"Ye see the twins don't like to have strangers monkeyin' around 'em," she explained. "I'll git goin' now and ye kin foller along. I've got to git Henry first." "Eh? What's that?" demanded Hippy. "I don't go nowheres without my Henry." "You--you aren't going to take that beast with you, are you, Mrs. Shafto?" cried Emma. "I sure be, and I reckon ye'll be mighty glad to have him along before we git through with this here hop into the Big Woods." Emma groaned dismally. "Never mind," soothed Hippy. "You can practice your nature reading stunt on him. Who knows but that you may learn the bear language, so that by the time we finish our work up here you will be able to go out in the forest and tell the bears your life history, and listen to them telling you theirs. Of course they might eat you, but that would not matter." "Huh!" grunted Miss Dean, elevating her nose and turning her back on him. "Mount!" ordered Hippy, after each girl had saddled her pony and stood waiting for the start. They swung into their saddles with agility, and jogged out into the road with Hindenburg racing ahead and darting back, barking joyously. He was already feeling the call of the wild. "There's Joe," called Emma, as they rounded a bend in the road. "I do not see the bear," wondered Tom. "Perhaps she decided to leave him at home to shift for himself. I hope so." Grace said she hoped _not_, for the bear would make life interesting for them. Joe was sitting on the back of one of her pack mules jogging along, leading the second mule behind, but, though she must have heard the Overlanders shout to her, she neither replied nor looked back. Hindenburg, however, darted ahead and began barking at the mules, dodging their heels successfully for several minutes, much to the amusement of the party following. At last, however, he caught a glancing blow from a mule foot that sent him rolling into the bushes. In a few moments he was out again, circling mules and rider, barking his angry protests, then dodging off the trail into the bushes where they heard him barking with a different note in his voice. "There comes the bear!" cried Nora. "Look at him!" "Yes, and there comes Hindenburg bucking the line," added Hippy. The bear, followed by the dog, burst into sight just at the moment that Hindenburg nipped the bear's hind leg. Henry whirled, made a pass at the pup, and missed him. The bear then charged Hindenburg with mouth wide open, and the battle was on. [Illustration: The Bear Advanced, Sparring Like a Prize Fighter.] "Call off yer dog," shouted Joe. "Call off your bear," answered Hippy Wingate. The guide tried to do so and failed. Hippy's efforts to draw Hindenburg from the fray met with no better success. It was at this juncture that the bear scored first blood. With a well placed blow of his paw he knocked the pup into the middle of the road, and the lead mule, at whose heels Hindenburg had fallen, kicked him the rest of the way into the bushes.