I turned my horse and raised my rifle, to make more sure of hitting the bull, as his determined conduct had imbued me with some degree of respect. I fired, and wounded him in the side a little too far back; at the same instant he dashed ahead again, but then thought better of it, and tried to rejoin the flying herd. I now set Trusty on him, who soon brought him at bay, and I gave him a bullet from the revolver. Again he rushed at me, and again fled. In this way, pursuing and pursued in turn, I had given him five bullets, when he left the herd in a perfect state of mania, and dashed after me. I made a short turn with my horse; the bull rushed past; I turned Czar again towards the buffalo; and as I passed I put a bullet through his heart at the distance of three yards. The monster fell to the ground in a cloud of dust, and raised up a heap of loose sand which it stained with its dark blood. [Illustration: AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. _p. 27._] To my surprise I noticed that Trusty did not come up to the fallen buffalo, but rushed past it, loudly barking, to the thicket at the springs, whence I saw an immense panther leap through the prickly plants. I galloped round the ponds and saw the royal brute making enormous leaps through the tall prairie grass toward the mountains. Trusty was not idle either, and was close behind it. I spurred Czar, and kept rather nearer the mountains, so as to cut off the fugitive's retreat and drive it farther out on the plains, while my hunting cry incessantly rang in its ears. It had galloped about a mile, when we got rather close to it; it altered its course once more, and climbed up an old evergreen live oak, among whose leafy branches it disappeared. I called Trusty to heel, stopped about fifty yards from the oak to reload my right-hand barrel, and then rode slowly round, looking for a gap in the foliage through which to catch a glimpse of this most dangerous animal. The leaves were very close, and I had ridden nearly round, when I suddenly saw its eyes glaring at me from one of the main branches in the middle of the tree. I must shoot it dead, or else it would be a very risky enterprise; and Czar's breathing was too violent for me to fire from his back with any certainty. I cautiously dismounted, keeping my eye on the panther, held a revolver in my left hand, brought the bead of my rifle to bear right between the eyes of the king of these solitudes--and fired. With a heavy bump the panther fell from branch to branch, and lay motionless on the ground. I kept Trusty back, waited a few moments to see whether the jaguar was really dead, as I did not wish to injure the beautiful skin by a second bullet unnecessarily, then walked up and found that the bullet had passed through the left eye into the brain. It had one of the handsomest skins I ever took; it is so large that I can quite wrap myself up in it, and now forms my bed coverlet. When I had finished skinning it and cut out the tusks with the