Can wild animals smell fear? Slingshot couldn’t remember. If they could, he thought he must smell like grilled buffalo burger!

“I’m g-going back,” Burp stammered, pulling away.

Slingshot grabbed Burp’s arm. “You can’t leave!” Slingshot believed that sometimes cowboys had to make their feet go forward, even if they didn’t want to.

Shaking in their boots, the boys nudged ahead, slow as snails.

Creeping through the dark, the cowboys were never quite sure if they were in real time, cowboy time, or Big Jim tall-tale time. Every dark outline of cactus became a ruthless outlaw. Every branch or twig became a diamondback ready to strike.

Burp never saw the dry gully right under his feet. Down, down, down he tumbled, on a roller coaster of stomach-churning fear.

“Yaaah! Quicksand!” he yelled. “It’s swallowing me!”

Slingshot quaked. Quicksand was TROUBLE in capital letters. More than all the loot in the world, he wanted to be safe in his bedroll. And he wanted Burp snoring right beside him.

“P-i-fff-i-t!” Burp spit sand. “Help! Pull me out!”

Slingshot could just make out Burp’s outline. “Grab hold of my hand,” he called, leaning down into the gully.

On the count of one, two, three, Burp was up and out.

“That devil’s slide almost ate me whole!”

Arr! Arr!

“That way!” The cowboys started off again in the direction of the yipping. “Here, boy. Here, boy.” Why wouldn’t the pup come?

Burp was so scared, he couldn’t think straight. “What if that’s not the pup? What if it’s a trap?”

Slingshot ignored him and crept ahead.

Arr! Arr!

“I mean it,” said Burp, digging his boot heels into the sand.

As he stood there for what felt like one long, endless moment, the sky was starting to show tiny hints of dawn. Burp had never been so happy to see the color pink in his whole entire cowboy life.

Feeling slightly braver in the pink light, Burp clutched his Spitball Blaster and followed Slingshot along a narrow, zigzagging path.

Arr! Arr! The tiny bark was always slightly ahead of them, just out of reach. What was the pup after? Or, what was after him?

Something like a branch snapped. Slingshot and Burp stopped cold.

The wind began to whistle. Dust whipped itself up into a funnel-shaped cloud and moved toward them. From out of the dust devil, a ball of fur came barreling at them. Burp screamed. The hair on the back of Slingshot’s neck stood porcupine-stiff. This was more danger than even a famous cowboy like Wild Bill Hickok could handle. “We’re done for,” whimpered Burp, falling weakly to his knees.

“Ghost Cat!” Slingshot yelled, diving toward Burp and knocking him completely to the ground. The mini twister zoomed right over and past the cowboys. So did the ball of fur. Even in the panic, Burp recognized a flash of gray ears and tail.

“Hey, that was the pup!” yelled Burp.

Slingshot and Burp clambered to their feet and raced after the fur ball. It darted into a low rock overhang. The boys dropped everything and crawled straight in after it.

A new panic started to grow as they crawled into the cramped and tiny little cave. Still, they pushed and clawed farther as it narrowed, their hearts pounding jackhammer-fast.

“Come, boy! Come!” Burp pleaded. “Where’d he go? I can’t see!”

Only a thin slice of gray light filtered into the crawl space. Slingshot groped and felt his way along the rough, jagged walls of the cave. “Hey, there’s an opening here, all the way at the back. I can feel it, but I don’t think I can fit through it.”

“The pup must have gone that way,” said Burp. “Here, boy. Come! Pleeeease.”

There was no answer. Not even a whimper.

Slingshot slumped to the ground. A cold chill ran through him. He squeezed his eyes shut. In his mind’s eye, he saw the Ghost Cat. With blazing eyes and sharp claws, it was coming. And it wasn’t after the pup anymore. It was after them!

“We’re done for,” said Burp. “The Ghost Cat’s going to crunch our bones like carrots.”

Slingshot called up every bit of cowboy courage he had left. “If that cat comes anywhere near the opening, blast him, Burp! Blast him into next week!”

Slingshot reached for his trusty Super-X. “Hey, my Super-X is gone! So’s my flashlight!”

Burp went for his Double-Barreled Spitball Blaster. “Oh, no!” he said. “We must have dropped everything outside when we ran for it. We’re sitting ducks now!”