As the first awful, raucous outburst broke the outer silence Kitty Bonnair jumped, and Lucy and her father turned pale.
“What’s that?” cried Kitty, in a hushed voice, “a mountain lion?”
“Not yet,” answered Creede enigmatically. “He will be though, if he grows. Aw, say, that’s just my cat. Here, pussy, pussy, pussy! D’ye hear that, now? Sure, he knows me! Wait a minute and I’ll try an’ ketch ’im.”
He returned a few minutes later, with Tommy held firmly against his breast, blacker, wilder, and scrawnier than ever, but purring and working his claws.
“How’s this for a mountain lion?” said Creede, stopping just inside the door and soothing down his pet. “D’ye see that hook?” he inquired, holding up the end of Tommy’s crooked tail and laughing at 213 Kitty’s dismay. “He uses that to climb cliffs with. That’s right––he’s a new kind of cat. Sure, they used to be lots of ’em around here, but the coyotes got all the rest. Tom is the only one left. Want to pet him? Well––whoa, pussy,––come up careful, then; he’s never––ouch!”
At the first whisk of skirts, Tommy’s yellow eyes turned green and he sank every available hook and claw into his master’s arm; but when Kitty reached out a hand he exploded in a storm of spits and hisses and dashed out through the door.
“Well, look at that, now,” said Creede, grinning and rubbing his arm. “D’ye know what’s the matter with him? You’re the first woman he ever saw in his life. W’y, sure! They ain’t no women around here. I got him off a cowman over on the Verde. He had a whole litter of ’em––used to pinch Tom’s tail to make him fight––so when I come away I jest quietly slipped Mr. Tommy into my shaps.”
“Oh, the poor little thing,” said Kitty; and then she added, puckering up her lips, “but I don’t like cats.”
“Oh, I do!” exclaimed Lucy Ware quickly, as Creede’s face changed, and for a moment the big cowboy stood looking at them gravely.
“That’s good,” he said, smiling approvingly at Lucy; and then, turning to Kitty Bonnair, he said: “You want to learn, then.”