n to the brow of the
hill. One of the wide-branched trees rose from the bottom of the ravine
right below them. Along one of the branches lay a long, cat-like body.

"A black panther!" gasped Tom.

CHAPTER II

THE PANTHER AT LARGE

"Say! let's get out of here!" exclaimed the girl from the West. "I don't
want to be eaten up by that cat--and Uncle Bill would make an awful row
over it. Come on!"

She seized Ruth's hand and, leaving Tom to drag his sister with him, set
off at full speed for the motor car, wherein Jerry Sheming, the stranger,
still lay helpless.

Helen was breathless from laughter when she reached the car. Jane Ann's
desire not to be eaten up by the panther because of what Mr. Bill Hicks,
of Bullhide, Montana, would say, was so amusing that Tom's twin forgot her
fright.

"Stop your fooling and get in there--quick!" commanded the anxious boy,
pushing his sister into the tonneau. With the injured Jerry, the back of
the car was well filled. Tom leaped into the front seat and tried to start
the car.

"Quick, Tom!" begged Ruth Fielding. "There's the panther."

"Panther! What panther?" demanded Jerry, starting up in his seat.

The lithe, black beast appeared just then over the brow of the hill. The
men who had started after the beast were below in the ravine, yelling, and
driving the creature toward them. The motor car was the nearest object to
attract the great cat's wrath, and there is no wild beast more savage and
treacherous.

Tom was having trouble in starting the car. Besides, it was headed
directly for the huge cat, and the latter undoubtedly had fastened its
cruel gaze upon the big car and its frightened occupants.

Ruth Fielding and her friends had been in serious difficulties before.
They had even (in the woods of the Northern Adirondacks and in the
foothills of the Montana Rockies) met peril in a somewhat similar form.
But here, with the panther creeping toward them, foot by foot, the young
friends had no weapon of defense.

Ruth had often proved herself both a courageous and a sensible girl.
Coming from her old home where her parents had died, a year and a half
before, she had received shelter at the Red Mill, belonging to her great
uncle, Jabez Potter, at first as an object of charity, for Uncle Jabez was
a miserly and ill-tempered old fellow. The adventures of the first book of
this series, entitled "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill; Or, Jasper Parloe's
Secret," narrate how Ruth