Snap: A legend of the Lone Mountain

by Clive Phillipps-Wolley

It was now dark save for the starlight; but that, reflected from the snow, was already bright enough to travel by. Later on, when the night was undisputed mistress of the earth, it would be light enough to read a letter on the prairie.

Unfortunately for Snap, he was likely to see a good deal of a Canadian winter night before he got home to the cheerful fire in the ranche-house. Misfortunes, they say, never come singly. In this instance the proverb was justified, for on looking for his pony Snap found it had broken away from the tree to which he had tied it, and had gone back towards home.

Snap was not only disgusted, but puzzled. A tramp home after his recent experiences was not quite what he would have chosen, and that the old 'Cradle' should have played him such a trick passed his understanding.

Just then a cry which reverberated amongst the great pines, and seemed to fill the forest with horror, explained the mystery. It was the cry of the hungry mountain lion seeking his prey by night. Snap glanced at the pine to which his horse had been tied. Yes, thank goodness, his rifle was there! it had not been strapped to his saddle; and as the boy got hold of his weapon confidence returned to him. If only he could get clear of the forest on to the open prairie he had no fear of the cowardly, sneaking brute behind him.

He tried to sing as he walked, to show his confidence and scare the beast with the sound of the human voice. But it was no good, he could not sing in that forest. Its awful silence rebuked him: the cold stars looked down, it seemed to him, in stony scorn, and his voice seemed so little and insignificant amongst all these mighty children of mother Nature.

Now and again the ice upon some stream, or the frozen limbs of some great tree, cracked like a loud rifle-shot. All else was still, except now and again for the voice of the red beast sneaking behind the boy somewhere in the shadows, still following, still afraid to attack.

The silence and lifelessness of a North American forest in winter is very impressive. The snow which covers the ground is lighter than swansdown, drier than sand. It falls unheard, it gives place to the foot without a sound. The birds are gone, or if not gone have hidden. The bear has made him a bed in some hollow tree or cave, and sleeps silently in the silent wood. The squirrel chatters no longer; he, too, has retired to his little granary in some hollow trunk. The rabbit and the weasel are still restlessly wandering about as usual, but both have changed their coats, and assumed a white covering to match the snows amongst which they live. Almost everything sleeps: trees in their robes of snow, the bear in his cave, the streams in their bonds of ice; even the winds are still. Nothing stirs.

If you have ever made a long walk at night by yourself over some lonely road or moor you may know that feeling which grows upon you, that some one is following you, that you can hear other footsteps than your own behind you. If this state of mind occurs to those who walk alone in England, where silence is really unknown and solitude impossible, where there are no mysteries (and very few, alas! of the beauties) of nature left, you can imagine how anxiously Snap kept gazing into the forest round and behind him for the owner of that awful voice, about which there could be no mistake, which was not the mere creation of any fancy.

At last he could see the edge of the open prairie, and, breaking into a run, he gained it. It was not a wise thing to do, for if anything will encourage a wild beast to attack, it is the appearance of flight in a man. And so it was in this case. As Snap gained the open he looked back, and as he did so, saw the long snake-like figure of the mountain lion come in long bounds across the snow.

As the boy faced about, the great reddish brute paused for a moment, crouching, its belly almost on the snow, for the last rush; its ears flattened back, its yellow eyes ablaze with murder, and its white fangs gleaming in the starlight. But a foe in the open can always be tackled and fought outright, and the flash of the good Winchester was redder than the anger in the wild beast's eyes, and the sharp, clear ring of the little rifle was a more unerring presage of death than even the scream of the mountain lion.