AFTER supper, the hunters stretched themselves out on their blankets around the fire; but the usual evening conversation was omitted. Their day’s work had fatigued them all, and soon their regular breathing told that sleep had overpowered them.
About midnight Frank, who slept away from the fire, and almost against the door, was aroused by a slight noise outside the cabin, like the stealthy tread of some animal in the snow. He had begun to acquire something of a hunter’s habits, and the noise, slight as it was, aroused him in an instant. The dogs had also heard it, for they stood looking at the door, with every hair sticking toward their heads, but without uttering a sound. Frank reached for his gun, which hung on some pegs just above his head, and at that moment he heard a sound resembling the “wheeze” of a glandered horse.
“Bars and buffaler!” exclaimed Dick, suddenly arousing from a sound sleep, and drawing his long hunting-knife, which he always carried in his belt; “there’s a painter around here somewhere—I’m sartin I heered the sniff of one.”
“I heard something,” replied Frank, “but I didn’t know what it was.”
By this time all the inmates of the cabin were aroused, and there was a hurried reaching for guns, and a putting on of fresh caps.
“Lend me your rifle, Dick,” said Frank, “and I’ll shoot him. I have never killed a panther.”
“Wal, don’t be keerless, like you generally are,” said the trapper, handing him the weapon. “Be keerful to shoot right between his eyes. Hist—I’ll be shot if the varmint ain’t a pitchin’ into the white buck—he are, that’s sartin!”
As Dick spoke there was a violent rustling in the bushes, and a sound as of a heavy body falling on the snow. Then there was a slight struggle, and all was still again. Frank quickly threw open the door, and hunters and dogs all rushed out together. It was very dark; but Frank, who was in advance of his companions, could just distinguish a black object crouching in the snow near the tree where the white buck had been fastened. In an instant his rifle was at his shoulder, and as the whip-like report resounded through the woods, the panther uttered a howl that sounded very much like the voice of a human being in distress, and, with one bound, disappeared in the bushes.
The quick-scented dogs found his trail in a twinkling. Guided by their barking, the hunters followed after them as rapidly as possible, in hopes that the dogs would soon overtake the panther and compel him to take to a tree. Running through a thick woods in a dark night is not a pleasant task; and the hunters made headway very slowly. But at length they came up with three of the dogs, which were standing at the foot of a large tree, barking furiously. Brave was nowhere to be seen.