Part 6

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.

THE TUNNEL RUNNERS

The deep copper-red channel of the little tidal river wound inland through the wide yellowish levels of the salt marsh. Along each side of the channel, between the waving fringes of the grass and the line of usual high tide, ran a margin of pale yellowish-brown sand-flats, baked and seamed with sun cracks, scurfed with wavy deposits of salt, and spotted with meagre tufts of sea-green samphire, goose-tongue, and sea-rosemary. Just at the edge of the grass-fringe an old post, weather-beaten and time-eaten, stood up a solitary sentinel over the waste, reminder of a time when this point of the river had been a little haven for fishing-boats—a haven long since filled up by the caprice of the inexorable silt.

Some forty or fifty paces straight back from the mouldering post, a low spur of upland, darkly wooded with spruce and fir, jutted out into the yellow-green sea of grass. Off to the left, some hundred yards or so away, ran a line of round-topped dike, with a few stiff mullein stalks fringing its crest. Beyond the dike, and long ago reclaimed by it from the sea, lay basking in the sun the vast expanses of sweet-grass meadow, blue-green with timothy, clover, and vetch, and hummed over by innumerable golden-belted bumblebees. Through this sweet meadow wound the slow curves of a placid and brimming fresh-water stream, joining itself at last to the parent river through an _abat-d’eaux_ in the dike, whose sunken valves protected it completely from the fluctuation of the tides.

The dividing line between the tall, waving, yellow salt grass and the naked mud-flat was as sharp as if cut by a diker’s spade, and it was fringed by a close brown tangle of grass-roots, which seemed to feel outward over the baked mud and then curl back upon themselves in apprehension. Close to the foot of the mouldering post, where this fringe half encircled it, appeared suddenly a pointed brownish head, with tiny ears and a pair of little, bright, bead-like eyes set very close together. The head was thrust cautiously forth from the mouth of a narrow tunnel under the grass-roots. The sharp, overhung muzzle, with nostrils dilating and quivering, interrogated the perilous outer air; the bead eyes searched the sky, the grass-fringe, the baking open of the flat. There was no danger in sight; but just in front, some five or six feet distant, a gaudy caterpillar on some bold venture bent was making his slow way across the scurfed mud, from one goose-tongue tuft to another.

The pointed head shot swiftly forth from the tunnel, followed by a ruddy-brown body—straight out across the bright naked space, and back again, like a darting shuttle, into the hole, and the too rashly adventuring caterpillar had disappeared.

A little way back from the edge of the flats a mottled brown marsh-hawk was flying hither and thither. His wings were shorter and broader than those of most members of his swift marauding race, and he flew flapping almost like a crow, instead of gliding, skimming, and soaring, after the manner of his more aristocratic kindred. He flew close above the swaying grass-tops, his head thrust downward, and his hard, unwinking eyes peered fiercely down between the ranked coarse stems of the “broad-leaf” grass. He quartered the meadow section by section, closely and methodically as a well-handled setter. Once he dropped straight downward into the grass abruptly, as if he had been shot; and when, an instant later, he arose again, with a great buffeting of the grass-tops, he was clutching some tiny gray object in his talons. Had one been near enough to see, it would have proved, probably, to be a young shrew. Whatever it was, it was too small to be worth carrying off to his high perch on the dead pine-tree beyond the ridge of the uplands. He flew with it to the open crest of the dike close by, where he devoured it in savage gulps. Then, having wiped his beak on the hard sod, he dropped off the dike and resumed his assiduous quartering of the salt grass.

About this time the little brown, pointed head with the bead eyes reappeared in the mouth of the tunnel by the foot of the post. Everything seemed safe. The samphire and the goose-tongue tufts, palely glimmering in the sun, were full of salt-loving, heat-loving insects. Warily the ruddy-brown body behind the pointed head slipped forth from the tunnel, and darted to the nearest tuft, where it began nosing sharply and snapping up small game.

The marsh-mouse was a sturdy figure, about six inches in length, with a dull chestnut-brown back sprinkled with black hairs shading downwards through warm gray to a delicate fawn-colored belly. Its shoulders and short forelegs were heavily moulded, showing the digger of tunnels, and its forepaws moved with the swift precise facility of hands. The tiny ears were set flat and tight to the head, and the broad-based skull over the triangular muzzle gave an impression of pugnacious courage, very unlike that of the wood-mouse or the house-mouse. This expression was more than justified by the fact, for the marsh-mouse, confident in his punishing little jaws and distrustful of his agility, had a dangerous propensity to stay and fight when he ought to be running away. It was a propensity which, owing to the abundance of his enemies, would have led speedily to the extermination of his race but for the amazing and unremitting fecundity which dwelt in his blood.