"Is the jaguar in a tree?" I asked Don Pancho in Spanish.

"Parece," he answered simply. "Seems so." Remarkably, he had guessed right about where this jaguar would run.

In the half hour it took to reach the dogs, I experienced a wave of eager anticipation, bordering on a kind of worried rush. I wanted desperately to see the jaguar before, somehow, it disappeared.

The dogs had surrounded a huge tree. On one of the massive sloping trunks, a male jaguar in full view looked down on us. The five dogs were in a furor of unrestrained canine energy, yowling and leaping and racing around the tree. Sombra, the leader, was so excited that she tried several times to run up the trunk to get at the cat. The dogs' wild clamor expressed the exhilaration we all shared. Tired and soaked with sweat, we looked at the jaguar and then at each other, smiling, savoring the joy of the moment.

What happened next is one of the most vivid images I have of the entire experience. In one 20-foot leap, the jaguar flew from the tree and landed in the midst of the frenzied dogs. One more leap and the jaguar was gone, vanishing into the green brush.