Very early that same morning, a brown and grizzled chopper in Nicholson’s
camp, having obtained a brief leave of absence from the Boss, had started
out on his snow-shoes for a two days’ tramp to the settlements. He had
been seized the night before with a sudden and irresistible homesickness.
Shrewd, whimsical, humourous, kind, ever ready to stand by a comrade,
fearless in all the daunting emergencies which so often confront the
lumbermen in their strenuous calling, these sudden attacks of
homesickness were his one and well-known failing in the eyes of his
fellows. At least once in every winter he was sure to be so seized; and
equally sure to be so favoured by the Boss. On account of his popularity
in the camp, moreover, this favour excited no jealousy. It had come to be
taken as a matter of course that Mac would go home for a few days if one
of his “spells” came upon him. He was always “docked,” to be sure, for
the time of his absence, but as he never stayed away more than a week,
his little holiday made no very serious breach in his roll when pay-day
came.
Though not a hunter, the man was a thorough woodsman. He knew the woods,
and the furtive inhabitants of them; and he loved to study their ways.
Trails, in particular, were a passion with him, and he could read the
varying purposes of the wild things by the changes in their footprints on
the snow. He was learned, too, in the occult ways of the otter, whom few
indeed are cunning enough to observe; and he had even a rudimentary
knowledge of the complex vocabulary of the crow. He had no care to kill
the wild things, great or small; yet he was a famous marksman, with his
keen gray eye and steady hand. And he always carried a rifle on his long,
solitary tramps.
He had two good reasons for carrying the rifle. The first of these was
the fact that he had never seen a panther, and went always in the hope of
meeting one. The stories which he had heard of them, current in all the
lumber camps of northern New Brunswick, were so conflicting that he could
not but feel uncertain as to the terms on which the encounter was likely
to take place. The only point on which he felt assured was that he and
the panther would some day meet, in spite of the fact that the great cat
had grown so scarce in New Brunswick that some hunters declared it was
extinct. The second reason was that he had a quarrel with all lucifees or
lynxes,—“Injun devils,” he called them. Once when he was a baby, just big
enough to sit up when strapped into his chair, a lucifee had come and
glared at him with fierce eyes through the doorway of his lonely
backwoods cabin. His mother had come rushing from the cow-shed, just in
time; and the lucifee, slinking off to the woods, had vented his
disappointment in a series of soul-curdling screeches. The memory of this
terror was a scar in his heart, which time failed to efface. He grew up
to hate all lucifees; and from the day when he learned to handle a gun he
was always ready to hunt them.
On this particular day of his life he had travelled all the morning
without adventure, his face set eagerly toward the west. Along in the
afternoon he was once or twice surprised by a creeping sensation along
his backbone and in the roots of the hair on his neck. He stopped and
peered about him searchingly, with a feeling that he was followed. But he
had implicit faith in his eyesight; and when that revealed no menace he
went onward reassured.
But when the diversion of gathering firewood and digging the hole that
served him for a camp came to an end, and he stooped to build his
camp-fire, that sensation of being watched came over him again. It was so
strong that he straightened up sharply, and scrutinised every thicket
within eyeshot. Thereafter, though he could see nothing to justify his
curious uneasiness, the sensation kept recurring insistently all the time
that he was occupied in cooking and eating his meal. When at last he was
ready to turn in for his brief night’s sleep,—he planned to be afoot
again before dawn,—he heaped his frugal camp-fire a little higher than
usual, and took the quite unwonted precaution of laying his rifle within
instant grasp of his hand.
In spite of these vague warnings, wherein his instinct showed itself so
much more sagacious than his reason, he fell asleep at once. His
wholesome drowsiness, in that clear and vital air, was not to be denied.
But once deep asleep, beyond the vacillation of ordered thought and the
obstinacies of will, his sensitive intuitions reasserted themselves. They
insisted sharply on his giving heed to their warnings; and all at once he
found himself wide awake with not a vestige of sleep’s heaviness left in
his brain.
With his trained woodcraft, however, he knew that it was some peril that
had thus awakened him, and he gave no sign of his waking. Without a
movement, without a change in his slow, deep breathing, he half opened
his eyes and scanned the surrounding trees through narrowed lids.
Presently he caught a glimmer of big, soft, round eyes gazing at him
through a tangle of spruce boughs. _Were_ they gazing at him? No, it was
the fire that held their harmless attention. He guessed the owner of
those soft eyes; and in a moment or two he was able to discern dimly the
lines of the deer’s head and neck.
His first impulse was to laugh impatiently at his own folly. Had he been
enduring all these creepy apprehensions because an inquisitive doe had
followed him? Had his nerves grown so sensitive that the staring of a
chipmunk or a rabbit had power to break his sleep? But while these
thoughts rushed through his brain his body lay still as before, obedient
to the subtle dictates of his instinct. His long study of the wild things
had taught him much of their special wisdom. He swept his glance around
the dim-lit aisle as far as he could without perceptibly turning his
head—and met the lambent blue-green gaze of the watching panther!
Through the thin veil of the hemlock twigs, he saw the body of the
animal, gathered for the spring, and realised with a pang that the long
expected had not arrived in just the form he would have chosen. He knew
better than to reach for his rifle,—because he knew that the least
movement of head or hand would be the signal for the launching of that
fatal leap. There was nothing to do but wait, and keep motionless, and
think.
The strain of that waiting was unspeakable, and under it the minutes
seemed hours. But just as he was beginning to think he could stand it no
longer, a brand in the fire burned through and broke smartly. Flames
leapt up, with a shower of sparks,—and the panther, somewhat startled,
drew back and shifted his gaze. It was but for an instant, but in that
instant the man had laid hold of his rifle, drawn it to him, and got it
into a position where one more swift movement would enable him to shoot.
But not the panther only had been startled by the breaking brand, the
leaping flame. The young doe had leapt backward, so that a great birch
trunk cut off her view of the fire. The first alarm gone by, she moved to
recover her post of vantage. Very stealthily and silently she moved,—but
the motion caught the panther’s eye.
The man noted a change in the direction of the beast’s gaze, a change in
the light of his eyeballs. There was no more hate in them, no more doubt
and dread; only hunger, and eager triumph. As softly as an owl’s wings
move through the coverts, the great beast drew back, and started to
descend from the tree. He would go stalk deer, drink warm deer’s blood,
and leave the dangerous sleeper to his dreams.
But the man considered. Panthers were indeed very few in New Brunswick,
and undeniably interesting. But he loved the deer; and to this particular
doe he felt that he perhaps owed his life. The debt should be paid in
full.
As the panther turned to slip down the trunk of the tree, the man sat up
straight. He took careful but almost instantaneous aim, at a point just
behind the beast’s fore-shoulder. At the report the great body fell limp,
a huddled heap of fur and long bared fangs. The man sprang to his feet
and stirred the camp-fire to a blaze. And the doe, her heart pounding
with panic, her curiosity all devoured in consuming terror, went crashing
off through the bushes.
[Illustration: WHEN TWILIGHT FALLS ON THE STUMP LOTS]