Within an hour they had left civilization behind them again and were slipping down through the wildest-looking country they had yet encountered. There were many islands, some hardly more than sand-bars where the twisting, gnawing river was depositing the tons of yellow mud it had eaten away, farther up. Jungles of tall cane lined the banks, and often, when the current bore them through a narrow cut, they would pass so close that the cane rattled along the side of the boat. They were just entering one of these channels, sometime in the middle of the afternoon, and Allen and Tad were speculating as to whether they were yet in Tennessee, when Abe held up his hand for silence. “Listen,” he said, after a moment. “Dogs barkin’, down in the canebrake. Mebbe we’ll see what they’re a-huntin’.” The others climbed to the fore deck and stood quiet, listening. Soon they too heard the savage baying of the hounds, away to the south, and as the current brought them nearer they watched the banks intently. The sound was much closer now, and seemed to have changed in tone. There were short breathless barks and an undercurrent of fierce snarling. “They’ve got somethin’, sure!” said Abe. “An’ if they ain’t too far back from the river we’ll come in sight of ’em in a minute.” “Look!” cried Tad. As he pointed they saw a gaunt black bear, with two cubs running at her side, dash across an opening in the canebrake not twenty yards away. Close on their heels came the dogs--big mongrel hounds that leaped abreast of the hindmost cub and pulled him down with murderous jaws. The old bear had started into the cane on the far side of the opening but turned at a scream from her luckless baby. With a rumbling growl she rushed back into the tangle of dogs, knocking them to right and left with vicious blows of her great forepaws. The other cub had taken to the water and was swimming strongly out across the channel. “Back water with the oars!” shouted Abe from the stern. And lifting the long sweep from its chocks, he thrust it down into the mud like a setting-pole. The flatboat slackened speed and came to a stop. Leaning far out over the gunwale and stretching his long arm downward, Abe gripped the young bear by the scruff of the neck and hauled him aboard, dripping and gasping. Meanwhile events had developed swiftly on the shore. There was a noise of running feet, and a hunter in deerskin burst out of the cane. As he appeared, the mother bear left her dead cub and plunged into the river. The next second the man came bounding after her, with no weapon but the long hunting-knife he gripped in his right hand. The bear saw the flatboat, hesitated, and doubled back to the left, only to meet the hunter, who sprang to bar her last path of escape. With a grunt of rage the great black beast surged up on her hind feet and faced this enemy, standing chest-deep in the water before her.