The Routing of the Philistines
In the seventh year of Kirstie’s exile, something occurred which gave
the Settlement gossip a fresh impulse, and added a colour of awe to the
mystery which surrounded the clearing.
The winter changed to a very open one, so that long before spring Kroof
awoke in her lair under the pine root. There was not enough snow to keep
her warm and asleep. But the ground was frozen, food was scarce, and she
soon became hungry. Miranda observed her growing leanness, and tried the
experiment of bringing her a mess of boiled beans from the cabin pot. To
the hungry bear the beans were a revelation. She realized that Miranda’s
mother was in some way connected with the experience, and her long
reserve melted away in the warmth of her responsive palate. The next
day, about noon, as Kirstie and Miranda were sitting down to their meal,
Kroof appeared at the cabin door and sniffed longingly at the threshold.
“What’s that sniffing at the door?” wondered Kirstie, with some
uneasiness in her grave voice. But Miranda had flown at once to the
window to look out.
“Why, mother, it’s Kroof!” she cried, clapping her hands with delight,
and before her mother could say a word, she had thrown the door wide
open. In shambled the bear forthwith, blinking her shrewd little eyes.
She seated herself on her haunches, near the table, and gazed with
intent curiosity at the fire. At this moment a dry stick snapped and
crackled sharply, whereupon she backed off to a safer distance, but
still kept her eyes upon the strange phenomenon.
Both Kirstie and Miranda had been watching her with breathless interest,
to see how she would comport herself, but now Miranda broke silence.
“Oh! you dear old Kroof, we’re so glad you’ve come at last to see us!”
she cried, rushing over and flinging both arms around the animal’s neck.
Kirstie’s face looked a doubtful indorsement of the welcome. Kroof paid
no attention to Miranda’s caresses beyond a hasty lick at her ear, and
continued to study the fascinating flames. This quietness of demeanour
reassured Kirstie, whose hospitality thereupon asserted itself.
“Give the poor thing some buckwheat cakes, Miranda,” she said. “I’m sure
she’s come because she’s hungry.”
Miranda preferred to think the visit was due to no such interested
motives; but she at once took up a plate of cakes which she had drenched
in molasses for the requirements of her own taste. She set the plate on
the edge of the table nearest to her visitor, and gently pulled the
bear’s snout down toward it. No second invitation was needed. The fire
was forgotten. The enchanting smell of buckwheat cakes and molasses was
a new one to Kroof’s nostrils, but the taste for it was there, full
grown and waiting. Out went her narrow red tongue. The cakes disappeared
rather more rapidly than was consistent with good manners: the molasses
was deftly licked up, and with a grin of rapture she looked about for
more. Just in front of Kirstie stood a heaping dish of the dainties hot
from the griddle. With an eager but tentative paw Kroof reached out for
them. This was certainly not manners. Kirstie removed the dish beyond
her reach, while Miranda firmly pushed the trespassing paw from the
table.
“No, Kroof, you shan’t have any more at all, unless you are good!” she
admonished, with hortatory finger uplifted.
There are few animals so quick to take a hint as the bear, and Kroof’s
wits had grown peculiarly alert during her long intimacy with Miranda.
She submitted with instant meekness, and waited, with tongue hanging
out, while Miranda prepared her a huge bowl of bread and molasses. When
she had eaten this, she investigated everything about the cabin, and
finally went to sleep on a mat in the corner of the inner room. Before
sundown she got up and wandered off to her lair, being still drowsy with
winter sleep.
After this the old bear came daily at noon to the cabin, dined with
Kirstie and Miranda, and dozed away the afternoon on her mat in the
chosen corner. Kirstie came to regard her as a member of the household.
To the cattle and the poultry she paid no attention whatever. In a few
days the oxen ceased to lower their horns as she passed; and the cock,
Saunders’s equally haughty successor, refrained from the shrill
expletives of warning with which he had been wont to herald her
approach.
One afternoon, before spring had fairly set in, there came two unwelcome
visitors to the cabin. In a lumber-camp some fifteen miles away, on a
branch of the Quah-Davic, there had been trouble. Two of the “hands,”
surly and mutinous all winter, had at last, by some special brutality,
enraged the “boss” and their mates beyond all pardon. Hooted and beaten
from the camp, they had started through the woods by the shortest road
to the Settlement. Their hearts were black with pent-up fury. About
three o’clock in the afternoon, they happened upon the clearing, and
demanded something to eat.
Though sullen, and with a kind of menace in their air, their words were
civil enough at first, and Kirstie busied herself to supply what seemed
to her their just demands. The laws of hospitality are very binding in
the backwoods. Miranda, meanwhile, not liking the looks of the
strangers, kept silently aloof and scrutinized them.
When Kirstie had set before them a good meal,—hot tea, and hot boiled
beans, and eggs, and white bread and butter,—they were disappointed
because she gave them no pork, and they were not slow to demand it.
“I’ve got none,” said Kirstie; “we don’t eat pork here. You ought to get
along well enough on what’s good enough for Miranda and me.”
For a backwoods house to be without pork, the indispensable, the
universal, the lumberman’s staff of life, was something unheard of. They
both thought she was keeping back the pork out of meanness.
“You lie!” exclaimed one, a lean, short, swarthy ruffian. The other got
up and took a step toward the woman, where she stood, dauntlessly eying
them. His scrubby red beard bristled, his massive shoulders hunched
themselves ominously toward his big ears.
“You git that pork, and be quick about it!” he commanded, with the
addition of such phrases of emphasis as the lumberman uses, but does not
use in the presence of women.
“Beast!” exclaimed Kirstie, eyes and cheeks flaming. “Get out of this
house.” And she glanced about for a weapon. But in a second the ruffian
had seized her. Though stronger than most men, she was no match for
him—a noted bully and a cunning master of the tricks of the ring. She
was thrown in a second. Miranda, with a scream of rage, snatched up a
table knife and darted to her mother’s aid; but the shorter ruffian, now
delighted with the game, shouted: “Settle the old woman, Bill. I’ll see
to the gal!” and made a grab for Miranda.
It had all happened so suddenly that Kirstie was, for a moment, stunned.
Then, realizing the full horror of the situation, a strength as of
madness came upon her. She set her teeth into the wrist of her assailant
with such fury that he yelled and for a second loosed his hold. In that
second, tearing herself half free, she clutched his throat with her long
and powerful fingers. It was only an instant’s respite, but it was
enough to divert the other scoundrel’s attention from Miranda. With a
huge laugh he turned to free his mate from that throttling grip.
His purpose was never fulfilled. Kroof, just at this instant, thrust her
nose from the door of the inner room, half awake, and wondering at the
disturbance. Her huge bulk was like a nightmare. The swarthy wretch
stood for an instant spellbound in amazement. With a savage growl, Kroof
launched herself at him, and he, darting around the table, wrenched the
door open and fled.
[Illustration: He ran wildly over the snow patches]
The other miscreant, though well occupied with Kirstie’s mad grip at his
throat, had seen, from the corner of his eyes, that black monster emerge
like fate and charge upon his comrade. To him, Kroof looked as big as an
ox. With a gasping curse he tore himself free; and, hurling Kirstie half
across the table, he rushed from the cabin. His panic was lest the
monster should return and catch him, like a rat in a pit, where there
was no chance of escape.
As a matter of fact, Kroof _was_ just returning, with an angry
realization that her foe could run faster than she could. And lo! here
was another of the same breed in the very doorway before her. As she
confronted him, his eyes nearly started from his head. With a yell he
dodged past, nimble as a loon’s neck. Savagely she struck out at him
with her punishing paw. Had she caught him, there would have been one
rogue the fewer, and blood on the cabin threshold. But she missed, and
he went free. He ran wildly over the snow patches in pursuit of his
fleeing comrade; while Kroof, all a-bristle with indignation, hurried
into the cabin, to be hugged and praised with grateful tears by Kirstie
and Miranda.
When the first of the fugitives, the lean and swarthy one, reached the
edge of the woods, he paused to look back. There was no one following
but his comrade, who came up a moment later and clutched at him, panting
heavily. Neither, for a minute or two, had breath for any word but a
broken curse. The big, bristly scoundrel called Bill was bleeding at the
wrist from Kirstie’s bite, and his throat, purple and puffed, bore
witness to the strength of Kirstie’s fingers. The other had got off scot
free. The two stared at each other, cowed and discomfited.
“Ever see the likes o’ that?” queried Bill, earnestly.
“Be damned ef ’twan’t the devil himself!” asseverated his companion.
“Oh, hell! ’twere jest a b’ar!” retorted Bill, in a tone of would-be
derision. “But bigger’n a steer! _I_ don’t want none of it!”
“B’ar er devil, what’s the odds? Let’s git, says I!” was the response;
and simultaneously the two lifted their eyes to observe the sun and get
their bearings. But it was not the sun they saw. Their jaws fell. Their
hair rose. For a moment they stood rooted to the ground in abject
horror.
Right above their heads, crouched close upon the vast up-sloping limb of
a hoary pine, lay a panther, looking down upon them with fixed, dilating
stare. They saw his claws, protruding, and set firmly into the bark.
They saw the backward, snarling curl of his lips as his head reached
down toward them over the edge of his perch. For several choking
heart-beats the picture bit itself into their coarse brains; then, with
a gurgling cry that came as one voice from the two throats, both sprang
aside like hares and ran wildly down the trail.
Within a few hours of their arrival at the Settlement, this was the
story on all lips,—that Kirstie’s cabin was guarded by familiars, who
could take upon themselves at will the form of bear, panther, wolf, or
mad bull moose, for the terrorizing of such travellers as might chance
to trespass upon that unholy solitude. The Settlement held a few
superstitious souls who believed this tale; while the rest pretended to
believe it because it gave them something to talk about. No one, in
fact, was at all the worse for it, except the ruffian called Bill, who,
on one of Young Dave’s rare visits to the Settlement, got into an
argument with him on the subject, and incidentally got a licking.