Suddenly the boy set up a shout of excitement. "Oh, Mister!" he yelled, with a string of profanity, his promise forgotten in his heat. "Come quick, an' look at der cat! Come quick, quick, quick! What a cat! You never see sich a cat!" Jim dashed forward. "Well, I should say cat!" he remarked, as he took in the situation. On a ledge about fifty feet above the road crouched a full-grown mountain lion, ears back, eyes furtively glimpsing every avenue of escape, yaggering at the intruders savagely. The small boy in Jim Felton rose on the instant. "Pelt him, Ches! Pelt him!" he cried, and let fly the rock in his hand by way of illustration. A wild animal seems to have little idea of a missile. The lion held his ground and let the stone strike him in the side. Then, with a screech like the vital principle of forty thousand tom-cat fights--a screech that left a sediment in the ear-drums of the listeners for the balance of the morning--he fairly flew up the straight side of the cliff, followed by a rain of projectiles. "Ches, we oughtn't to have done that," said Jim soberly. "If that fellow had been of another mind, he'd have made this the warmest day of our lives." "W'y! Will dey fight?" asked Ches, his eyes wide open. "They will that, son, sometimes," replied Jim. Then he launched into the tales of wild beast hunts, drifted from that to the romance of the gold field, the riches coming in a day--the whole glamour of it. Never did narrator have more attentive listener. There was a sort of white joy in the boy's face. "Oh, ain't I glad to git in dis!" he cried. "Here's just wot I been lookin' fur." Suddenly he struck Jim on the shoulder with a tightly clenched fist. "I made fur youse der first t'ing--didn't yer see me? I know me man all right. Der secont I put me peeps on yer I ses ter meself, 'Dat feller won't t'row yer down, Chimmy'--ain't I right, hey? Ain't I right, Mister?" Jim patted him on the back. "I think you're right, old man," he said. "I'll do anything I can for you." "Yer don't hafter tell me dat--I know it," replied the boy. A sudden sob gathered in his throat and choked him. "Yer don't know wot I been t'rough, Mister--it 'ud laid out many er big stiff ten times me size. I'd--don't youse laugh at me now, becus I'm only a kid--I'd give me heart's blood fur youse, s' help me, I would, now!" "Shake hands, pardner," said Jim, his own voice a trifle hoarse. "We'll do fine together--I know we will." III They crested the last sharp rise, and looked down upon the little cabin huddling in the spruces--an island of humanity in the beautiful sea of the wilderness.