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The Border Boys with the Mexican Rangers
The Border Boys with the Mexican Rangers
CHAPTER I
AN IMPRUDENT BEAR
Professor Wintergreen sat bolt upright amidst his blankets and listened intently. Had it been daylight, the angular figure of the scientist would have made a laughable spectacle. But the canyon in the State of Sonora, in Western Mexico, in which the Border Boys and their preceptor were camped, was pitchy dark with a velvety blackness, relieved only by a few steely-looking stars shining from the open spaces of a fast overclouding sky.
The night wind soughed in melancholy fashion through the trees that clothed the sides of the rugged abyss in which the camp had been pitched that evening, and the tinkle of the tiny stream that threaded its depths was audible. But although these were the only sounds to be heard at the moment, it was neither of them that had startled the professor. No, what he had heard had been something far different.
Waking some hours after he had first fallen asleep, the man of science had indulged his sleepless moments by plunging into mental calculations of an abstruse character. He was deeply engrossed in these, when the sudden sound had broken in on the quietness of the night.
“Bless me, I could have sworn that I heard a footstep, and a stealthy one, too,” muttered the professor to himself, “I must be getting nervous. Possibly that is what made me wake up, and – wow!”
The ruminations of Professor Wintergreen broke off abruptly as he suddenly felt something warm and hairy brush his face.
“It’s a bear!” he yelled, springing to his feet with a shout that instantly aroused the others, – Jack Merrill, the rancher’s son; Ralph Stetson, his schoolmate from old Stonefell; Coyote Pete, and Walt Phelps.
“A b’ar!” yelled Coyote Pete, awake in a flash, “wha’r is ther varmint?” As he spoke, the plainsman drew forth his well-worn old forty-four and began flourishing it about.
Before the others could say a word a dark form bolted suddenly through the camp, scattering, as it went, the embers of the dying campfire.
“It’s a bear, sure enough!” exclaimed Ralph, as the creature, a small bear of the black variety, howled and stumbled amidst the hot coals.
All at once its shaggy coat burst into flame, and with a cry of intense agony it dashed off into the woods.