Pluck on the Long Trail; Or, Boy Scouts in the RockiesSabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
General
Pluck on the Long Trail; Or, Boy Scouts in the Rockies
Sabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction; Hiking -- Juvenile fiction; Rocky Mountains -- Juvenile fiction
It was the outcrop where Ward had been. Fitz jumped to make for it. He
hugged his camera as he ran. We thought that Van Sant would make for it,
too. But he let Fitz pass him, and he stood. The old bear was coming,
crazy. She only halted to scratch where a twenty-two pellet had stung
her hide. Van Sant waited, steady as a rock. He lifted his little rifle
slowly and held on her, and just as she was about to reach him he
fired.
"Crack!"
Headfirst she plunged. She kicked and ripped the ground, and didn't get
up again. She lay still, amidst a silence, we all watching, breathless.
Beyond, Fitzpatrick had closed his precious camera as he ran, and now at
the rock had turned.
"Shoot her again, Van!" begged Scout Ward.
"I can't," he answered. "That was my last cartridge. But she's dead. I
hit her in the eye." And he lowered his rifle.
Then we gave a great cheer, and rushed for the spot--except Major Henry;
he was the first to think and he rushed to see to little Jed Smith.
Fitzpatrick shook hands hard with Red Fox Scout Van Sant and followed
the major.
Yes, the old bear was stone dead. Van Sant had shot her through the eye,
into the brain. That was enough. Ward and I shook hands with him, too.
He had shown true Scouts' nerve, to sail in in that way, and to meet the
danger and to be steady under fire.
"Oh, well, I was the only one who could do anything," he explained. "I
knew it was my last cartridge and I had to make it count. That's all."
Then we hurried down to where the Major and Fitz and Kit Carson were
gathered about little Jed. Jed wasn't dead. No; we could see him move.
And Fitz called: "He's all right. But his shoulder's out and his leg is
torn."
Little Jed was pale but game. His right arm hung dangling and useless,
and his right calf was bloody. The whole arm hung dangling because the
shoulder was hurt; but it was not a fractured collarbone, for when we
had laid open Jed's shirt we could feel and see. The shoulder was out of
shape, and commencing to swell, and the arm hung lower than the well
arm. (Note 58.)
We let the wound of the calf go, for we must get at this dislocation,
before the shoulder was too sore and rigid. We knew what to do. Jed was
stretched on his back, Red Fox Scout Ward sat at his head, steadying him
around the body, and with his stockinged heel under Jed's armpit Major
Henry pulled down on the arm and shoved up against it with his heel at
the same time. That hurt. Jed turned very white, and let out a big
grunt--but we heard a fine snap, and we knew that the head of the
arm-bone had chucked back into the shoulder-socket where it belonged.
So that was over; and we were glad,--Jed especially. We bound his arm
with a handkerchief sling across to the other shoulder, to keep the
joint in place for a while, and we went at his leg.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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