Step by step, still came the monster slowly on, and now was come so near that the boy could feel his moist breath warming the air around him. Another step, and their noses had been all but within touching distance of each other. But just at that moment--just as the cry of pap! pap! rang affrightedly out on the still evening air--the red moccasins, which, up to this time, had remained perfectly quiet, seemed to be seized all on a sudden with an animated interest in what was passing. With a hop, step and jump, they were, in a twinkling, right at the bull's nose and pouring upon it a shower of kicks, so rapid and stunning that the beast, huge and powerful as he was, staggered backward several paces, with a look of utter bewilderment. Nor did the pertinacious little stunners let him off till they had forced him back to the very brink of the steep; when, with a roar of fright and pain which shook the lonely wilds, the monster wheeled about, and making a blind leap, vanished over the precipice. This done, the red moccasins quietly retraced their steps, and, with the same air of easy self-assurance, adjusted themselves before the boy, who, not so fearful now as sullen, buried his face once more in his coonskin cap; and never a word of thanks to them, nor to any one else, that Sprigg was in the land of the living. CHAPTER X. Still at the Foot of the Old Oak Tree. The roar of the bison bull was hardly out of his ears, when the boy heard another slight rustling in the leaves and grass near-by, and peeping out from behind his cap, he saw that the moccasins had again shifted their position. Looking in the direction toward which their toes were turned, he saw an object more to be dreaded, by far, than a bison bull. A wild-cat it was, already too near at hand, creeping up in that soft, sly way peculiar to animals of the cat family whenever they have a victim in view. A wild-cat--fat; sleek sides, all ribbed with stripes of black and white; white teeth, very long and sharp; black claws, longer and sharper still; ringed tail, very long and very lithe, waving softly all the time from side to side, with a sort of quivering eagerness in its motion, as if the owner were trying his best to hold it still, and for the life of him could not do so. By this time, the handsome savage had slipped himself within easy springing distance of his intended quarry. Here he paused, and fixing his wild, sly eyes on those of the boy, began purring in a soft way, and licking his red chops with his long, red tongue in a soft way--that uncontrollable tail still waving from side to side in the same soft way--all in the softest, slyest way that you could well imagine, as if he were saying within himself: "But won't a wild-cat pap and a wild-cat mam and their wild-cat kittens feast and be merry to-night?"