Down at the foot of the tree crouched the brute, as if to announce that she would wait there until after dark, when she would have the advantage.
“I’m in for it now,” mused the lad. “Treed by a wildcat, and nothing with which to shoot her. I am in a pickle. The fellows won’t know where to look for me, and I can’t fire any shots to call them. I am up against it.”
He made himself as comfortable as possible on his small perch. At his first movement the cat started up from her crouching position, as if to be on the alert, but, seeing that her prey did not attempt to descend, she again stretched out, and began moving her paw over the place where the shot had torn her scalp.
For half an hour Frank sat there, turning over the situation in his mind. He hoped the cat might tire of waiting, or go back to the fox she had killed, but the animal showed no such intentions. Noon came, and there was no change. Frank was tired and cramped, and he began to feel the pangs of hunger. He moved about, seeking to be comfortable, and every time he shifted his position the wildcat would growl, as if resenting it.
“Maybe when I don’t come home to dinner the fellows will come looking for me,” thought the treed lad. “They may be able to trace my footsteps.”
But the afternoon began to wane, and no relief came. Frank was desperately weary, and was beginning to be alarmed. Not only was the prospect of a night in the tree most unpleasant, but he feared that after dark he could not watch to ward off the approach of the beast, whose ability to see after nightfall was better than was his. Then, too, he feared that his muscles might get numb, and that he would fall.
“Well, I’ll cut another club, and have it in readiness,” Frank thought, and, as there were no more suitable dead limbs that would serve, he whittled off with his knife, a tough green branch, that would answer as a club.
This movement on his part was resented by the cat, who raised up and tried her fore paws on the tree trunk, tearing off bits of bark. But she did not venture to climb. The memory of the blows on the head probably deterred her.
It began to get dusk. The cat seemed to know this, and began prowling about the foot of the tree, as if waiting until the veil of night had completely fallen before making another attack. Now and then she growled and once howled dismally.