“I should think so,” replied Fred.
“Oh, I guess not,” said Mack, incredulously.
“I guess they were lions,” returned Eugene, quickly. “We saw more than twenty prowling about here.”
“That’s a larger troop than I ever heard of before,” said Mack.
“Well, you hear of it now, and if you had been here you would have seen it. Archie shot one, and he jumped clear of the ground, so that we all had a fair view of him. I tell you he was a big one—larger than any I ever saw in a menagerie. He’s out there somewhere.”
“I believe I see him,” said Frank, holding his firebrand above his head, and looking intently at some object on the other side of the fountain.
The three hunters scrambled up out of the shooting-hole, and with the rest of the party followed after Frank, who led the way down the bank. There was some animal lying on the ground on the opposite side of the spring, sure enough; but it was not the immense object they expected to see after listening to Eugene’s description of it. When they had taken a few steps more Mack broke into a laugh, and Eugene began to think that he must have looked through a very badly frightened pair of eyes to make a first-class lion out of the insignificant beast he saw before him. What had at first appeared to be a great shaggy head gradually dwindled into a pair of shoulders, and presently he found himself standing beside an animal a little larger than the wolves he had often seen in his native State.
“This can’t be the thing I shot,” said Archie.
“I don’t see anything else,” replied his cousin, raising his firebrand above his head and looking all around.
“What is it, anyhow?” asked Fred. “It looks like a dog, and a half-starved one at that.”