Perhaps that was a happy circumstance, after all. For as the car swerved, there was a splintering crash, and the windshield was shivered. The body of the panther shot to one side and the motor car escaped the full shock of the charge.
Over and over upon the ground the panther rolled; and off toward the road, in a long, sweeping curve, darted the automobile.
"Lucky escape!" Tom shouted, turning his blazing face once to look back at the party in his car.
"Oh! More than luck, Tommy!" returned Ruth, earnestly.
"It was providential," declared Helen, shrinking into her seat again and beginning to tremble, now that the danger was past.
"Good hunting!" exclaimed the girl from the ranch. "Think of charging a wildcat with one of these smoke wagons! My! wouldn't it make Bashful Ike's eyes bulge out? I reckon he wouldn't believe we had such hunting here in the East—eh?" and her laugh broke the spell of fear that had clutched them all.
"That critter beats the biggest bobcat I ever heard of," remarked Jerry Sheming. "Why! a catamount isn't in it with that black beast."
"Where'd it go?" asked Tom, quite taken up with the running of the car.
"Back to the ravine," said Ruth. "Oh! I hope it will do no damage before it is caught."
Just now the four young friends had something more immediate to think about. This Jerry Sheming had been "playing 'possum." Suddenly they found that he lay back in the tonneau, quite insensible.