Sitting there, he listened to the breeze sighing among the branches of the pines; and to his excited mind it was actually laughing at the predicament of the wretched chums.
Something else came stealing to his hearing, something that made Bumpus suddenly sit up, hold his breath, and strain his senses trying to locate the direction from which it seemed to spring, and at the same time guess the nature of the sound.
“I wonder now, was that a wildcat growling?” he asked himself.
The thought was so disquieting, owing to the gathering gloom, that he could not help reaching out his hand toward the heavy Marlin that he had temporarily laid on the ground near by.
While the sound, whatever it may have been, was not repeated, so far as Bumpus could tell, still he felt far from satisfied about it. What if the sly old cat was at that very moment creeping up on them? For all they knew, it might be close by just then, “inching” its way along, just as he had watched a tame Tabby do at home, when trying to steal upon a sparrow it wanted for its dinner.
Bumpus became quite nervous over the thought. He drew back the hammers of his double-barrel, and began to look around him. All sorts of stories that he had heard told from time to time about these bobtailed cats of the pine woods, with their cousin, the lynx, that had tassels on its ears, now floated before his mind. Naturally they did not tend to ease the strain under which he was laboring; for where he had before only imagined he could see one pair of yellow eyes staring at him from out the gloom, he now began to see them everywhere.
Why, the woods must be full of the creatures, and they were going to set upon the unfortunate scouts, to make a meal for that cold night. And another thing gave Bumpus great uneasiness; there was no use of trying to get away from this army of “yellow-eyes” by climbing that hemlock; since cats were as much at home in any kind of tree as on the ground.
No wonder Bumpus shivered now, with something more than the cold air. They were certainly up against it, good and hard; and if ever they saw Thad and the rest of the scouts again, how happy they should be.
Why didn’t Giraffe quit his fooling with that silly old bow, and take to thinking up some scheme that was worth while? It seemed the height of foolishness for him to be wasting all his time with that ridiculous fire-making dodge, that never could be done anyway. Bumpus was almost tempted to stumble forward, and pretend to fall over his kneeling figure, just to upset things, and make Giraffe come to his proper senses. He would, only he was a little afraid that the tall scout might be so furious that he would do something violent; for he was getting “awful touchy” on the subject of making a fire in that way.
“If I could only make dead sure of one of them yellow eyes, I’d like to knock the beast over,” Bumpus was muttering to himself; and then he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, as if trying to see better, after which he said disconsolately: “It ain’t no use, they just keep dancin’ all around me. P’raps there ain’t any cats there at all. P’raps I’m just imaginin’ things, like my dad used to say I did, when they put me to bed in the dark, tellin’ me the angels was all around me, an’ wouldn’t let anything hurt me; but pretty soon, when the skeeters got busy, I let out a whoop, and told ’em the angels was bitin’ me something awful. P’raps if I shut my eyes I’d feel better.”