“The leopard!”
Then I looked, and I too shouted:
“The leopard!”
She lay tangible, unquestionable, in plain sight under the silver
moonrays with the clear black shadows of the maple leaves sharp on her
sleek hide.
Gabbling our excited astonishment we pulled at her and turned her over.
She had six wounds, three where the bullets entered and three where
they came out, one through spine and breast-bone and two through the
ribs.
We dropped the carcass and stood up.
“But I thought....” I exclaimed.
“But I saw....” Beverly cried.
“You gentlemen,” thundered Colonel Case, “had best not say what you saw
or what you thought you saw.”
We stood mute, looking at him, at each other, and up and down the
street. No one was in sight. Apparently the circus had so completely
drained the neighborhood that no one had heard the shots.
Case addressed me in his natural voice:
“If you will be so good Radford, would you oblige me by stepping into
my house and telling Jeff to fetch the wheelbarrow. I must keep watch
over this carrion.”
There I left him, the two crooked revolvers pointed at the dead animal.
Jeff, and Cato with him, brought the wheelbarrow. Upon it the two
negroes loaded the warm, inert mass of spotted hide and what it
contained. Then Jeff lifted the handles and taking turns they wheeled
their burden all the way to uncle Rastus’, Case walking on one side
of the barrow with his cocked revolvers, we on the other, quite as a
matter of course.
Jeff trundled the barrow out to the hay barrack on the knoll. He and
Cato and uncle Rastus carried out cord-wood until they had an enormous
pile well out in the field. Then they dug up a barrel of kerosene from
near one corner of the barrack. When the leopard had been placed on the
top of the firewood they broached the barrel and poured its contents
over the carcass and its pyre. When it was set on fire Case gave an
order to Jeff, who went off. We stood and watched the pyre burn down
to red coals. By that time Jeff had returned from Shelby Manor with a
double team.
Case let down the hammers of his revolvers, holstered them, unbuckled
his belt and threw it into the dayton.
Never had we suspected he could sing a note. Now he started “Dixie” in
a fine, deep baritone and we sang that and other rousing songs all the
way home. When we got out of the dayton he walked loungingly up the
veranda steps, his belt hanging over his arm. He took the rifles from
the door jamb.
“I have no further use for these trusty friends,” he said. “If you
like, you may each have one as a souvenir of the occasion. My defunct
pistols and otiose belt I’ll even keep myself.”
Next morning as I was about to pass Judge Kenton’s house I heard
heavy footsteps rapidly overtaking me. Turning I saw Case, not in his
habitual gray clothes and broad-brimmed semi-sombrero, but wearing a
soft brown felt hat, a blue serge suit, set off by a red necktie and
tan shoes. He was conspicuously beltless.
“You might as well come with me, Radford,” he said. “You will probably
be best man later anyhow.”
We found Judge Kenton on his porch, and Mary, all in pink, with a pink
rose in her hair, seated between her father and her pretty step-mother.
“I sent Jeff with a note,” Case explained as we approached the steps,
“to make sure of finding them.”
After the greetings were over Case said:
“Judge, I am a man of few words. I love your daughter and I ask your
permission to win her if I can.”
“You have my permission, Suh,” the Judge answered.
Case rose.
“Mary,” he said, “would you walk with me in the garden, say to the
grape arbor?”
When they returned Mary wore a big ruby ring set round with diamonds.
Her color was no bad match for the ruby. And, beyond a doubt, Case’s
cheeks showed a trace of color too.
“Father,” Mary said as she seated herself, “I am going to marry Cousin
Cassius.”
“You have my blessing, my dear,” the Judge responded. “I am glad of it.”
“Everybody will be glad, I believe,” said Mary. “Cassius is glad, of
course, and he is glad of two other things. One is that he feels free
to dine with us to-night, he has just told me so.
“The other” (a roguish light sparkled in her eyes) “he has not
confessed. But I just know that, next to marrying me, the one thing in
all this world that makes him gladdest is that now at last he feels at
liberty to see a horse race and go to the races every chance he gets.”
In fact, when they returned from their six-months’ wedding tour, they
were conspicuous at every race meeting. Case’s eyes had lost their
restlessness and his cheeks showed as healthy a coloring as I ever saw
on any human being.
It might be suggested that there should be an explanation to this tale.
But I myself decline to expound my own theory. Mary never told what
she knew, and her husband, in whose after life there has been nothing
remarkable as far as I know, has never uttered a syllable.
1907