"Got who?" asked Chunky.
"I don't know. The cougar, I presume. Don't you hear them?"
"I hear the dogs barking, that's all," replied Ned.
"And I hear more than that," said the guide, with a peculiar smile. "Don't you distinguish a difference in the tone of one of the dogs' bark?"
"No, I don't," snapped Chunky. "All barks sound alike to me."
"Mustard is baying 'treed,'" said the guide. "Hurry, if you want to be in at the death. If you don't the dogs either will kill him or get killed before we can reach them."
Putting spurs to their mounts, the hunters set off at a livelier gallop, and soon the deep tones of the hounds began to grow louder. Now, too, the boys were able to catch a new note—a note almost of triumph, it seemed to them, in the dogs' hoarse baying.
"Stick to your ponies. Don't leave them. If it's a cougar, he is liable to stampede them again. And don't any of you shoot until I give you the word."
"There he is!" cried Tad, pointing to a low-spreading pinyon tree. "I can see him moving around in the top there. May I take a shot at him, Mr. Thomas?"
"No; do you want to kill the dogs?"