The bushes moved again, and something came into view. Bill Breakstone sank back, and his apprehension departed. It was a timber wolf, gray and long. A dangerous enough beast, if a man alone and unarmed met a group of them, but Bill, with the rifle, had no fear. The wolf sniffed the odor of flesh, sniffed again, knew that it was the odor of human flesh, and his blood became afraid within him. Bill Breakstone laughed quietly, but the boy slept placidly on. The incident amused Bill, and, therefore, it was welcome. It broke the monotony of the long quiet, and, just when he was laughing noiselessly for the fourth time over the wolf’s discomfiture, the bushes moved again. Bill, as before, slipped the muzzle of his rifle farther forward and waited. A slight pungent odor came to his nostrils. The bushes moved more than before, although without noise, and a great yellow body came into view. The eyes were green, the claws sharp and long, and the body lithe and powerful. It was a splendid specimen of the southwestern puma, a great cat that could pull down a deer. But Bill Breakstone was still unafraid. He raised the rifle and aimed it at the puma, although he did not press the trigger. "I can kill you, my friend, with a single bullet," he murmured, "but the report of that rifle would probably bring the Comanches upon us. Therefore, I will look you down." The puma paused in doubt and indecision, restlessly moving his tail, and staring with his great green eyes until they met the gray eyes of the human creature, looking down the sights of the rifle barrel. That steady, steel-like gaze troubled the puma. He was large and powerful. He could have struck down the man at a single blow, but the heart within that mass of bone and muscle became afraid. The green eyes looked fearfully into the gray ones, and at last turned aside. The great beast turned stealthily, and slid into the thicket, at first slowly, and then in a run, as the terror that he could not see crowded upon his heels. Bill Breakstone had laughed several times that morning, but now he laughed with a deep unction. "I’m proud of myself," he murmured. "It’s something to outlook a panther, but I don’t know that I’d have looked so straight and hard if I hadn’t had the rifle ready, in case the eyes failed. Now I wonder who or what will be the next invader of our premises." His wonder lasted only until noon, when the sun was poised directly overhead, and the open spaces were full of its rays. Then, as light as the beasts themselves had been, two Comanches walked into full view. Bill Breakstone was as still as ever, but his hand lay upon the trigger of the rifle.