“Did it—I say—where did it?”
Another person had joined the crowd. He was hatless and garbed in the costume of the early settler, fringed and beaded buckskin from his toes to his chin, and his face was ashen. He walked up with an uncertain gait and his breathing gave evidence of recent exertion.
“What happened to you, Jack?” asked the florid one.
“Why, I—uh—I——”
“You met it too, did you?” grinned the thin-faced one, and the fringed one gulped an assent.
“I was—er—just coming through that clump of bushes and I met it. You see I—er—thought perhaps that if I ran I could coax it away from the rest of you.”
“Haw, haw, haw!” roared Sig. “You shore ought to git uh hero medal. Didn’t yuh know that no self-respectin’ cougar would chase uh git-up like that?”
Just then two more men came running down the hill and, seeing the crowd, one of them stopped and cupped his hands.
“Mister Norton!” he yelled. “Oscar slipped his collar and got away!”
“Just my luck!” exclaimed Norton, the florid one. “Here I bring this bunch way up here to finish that film, and that blamed cat gets away and spoils it all!”