"That critter beats the biggest bobcat I ever heard of," remarked Jerry
Sheming. "Why! a catamount isn't in it with that black beast."

"Where'd it go?" asked Tom, quite taken up with the running of the car.

"Back to the ravine," said Ruth. "Oh! I hope it will do no damage before
it is caught."

Just now the four young friends had something more immediate to think
about. This Jerry Sheming had been "playing 'possum." Suddenly they found
that he lay back in the tonneau, quite insensible.

"Oh, oh!" gasped Helen. "What shall we do? He is--Oh, Ruth! he isn't
_dead_?"

"Of a strained leg?" demanded Jane Ann, in some disgust.

"But he looks so white," said Helen, plaintively.

"He's just knocked out. It's hurt him lots more than he let on," declared
the girl from Silver Ranch, who had seen many a man suffer in silence
until he lost the grip on himself--as this youth had.

In half an hour the car stopped before Dr. Davison's gate--the gate with
the green lamps. Jerry Sheming had come to his senses long since and
seemed more troubled by the fact that he had fainted than by the injury to
his leg.

Ruth, by a few searching questions, had learned something of his story,