“You really must be more careful in the future, boys,” declared Mrs. Sam Rover. “Why, you might have been trampled under foot by the cattle, as well as chewed up by this mountain lion!”
“I didn’t know there was any danger of the cattle stampeding,” put in Mrs. Tom Rover.
“Oh, Jackson assures me that the stampede wasn’t of much consequence,” remarked Songbird Powell. “But, of course, the boys shouldn’t have gotten in front of the animals. But this question of facing a mountain lion is another story.”
“Py chimminy! you don’t vas cotch me facin’ no mountain lions,” declared Hans Mueller emphatically. “I did me dot years ago, ven I go oud mit your faders. But I ton’t do him no more alreatty.”
“Oh, Fred, you must be more careful!” protested May to the youngest Rover, when she got the chance. “Suppose that lion had jumped right on top of you?”
“Believe me, May, I didn’t want to get so close,” he answered. “When we discovered the beast he wasn’t over twenty feet away.”
“And they told us there weren’t very many wild beasts around here!” came from Martha. “After this I guess we had better be careful how we roam through the woods and along the river.”
“Oh, they’re not likely to harm you unless you corner them,” said Songbird Powell. “They’ll sneak away from you if you give them half a chance. It’s only when they’re cornered or when they’re needing food that they are really combative.”
The mountain lion was skinned and the pelt taken away by the ranch foreman to be cured, and then Fred and Andy took it easy for the rest of the day.
“Isn’t it queer that Brassy Bangs has never showed himself around this place?” remarked Spouter that evening. “Wouldn’t you think he’d at least ride over to see what sort of an outfit we had here?”