Nat, taking off his heavy driving gloves and throwing them upon the driver's seat.
"You'd have to be a cat to do that," laughed Joe Hartley, gazing back into the dense blackness of the cavern.
"That's soon fixed," added Nat, and removing one of the lights of the car from its socket he pressed a little button. A sharp click resulted, and a flood of brilliant white radiance poured from the lamp. It was an improved carbide contrivance, the illuminant which made the gas being carried in its socket.
The boy turned its rays backward into the cave, flooding the rough, rocky walls, stained here and there with patches of dampness and moss, with a blaze of light.
"Say," cried Joe suddenly, as the rays fell far back into the cave but still did not seem to reach its terminus, "what is that back there?"
As he spoke he seized Nat's sleeve in a nervous, alarmed way.
"What?" demanded Nat, holding the light high above his head in his effort to pierce the uttermost shadows.
"Why that – don't you see it?" cried Joe.
"I do now," exclaimed Nat in a startled voice, "it's – "
"T-t-t-two g-g-glaring eyes!" fizzed Ding-dong Bell.
As he spoke, from behind the boys, came a low, menacing growl. They faced about abruptly to see what this new source of alarm might be.
As they all turned in the direction from which the growl had proceeded – namely the mouth of the cave – a cry of dismay was forced from the lips of the three lads. Stealthily approaching them, with cat-like caution, was a low, long-bodied animal of a tawny color. Its black-tipped tail was lashing the ground angrily, and its two immense eyes were glaring with a green light, in the gloom of the cave.
"A mountain lion!" cried Nat, recognizing their treacherous foe in an instant.
"And its mate's back there in the cave," called Joe, still more alarmedly.
"G-g-g-g-get the g-g-g-guns!" sputtered Ding-dong.
This was far more easy to recommend than to accomplish, however. The lads, never dreaming that they would want their weapons, had left them in the automobile. The car, as will be recalled, had been left near the mouth of the cave. The mountain lion advancing toward them had already passed the auto and was now between them and the place in which their weapons were reposing.
The mountain lion, or cougar, ordinarily not dangerous unless it gets its foe at an absolute disadvantage, becomes, during the mating season, a vindictive, savage brute, if separated from its mate. That this was now the case was evident. There was no room to doubt that the two green eyes glaring from the remote blackness of the cave were the optics of another "lion."
The young Motor Rangers were fairly trapped. Without weapons or any means of protecting themselves but their bare hands, they were in imminent peril of a nasty conclusion to their sudden encounter.
CHAPTER II
BETWEEN TWO FIRES
Snarling in very much the manner of an angry cat, the lion, which had appeared at the mouth of the cave, began to come forward more rapidly. At the same instant, as if by mutual consent, his mate started to advance from the rear of the cave. It was evident that if they did not wish to be seriously injured, perhaps killed, the Motor Rangers would have to act, and act quickly.
But what were they to do? Nat it was who solved the question. The floor of the cave was littered with boulders of various sizes, ranging from stones of a pound or so in weight, up to huge rocks beyond a boy's power to lift.
Stooping down swiftly Nat selected a stone a little larger than a baseball, and then throwing himself into a pitching posture, awaited the oncoming cougar, approaching from the cave mouth.
The boy had been the best pitcher the Santa Barbara Academy had ever produced, and his companions saw in a flash that he meant to exercise his skill now in a way of which he had little dreamed when on the diamond. His hand described an evolution in the air, far too quick to be followed by the eye. The next instant the stone left his grasp, and swished through the atmosphere.
Straight and true it sped to its mark.
And it struck home none too quick. The lion had already crouched for a spring on the defenseless lads, who stood between himself and his mate, when Nat's missile was discharged.
Crack!
The sharp noise of the stone's impact with the skull of the crouching feline sounded like a rifle shot.
"Bull's-eye!" yelled Joe excitedly.
And bull's-eye it was. The rock had a sharp edge which Nat, in his haste, had not noticed. As it struck the lion's head it did so with the keen surface foremost. Like a knife it drove its way into the skull and the lion, with a howl of pain and fury, turned, stumbled forward a few paces, and then rolled over.
Before the others could stop him, Ding-dong Bell, entirely forgetting the other lion, dashed forward to examine the fallen monster. The result of his action was that his career came very near being terminated then and there. The cougar had only been stunned, and as the stuttering boy gave one of its ears a tug, it leaped erect once more and struck a blow at him with its chisel-like claws that would have torn him badly had they struck.
But Ding-dong, though deliberate in his speech, was quick in action. He leaped backward like an acrobat, as he saw the mighty muscles tauten for action, and so escaped being felled by the blow. He could feel it "swish" past his nose, however, and entirely too close to be pleasant.
In the meantime, Nat, realizing that his best move would be to get to their arms, had made a flying leap for the auto and seized an automatic rifle of heavy calibre. As Ding-dong leaped back he aimed and fired, but in the darkness he missed, and with a mighty bound the wounded cougar leaped out of the cave and dashed off through the storm into the brush on the hillside above.
"One!" exclaimed Nat, like Monte Cristo in the play.
The others gave a low laugh. They could afford not to worry so much now. True, there was one of the cougars still back in the cave, but with their rifles in their hands the lads had little to fear.
"I felt for a minute, though, like I did that time the Mexican devil sprang on me near the gulf village," said Nat, recalling one of his most perilous moments in Lower California.
But there was little time for conversation. Nat had hardly uttered his last remark before the cougar at the rear of the cave began to give signs that it too was meditating an attack. There are few animals that will not fight desperately when cornered, even a rat making a formidable foe sometimes under such conditions, and cornered the cougar unquestionably was.
"She's coming," warned Joe in a low voice, as a rumbling growl resounded above the roar of the storm outside.
"L-l-let her c-c-come," sputtered Ding-dong defiantly.
"Better climb into the car, boys," said Nat in a whispered tone, "we can get better aim from an elevation."
Accordingly they clambered into the tonneau of the motor vehicle, and kneeling on the seat awaited the onslaught which they knew must come in a few seconds.
"I've half a mind to let her go, if we can without putting ourselves in danger," said Nat, "it doesn't seem fair somehow to shoot down a poor brute in cold blood."
"But that poor brute would attack you without hesitation if you lay injured on a trail," Joe reminded him; "these cougars, too, kill hundreds of sheep and young calves, just for the sheer love of killing, for half of what they kill they never touch."
"That's right," agreed Nat, "still fair play is a jewel, and – "
Further words were taken out of his mouth by something that occurred just at that instant, and settled the fate of the cougar then and there.
Ding-dong Bell, whose unlucky day it seemed to be, had, in his excitement, been leaning far over the back of the tonneau, peering into the darkness at the rear of the cave. He was trying to detect the shadowy outlines of the cougar. A few seconds before Joe Hartley had said: —
"Look out, Ding-dong, or you'll go overboard."
The