Once more the boys put spurs to their horses and went galloping through the woods at break-neck speed.
If you have ever ridden with experienced hunters, you will, perhaps, have some idea of the manner in which Walter and his party intended to conduct the chase; if you have not, a word of explanation may be necessary. To begin with, they had no intention of following directly after the dogs, or attempting to keep up with them, for that would have been useless. They settled it in their minds beforehand which point in the woods the game would run for, and then “cut across lots,” and tried to reach that point before him.
Wild animals have ways and habits of their own that a man who has often hunted them understands. If he knows the country he can tell within fifty yards where a deer or a bear will run when pursued by the dogs, and each of the Club thought he knew just the place the panther would make for when their hounds opened on his trail. While they were sitting beside the fire waiting for daylight, Eugene said that if the trail ran toward the swamps, he would ride for a certain ford in the bayou. That was the point at which deer always crossed in going to and from the swamp, and he thought it very probable that the panther would cross there also. Walter did not agree with his brother, and intended to look elsewhere for the game. There was a huge poplar tree about two miles from the plantation, that went by the name of “the panther’s den;” and he was sure he would find him there. Featherweight thought the animal would make the best of his way to a certain canebrake where Uncle Dick had killed three or panthers during the previous winter, and the others thought he would go somewhere else. In short, they had all made up their minds what they were going to do, and each fellow thought his place was the best. They agreed that the first one who discovered the panther should announce the fact to the others by blowing four long blasts on his hunting-horn.
In less than two minutes after the hounds opened on the trail, the hunters had scattered in all directions, and each boy was drawing a bee-line for the place where he expected to find the panther. For a long time Walter thought he was right in his calculations, for the music of the hounds told him that they were running in the same direction in which he was going; but presently the baying began to grow fainter and fainter, and finally died away in the distance. Then Walter knew that he was wrong, but still he kept on, determined to visit and examine the “old panther’s den,” when suddenly he heard the notes of a horn away off in the swamp. He listened and counted four long blasts. It was Bab’s horn, and judging by the way that young gentleman rolled out the signals, he was very much excited about something. Walter faced about at once, and, guided by the music of the horn which continued to ring out at short intervals, finally came within sight of a dense brier thicket in the lower end of his father’s cornfield. There were several trees in the thicket, and the hounds were running about among them, gazing up into the branches and baying loudly. Bab was the only one of the Club in sight. He sat on his horse just outside the fence, looking up at a cottonwood that stood a little apart from the others, and following the direction of his gaze, what was Walter’s amazement to see two immense panthers crouching among the branches!
“Are we not in luck?” exclaimed Bab—“two panther-skins to show as trophies of our skill, and fifty dollars to put into our pockets? This is grand sport. I never was more excited in my life.”
Walter thought it very likely. He did not see how any boy could possibly be more excited than his friend was at that moment. There was not a particle of color in his face; his voice trembled when he spoke, and the hand in which he held his rifle shook like a leaf.
“Humph!” said Walter; “are you not counting your young poultry a little too early in the season? Those skins, that you intend to exhibit with so much pride, are very animated skins just now, and the bone and muscle in them may carry them safely out of our reach in spite of all our efforts to prevent it. Have you never heard old Coulte talk about panther-hunting?” (Coulte was a Creole who lived away off in the swamp. He was a famous hunter, and had killed more panthers, bears, and deer than any two other men in the parish.) “He says,” continued Walter, “that ‘ven ze Frenchman hunts ze paintare ze shport is fine, magnifique; but when ze paintare hunts the Frenchman, Ah! oui! zare is ze very mischief to pay!’ Suppose those panthers should show a disposition to jump down from that tree and come at us; what then?”
“Ah! oui!” said Bab, with a regular French shrug of his shoulders. “By the time they touched the ground I would be a long way from here. That’s our fellow,” he said, pointing to the nearest panther. “I caught sight of him just now as he was ascending the tree, and noticed that he could scarcely raise his fore-legs. He is badly wounded.”
“Where did the other come from?”