It seemed but a few minutes until the warning had spread throughout Scottsville. Children were hastily summoned and taken within doors; stores were closed; armed men appeared; women stood, door knobs in hand, pale-faced and trembling; parents whose children had attended the performance rushed about excitedly calling to all concerning their offsprings’ whereabouts. Mr. Trevor was not missing among these. Many Elm Street mothers paced their lawns as if awaiting some messenger of death. And the Elm Street boys themselves? Their first panic over, they naturally set out in the direction the beast had taken.
“He’s over in Jackson’s Woods,” came a message from somewhere. Jackson’s Woods marked the end of the town, a half-cleared bit of forest. Cautiously and following other pursuers the boys hurried in that direction. When they came to its edge, fifty or more men were seen in a crowd. Well beyond them, on the edge of the old “frog pond” and low on the ground, Old Growls was lapping water in apparent content.
While the pursuers took council, the beast arose, looked lazily at the crowd and then walked slowly toward a clump of half-dead trees. Here, the pursuers again advancing slowly, the tiger paused, hunched himself and then, as lightly as a kitten, sprang into the lower limbs of a tree, broken off about halfway up.
One or two men rushed ahead but the tiger gave them no heed. Slowly it made its way up the tree trunk until it reached an open place above the last dead branches. Then curling its body about the trunk and on the limbs the animal seemed to settle itself in the warm sun for its first taste of freedom.
The first man that the boys recognized was Marshal Walter, who had just arrived in a buggy, a rifle clenched in his trembling hands.
“Where is he?” panted the veteran official.
“In the top o’ that tree,” yelled a dozen spectators. “An’ he’d ought to be shot,” added one.
“I’ll soon put him out o’ business,” announced the marshal. “Stan’ back there, you ’at ain’t armed.”
“What d’you mean?” cried the deep-voiced “announcer,” who now turned out to be one of the owners of the Great Western Show. “Don’t you put no bullet in that animal. He’s worth two thousand dollars of any man’s money. Don’t you do him no damage or you’ll pay for it. He ain’t done no harm and ain’t a-goin’ to. We’ll take care o’ him. He’s been loose before. Drop that gun,” he concluded in a tone that alarmed the marshal.
“I’m here to protect life and property,” began the marshal.