'
The Robinsons of the desert were now in an awkward predicament; for
although they had been safe from the peccary, the cougar could climb a
tree like a squirrel. A noise, however, disturbs him from his meal,
and swinging the dead animal on his back, he begins to skulk away. But
he is interrupted before he can reach cover; and as the new-comers
prove to be twenty or thirty peccaries, summoned to the field by the
dying screams of their comrade, he has more to do than to think of his
dinner. To fling down his burden, to leap upon the foremost of his
enemies, is but the work of an instant; but the avengers crowd round
him with their gnashing jaws and piercing cries, and the brute darts
up the tree like a flash of red fire, and crouches not twenty feet
above the heads of the horrified spectators! The father, however,
after some agonising moments of deliberation, brings him down with his
rifle; and the cougar, falling among the eager crowd below, is torn to
pieces in a moment. But this does not get rid of the peccaries, who
set up their fiendish screams anew as they discover two other victims
in the tree.
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