His heart skipped a beat. Someone was following! Who could it be? Was it a curious Carib? Hardly. They were too much afraid of the killer. Was it an enemy from across the river? Such a thing was possible.
Stepping noiselessly to one side, Pant waited. Straight on came the one who followed.
“Sounds like two,” Pant said to himself.
“Sounds——” he hesitated a moment. “It don’t sound like—it sounds—yes, it is! It’s old Rip himself!”
And so it was. Rip, the burro, once a bag of bones, now well fed on bread-nut hay, sleek and fat, had chosen to follow his young master on his hunt for a killer.
“Now, why did you follow?” Pant said with a chuckle. “What am I to do with you? If I tie you up here the killer may get you. I can’t spare time to take you back. I know what I’ll do; I’ll take you along. We’ll fight it out together with the big cat.”
For this resolve Pant will always have cause to be grateful; and yet, in a way, the affair was to end rather sadly.
With the burro standing patiently beside him, he had remained in hiding for a full half hour when, without warning, there had appeared in the trail not five yards before him the very creature he had come to seek. There stood the killer!
So sudden was his appearance that Pant had little time to prepare for the attack. He had only seized his rifle and had no time to aim and fire, when, with a scream that was blood-curdling, the big cat launched himself through the air.
Expecting nothing so much as to be torn to bits by the claws and fangs of the beast, the boy dropped his rifle and threw himself back into the bushes. As he did this, unconsciously his right hand reached for his machete and drew it from its scabbard.