Then something that struck him as odd in their salutation caused him to
look again. It was not simply a friendly greeting. There was terror,
panic, wild anxiety. And now they were shouting and pointing to something
behind him.

He turned like a flash. And what he saw made his heart almost leap from
his body.




CHAPTER V

The Grizzly at Bay


Tearing down upon him in a rapid, lumbering gallop was a monstrous bear.
It needed no second glance to tell that it was a grizzly. The little eyes
incandescent with rage, the big hump just back of the ears, the enormous
size and bulk could belong to none other than this dreaded king of the
Rockies.

For an instant every drop of blood in Bert's body seemed to rush to his
head. It suffused his eyes with a red film and sounded like thunder in
his ears. Then the flood receded and left him cold as ice. He was himself
again, cool, self-reliant, with his mental processes working like
lightning.

He had no time to unfasten the canoe. Long before he could get in and
push off, the bear would have been on top of him. The beast was not more