“I don’t. That is—very little. But I thought I’d try that and see if it would work. If it didn’t, I was going to shoot them. They had to be stopped some way.”
“What do you suppose made them come around the trail so fast?” asked Joe.
Dr. Rander expressed the belief that the vicugnas had been frightened by a puma or some other animal.
“Otherwise they would not have made that wild dash,” he said. “Whenever you see a stampede of animals, you may know that there is some reason for it.”
The explorers forced the remaining vicugnas to turn back and follow the trail in the direction from which they had come. When the last animal had disappeared around the bend, Dr. Rander urged the mules ahead, and they again took up the journey.
“I don’t suppose the puma or whatever it was will frighten those vicugnas back again, will it?” Joe was a bit worried as they labored around the rough trail, which was even narrower than before.
“We’ll hope not,” the old man said.
“If the puma’s there, maybe we can get a shot at it,” suggested Bob. “I’d like to bag one for Dad and the others.”
But if there was one of these huge cats in the vicinity, it did not make its presence known. Perhaps, as Joe mentioned, it had left for another locality.