A succession of sharp clicks came to his ear; the men swung their sticks forward and started up the slope in a body, calling the dogs with them. About half way up the hill they halted. One picked up a stone and flung it towards the hole in the hill. One of the dogs detached himself from the others and sped after it. He was a coon-dog, small and venturesome. He poked his head under the dewberry bush inquisitively. The sunlight outside was still in his eyes, and he thrust part of his body in, too, catching a scent which warranted investigation. The move was fatal. Like a bolt of lightning some curved fangs tore his throat open, and without a sound and with scarcely a struggle the coon-dog rolled back down the slope, dead at the feet of his master. Above, the dog licked his chops, and waited. The men tried to urge the wolf-hound forward, but he slunk back, afraid. Among those of his own blood-kind who had come forth to take the outcast was a half-breed—part bull, part mastiff. He was a powerful fellow, and sullen looking. His owner took him by the collar and led him up the hill a few feet, then spoke to him and pointed towards the hole. The half-breed seemed to understand, for his hackles rose bristling, and he advanced slowly and warily. Just in front of the overhanging bush he stopped, thrust his head forward, and stood as a setter stands when he holds a flock of birds. The dog inside arose, and made ready for the attack. It came speedily. Without sound or warning the half-breed leaped, and they closed. The dog had sprung forward to meet his foe, and in the fearful struggle that ensued they both appeared on the hill-side, full in the open. Urged on by the voices of the men the other dogs closed in too, and the tawny shape of the outcast became the centre of a whirling vortex of animal fury. Down the slope they all rolled together, the men cheering on their allies, and trying to find an opportunity to use their weapons. Down, down to the little stream that ran through the ravine the battle went, the half-breed never losing the throat-hold which he took at the first leap. There, on the bank of the rivulet, the tragedy was played.
The men said they had never seen such a fight.
THE KING OF THE NORTHERN SLOPE
THE KING OF THE NORTHERN SLOPE
ALONG a path which a man’s eye could not have seen, but which, even at night, was visible to the kind that dwell in the hills, a long, lithe object passed swiftly and without noise. It was down a knob-slope, in a diagonal course, the object came, and the night was only star-bright, for the moon was late in coming. This quiet figure, which glided serpent-like on its way, was about three feet in length; its slender, round body was covered with short, thick hair, drab and mottled brown in color, and had only a stump of a tail about three inches long. The head was bullet-round, the short, stubby ears pricked and alert, and the nose muscles distended and twitched with every cautious step. The padded feet of this night rambler were almost as noiseless as the star rays’ fall. Scarcely a leaf was overturned, scarcely a dead twig snapped. His body, curving sinuously, would not have brushed an ant from the stem of a sapling. The King of the Northern Slope was hungry, and his present errand was to the sheepfold or pigsty of the nearest farmer.
He was the biggest wild-cat in that part of the country, and his reign on the northern slope was respected and acknowledged by all the four-footed things that harbored and hunted in the hills. The mountains far eastward had dwindled away here to a chain of knobs, bisecting the country from east to west. Miniature mountains they were, indeed; wooded, rocky, untillable, and lonely. Wild-cats, foxes, and the smaller gentry of the forest, squirrels, raccoons, and opossums, lived and throve upon this chain of knobs. But gradually those that had lived on the northern slope went over the crest to the other side, and left the field to the undisputed possession of the big cat, who did not care to have his preserves poached upon by the rag-tags and bob-tails of creation. Once a year he would go questing for a mate, boldly invading the southern side of the range, and not coming back until he had found the lady of his choice. Then after a while a brood of whelps would be born in the secret lair of the King, and when these were scarcely able to fall about the floor of their birthplace in play, and bite at each other’s sawed-off tails, the King would, one fine day, hustle them and their mother, his erstwhile bride, out of his home and over the crest of the range, to fare good or ill, as luck would send. At least this was the story that the human-people told, and this much goes to support the tale, that, whereas those farmers living beyond the line of knobs to the southward lost but few hogs from nocturnal depredations, those living to the north were in nightly fear that morning would show a trail of blood from barnyard or pen. And the men-people had sat together night after night in council, with heads bobbing and tongues wagging, trying to evolve a plan whereby to capture or destroy this scourge of their fields and pastures. But they had failed. The truest nosed hounds of the various packs scattered around could not keep his trail, but would lose the scent and return crest-fallen and shame-faced. He was never seen within gunshot, and they could not find his lair. But one thing they knew—that nothing else ran at night on the northern slope.
Picking his way as daintily as a satin-shod miss tips across a dirty street from carriage door to house door, the King pursued his diagonal course, which would eventually bring him to a field adjoining the garden of a farm-house. He had but little more than half completed his journey, when to his quick ears came a sharp snap, and something struck him sharply on the back just behind his shoulders. He bared his teeth with a low growl of wrath, and smote back blindly with one paw, which was rimmed with five curving claws unsheathed with lightning swiftness. At the same time there came the sound of huge wings beating the air to bear a heavy body up, and a hoot owl laboriously made his way through the trees, his perch, a dead limb, having at last broken beneath his weight. Low on the ground two fiery eyes glared up in savage hate; then the long, white claws slowly drew back out of sight and the cushioned feet moved on again.
It had been a hard and long winter for the King, and the spring had been slow in coming. There had been days when he could not leave his den; when the leaden clouds had unburdened themselves for hours at a time, and the snow had piled up, up, up over the very door of his home, and all familiar landmarks were obliterated. Then he must needs chafe inside his hiding-place, and when hunger seized him the cold nipped him the harder, and it was a bitter battle to keep them both off. But his fur had grown heavy and thick, and he could curl up and sleep and forget that hunger was gnawing within him. He had lived through too many winters and seen too many snows to venture out. For tracks can be seen by the men-people, and then it would be all over with him, for they would come and smoke him out. Once before, when he was younger, his life had been thus jeopardized, and it was only by finding another exit far off from the one where his enemies sat waiting that he escaped. The winter just passed had seen his endurance tested to the utmost. Tortured by starvation, he had at last determined to scout around on the top of the knob, when the half-covered entrance to his den was darkened and a striped-tail raccoon came ambling in. One swift blow and then the King feasted royally, although his victim was old and bony and had but little blood in his carcass. But this stayed his craving maw for a few days longer, and then he crunched the dry bones and licked the snow in lieu of water and waited for a thaw. It came at last, and the prisoned King sat just within his door and watched the snow disappear with gloating eyes. But even then there was danger in every step he took, for the soaked ground caught and held the scent of his tracks, and there were ever roaming the hills in search of him those lop-eared, thin-flanked, tireless hounds, the only four-footed things in all his kingdom that he feared. And they never came alone to do him fair battle, but always in overpowering numbers with hereditary hate in their hearts. And so it was incumbent upon him to employ flight and wily woodcraft when dealing with these arch-enemies, and such had been his cunning that he had always fooled them and shaken them from his tracks ere he crept tired, yet victorious, into his hidden chamber to rest.