Reno uttered another savage growl and sprang upon the bank. The hard
packed snow crunched under him. There sounded a scream from the brush
--a sound that Ruth knew well. The catamount was really at hand--there
could be no mistaking that awful cry, once having heard it.

The dog burst through the bushes with such a savage clamor that Ruth
was indeed terrified. She sprang after him, however, hoping to drag
him back from any affray with the panther. What would Tom Cameron say
if anything happened to his brave and beautiful Reno?

It was past the girl's power, however, to stay the mastiff. With
angry barks he broke through the barrier and entered a small glade
not a stone's throw from the bank of the stream. Before Ruth reached
this cleared place she saw the tracks of the beast which had so
startled her. There could be no mistaking the round impressions of
the great, padded paws. Unlike the print of the bear, or the dog,
that of the cat shows no marks of claws unless it be springing at its
prey.

And now, when Reno burst into the open, the panther uttered another
fierce and blood-chilling scream. Ruth noted the flash of the great,
lithe body as the beast sprang into the air. Startled for the moment
by the on-rush and savage baying of the dog, the panther had leaped
into a low-branching cedar. The tree shook to its very tip, and to
the ends of its great limbs. There the panther crouched upon a limb,
its eyes balefully glaring down upon the leaping, growling mastiff.

As Ruth remembered the creature from the time of her dreadful ride
on the timber cart with the so-called Fred Hatfield, it displayed a