"We won't go any further than we can help without a horse," said Murray at last. "And there's the big-horn to carry in."
"Murray, that big-horn! Just look yonder!"
It was not far to look, and the buck they were carrying seemed to come to the ground of his own accord.
"Cougar!" exclaimed Murray.
"The biggest painter I ever saw," said Steve, "and he's getting ready to spring."
The American panther, or, as Murray called him, cougar, is not so common among the mountains as he is in some parts of the forest-covered lowlands, but the vicinity of the table-land above, with its herds of deer, might account for this one. There he was now, at all events, preparing to take possession of the game on the top of that bowlder without asking leave of anybody.
"Quick, Steve! forward while he's got his eyes on the antelope. We may get a shot at him."
Almost recklessly they darted down the cañon, slipping swiftly along from bowlder to bowlder, but before they had covered half the distance the panther made his spring.
He made it magnificently. He had scented the blood of that antelope from far away, and he may have suspected that it was not a living one, but his instincts had forbidden him to approach it otherwise than with caution. He would not have been a cougar if he had not made a spring in seizing upon his prey.
They are nothing in the world but giant cats, after all, and they catch their game precisely as our house cats catch their mice. If anybody wants to know how even a lion or a tiger does his hunting, "puss in the corner" can teach him all about it.