For an instant the Black Panther recoiled at the noise, and in that instant Sid’s .30 whipped out its sharp report. High in the air leaped the great cat. All that had gone before was nothing to the feats of strength and agility he displayed now. He was hit,--he was enraged,--he was frantic with fury! In one terrific leap he cleared half the distance between himself and Sid; in the next he was pawing and striking around Sid’s gun muzzle, stuck into his face as the boy retreated, prodding at him and trying to reload. Scotty had picked up his .405 and was frantically yanking on its lever. Then past him leaped a brown shape, bellowing attack. Ruler it was--in the nick of time to save Sid! He had done the incredible thing, the impossible thing, of climbing along the cougar’s cliff route through the spruces! At the hound’s raging bark, the Black Panther whirled about from Sid and his back and tail went up until he seemed ten feet tall. Ruler was a third his size, but the instinct to hump up at the sight of a dog seems ineradicable in all the cat tribe. The next instant he had leaped up on the cliff wall, above its hollowed-out arch, so as to get a high place from which to spring. “Shoot, Scotty!--Shoot quick!” yelled Sid, for his own rifle had jammed, with one cartridge in the chamber and another in the carrier, in the excitement of trying to reload with the panther pawing at him. The heavy .405 roared out, filling the whole arch with smoke. Down through it fell the Black Panther, paralyzed for the moment. He struck on his back, and the rafters of the ancient cliff-dwelling roof crackled under him. Toward Sid he floundered, his claws scratching the ’dobe. Blood spurted in a stream from his side and he was dying, but there was murder in his eyes, hate, fury, the yearning desire to kill in the last second of life left to him. Rapidly he crawled toward Sid, purposeful, determined not to die without his jaws clenched in at least one adversary. Ruler bit and worried and dragged back on him from behind, but the Black Panther ignored him completely. He had Sid cornered, in the angle between the side and end wall of the pueblo, and he knew it. Scotty hesitated, with wabbling rifle, for a tense moment. If he fired he would certainly hit Sid, for the two were in line with him and the heavy bullet would crash clean through the Black Panther from behind. If he moved to another position he would be too late.