Pike looked about in a despairing way.

The distance to the ground seemed dishearteningly great.

His first impulse, therefore, was to climb still higher, and this he began to do.
But, recollecting the tenacity of Badger's purpose in whatever the Kansan was engaged, he felt sure that he would be pursued into the very top of the tree and shaken to the ground.

Therefore, he hastily crawled out over a horizontal limb, whose drooping ends dipped toward the earth.
If driven to the worst, he felt that he could drop from one of those drooping ends without serious injury.
With a howl of rage, Badger climbed on after the frightened youth, and pursued him out on the horizontal limb.
But there were to be other actors in this little overhead drama.

A couple of cats, chancing to be in the campus when the students invaded it, had run up this identical elm, and had crouched in wild-eyed fear on that same bough, watching the wild orgies of the students.