"Neither do I," replied the colonel. "Spread out around the tree and see if you can find where he came down."
But a thorough search failed to reveal, to the investigators, any trace.
"I never saw anything like this," declared the colonel. "He seems to have disappeared completely."
"But where could he have gone?" asked Jack, anxious for the safety of his brother.
"I wish I knew," returned the colonel. "If there were any birds around here big enough we might suspect that one of them had carried him off, but we will evidently have to await Pepper's own explanation of the enigma." Then he added after a moment:
"Well, boys, we have got to the end of the trail. I don't know what to do next."
"That reminds me," started Dick, when there was a hiss, a snarl and a flash through the air from the tree, under whose branches they were standing, and an immense wild cat, spitting and clawing, landed on Dick's back.
"Help! Murder!" shouted Dick. "Take it off!"
For an instant the boys were so dumfounded by the suddenness of the attack that they all jumped in different directions, but the colonel, with a well-directed blow from the heavy stick he carried, knocked the animal off of Dick, but not before his coat had been torn and Dick himself scratched by its claws.
Snarling and spitting the cat now crouched, facing the colonel, and seemed about to spring.