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Vouchsafing a brief nod to the visitors he continued his conversation with MacDavid. "Ya-as," he was drawling, "one of the most extraordinary shots you ever heard of, Morley! I was between the devil and the deep sea properly. There was the bear rushing me at the double and there was the cougar perched growling up on the rock behind me.
A quiver made of the cougar skin, from which the tail of the animal depended, as a characteristic ornament, was slung at his back, and a shield of hides, quaintly emblazoned with another of his warlike deeds, was suspended from his neck by a thong of sinews.
We kept continually moving about, Frank mounted, and I afoot, to get good views of the cougar. When she crouched as if to leap, it was almost impossible to remain under the tree, and we kept moving. Once more Jones crept up on hands and knees. Moze walked the slanting pine like a rope performer. Kitty began to grow restless.
Snow was falling at the time, but the storm was evidently almost over; the leaves were all off the trees and bushes; and I felt that next day there would be such a chance to follow the cougar as fate rarely offered. In the morning by dawn I was at the bottom, and speedily found his trail.
Wood was thrown on the fire, and as the Mexicans gathered around the blaze they saw, twitching in the death throes, a big cougar, or some animal allied to it. Neither Tom nor his friends had ever seen one just like it, and the Mexican name for it meant nothing to them. But it was dead, and Tom was saved and the way he grasped Ned's hand showed how grateful he was, even if he did not say much.
As the big cat leaped, Mustard fastened his fangs into the beast's left leg, and was carried along with the cougar in its mighty spring. They could hear the hones grind as the iron jaws of the hound shut down on them. With a scream of rage, the maddened animal came to a sudden stop.
When the old chief appeared at the school-house with Benjamin that morning, the school gathered around him and asked him what these things could mean. He replied, in broken Chinook, that there was a puma among them, and that this animal sucked the blood of its victims. The puma or cougar or panther, sometimes spelled painter, is the American lion.
"We'll know soon," answered Lige directing the boys to urge their ponies along, and at a rapid pace they came up with the hounds some twenty minutes later. They were fighting some animal in a dense copse. It was a dinful racket they made in their desperate battle. "It's a cougar," explained Lige. "No cat would make such a rumpus. Look out for yourselves.
"Auntie, I don't believe Tom ever killed Al's sheep," declared Dale, positively. "Wal, Al thinks so, an' many other people," replied Mrs. Cass, shaking her gray head doubtfully. "You never swore he didn't. An' there was them two sheep-herders who did swear they seen him." "They only saw a cougar. An' they were so scared they ran." "Who wouldn't? Thet big beast is enough to scare any one.
It hit the cougar, and turning, he now rushed to the bank, and, bellowing with rage, plunged into the river. My position now became critical in the extreme. Once the rock was gained, I would certainly be mangled by the fierce creature. I could not take flight by water, as he could easily overtake me. My terror was extreme, and I lost the power of will.
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