XXIXNO PROWLERS ALLOWED
Perk was more than usually sleepy when he lay down with the gun close by the fire. Perhaps he really did not expect to be called upon to defend the camp since the doctor had assured him there had never been any serious trouble from the inmates of the wilderness, though he admitted he had now and again found some evidence in the morning that a large beast had been prowling around while he slept behind a closed door.
But having made up his mind to do his full duty, Perk was not to be turned aside either through arguments or ridicule. He lay there doing his best to keep awake by reviving long since buried memories of his activities across the sea when in France.
Then he “passed out,” as he himself would have termed it, to awaken and find the fire in need of replenishing. There was an abundance of wood close at hand so, still half asleep, Perk got to his knees, picked up an armful and rising to his full height stepped over to the smoldering fire.
As he cast his burden on the red ashes some of the smaller stuff started up instantly, causing the immediate vicinity to appear as though illuminated by a flash of vivid sunlight.
Perk heard a sound that was not unlike a loud sniff. This startled him and his returning animation was hastened when he caught a low growl, thrilling him to the center of his being.
Instantly he stared in the quarter from which these strange sounds proceeded. A movement concentrated his attention on a certain point. Some object that resembled a bulky, dark, living thing commenced to rise up until the startled Perk though it would never stop growing.
There it was standing before him—the same monster he had seen from his seat aboard the air ship. A full-grown grizzly, the “Mountain Charlie” of the California ranchers and hunters, a very giant of devilish ferocity and unafraid of anything that walked on two or four feet, monarch of the foothills and canyons of the mighty Rockies!
The grizzly growled again, this time with added vigor as if wanting the wretched invader of his hunting grounds to thoroughly understand he would put up with no trifling and that he must speedily “skip the ranch” unless he wished to be scattered around the whole neighborhood in pieces.
“Holy Smoke!”
That was as far as Perk got in starting to express his agitated feelings for the standing bear had made a movement that started him toward the campfire and the amazed aviator. Perhaps by this time Jack may have also awakened but Perk gave no heed to such a possibility. As the self-appointed guardian of the slumbering camp it was up to him to stand like a rock in its defense.
No right or left tackle on the gridiron ever made a more furious plunge in an effort to stop the hurtling progress of the enemy player carrying the pigskin toward the goal posts than Perk set in motion just then, urged on as with a goad by the necessity for clutching that firearm upon which he was depending so much.
He landed in a huddle, snatched at the gun, dropped it in his wild excitement, pawed around for what seemed a full agonized minute but which evidently lasted less than five seconds and finally found himself clutching the object of his mad groveling. Even then he got mixed a bit and was presenting the butt of the weapon toward the oncoming growling bear when, recognizing his mistake he managed to swing it around.
Another blunder just then might have cost him dear but Perk, now fully alive to the emergency cooled down sufficiently to move the little lever which would start the machine-gun to spitting out its discharges in one—two—three style as long as the belt of cartridges held out and he, Perk, refrained from shutting off the mechanism by which it was worked.
The bear was not twenty feet away when this hurricane of lead began to rain upon him with oft repeated thuds. His growls had been followed by the most dreadful roarings to which those near-by cliffs had ever echoed. He dropped down on all fours, shuffled this way and that, like a boy trying to evade the attacks of a swarm of maddened yellow jackets whose nest he had the temerity to strike with a club. But all without avail, since the now equally aroused Perk had only to switch the muzzle of his little cannon a trifle to continue bombarding him right along.
The gigantic beast rolled over this way and that, stroke to get upon his feet again, his bellows becoming less vociferous as his wounds increased with frightful rapidity. There could be no telling when Perk would ever have stopped firing only that a hand grasped his weapon and turned it upward toward the starry heavens while the voice of Jack roared in his ear:
“Hold hard, brother, you’ve got him shot full of holes as it is. What’s the use ruining his hide? Some day you’ll be proud to rest your feet on a rug made from a genuine old grizzly you potted all by yourself out here in the Rockies.”
So the fully aroused Perk managed to curb his warlike spirit a bit and shut off the flow of deadly missiles.
“Gosh amighty Jack, did you see me knock the ole hippopotamus silly when I opened on him right smart? Some ruction while she lasted, I’ll tell the cockeyed world! Gee whiz! he’s kicked his last an’ there he lies as quiet as a lamb.”
“He’s your meat okay, buddy,” Jack assured him after which he turned to explain the meaning of the frantic outburst of firing for both Dr. Reeves and Suzanne were in the doorway of the shack, demanding to know what it was all about and if anybody were hurt.
“Huh! on’y one that’s hurt real bad lies over yonder with his toes pointin’ up to the skies!” laughed the proud marksman. “Reg’lar he-grizzly, with a bellow like a range bull. Tried to rush me, don’t you know, but it turned out he couldn’t chaw lead an’ so he quit cold. An’ me, I’m figgerin’ on having the smartest rug you ever set eyes on made from his hairy hide if I c’n trim it from his carcass come mornin’. Some stunt for little Perk to put on the boards, if I do say it myself, as oughtn’t.”
“Queer how I have managed to keep the peace with that scamp for so long,” observed the doctor with a whimsical laugh, “and then he chooses to go on the warpath just when I happen to have company for the first time in years. But that was the proper caper, Perk, and you deserve to have a beautiful rug to show when telling this thrilling exploit to your grandchildren.”
“Wow! go easy on a feller, please, Doc,” expostulated the embarrassed Perk, “why, I ain’t even got a girl yet. You see, they gimme the razzberry, mebbe ’cause I’m so handsome. But I’m meanin’ to get that rug fixed up, if the pelt c’n be dragged off the big varmint in the mornin’ an’ that’s that.”
Examination showed that although a number of the bullets sprayed forth so promiscuously by the ardent sportsman had punctured the hide of the bear, these small holes would not prevent its being repaired and made useful, if one chose to spend a little time and cash for the desired result. So while Perk absolutely refused to call his vigil off and get some sleep, he had the comforting assurance that his work had not gone for naught.
“Yeah! don’t try to cramp my style, partner,” he told Jack who was trying to argue that lightning seldom struck twice in the same place, “course I understand how that grizzly ain’t goin’ to gimme another scare, but how do we know that he ain’t got a mate an’ if she comes prowlin’ around this roost an’ runs across her big boy lyin’ there all bloody and cashed in, why she might go on a tear an’ smash things into kindlin’ wood. Yep, I’ll finish the night on my post. Time to pick up any lost sleep when we’re back in old Cheyenne jest loafin’ an’ waitin’ for orders to start out on a fresh job.”
Knowing how stubborn Perk could be when he took a notion, Jack made no further attempt to persuade him and the last he saw of the bear-killer, Perk was sitting there, his back against a stump, with the formidable machine gun across his knees, all set for business at the old stand. Let all the silvertips in the entire Rocky Mountain section step up and give him a dare, with that wonderful gun that reminded him of old days in France when he was with the La Fayette Escadrille, flying for France and her allies, he felt equal to a full dozen of the shaggy beasts.
So the balance of the night passed and finally came the dawn of a new day that would thrill the nation with the startling news covering the finding of the missing air-mail pilot.