unced on it.

Illustration #1 "The animal was crouching on the ground, looking up."

That gave me two or three seconds to think. Because you can see for
yourself that if an animal is ready to eat a boy scout it wouldn't take
him very long to eat a chop. Maybe you'll say it wasn't good to give him
raw meat, but how about me. Wasn't I raw meat? It was better to give him
the chop and have a few seconds to think than to let him do the thinking
and get me.

That was the time when I did some thinking in four or five seconds. Gee
whiz, you have to think quick at school exams, but cracky, leopards are
worse than school principals, I should hope. Anyway, they're just as bad.

Now was the time I wished that I had left the door of the spring house
open a little wider, because I had a dandy idea. As long as the animal
knew what it was I was throwing, he'd go after the other chop when I threw
it. Because chops were his favorite food, I could see that. So if I could
only just throw the other chop into the doorway he'd go in there after it,
and while he was eating it I'd shinny down in a hurry and shut the door and
wedge a board against it. I said to myself that I could do that quicker
than he could eat the chop, and one thing sure, he wouldn't bother with me
while he was doing it. An animal can never think about two things at once
and he thinks about food most of all. Maybe scouts think about food a lot,
too, but anyway, they can think about two things at once. That's the
difference between scouts and wild animals.

Oh, if I had only left that door wide open! Then I could have thrown the
other chop right through the opening and 'way into the house. But now I had
to throw it down and almost around a corner, as you might say; and even if
the meat went in at all, it wouldn't go in far. But if I could only throw
it in far enough so that I could slam the door shut, that would be enough.

Anyway, I saw that if I didn't throw it quick I'd be worse off than before,
because the animal had had a taste of raw meat and he'd be on the war path.
I could see he was looking up at me and his eyes were blazing and he was
making a sound that gave me the shudders. It seemed as if he was giving me
notice that he was going to spring for the tree. I guess he would have done
it that very second, too, only he noticed a leaf stuck to his paw and I
guess it bothered him, because he raised his paw just as a cat does when
she washes her face, and rubbed it o