started, and we all
except Fitz spread out to help in the surround. Fitz made ready to take
them on the run. Nobody is afraid of the little brown or black bear.

Jed and Kit were just entering the bushes to make the circuit on their
side, when we heard Apache snorting and galloping, and a roar and a
"Whoof!" and out from the brush over there burst the burro, with another
bear chasing him. This was no little bear. It was a great big bear--an
old she cinnamon, and these others weren't the small brown or black
bears, either: they were half-grown cinnamon cubs!

How she came! Kit Carson and Jed Smith were right in her path.

"Look out!" we yelled.

Kit and little Jed leaped to dodge. She struck like a cat as she passed,
and head over heels went poor little Jed, sprawling in the brush, and
she passed on, straight to her cubs. They met her, and she smelled them
for a moment. She lifted her broad, short head, and snarled.

"Don't do a thing," ordered Major Henry. "She'll leave."

So we stood stock-still. That was all we _could_ do. We knew that poor
little Jed was lying perhaps badly wounded, off there in the brush, but
it wouldn't help to call the old bear's attention to him again. In the
open place Fitzpatrick the Bad Hand stood; he was right in front of the
old bear, and he was _taking pictures_!

The old bear saw him, and he and the camera seemed to make her mad.
Maybe she took it for a weapon. She lowered her head, swung it to and
fro, her bristles rose still higher, and across the open space she
started.

"Fitz!" we shrieked. And I said to myself, sort of crying: "Oh, jiminy!"

We all set up a tremendous yell, but that didn't turn her. Major Henry
jumped forward, and tugged to pull loose a stone. I looked for a stone
to throw. Of course I couldn't find one. Then out of the corner of my
eye, while I was watching Fitz, too, I glimpsed Red Fox Scout Van Sant
coming running, and shooting with his twenty-two. The bullets spatted
into the bear's hide, and stung her.

"Run, Fitz!" called Van Sant. "I'll stop her."

But he didn't, yet. Hardly! That Fitz had just been winding his film. He
took the camera from between his knees, where he had held it while he
used his one hand, and he leveled it like lightning, on the old
bear--and took her picture again. That picture won a prize, after we got
back to civilization. But the old bear kept coming.

We all were shouting, in vain,--shouting all kinds of things. Red Fox
Sc