there on the bed, like it had been there all the time, was two great
big eyes turnin' from green to red, and flame comin' out of them like
it does out of coals when the wind blows."

"Was it a cat?" whispered Robert Day, hoping since Zene was safe,
that it was not.

Zene passed the insinuation with a derisive puff. He would not stoop
to parley about cats in a peril so extreme.

"'How do _I_ know what it was?" he replied. "I left one of my
socks and took the boot in my hand. It was all the gun or anything o'
that kind I had. I left my neckhan'ketcher, too."

"But you didn't get out of the window," objected Bobaday eagerly.
"They always have a hole dug, you know, right under the window, to
catch folks in."

"Yes, I did," responded Zene, leaping a possible hole in his
account. "I guess I cleared forty rod, and I come down on all-fours
behind a straw-pile right in the stable-lot."

"Did the thing follow you?"

"Before I could turn around and look, I see that man and that woman
leadin' our horses away from the grove where I'd tied 'em to the
feed-box."

"What for?" inquired Robert Day.