Just then the moon swung clear of the thick trees and the dancers were in its full flood. The boy watched them with trembling eagerness.
A tall, catlike creature, erect and graceful, swayed like a phantom in and out among the others, and seemed to lead. As it came directly in front of the musicians it turned full front toward them. It was an immense gray panther.
At any other time Bo would have screamed. Now he was only fascinated. Its step was perfect and its long tail waved behind it, like a silver plume, which the others followed. Two red foxes kept pace with it. Two gray ones, a little to one side, imitated their movements. In the background a family of three bears danced so awkwardly that Bo was inclined to laugh.
"We will teach them to do better than that when we get our colony," he said.
Horatio nodded without pausing. The dancers separated, each group to itself, the gray panther in the foreground. Spellbound, the boy watched the beautiful swaying creature. He had been taught to fear the "painter," as it was called in Arkansaw, but he had no fear now. He almost felt that he must himself step out into that enchanted circle and join in the weird dance.
New arrivals stole constantly out of the darkness to mingle in the merrymaking. A little way apart a group of rabbits skipped wildly together, while near them a party of capering wolves had forgotten their taste for blood. Two plump 'coons and a heavy bodied 'possum, after trying in vain to keep up with the others, were content to sit side by side and look on. Other friends, some of whom the boy did not know, slipped out into the magic circle, and, after watching the others for a moment, leaped madly into the revel. The instinct of the old days had claimed them when the wild beasts of the forest and the wood nymphs trod measures to the pipes of Pan. The boy leaned close to the player.
"The rest of it!" he whispered. "Play the rest of it!"
"I am afraid. They have never heard it before."
"Play it! Play it!" commanded Bo, excitedly.
There was a short, sharp pause at the end of the next bar, then a sudden wild dash into the second half of the tune. The prancing animals stopped as if by magic. For an instant they stood motionless, staring with eyes like coals. Then came a great rush forward, the gray panther at the head. The boy saw them coming, but could not move.