Scotty stared for a moment, rifle lowered. Then--“_Blaze!_” he yelled in amazed delight--“_Yeeoow!_--Tear him, puppy!” he whooped. The giant Airedale launched himself like a gray thunderbolt surcharged with vim and power at the cougar’s throat. As Scotty watched them, not daring to fire, the cat spun around and Ruler instantly seized a hock hold. Claws flew through the air. Blaze bounded about the cat like a rubber ball, just out of reach. A whoop of triumph came from Niltci as he closed in swiftly with upraised knife. For a tense instant Scotty sat watching a chance to fire from his saddle, his heart beating so that he could hear the pulses through his own open mouth. Then the cat whirled and soared through the air in one tremendous bound that carried him twenty feet away. He hit the ground running. There is no such speed as an old Tom can put on when in a tight place! He seemed literally to fly through the air, Blaze and Ruler a jump or two behind him. Niltci gave up the chase and snatched at the bridle of his pony as that faithful creature raced up after him. Scotty put spurs to the mare and galloped off in hot pursuit. “_Hi!_ Blaze! _Hi!_ Ruler!--_Wahoo!_” he yelled, throwing the bridle over the mare’s neck. In answer a stentorian _Whoopee!_ came ringing back through the forest. That was a _man’s_ voice, and almost immediately following it there was a crash in the timber and a white horse thundered through the pines at right angles to Scotty’s course, the tree trunks seeming to pass the white flash of the horse like fence pickets. “_Left!--Left!--You pisen--li’l--horned--toad!_” came Big John’s iron voice, jolting to the rhythm of his gallop. Scotty whooped back greeting at him and then wheeled obediently. The cat and both dogs were in plain sight ahead of him but Big John had an uncanny foresight in the ways of big game, and he had no doubt foreseen some sort of twist or short cut on the cougar’s part. The timber cleared ahead of Scotty now, and out to the left in it he saw a giant pine, already dying of old age. For it the cougar had turned and was now racing at top speed. He ran up its huge bole like a cat climbing a tree, a shower of bark spalls raining down from his claws. At the first big dead branch he stopped and turned below his black muzzle, spitting and snarling from an open pink mouth at the dogs underneath. Ruler was prancing around on his hind legs, yelling with eagerness, while Blaze savagely scrambled up the trunk, to lose his grip and tumble down and indomitably attempted it again. Big John reined in the white horse. “Now’s yore chance to do the pretty, Scotty, old-timer--afore he jumps down--_shoot!_” he yelled.