they found
a huge bear intent upon a feast of beef. The oxen were bellowing in
terror, one of them dashing crazily about the inclosure, and the other
so badly hurt that it could not get up.

Phillips, who was in the lead, fired first, but succeeded only in
wounding the bear. Pain was now added to the savagery of hunger, and the
infuriated monster rushed upon Phillips. Dave leaped back, but his foot
slipped on a bit of ice, and he went down with a thud, his rifle flying
from his hand as he struck.

But there was a cool young head and a steady hand behind him. A ball
from Will's rifle entered the distended mouth of the onrushing bear and
pierced the brain, and the huge mass fell lifeless almost across Dave's
body.

Phillips's nerves loosened with a snap, and he laughed for very relief
as he seized Will's hands.

"That's the time you saved my life, old fellow!" said he. "Perhaps I can
do as much for you sometime."

"That's the first bear I ever killed," said Will, more interested in
that topic than in the one Dave held forth on.

One of the oxen was found to be mortally hurt, and a bullet ended its
misery. Will then took his first lesson in the gentle art of skinning a
bear.

Dave's chance to square his account with Will came a fortnight later.
They were chasing a bunch of elk, when Will fell, and discovered that he
could not rise.

"I'm afraid I've broken my leg," said he, as Dave ran to him.

Phillips had once been a medical student, and he examined the leg with a
professional eye. "You're right, Billy; the leg's broken," he reported.

Then he went to work to improvise splints and bind up the leg; and this
done, he took Will on his back and bore him to the dugout. Here the leg
was stripped, and set in carefully prepared splints, and the whole bound
up securely.

The outlook was unpleasant, cheerfully as one might regard it. Living
in the scoop of a sidehill when one is strong and able to get about and
keep the blood coursing is one thing; living there pent up through a
tedious winter is quite another. Dave meditated as he worked away at the
pair of crutches.

"Tell you what I think I'd better do," said he. "The nearest settlement
is some hundred miles away, and I can get there and back in twenty days.
Suppose I make the trip, get a team for our wagon, and come back for
you?"

The idea of being left alone and well-nigh helpless struck dismay to
Will's heart, but there was no help for it, and he assented.