Can you spare a tissue?

Lost Forest truly is a wonderful place.  Where else can you talk to the trees, and where else are the trees considerate enough to use handkerchiefs when they have colds?  (Yes, you could argue that that stick technically has no hand, but you could also argue that the animals aren't plotting anything, and we both know that that's just not true.)  Looks like Moss and Brawny have finally found Kelly and Cherry and are trying to figure out how to rescue them.  (Well, sort of.  They know where they are, though they can't be certain that they aren't talking to ghosts or other apparitions, but this is Mark Trail and with the young readers and whatnot, they have a pretty good chance of being alive.  For now, anyway.)

Inside of the cave, Cherry has distanced herself from Kelly, showing the animals that she'll let them do as they wish.  She has decided to busy herself at the fallen rocks, shouting out a conversation with Moss, and when she tires of that, she can take a seat on the Jack Elrod ball (I bet it's like sitting on a bean bag chair).  Kelly meanwhile, even though she's already expressed concern and fear over the appearance of the mountain lion, has wandered over to said lion, and Momma Mountain lion doesn't look too happy about that (though Kelly looks like she's considering whether or not to perform a a dental procedure on the poor thing).  One would think that now would be the perfect time to get that close up footage of real mountain lions, but apparently Kelly dropped the camera somewhere (possibly down a deep chasm in the cave) so this great shot will have to go unseen by the general public.  (Can someone please tell me how Kelly hasn't been mauled by some other woodland creature yet?  One would think that the lack of a mind and sense of self-preservation would have taken her out of the evolutionary chain by now.  Oh well.)

Hurrah!  Mark has finally arrived and Kelly wisely decided to back away from the mountain lioness (and for all the talk about the lioness being nervous, she looks much calmer than she did in the previous strip where she was about to leap forward and maul Kelly).  Now that the little mountain lion has finished his little lion business, the family can retreat to the safety of the back of the cave.

Mark carries on the charade of being there to help get Kelly out of the cave by handing Cherry a shotgun (but if you look at the pictures, it's obviously a broken one since in one frame he's pushing it up and in the next it's coming down).  I just hope the Jack Elrod ball is something that can be easily pushed aside, otherwise I have a feeling the gun is going to get stuck in between the rocks (with one of them pulling back the hammer so all it would take to pull the trigger is an errant pebble) and make this rescue all the more dangerous.  Still, the real question now is, just who is that shotgun intended for (and did Mark bother to put any bullets in it)?