Cat o’ MountainCHAPTER ITHE PANTHER
Cat o’ Mountain
Highon 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 therubble 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 swingingabout 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 goingall 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’tgo 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 showedthat 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 showedbeside 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!”