[Illustration: STEADILY SHE PROBED HIS FACE, AND SLOWLY SHE NODDED]
Cat O’ Mountain
BY
ARTHUR O. FRIEL
_Author of_
“_King--of Kearsarge_”
Illustrated by
DONALD S. HUMPHREYS
THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA
1923
COPYRIGHT
1923 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
[Illustration]
Cat o’ Mountain
Made in the U. S. A.
_To_
_JAMES and CAROLINE MACK_
_whose unfailing kindliness
to the mysterious prowler of
The Traps
will long be remembered by
“The Detective”_
FOREWORD
At the northern end of the Shawangunk range lies a region where the
Maker of Mountains went mad.
Into his new-laid rock the giant crashed his huge hammer, smashing
asunder his handiwork, gouging out chasms, splitting it into fissure
and cavern and abyss, slashing its eastern edge into a frowning
precipice. When he had gone, up into some of his hammer-scars welled
subterranean waters, forming crag-bound lakes hundreds of feet higher
than the rugged valley floor. Other chasms became gulfs of verdure,
crammed with a veritable jungle of hardwoods and evergreens. And there,
in the labyrinth of tree and bowlder, fierce brutes and venomous snakes
bred and fought and slew. It was the home of the wolf, the panther, and
the bear; of the rattlesnake and the copperhead.
Then came men: savages who killed and ate the wild beasts and clothed
themselves in their furry hides. Through the gorges and down the slopes
they laid their trails, along which they roved for centuries in hunt
and tribal war. At length they paused, staring eastward at new fires
burning below them--the fires of white men.
The inevitable followed. First by firewater, then by firearms, the
Dutch settlers crowded the tawny “duyvils” out of the forested
lowlands between the river of Hendrick Hudson and the mountain wall.
But behind that wall, in the natural stronghold created by the mad
Mountain-Maker, the red men long held their own. More, at times they
swooped out from the one small gap in the cliffs on bloody raids. And
when the vengeful whites retaliated with invasions of their fastness,
they ambushed those palefaces along their trails.
Then the settlers ended it. Trapped again and again within that gulf,
they in turn became the trappers. Stealthily moving in force, they
garrisoned the heights of Mohonk and Minnewaska; they outwitted,
outmanœuvred, outambushed the Indians; they herded them back against
their own precipices, cornered them among their own bowlders, slew
them without mercy. Returning to their lowland farms, they left behind
them a silent, blood-spattered, death-strewn hole in the hills which
henceforth--because of its traps and countertraps--was to be known as
The Traps.
Long afterward, men came in again; white men, and red men too, no
longer foes. They cleared little farms, brought in their women,
intermarried and interbred, led such primitive existences as might
have been expected. Dwelling in their own little world, they followed
their own inclinations in such matters as mating and hunting and
drinking--and thereby achieved a reputation somewhat dubious. The
tongue-wagging folk outside declared the Trapsmen were “wife-swappers”
and “moonshiners” and other things. And perhaps they were.
Rumor has asserted, too, that these men first settled that craggy hole
not because they would but because they must; that the country outside
was “too hot” for them; that they even had to obtain their wives by
becoming squaw men or by the primeval custom of capture; and that
for many years their land was distinctly unsafe for any man not of
their clan. This also may be true. Be that as it may, they lived hard
lives, and many of them died hard deaths. Yet they lived as free men,
untrammeled by slavish subservience to the myriad laws manufactured in
the cities beyond them.
But they, too, passed. As the bear and the wolf and the Indian faded
out of that country after the coming of the white man, so the Trapsmen
have almost vanished before the encroachments of commercialism. Beside
the upland lakes now rise those structures from which the pioneer
turns with loathing--summer hotels. Moreover, virtually all of the
intervening Traps has been bought in by the hotel barons. The little
homes of the vanished men are slowly rotting apart; their tiny fields
and their hard-grown orchards are going the way of the ancient Indian
trails--disappearing into wilderness where snakes thrive unmolested.
Few indeed are the people who now live in the mountain bowl; fewer
still those who are native-born. The others are from outside.
Yet there are, in the region round about, two or three old
men--taciturn, abrupt, whole-souled old fellows--who were born in the
Traps and who will die not far from the Traps. From them, and from the
whispering ghosts which, by day and by dark, have drifted along beside
me on the silent trails and talked to me in weird crevasse and uncanny
old house, I have learned the tale which is here set down. It is a
tale of Yesterday, in a land of Yesterday, chronicled by one who was
there--yesterday.
A. O. F.
_New York, 1923._
CONTENTS
I. THE PANTHER 13
II. NIGGER NAT’S GIRL 24
III. PIPE-SMOKE--AND POWDER-SMOKE 35
IV. THE FUGITIVE 45
V. CREEPING THINGS 56
VI. THE KNOCK-OUT 66
VII. A MAN MEETS A MAN 76
VIII. THE HA’NT 87
IX. DALTON’S DEATH 97
X. A SCRAP OF PAPER 108
XI. AT THE BRIDGE 119
XII. THE LAW COMES 129
XIII. THE CODE OF THE HILLS 139
XIV. COLD NERVE 150
XV. FIRE AND FROST 160
XVI. THE MOVING FINGER WRITES 172
XVII. A STAB IN THE NIGHT 184
XVIII. HUNTERS OF MEN 195
XIX. THE SUN BREAKS THROUGH 206
XX. LIBERTY OR DEATH 217
XXI. THE HAND OF THE GHOST 229
XXII. IN THE SHADOWS 240
XXIII. THE DEMON OF THE DARK 251
XXIV. CROSS TRAILS 262
XXV. NINETY-NINE’S MINE 272
XXVI. SNAKE STRIKES 284
XXVII. TRAPPED 293
XXVIII. AN ACCOUNT IS CLOSED 301
XXIX. OUT OF THE PAST 311
XXX. THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 322
Cat o’ Mountain
CHAPTER I
THE PANTHER
High on the crags a panther screamed.
Savage, sinister, yet appallingly human--like the malevolent squall of
an infuriated hag--the cry tore through the night shadows whelming the
mountain-girt gulf of the Traps. Among the gigantic bowlders and the
uncanny crevasses of Dickie Barre it hurtled in a shattered wave of
sound. Out across the dense tangle of underbrush and the lazy-creeping
water of Coxing Hill it fled, freezing in their tracks the smaller
brethren of the wild--fox and raccoon and rabbit and mink--which moved
there in their furtive foraging. From the forested steeps of Mohonk and
Millbrook it reverberated, and among those trees it was swallowed up.
Again the malignant wail broke out; and now the beast which voiced it
was not in the same spot as before. Somewhere on the very brink of
the precipice of Dickie Barre the huge cat had been, and somewhere on
that edge he still was. But he was moving, seeking a crack or crevice
through which he might steal swiftly downward without hurling himself
to death on the rubble of cliff-fragments below; and his failure to
find it at once exasperated his ugly nature to its ugliest. His eyes
told him something down there was moving. His nose said the thing was
human, was hurt, was harmless. His fierce brain knew it would be an
easy kill, and his ravening jaws slavered at the realization that after
one rending attack he could gorge himself--on the tender flesh of a
woman.
Baffled, maddened, he screeched once more. Then he became silent. He
had found something promising: not a direct line of descent, but a
narrow shelf dipping diagonally down the face of the cliff. Along this
he proceeded with swift, sure stealth.
Then, down in the density behind him, a light shot out from between two
towering bowlders. A clean, brilliant beam it was--the ray of a carbide
camp-lamp. Its white sheen played up, down, right, left; and as it
moved, the rock-masses and the trees and brush round about stood forth,
then vanished again into the gloom. But it did not advance. Between
those two colossal blocks it stayed, peering like a dazzling eye.
All at once it jumped. From the chaos of chunks between silent cat and
silent light, a voice had cried out.
“Help! Oh--help!”
It was a high, clear, penetrating call, with an under-note of terror
and pain.
Two voices answered: one, a ferine snarl from the merciless
cat-creature beyond; the other, a quick response in the tones of a man.
“Right here! Where are you?”
“Here into the--the rocks! Oh, hurry up, before that critter gits to
me!”
“Coming!”
The glaring white eye moved forward in haste. Behind it, boots scraped
and bumped on rock. It rose in a steep slant, slid suddenly down,
accompanied by more scraping of boot-heels; disappeared between two
blocks leaning together; emerged beyond, ascended again, wavering
erratically with the strain of climbing a treacherous slope; halted at
the peak of another bowlder and rapidly searched the surroundings.
“Can’t see you!” the man panted. “Speak up!”
“Hold stiddy a minute!” implored the other voice. “I’m a-comin’--up
this rock--if I don’t slip. Oh!” The last was a choked moan.
“What’s the matter? Hurt?”
“Ye-yes. But wait--I’m a-comin’----”
The light quivered, as if the man behind it were impatient to leap
forward. But it remained poised on its own bowlder, shooting at the
upper edge of another mass of conglomerate beyond which the girlish
voice had spoken. A few seconds later, atop that rough stone, something
glinted red-gold in the white glare. Under it rose wide gray eyes, a
pale face--the eyes suddenly shut and the face shrank from the blinding
beam. Again the gas ray lit up the glowing glory of the red hair.
“All right. Stick there,” commanded the man. A quick twist of the
light--then another grind of sliding heels, terminating in a solid bump
like the impact of a gun-butt against stone. The white eye now was
swinging about at the base of the bowlder, hunting a way around the
almost vertical block. A few seconds, and it began staggering over the
smaller debris toward one corner.
“Oh--look out--here’s the critter now!”
With the warning came a swift scramble overhead. The light wheeled
and revealed a girlish figure in a torn drab dress swinging itself
out--slipping rapidly down--hanging by its hands from the upper edge.
“Hold hard!” snapped the man. “Don’t be silly--he’s a coward, like all
cats. He’ll run if you say ‘boo.’ Hang tight a minute. Don’t drop.”
But the girl, dangling with face turned upward and heels a yard or more
above the jagged jumble below, sniffed scornfully at his assertion of
knowledge. Before he could make two steps toward her she let go. Down
she darted in a grayish streak, and on the stones beneath she crumpled.
One sharp moan of pain broke from her. Then, looking upward, she
breathed: “Look!”
The light switched up. From the edge above now protruded another head:
a flat-nosed, fang-toothed, tawny visage whose eyes flamed green with
ferocity and whose snarling jaws writhed in malignant menace.
A startled grunt sounded behind the light. The white eye lifted, hung
poised as if held by a hand grown rigid. Beside it, twin tubes of steel
centered on that horrid head.
_Boomboom!_ A double flash leaped thundering from the tubes. In a swirl
of blue smoke the face of the great cat vanished.
The light pitched backward, fell clattering on the rocks. A muffled
impact and a sullen thwack of metal told that the man and his gun too
had been knocked down by the recoil. Over behind the bowlder something
else thudded softly and was still.
But, though dropped, the lantern burned faithfully on. Its ray lit up
a pair of high-laced boots, tan corduroys, and a hammerless shotgun
sprawling on a slanting bowlder. A second later a broad hand swooped at
it and righted it. The gun was lifted, broken at the breech, swiftly
reloaded and snapped shut. Then the legs drew up and the light rose,
darting at the girl.
She was huddled where she had dropped, but her pale face was alive and
her gray eyes wide open. As the glare fell on her she threw up an arm
to shield her dark-dilated pupils. Upon the tanned skin of that firm
young forearm showed a long red gash.
“Good Lord! You’re badly hurt!” exclaimed the man.
The lips under the shadowing arm curved in a strained smile.
“’Tain’t much,” she deprecated. “I got a gouge when I tumbled. Guess
you kilt Mister Catamount, or scairt him off anyway. They take a mighty
lot of killin’ sometimes. Now can you git me down to where I can walk?
My ankle’s hurt.”
A quiet laugh of admiration came from the invisible man.
“You’re a plucky little lady,” he informed her. “Most girls in your
place would be fainting or going all to pieces. As for walking, I
don’t know. This is a tough hole to navigate in after dark. But we’ll
see.”
The light moved toward her. As it advanced the man added in a chiding
tone: “You shouldn’t have dropped like that. No wonder your ankle’s
hurt.”
“Is that so! What was I goin’ to do, Mister Smarty--let that critter
claw me? And I hurt my leg an hour ago, not jest now. And I wish you’d
look and see if the catamount’s alive yet. He’s been pesterin’ round
here ’most a month, and you better kill him good and dead.”
“Oh, he’s dead enough----”
“You go and look!”
Again the quiet laugh sounded.
“Just as you say, my lady. I think I heard him fall over back there.”
Once more the light turned. It wavered around the base of the bowlder,
bobbed up and down among the jags and juts of the rock-heap, paused,
swung slowly, came to rest on a furry huddle hanging limp over a
misshapen stone. There dangled two powerful fore-legs, topped by
massive shoulders, terminated by big paws. Between them hung a red ruin
which had been a head.
“Whew!” whistled the man, studying the size of the legs and the breadth
of the back. “What a brute! Never knew they grew so big. Lucky he was
close enough to take those charges before they could spread. Otherwise
that bird-shot would only have maddened him.”
Turning, he picked his way back to the spot where the girl waited. He
found her sitting up on a stone and frowning down at her left foot. For
the first time he observed that her feet and the shapely ankles above
them were bare. The left one was much swollen.
“He’s as dead as they make ’em,” he sang out cheerily. “We’re a
bunged-up lot, aren’t we? Cat lost his head, your arm and foot are
hurt, and my right shoulder’s kicked into the middle of my back from
letting both barrels go at once. And even my gun is all mauled from
falling on the rocks.”
“Ain’t that too bad?” The tone was amusedly sarcastic. “But I guess I’m
the wust off--I’ve got more bad luck comin’.”
“How so?”
“I’ll catch hell when I git home,” was the naive explanation.
For a minute the man was speechless. Then he chuckled.
“So? Then why go home?”
The mountain girl’s answer was as straightforward as before.
“I don’t know any other place to go.”
Her sober face told that she spoke the gaunt truth, and that she
dreaded the thought of returning to the house whence she had come. An
awkward pause followed.
“Well, you may not get there to-night,” the man declared. “I doubt if
I can find my way out of this mess of rocks before daylight, and you
certainly can’t go scrambling around on that bad foot. You’ll have to
come to my camp now and get bandaged up.”
The auburn brows drew together in another frown, and the eyes under
them peered toward him in open suspicion.
“I ain’t so sure about that,” she asserted. “I can git home some way
alone, if I have to, and I don’t figger to stay up here all night. Who
are you?”
“Oh, just a rambling camper. But don’t be silly. I’m not a skunk. I’ll
gladly take you home if it’s possible and sensible, but until you’re in
condition to travel it’s neither. Now you need a bandage on that arm,
some hot water on the ankle, and--are you hungry?”
“I’m ’most starved,” she admitted. “I got mad and run away this
mornin’, and I ain’t et since breakfast.”
“Oho! I’m afraid you’re a temperamental little redbird. Well, come on
down to camp and I’ll feed you bacon and beans--and hot coffee, lots of
it. How’s that?”
“Sounds awful good. I guess you’re all right. You go ’long and show the
way.”
She turned about on her stone. The movement disclosed a long rent in
the faded dress, running from arm to waist, through which glowed pink
flesh. Her skirt, too, was badly ripped. The man behind the light
switched it from her to the formidable mass of stones ahead.
“If you can stub along on one foot,” he suggested, “we can make better
progress by hugging each other. I can stand it if you can.”
A quick laugh answered him. The light veered back, revealing dancing
eyes, perfect teeth, and flushed cheeks under the glowing hair.
“I can stand ’most anything--if I have to,” she flashed. “And it looks
like I’d have to.”
“By George! Young lady, you’re a little beauty when you laugh! I think
I’m going to enjoy this trip. Wait a minute and I’ll let you put your
arm around my neck.”
Followed the grind of boot-soles and the approach of the lamp.
“You’re awful good.” She laughed again. “You’d ought to sell soft soap
for a livin’, you’ve got so much of it.”
“Humph! That’ll do. Now let’s walk.”
Slowly the white eye wobbled along among the tumbled blocks. The only
sounds behind it were those of labored breathing and curt directions
regarding the placing of feet. Not once did the girl whimper from the
pain of the injured ankle.
Presently the pair of tall cliff-chunks took shape ahead, their bases
lost among smaller stones, their crests invisible in the upper gloom,
their irregular sides framing a narrow black cañon which seemed to
end in emptiness. But out from that gloomy slit drifted a tang of
smouldering wood-smoke; and beyond it, the girl knew, the hidden camp
of her unknown rescuer waited.
At the entrance to the covert they paused. So narrow was the passage
that they could no longer advance side by side. But the carbide flame
showed that the footing ahead was smooth and almost level, offering no
obstacle to her progress alone; also, that the distance to the cavern
beyond was hardly more than a couple of rods.
“Now if you’ll hop along by yourself for a few yards more you’ll be
there,” spoke the tall, vague form behind the metal lamp. “Sorry my
doorway’s so tight, but it was made before I came here.”
The injured girl, drooping against a stone beside her, let the jest
pass without a smile.
“You go ahead,” she prompted wearily. “You’ve got boots.”
“What of it?” he puzzled.
“Snakes.”
“Ouch! Snakes around here?”
“Why, sure. This country’s full of ’em--rattlers and copperheads. Guess
you ain’t been into here long, mister.”
“Right. I haven’t. But--Lordy! You shouldn’t go around barefoot in
snake country.”
“Mebbe. But folks can’t wear out their shoes into summer if they’re
goin’ to have ’em for winter, can they?”
He made no reply. Into the gap he turned, and through it he passed to
the larger space beyond, his wide shoulders rubbing the rock as he
passed. Behind him she limped along, leaning against one wall.
At the end of the little cañon he stepped downward, halted, and set gun
and lamp on a rock shelf. Some twenty feet away, under an overhang of
the cliff, an open blanket-roll and various small camp-tools showed
beside an Indian fire--short sticks laid like wagon-wheel spokes, with
the flame at the hub.
“Now you can hug me for the last time--maybe,” he solemnly stated. “I’m
going to tote you over there. It’s rough going.”
With which she was lifted and carried across a rubble of fragments to
the blankets.
As he straightened up in the brilliant light thrown across by the
lamp, she saw him plainly for the first time: a lithe, firm-jawed man
whose face glowed red with new sunburn between a gray flannel shirt
and a head of silky blond hair; a clean-mouthed, clean-limbed chap
whose twinkling blue eyes might have brought an approving smile to the
lips of many a girl far more critical of men than this maiden of the
mountains. But no hint of liking for her new-found friend dawned in her
face.
Into her eyes darted a light of mingled recognition, suspicion,
repulsion. She shrank from him as if he had suddenly become one of
those snakes against which she had just warned him.
“Oh, Lord!” she breathed. “It’s you! The detective!”