ts at that
precise moment, he would have felt very differently.

Radcliffe, meantime, was staring into the dark recess of the cavern, but
all he could see was the two shining eyes of whatever occupant was there.
Was it bear or cougar? For both, he knew, took refuge in caves. The
largeness of the eyes inclined him to the belief that it was a California
mountain lion, and such it was part of his work to exterminate,--though
the state also hires an official lion hunter.

That the great cats are cowards he well knew. But this one was cornered,
and might prove no mean antagonist. With revolver cocked in his right
hand, his lamp in the other, he advanced toward those two shining fires.
A faint scratching along the rocky floor warned him that the animal was
gathering for a spring. He was still rather far for a revolver shot, but
he aimed straight between the eyes. His shot reverberated with a
thousand echoes. The sounds, ear-splitting in the smoke-filled
gloom,--thundered like a thousand siege guns, it seemed to Radcliffe,
stalactites tumbled about his ears like crockery, and more appalling than
all the rest was the weird, almost human scream of the wounded animal,
which likewise reechoed for several minutes. The unwitting cause of all
this turmoil was in a cold perspiration when things finally quieted down.
But the puma, (for such it proved to be), lay dead at his feet.

The three Mexicans likewise heard the racket, for they, as it happened,
were not far away. The Ranger had very nearly trailed them. With rolling
eyes and hands that mechanically traced the sign of the cross, they
listened, while the thunders died away.

Pedro, though his nerves were more than a little shaken, was quick to
seize his opportunity. Slipping like an eel through a narrow opening
between two columns, where the dripstone had all but closed the way into
another chamber, he would have escaped observation entirely had it not
been for his betraying torch-light.

Sanchez darted after him. But remember, Sanchez was at least a hundred
pounds heavier than even well-fed Pedro. The result might have been
expected. He stuck mid-way! And there he dangled his fat legs in an
endeavor to free himself, while Pedro doubled with laughter and the other
Mexicans stared, too amazed to move.

"Pull, can't you, pull!" was Pedro's expurgated version of Sanchez's
reiterated discourse with his followers. And when no one came to his
rescue, he nearly burst a blood vessel