The Little Brass God was gone!

George, still lying upon the floor of the cavern, stretched his legs and arms, to see if he was all there, as he mentally commented.

After a time he arose to his feet, clinging desperately to the wall because of his weakness, and called to Thede, who, as the reader knows, had left hours before, in search of the injured lad’s chums. There came only echoes in reply to his shouts.

There was a pile of wood near at hand and, gathering numerous dry fagots, the boy staggered dizzily toward the heap of ashes in the center of the cave. It seemed to him that the first thing to do was to get warm.

He was hungry, too, but warmth was the important thing just then. A few red coals still remained, and a blaze soon grew under the boy’s careful hands. In a short time there was a roaring fire.

After thawing the chill out of his bones, the boy began looking around for his friend of the night before. He looked at his watch and noted that it was eight o’clock. His revolver was gone but his search-light was still in his pocket.

He remembered in a moment that he had handed his revolver to Thede before starting to cross the light zone in the center of the cavern. Whatever had taken place during his hours of unconsciousness, it was evident that he had not been robbed.

It seemed to the boy, as he stood looking through the opening which gave a view of the forest to the north, that he had lain on the hard floor of the cavern for countless aeons. He did not remember what had caused the wound on his head. He only knew that he had been seized with a sudden dizziness and had fallen, after hearing pistol shots.

Standing before the fire with the cheerful light of the blaze on one side and the dazzling light of the sun on the snow on the other side, the uncanny incidents of the night before seemed like a dream to the boy.

He even found himself wondering whether he had actually caught sight of the Little Brass God, leering down upon the watcher from the wall.

Then he recollected that Thede had first called his attention to the ugly image whose evil eyes seemed to take on malevolent expressions in the light of the dancing flames.

“It must be all true, then,” he concluded. “The man by the fire, the Little Brass God on the shelf, the pistol shots, and then a blank.”

He wondered where Thede had gone, and why he had deserted him.

“That’s the strangest part of it all,” the lad mused. “I had an idea that the boy would stand by me if I got into trouble, and here he runs away, leaving me lying unconscious in the freezing atmosphere of this desolate old cavern. I didn’t think it of him!”

It occurred to George as he studied over the puzzle that Thede might not have been as innocent and loyal as he had pretended to be. He might have been merely an instrument in the hands of a cunning man.

“At any rate,” the boy pondered, “we have found the Little Brass God!”

He had not, of course, secured possession of it, but he had learned definitely that it was in that part of the country. He wondered as to the identity of the man who sat watching the fire. The light had been dim, and it might have been Pierre for all he knew. Or it might have been an accomplice of the tricky trapper.

“Now, I wonder how I’m going to get back to camp,” the boy mused as he piled on more wood and spread his hands to the cheerful warmth of the fire. “Judging from the time it took us to get here, it must be ten or twelve miles back to the camp.”

“The boys will think I’ve deserted them, I guess,” he added. “If they knew how hungry I am just at this minute, they’d send out a relief expedition!”

While the boy warmed himself before the fire a series of growls came from the entrance to the cavern, and two black bears looked in upon him.

“Now I wonder if you’re the same disreputable citizens that tried to make a free lunch counter of me last night?” George mused. “I presume you’re hungry, all right, but I’d rather not be the person to do the feeding this morning. You look too fierce for me, both of you.”

The smell of blood evidently excited the bears to unusual feats of courage, for they entered the mouth of the cavern and stood growling and showing their teeth within a short distance of where George stood.

Only for the great blaze which now leaped almost to the roof of the cavern, the boy would have been attacked at once. He glanced at the rapidly decreasing pile of wood, and wondered what would take place as soon as the fire had died down. He had no weapon with which to defend himself.

For at least a quarter of an hour the bears and the lad gazed at each other through the red light of the fire. The bears were gradually moving forward, and every time the lad laid a stick of wood on the blaze they seemed to understand more fully that his defense was weakening.

George thought he had never seen wood burn away so fast. The blaze seemed to melt it as boiling water melts ice.

Already the blaze was dropping lower, and the pile of wood was almost gone. The bears sniffed at the blood stains where the boy had lain on the floor, and turned fierce eyes on the figure by the fire.

George estimated that his wood might last ten minutes longer. Then there would be a rush, a crunching of bones and all would be over.

A rifle shot sounded from the outside, and one of the bears dropped to the rocky floor, struggled spasmodically for a moment, and then straightened out and lay still. The next instant another shot, equally accurate, came and the second bear was dead in a moment.

The boy waited eagerly for the appearance of the man who had done the shooting. He had no idea who the man might be, and was not quite certain that the fellow had not taken from him one danger only to place him in another. Still, he looked eagerly forward to his appearance.

When the man appeared, a smoking double-barreled rifle in his hand, George saw a tall, ungainly figure with long legs, a long, slim body, very high cheek bones, and rather stern and uncompromising blue eyes.

The newcomer was dressed in the leather jacket usually worn by trappers in that district, leather leggins, moccasins, and fur cap. A belt of red leather, probably colored and tanned by some Indian process, was drawn tightly about his waist. There were gold rings in his ears which swung an inch down on his brown cheeks.

“Hello, sonny!” the man said, advancing into the cavern, standing the butt of his rifle on the rock, and leaning on the barrel.

“Say,” the boy almost shouted, springing forward and extending his hand, “that’s about the best shooting I’ve seen in a year!”

“The place to hit a bear,” the new-comer replied, “is in the neck, right about where the spinal cord starts to crawl under the skull.”

“It’s a good thing you came along just as you did,” George stated. “I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am, and so you’ll have to take that for granted. You saved my life!”

“I’m Antoine,” the other said, in a moment, after a casual survey of the boy. “I’m a hunter and trapper. I saw the bears looking in, and knew from the smoke coining out that there was a human being in here, too. Knowing that bears and humans don’t mix remarkably well, I came in, too. That’s all there is to it!”

“I guess they would have mixed with me all right in about a minute,” George said with a smile. “I had about abandoned hope!”

“How’d you get here?” asked Antoine.

George related the story of the adventures of the previous night, omitting, however, any mention of the Little Brass God. While he talked, there came to his mind an indistinct impression that the face of the man he had seen sitting by the fire was the face of the man who now stood before him.

He put the thought away instantly, for he did not believe that the person who had left him on the floor of the cavern to die of cold and exposure, or to be devoured by wild beasts, could be the same who had so opportunely rescued him from death.

“You must be hungry, I take it,” Antoine said, after the boy bad concluded his recital. “Boys usually are hungry.”

“You bet I’m hungry!” George replied.

Antoine glanced smilingly about at the two bears lying on the floor.

“Can you cook bear steak?” he asked.

“Can I?” repeated George.

Antoine pointed to the Boy Scout medals on the lad’s coat sleeve.

“You have the Stalker and Pioneer medals,” he said. “You ought to know something about forestry.”

“How do you know what they are?” smiled George.

“Oh,” was the hesitating reply, “I know quite a lot about Boy Scout work and training. Fine lot of fellows, those Boy Scouts!”

“Right you are!” declared George.

Antoine now drew forth a hunting knife which seemed to be as keen as a razor and began removing the skins from the dead animals. He worked swiftly and skillfully, and in a short time the making of two fine black bear rugs were laying in the sun outside.

“Now,” the man said, “you get busy with that steak over the coals, and I’ll tote in more wood. You don’t seem quite up to carrying heavy loads yet. That must be a bad wound.”

“I think I must have lost considerable blood,” George answered.

After the steak was nicely broiled, Antoine brought water from a nearby stream, and the boy’s head was carefully and rather skillfully attended to.

“And now,” said Antoine, “we’ll go to my own home, which isn’t far away.”

Without a word the boy followed the hunter through the deep snow which lay on the slope until they came to an opening in the rock. Entering, the boy found a very comfortable cavern, almost completely lined with fur. There was a chimney-like crevice in the ceiling which permitted the escape of smoke and foul air. Both inside and outside the entrance were great stones by which the place might be sealed up from either side.

“Quite a cozy nest!” George ventured, and Antoine nodded.

“We’ll celebrate your arrival with a cup of good strong tea,” he said.

The tea was brewed and drank. Then the trapper’s face began to assume grotesque forms. The boy’s head swam dizzily. He caught a cynical smile in Antoine’s eyes and dropped back into a drugged and dreamless sleep!