# Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp/Chapter 15
#### CHAPTER XV
##### THE BATTLE IN THE SNOW

It was a fact that Ruth was tempted to run back to the house, just as fast as she could go, and from there send Reno out to find his young master. Whether the dog could have traced Tom on the ice, however, is a question, for Ruth did not yield to this cowardly suggestion. She had come out with the gun to find the boys, and her hesitation at the edge of the pond was only momentary.
She started down the pond toward the stream, seeing the scratches of the boys' skates leading in that direction. There could be no doubt as to where they had gone. Ruth only wished that she had brought her skates when she ran so hastily from Snow Camp.
Not a sound reached her ears, save the sharp twitter of a sparrow now and then, the patter of Reno's feet on the ice, and the rattle of the loaded rifle against the buttons of her sweater-coat. The forest that surrounded the pond seemed uninhabited. The axes of the woodsmen did not echo ​here, and the boys must indeed be a great way off, for she could distinguish no sound whatever from them.
Yet she had no doubt that she was following their trail—not even when she came down to the outlet of the pond. The strokes of the skates upon the ice were still visible. The three boys had certainly gone down the frozen stream.
"Come on, Reno!" she exclaimed aloud, encouraging herself in her duty. "We'll find them yet. They certainly could not have gone clear to Rolling River—that's ten miles away!"
The stream was not ten yards across—nothing more than a creek. The woods and underbrush shut it in closely. There was not a mark in the snow on either hand of footsteps—not that Ruth could see. And how heavy the afternoon silence was!
Ruth had recovered in a measure from the first fear she had felt of the marauding panther. The beast, had he traveled toward Snow Camp, was likely miles away from the spot. She had determined to go on and find Tom and the others, more that they might be warned of peril on approaching Snow Camp, than for any other reason.
And she did wish, now, that Tom and the other boys would appear. She was more than a mile—quite two miles, indeed—from the lodge.
"I guess Mr. Cameron will call me reckless ​again. He suggested that I was that when I followed Fred Hatfield—or whatever his name was—from the cars at Emoryville. He'll surely scold me for this," thought Ruth.
She kept on down the stream, however, and at last began to shout for her boy friends. Her clear voice rang from wall to wall of the forest; but it could not have been heard far into the snowy depths on either hand. Suddenly Reno growled a little, sniffed, and the hair upon his neck began to rise.
"Now, there's no use your doing that, boy," Ruth declared, clutching the mastiff tight by the collar with her left hand, while she balanced the rifle in her right. "If you hear them, bark! Tom will know it's you, then, and your bark will carry farther than my voice, I do believe."
Reno whined, and looked from side to side, sniffing the keen, still air. It seemed as though he scented danger, but did not know for sure from which direction it was coming.
"You're scaring me, acting so, Reno!" exclaimed Ruth. "I wish you wouldn't. I can't help feeling that the panther is right behind me somewhere. Oh!"
The end of her soliloquy was a shriek. Something flashed through the brush clump on her left hand. Reno broke into a savage barking and sprang toward the bank. But Ruth did not lose ​her grip on his collar, and her hand restrained him.
"Oh, Tom! Tom!" the girl cried.
There was another movement in the bushes. It was between Ruth and the way to the camp, had she been so foolish as to try to reach the house directly through the woods. But she did face up stream again, and had Reno been willing to accompany her she would have run as hard as ever she could in that direction.
"Come, Reno! Come, good dog!' she gasped, tugging at his collar. "Let it alone—we must go back——"
Reno uttered another savage growl and sprang upon the bank. The hard packed snow crunched under him. There sounded a scream from the brush—a sound that Ruth knew well. The catamount was really at hand—there could be no mistaking that awful cry, once having heard it.
The dog burst through the bushes with such a savage clamor that Ruth was indeed terrified. She sprang after him, however, hoping to drag him back from any affray with the panther. What would Tom Cameron say if anything happened to his brave and beautiful Reno?
It was past the girl's power, however, to stay the mastiff. With angry barks he broke through the barrier and entered a small glade not a stone's throw from the bank of the stream. Before ​Ruth reached this cleared place she saw the tracks of the beast which had so startled her. There could be no mistaking the round impressions of the great, padded paws. Unlike the print of the bear, or the dog, that of the cat shows no marks of claws unless it be springing at its prey.
And now, when Reno burst into the open, the panther uttered another fierce and blood-chilling scream. Ruth noted the flash of the great, lithe body as the beast sprang into the air. Startled for the moment by the on-rush and savage baying of the dog, the panther had leaped into a low-branching cedar. The tree shook to its very tip, and to the ends of its great limbs. There the panther crouched upon a limb, its eyes balefully glaring down upon the leaping, growling mastiff.
As Ruth remembered the creature from the time of her dreadful ride on the timber cart with the so-called Fred Hatfield, it displayed a temper and ferocity that was not to be mistaken. Reno's sudden onslaught was all that had driven it to leap into the tree. But there it crouched, squalling and tearing the hard wood into splinters with its unsheathed claws. In a moment it would leap down upon the dog, and Ruth was horror-stricken.
"Oh, Reno! Good dog!" she moaned. "Come back! come back!"
​The mastiff would not obey and in a moment the huge cat sprang out of the tree directly upon Tom Cameron's faithful companion. Reno was too sharp to be easily caught, however; he leaped aside and the sabre-like claws of the panther missed him. Nor was the dog unwise enough to meet the panther face to face.
He sprang in and bit the cat shrewdly, and then got away before the beast wheeled, yelling, to strike him. Round and round in the snow they went, so fast that it was impossible for Ruth to see which was dog and which was cat, their paws throwing up a cloud of snow-dust that almost hid the combatants.
"Ah!" cried Ruth, aloud. "I've missed my chance, I should have tried to shoot the creature while it was in the tree."
And that seemed true enough. For had she been the best of shots with the rifle, it looked now as though she was as likely to shoot Reno as the panther whilst they battled in the snow.