“I’ve got to get another club,” said Fred, as he started hacking at a stout branch with his knife. “I don’t know how I ever kept from falling when he knocked that stick out of my hand.”
“It was lucky he connected with the club instead of with your hand,” remarked Lee. “You’d better get that branch cut as quickly as you can. That beast will be up here again inside of five minutes.”
“All right, I’m ready for him,” said Fred, as he cut through the last tough fibre and found himself provided with a serviceable club. “We can give him the same dose he got before.”
The cougar was still full of fight, and Fred had hardly regained his position when the fierce brute came swarming up the tree again. But this time he did not stop at the screen of branches, most of which had been torn off in the previous struggle, and in spite of a staggering fusillade of blows he managed to reach the crotch in which the boys were standing.
“Out onto the branches, fellows!” yelled Lee. “It’s our only chance!”
Before the panther could get his balance and reach one of them, the boys had scrambled out on three separate branches, leaving the cougar in undisputed possession of their former vantage ground.
It was a breathless moment for all three, as they waited to see which one the animal would attack first. The cougar himself seemed undecided at first, glaring from one to the other, spitting and growling, viciously. Then, perhaps because he had happened to choose the largest branch, the ferocious beast started creeping toward Lee, his wicked yellow eyes staring fixedly at his victim.
“Help me out, fellows, or I’m a goner!” cried the Southern lad despairingly.
His friends had no intention of leaving him to his fate. Some three feet above Lee’s branch were two others, almost parallel to it. Bobby and Fred, both moved by the same thought, selected each a branch and crawled cautiously out in the wake of the advancing cougar.
The latter was proceeding cautiously, for the branch bent and swayed with his weight, and anyway, his prey seemed so securely within his reach that he saw no cause for hurry. He was so intent on Lee that he either did not notice the swaying of the branches over his head or else thought it not worth noticing. Lee kept edging further and further out on the branch, until at last the cougar, feeling it bend perilously beneath him, paused a moment in his deadly progress. This was Bobby’s and Fred’s opportunity, and they were not slow in taking advantage of it. They poised their clubs a second, and then, at the same time, brought them down full force on the wicked yellow head beneath them.