第69章 WHAT HAPPENED(1)

Master Provy Smith had started out that eventful morning with the intention of fighting Master Jackson Tribbs for the "Kingship" of Table Ridge--a trifling territory of ten leagues square--Tribbs having infringed on his boundaries and claimed absolute sovereignty over the whole mountain range.Julian Fleming was present as referee and bottle-holder.The battle ground selected was the highest part of the ridge.The hour was six o'clock, which would allow them time to reach school before its opening, with all traces of their conflict removed.The air was crisp and cold,--a trifle colder than usual,--and there was a singular thickening of the sun's rays on the ridge, which made the distant peaks indistinct and ghostlike.However, the two combatants stripped "to the buff,"and Fleming patronizingly took position at the "corner," leaning upon a rifle, which, by reason of his superior years, and the wilderness he was obliged to traverse in going to school, his father had lent him to carry.It was that day a providential weapon.

Suddenly, Fleming uttered the word, "Sho!" The two combatants paused in their first "squaring off" to see, to their surprise, that their referee had faced round, with his gun in his hand, and was staring in another direction.

"B'ar!" shouted the three voices together.A huge bear, followed by its cubs, was seen stumbling awkwardly away to the right, making for the timber below.In an instant the boys had hurried into their jackets again, and the glory of fight was forgotten in the fever of the chase.Why should they pound each other when there was something to really KILL? They started in instant pursuit, Julian leading.

But the wind was now keen and bitter in their faces, and that peculiar thickening of the air which they had noticed had become first a dark blue and then a whitening pall, in which the bear was lost.They still kept on.Suddenly Julian felt himself struck between the eyes by what seemed a snowball, and his companions were as quickly spattered by gouts of monstrous clinging snowflakes.

Others as quickly followed--it was not snowing, it was snowballing.

They at first laughed, affecting to retaliate with these whirling, flying masses shaken like clinging feathers from a pillow; but in a few seconds they were covered from head to foot by snow, their limbs impeded or pinioned against them by its weight, their breath gone.They stopped blindly, breathlessly.Then, with a common instinct, they turned back.But the next moment they heard Julian cry, "Look out!" Coming towards them out of the storm was the bear, who had evidently turned back by the same instinct.An ungovernable instinct seized the younger boys, and they fled.But Julian stopped with leveled rifle.The bear stopped too, with sullen, staring eyes.But the eyes that glanced along the rifle were young, true, and steady.Julian fired.The hot smoke was swept back by the gale into his face, but the bear turned and disappeared in the storm again.Julian ran on to where his companions had halted at the report, a little ashamed of their cowardice."Keep on that way!" he shouted hoarsely."No use tryin' to go where the b'ar couldn't.Keep on!""Keep on--whar? There ain't no trail--no nuthin'!" said Jackson querulously, to hold down a rising fear.It was true.The trail had long since disappeared; even their footprints of a moment before were filled up by the piling snow; they were isolated in this stony upland, high in air, without a rock or tree to guide them across its vast white level.They were bitterly cold and benumbed.The stimulus of the storm and chase had passed, but Julian kept driving them before him, himself driven along by the furious blast, yet trying to keep some vague course along the waste.So an hour passed.Then the wind seemed to have changed, or else they had traveled in a circle--they knew not which, but the snow was in their faces now.But, worst of all, the snow had changed too; it no longer fell in huge blue flakes, but in millions of stinging gray granules.Julian's face grew hard and his eyes bright.He knew it was no longer a snow-squall, but a lasting storm.He stopped; the boys tumbled against him.He looked at them with a strange smile.

"Hev you two made up?" he said.

"No--o!"

"Make up, then."

"What?"

"Shake hands."

They clasped each other's red, benumbed fingers and laughed, albeit a little frightened at Julian."Go on!" he said, curtly.

They went on dazedly, stupidly, for another hour.