Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/64

46 giant “bald face” grizzly loomed almost upon the two officers. There was no time for thought. Quick as a flash, Connie threw himself between two rocks and, as the great brute thundered past, the boy saw McKeever slip on a patch of old ice, try to recover, and then, as though hurled from a catapult, ricochet from a rock-wall to bring up against a small twisted sapling, and drop, limp as a rag at its base. From beyond, down the steep valley, a mighty roaring and a rattling avalanche of small stones marked the flight of the wounded bear.

Connie leaped to his feet and rushed to the side of the Sergeant, where he was joined a few moments later by the Indian scout whose ill-timed shot had precipitated the disaster. Together they moved the unconscious man to a flat shelf of rock and proceeded to examine him for injuries. Upon his forehead, above the left eye, a lump the size of a hen’s egg had swelled to an angry blue-black, but this gave them scarcely a thought, for they saw that from the thigh to the top of his high-laced boot, the man’s khaki trousers hung in ribbons where the huge claws had ripped downward almost the entire length of the leg. For