Glum Gunn rushed across the area, jumped into the cage of the puma, and began belabouring him with his whip. The beast whimpered and wept, and the brute belaboured him. Clare heard the changed cry of his friend, and came swooping like the guardian angel he was. When he saw the patient creature on his haunches like a dog, accepting Gunn’s brutality without an attempt to escape it—except, indeed, by dodging any blows at his head so cleverly that the ruffian could not once hit it—he bounded to the cage, wild with anger and pity. But Gunn stood with his back against the door of it, and he was reduced to entreaty.
“Oh, sir! sir!” he cried, in a voice full of tears; “it was all my fault! Abby came to look for me, and I didn’t know Pummy disliked dogs!”
“Do you tell me, you rascal, that you were down among the hanimals when I supposed you in your bed?”
“Yes, sir, I was. I didn’t know there was any harm. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“Hold your jaw! What was you doing?”
“I was only in the cage with the puma.”
“You was! You have the impudence to tell me that to my face! I’ll teach you, you cotton-face! you milk-pudding! to go corrupting the hanimals and making them not worth their salt!”
He swung himself out of the cage-door in a fury, but Clare, with his friend in danger, would not run. The wretch seized him by the collar, and began to lash him as he had been lashing the puma. Happily he was too close to him to give him such stinging blows.
With the first hiss of the thong, came a tearing screech from the puma, as he flung himself in fury upon the door of his cage. Gunn in his wrath with Clare had forgotten to bolt it. Dragging with his claws, he found it unfastened, pulled it open, and like a huge shell from a mortar, shot himself at Gunn. Down he went. For one moment the puma stood over him, swinging his tail in great sweeps, and looking at him, doubtless with indignation. Then before Clare could lay hold of him, for Clare too had fallen by the onset, Pummy turned a scornful back upon his enemy, and walking away with a slow, careless stride, as if he were not worth thinking of more, leaped into his cage, and lay down. The thing passed so swiftly that Clare did not see him touch the man with his paw, and thought he had but thrown him down with his weight. The beast, however, had not left the brute without the lesson he needed; he had given him just one little pat on the side of the head.
