“It’s a leopard!” whispered Billie, as she backed the Comet slowly along the path.
CHAPTER XV.—OUT OF THE WILDERNESS.
From his reputed royal ancestors, the lion and the panther, the leopard, or jaguar, as he is called in that region, had inherited a sinuous body, swift as a flash in movement, and a savage, feline face. A ray of sunlight, falling on the soft tones of his beautiful spotted skin, gave out a rich lustre. The smooth padded paws, under their velvet covering, were as strong as steel. His fierce, gray whiskers bristled at the whirring of the motor and his ears stood up straight like an angry cat’s.
“The horn, the horn,” whispered Mary in a choking voice, “it will frighten him.”
Billie reached mechanically for the rubber bulb and squeezed it again and again. The honk-honk rang out in the forest like a cry for help, and the leopard shivered where he crouched as if this unmelodious music jarred on his nerves.
Suddenly with a flying leap, he landed in the branches of a tree beside the motor. Billie never knew how she had the presence of mind to start the car. She only knew that they were going as fast as possible on that encumbered path and that the leopard, not counting on this swiftly moving object, had jumped again, grazed the motor and landed just back of them.
Perhaps it was Mary’s ear-piercing shriek which frightened him, or perhaps it was the red motor itself, which may have seemed to him a newly created animal with a whirring, bristling noise that made his nerves tingle. At any rate, instead of terrifying them again by jumping into the branches over their heads, he crept behind, half cautiously, but still ready to leap at the first opportunity.
“Keep up the horn, for heaven’s sake, and make as much noise as you can,” cried Elinor. “They can be frightened, I know, by loud noises.”
Edward on his knees beside Billie, worked the horn until his fingers ached, and the girls gave Indian yells and hooted and yodeled until they were exhausted.
For fully five minutes they rolled over the carpet of pine needles along the trail and the leopard dropped farther and farther off, until finally he slunk into the bushes. The intervals of hooting and calling grew longer and longer, and at last they rested. Mary, only, kept watch, kneeling backwards in the seat in a prayerful attitude.