From their cave in the cleft of Red Rock, where the half-uprooted
pine-trees swung out across the ravine, the two panthers came padding
noiselessly down the steep trail. In the abrupt descent their massive
shoulders and haunches worked conspicuously under the tawny and supple
hide, in a loose-jointed way that belied their enormous strength. Where
the trail came out upon a patch of grassy level, starred with blossoms,
beside the tumbling mountain stream, they parted company—the female
turning off across the tangled and rocky slopes, while the male went on
down to hunt in the heavy timber of the valley-bottom. Game was scarce
that spring, and the hunt kept them both busy. They had no misgivings
about leaving their two blind sprawling cubs to doze on their bed of dry
grass in the dark inner corner of the cave. They knew very well that in
all their range, for a radius of forty or fifty miles about the humped
and massive hog-back of Red Rock, there was no beast so bold as to
trespass on the panther’s lair.
It was, perhaps, a half hour later that a man came in sight, a half-breed
squatter, moving stealthily up the farther bank of the stream. His dark
figure appeared and disappeared, slipping from rock to tree, from tree to
wild-vine thicket, as he picked his way furtively along the steep and
obstructed slope. Not a twig cracked under his moccasined steps, so
carefully did he go, though the soft roar of the stream would have
covered any such light sound from all ears but the initiated and
discriminating ones of the forest kindreds. His small watchful eyes took
note of the grassy level on the other side of the stream, and, with a
sure leap to a rock in mid channel, he came across. He arrived just a few
feet below the spot where the female panther had taken her departure,
digging in her broad pads heavily in the take-off of her leap. The
grasses, trodden down in the heavy footprints, were still slowly lifting
their heads. At sight of this trail, so startlingly fresh, the man
crouched instantly back into the fringing bush, half lifting his rifle,
and peering with vigilant eyes into the heart of every covert. He
expected to see the beast’s eyes palely glaring at him from some near
ambush.
In a few minutes, however, he satisfied himself that the panther had gone
on. Emerging from the bushes, he knelt down and examined the footprints
minutely. Yes, the trail was older than he had at first imagined, by a
good half hour. Some of the trodden grass had perfectly recovered itself,
and a crushed brown beetle was already surrounded by ants. He arose with
a grim smile, and traced the trail back across the grass-patch till it
mingled with the confusion of footprints, going and coming, which led up
the mountains. In this confusion he overlooked the traces of the other
panther, so he was led to the conclusion that only one of the pair had
gone out. If this was the path to the lair, as he inferred both from the
number of the tracks and the fitness of the country, then he must expect
to find one of the pair at home. His crafty and deep-set eyes flamed at
the thought, for he was a great hunter and a dead shot with his heavy
Winchester.
For days the half-breed had been searching for the trail and the den of
the panther pair. His object was the cubs, who, as he knew, would be
still tiny and manageable at this season. A good panther skin was well
worth the effort of the chase, but a man in the settlements, who was
collecting wild animals for a circus, had offered him one hundred and
fifty dollars for a pair of healthy cubs. The half-breed’s idea was to
get the cubs as young as possible, and bring them up by bottle in his
cabin till they should be big enough for delivery to the collector.
Before starting up the steep and difficult trail, the man examined his
rifle. A panther at home, protecting her young, was not a foe with whom
he could take risks. She commanded the tribute of his utmost precaution.
A careful survey of the slope before him convinced his practised eye that
the den must be somewhere in that high cleft, where the broken faces of
the red sandstone glowed brightly through dark patches and veils of
clinging firs. He marked the great half-fallen pine-tree, with its top
swung out from the rock face, and its branches curling upward. Somewhere
not far from that, he concluded, would he come upon the object of his
search.
Difficult as was the ascending trail, now slippery with wet moss, now
obstructed with thick low branches which offered no obstacle to the
panthers, but were seriously baffling to the man, he climbed swiftly and
noiselessly. His lithe feet, in their flexible moose-hide moccasins, took
firm hold of the irregularities of the trail, and he glided over or under
the opposing branches with as little rustling as a black snake might have
made. Every few moments he stiffened himself to the rigidity of a stump,
and listened like a startled doe as he interrogated every rock and tree
within reach of his eyes. Ready to match his trained senses against those
of any of the wilderness kin, he felt confident of seeing or hearing any
creature by which he might be seen or heard. Mounting thus warily, in
some twenty minutes or thereabouts he came out upon a narrow shelf of
rock beneath the downward swing of the old pine-tree.
Cautiously he peered about him, looking for some indication of the cave.
This, as he told himself, was just the place for it. It could not be very
far away. Then suddenly he shut himself down upon his heels, as if with a
snap, and thrust upward the muzzle of his Winchester. Lifting his eyes,
he had seen the black entrance of the cave almost on a level with the top
of his head. A little chill ran down his spine as he realized that for
those few seconds his scalp had perhaps been at the mercy of the
occupant.
Why had the beast not struck?
The man took off his old cap, stuck it on the muzzle of his gun, and,
raising it cautiously, wagged it from side to side. This move eliciting
no demonstration from within the cave, he scratched noisily on the rock.
Having repeated this challenge several times without response, he felt
sure that both panthers must be away from home.
Nevertheless, he was not going to let himself be over-confident. He was
too sagacious and instructed a woodsman to think that the wild creatures
would always act the same way under the same circumstances. It was not
impossible that the occupant of the cave was just waiting to see. Drawing
back some six or eight feet, the man wriggled slantingly up the slope of
rock, with the muzzle of his Winchester just ahead of him, till his face
came level with the entrance. Every muscle of his body was strung taut
for an instantaneous recoil, in case he should see before him two palely
flaming eyes, afloat, as it were, upon the darkness of the interior.
But no; at first he could see nothing but the darkness itself. Then, as
his eyes adapted themselves to the gloom, he made out the inmost recesses
of the cave, and realized that, except for a vague little heap in one
corner, the cave was empty. In that case, there was not a single moment
to be lost. With one piercing backward glance down the trail, he slipped
into the cave, snatched up the two kittens, regardless of their savage
spitting and clawing, and thrust them into an empty potato-sack which he
had brought with him for the purpose. Hurriedly twisting a cord about the
neck of the sack, he wiped his bleeding hands upon his sleeve with a
grin, slung the sack over his left shoulder, and hurried away. Having
captured the prize, he was quite willing to avoid, if possible, any
immediate reckoning with the old panthers.
Till he reached the grass-patch by the stream he took no pains to go
silently, but made all possible haste, crashing through the branches and
sending a shower of small stones clattering down the ravine. The angry
and indomitable kittens in the bag on his back kept growling and
spitting, and trying to dig their sharp claws into him, but his buckskin
shirt was tough, and he paid no attention to their protest. At the edge
of the torrent, however, he adopted new tactics. Leaping to the rock in
mid channel, he crossed, and then, with great difficulty, clambered along
close by the water’s edge, well within the splash and the spray. When he
had made a couple of hundred yards in this way, he came to a small
tributary brook, up which he waded for some eighty or a hundred feet.
Then, leaving the brook, he crept stealthily up the bank, through the
underbrush, and so back to the valley he had just left, at a point some
little distance farther downstream. Thence he ran straight on down the
valley at a long easy trot, keeping always, as far as possible, under
cover, and swerving from time to time this way or that in order to avoid
treading on dry underbrush. His progress, however, was quite audible, for
at this point in the venture he was sacrificing secrecy to speed. He had
fifteen or sixteen miles to go, his cabin being on the farther slope of
the great spur called Broken Ridge, and he knew that he could not feel
absolutely sure as to the outcome of the enterprise until he should have
the little captives secure within his cabin.
As he threaded his way through the heavy timber of the valley bottom, a
good six or seven miles from the den in Red Rock, he began to feel more
at ease. Here among the great trunks there was less undergrowth to
obscure his view, less danger of the panthers being able to steal up upon
him and take him unawares. He slackened his pace somewhat, drawing deep
breaths into his leathern lungs. But he relaxed no precaution, running
noiselessly now over the soft carpet of the forest, and flitting from
tree-trunk to tree-trunk as if an enemy were at his very heels. At last,
quitting the valley, he started on a long diagonal up the near slope of
Broken Ridge Spur.
The face of the country now suddenly changed. Years before, a forest-fire
had traversed this slope of the ridge, cutting a clean swathe straight
along it.
The man’s ascending trail thus led him across a space of open, a space of
undergrowth hardly knee-deep, dotted with a few tall “rampikes,” or
fire-stripped tree-trunks, bleached by the rains and inexpressibly
desolate. Haying here no cover, the man ran his best, and finally, having
crossed the open, he dropped down in a dense thicket to rest, breathing
hard from that last spurt.
In the secure concealment of the thicket he laid aside the complaining
burden from his back, stood his rifle in a bush, let out his belt a
couple of holes, and stooped to stretch himself on the moss for a quick
rest. As he did so, he cast a prudent eye along his back trail. Instantly
he stiffened, snatched up his gun again, sank on one knee, and insinuated
the muzzle carefully between the screening branches. A huge panther had
just shown himself, rising into view for an instant, and at once sinking
back into the leafage.
At this disappearance the man grew uneasy. Was the beast still trailing
him, belly to earth, through the low undergrowth? Or had it swerved aside
to try and get ahead of him, to ambuscade him by and by from some rock or
low-hung branch. Or, on the other hand, had it given up the pursuit
rather than face the perils of the open? The man was annoyed at the
uncertainty. Raising himself to his full height in order to command a
better view of the trail, but at the same time keeping well hidden, he
stood hesitating, doubtful whether to hurry on as fast as possible or to
wait a while in this safe ambush in the hope of getting a shot at his
pursuer.
* * * * * * * *
Back to the cleft in Red Rock, beneath the down-swung pine, came the
female panther. She had been lucky. She had made a quick kill, and
satisfied her hunger, and now she was hurrying back to nurse her cubs.
Just before the door of the cave she caught the scent of the man. The fur
arose angrily along her neck and backbone, and she entered in anxious
haste. Instantly she came out again, whining and glancing this way and
that as if bewildered. Then she plunged in again, sniffed at the place
where the kittens had lain, sniffed at the spots where the man’s feet had
stepped, and darted out once more upon the ledge. But her appearance was
very different now. Her eyes blazed, her long and powerful tail lashed
furiously, and her fangs were bared to the gums in anguished rage.
Lifting her head high, she gave vent to a long scream of summons,
piercing and strident. The cry reached her mate, and brought him leaping
in hot haste from his ambush beside a spring pool where he was waiting
for the appearance of some thirsty deer. But it did not reach the ears of
the running man, who was at that moment threading a dense coppice far
down the valley. Having sent out her call across the wide silence, she
waited for no response, but darted down the trail. The tracks of the
despoiler were plain to follow, and her nose told her that they were a
good half hour old. She followed them down to the water’s edge, out on to
the rock and across the torrent. Then she lost them.
When her mate arrived, crouching prudently behind a thick fir-bush, to
reconnoitre before he sprang out into the grass, she was bounding
frantically from one side of the stream to the other, her enormously
thick tail upstretched stiffly, as a sort of rudder, through the course
of each prodigious leap. For a moment or two the pair put their heads
together, and the mother, apparently, succeeded in conveying the
situation to her mate in some singularly laconic speech. Almost at once,
as it seemed, their plans were completed. The two started downstream, one
along each bank. A couple of minutes more, and the man’s trail was picked
up by the female. A low cry notified the male, and he instantly sprang
across and joined her.
It seems probable, from the female’s future actions, that the two
bereaved animals had now a fairly right idea of what had happened. The
absence of blood, or sign of disturbance in the den or on the trail,
conveyed to them the impression that their little ones had been carried
off alive, because, to a wild creature, death is naturally associated
with blood. It is possible, moreover, that there was nothing so very
strange to them in the fact that the man should wish to carry off their
cubs alive. What was so precious to themselves might very well be
precious to others also. Mother birds, and mother quadrupeds as well,
have been known, not infrequently, to steal each other’s young. If, then,
the panthers imagined that their kidnapped little ones were still alive,
the furious quest on which they now set forth had a double
object—vengeance and rescue.
They ran one behind the other, the female leading, and they went as
noiselessly as blown feathers, for all their bulk. From time to time,
being but short-winded runners, and accustomed rather to brief and
violent than to long-continued effort, they would pause for breath,
sniffing at the trail as it grew rapidly fresher, and seeming to take
counsel together. Their pursuit at length grew more stealthy, as they
approached the further side of the timbered valley, and realized that
their enemy could not now be very far ahead.
The two panthers knew all that it concerned them to know about the man,
except his object in robbing them of their little ones. They had often
watched him, followed him, studied him, when he little guessed their
scrutiny. They knew where he lived, in the cabin with one door and one
window, at the back of the stumpy clearing on the side of Broken Ridge.
They knew his wife, the straight, swarthy, hard-featured woman, who wore
always some bright scarlet thing around her neck and on her head. They
knew his black-and-white cow, with the bell at her neck, which made
sounds they did not like. They knew his yoke of raw-boned red steers,
which ploughed among the stumps for him in the spring, and hauled logs
for him, laboriously, in the winter. They knew the disquieting brilliance
which would shine from his window or his open door in nights when all the
forest was in darkness. Above all, they knew of his incomprehensible
power of killing at a distance, viewlessly. On account of this terrible
power, they had tried to avoid giving him offence. They had refrained
from hunting his cow or his steers; they had even respected his foolish,
cackling chickens, being resolved in no way to risk drawing down his
vengeance upon them. Now, however, it was different.
As the two grim avengers followed the trail, like fleeting shadows, a red
doe stepped leisurely into their path before she caught sight of them.
For one instant she stood like a stone, petrified with terror. In the
next, she had vanished over the nearest bushes with such a leap as she
had never before achieved. The female might have sprung upon her neck
almost without effort. But she never even raised a paw against this easy
quarry; it was a higher hunting that now engrossed her.
When at length the two running beasts came to the edge of the open ground
on the slopes of Broken Ridge, they hesitated. The female, though the
more deadly in the persistence of her hate, was at the same time the more
sagacious. First of all, she wanted to recover her cubs. No mere
vengeance could be so important to her as that. She shrank back into
deeper cover, and started off to one side to skirt the dangerous open.
But noticing that her mate was not following her, she stopped and looked
back at him inquiringly.
The male, more impetuous and more bent upon mere revenge, showed himself
for a moment beyond the fringe of the woods. In that one moment, though
it was impossible that he should have detected the man in his hiding
across the open, he nevertheless seemed to receive some impression from
the man’s challenging eyes. He felt that his enemy was there, in that
dense clump of young firs. Instantly he dropped upon his belly in the
undergrowth, flattening himself to an amazingly inconspicuous figure.
Then he began creeping, slowly and with infinite stealth, out across the
space of peril, beneath the full, revealing glare of the sun. The female
gave vent to a low whimper, trying to call him back. Failing in that, she
stood and watched him anxiously.
She could just see his tawny back moving through the light green leafage
of the scrub. He was crawling more swiftly now. He had covered nearly
half the distance. All at once there came a spurt of flame from the fir
thicket, and a sharp cracking report. In the next instant she saw her
mate rise straight into the air on his hind legs, clawing savagely. Then
he seemed to fall together and tumble over backwards.
She knew very well what had happened. This was the power of the man. She
knew her mate was dead. A further sullen heat was added to her hate, but
it did not make her reckless. She ran away down the slope, skirted the
open at a safe distance, and closed in once more upon the man’s trail a
good mile farther on. She had got ahead of the fugitive, for even now she
heard the faint thud-thud of his loping feet. She hid herself far up a
tree, some thirty feet from the trail, and waited.
As the man came up, she eyed him with a mingling of mad hatred and
anxious question. She saw the bundle on his back writhe violently, and
she caught a little growling complaint which came from it. That settled
her policy. Had she thought that the cubs were dead, she might have
dropped upon the man from her post of vantage. But the cubs were alive.
For their sakes she would take no risks with the man.
When he had passed on, she followed at a safe distance. The strange
procession crossed the ridge. It neared the clearing and the cabin. At
this point the panther heard, some little way back from the trail, the
tonk-tonk of a cow-bell. There was no need of following the man so very
closely for the moment. She swerved aside, ran straight, like a cat going
for milk, through the thickets, and, with a burst of intolerable fury,
sprang upon the cow’s neck. There was not even a struggle, for the
animal’s neck was broken before it had time to know what was happening.
The desperate mother tore her victim, but ate none of it. Then she
hurried on toward the cabin. At least she had tasted some beginnings of
vengeance.
As she reached the edge of the clearing, and came in sight of the cabin,
the man was just entering the door, with the precious bundle in his
hands. She saw the door close behind him. At this she whimpered uneasily,
and started around to skirt the clearing and come upon the cabin from the
rear.
As she went, she caught sight of the two red steers, feeding in the
pasture field close by the fence. She crept up, eying them, but too
sagacious to reveal herself in the open. As luck would have it, one of
the steers at this moment came up close to the fence, to scratch his hide
on the knots. With a snarl the panther struck at him through the rails,
and drew a long ragged gash down his flank. Snorting with pain and
terror, the steer turned and raced for home, tail in air; and his
comrade, taking the alarm, bellowed nervously and followed him.
A few minutes later the man came out of his cabin, followed by his wife.
The steers were at the barn door—a place they usually avoided at this
season. One of them was shivering and bleeding. The man examined the
wound, and understood. Turning to the woman, he said,—
“That there’s the _mother’s_ work. We must hunt her down an’ settle her
to-morrer, or she’ll clean out the farm.”
Letting the frightened steers into the barn, he waited anxiously for the
_tonk-atonk_ of the black-and-white cow coming home to be milked. When
she did not come, that, too, he understood only too well, and his wide
mouth set itself grimly. It looked as if those were going to be an
expensive pair of cubs.
After dark, late, the mother stole close up to the cabin. Everything was
shut up tight—barn, shed, and house alike. At the door-sill she listened
long and intently, like a cat at a mouse-hole. Her fine ear made out the
heavy breathings of the man and the woman within. It also at length
distinguished some faint little growlings and gruntings, such as the cubs
only uttered when they were well fed. She prowled around the house all
night, the pale flame of her savage and anxious eyes glowing upon it from
every direction. Then, at the edge of dawn, she stole away, but not far,
to a hiding-place whence she could command a view of the cabin-door. It
was within that door that her cubs had vanished.
The sun was not a half hour high when the man set forth, and the woman
with him, to hunt down the dangerous adversary whom they had challenged.
The woman, who carried a rifle of the same pattern as the man’s, was
almost as sure a shot as he. The continued absence of the cow, the wound
on the red steer’s flank, the defiant network of tracks all about the
cabin, showed clearly enough that the fight was now to the death. The man
and woman knew there would be no security for them as long as the mother
panther remained alive. Therefore they were in haste to settle the
matter. They picked out a distinct trail and followed it. It led them
straight to the body of the slain cow, which the slayer had visited twice
in the course of the night, just to satisfy her thirst for vengeance.
But at the moment when the two indignant hunters were examining the
carcass of the cow, the panther was at their cabin-door, listening. She
had seen the man and woman hurry away. Now she could hear quite
distinctly the little complainings of her young. She pushed against the
heavy door till it creaked, but there was no entrance for her by that
way. Close by was the window. Standing up on her hind legs, she stared
in. At last she managed to make out the two cubs, lying in a corner in a
box of rags and straw. The sight scattered all her caution to the winds.
Scrambling up to the window-sill, she dashed her head and shoulders
through the glass. That the jagged fragments cut her mouth and muzzle
severely, she never heeded at all. Forcing her whole body through, her
powerful haunches caught the window-frame, and carried it with them to
the floor. Writhing herself free of this encumbrance, she darted to the
box of rags, snatched up one of the cubs by the loose skin of its neck,
sprang through the window with it, and bore it off into a growth of tall
rank grass behind the barn. Returning at once to the cabin, she rescued
the other cub in the same way, and brought it triumphantly to its brother
in the long grass.
About this time she heard the man and the woman coming back. Instead of
trying to get away, she coiled herself flat in the grass and began to
suckle the cubs to keep them quiet. Her hiding-place was the most secure
that she could have found within miles of the cabin, the man having never
any occasion to go behind the barn—as she had seen by the absence of
tracks—and the rank growth furnishing a very complete concealment. Crafty
woodsman though the man was held to be, it never entered his mind that so
shy a beast as the panther would take covert thus within the very
stronghold of the foe. At sight of the shattered window he fell into a
rage, and when he found the cubs gone, he exhausted ingenuity in
consigning to every torment the man who had tempted him into speculating
in panther cubs. Storming noisily, he hunted everywhere, except behind
the barn. For a time his wife sat composedly on the wood-pile, and
cheered him with pointed backwoods sarcasms. At last, however, the two
went away over the ridge, to recover the skin of the other panther before
it should be spoiled by foxes. During their absence the mother got both
cubs safely carried off to a hollow tree some five miles farther along
the ridge. That night, while the man and the woman slept, with boards
nailed over their window, she bore them far away from the perilous
neighborhood. By difficult paths, and across two turbulent streams, she
removed them into the recesses of the neighboring county, a barren and
difficult region, where the wanderings of the man were little likely to
lead him.