The Reward.
When, however, a tree animal was scented, the hunt was both noisy and rapid. Either Waddles or Quick would pick up the trail of one of the bandit cats, and give tongue according to their vocal abilities, Quick’s being a most piercing and unearthly scream. Then the oddly assorted pack would start off, noses to the ground, barking, baying, yelping as if Dogtown itself was hunting the great phantom cat of whom all naughty puppies live in dread, whose grin is sometimes seen on the full moon on foggy nights, and whose trail always either leads to water or rises in the air.
If the cat thus pursued should happen to be at rest when the trail is discovered, it is soon on foot again, spurred by the approaching noise. If in the open, it makes for the nearest trees; for cats are poor long distance runners, their specialties being leaping and climbing.
A cat of experience and steady nerve, having gained a medium-sized tree, will retreat to the upper branches, secure a good perch, and there sit and wait indefinitely without looking down, for the cat who looks down upon a pack of jumping, yelping dogs is lost, being either confused into letting go her grip and dropping, or else startled into jumping squirrel-like for the branches of an adjoining tree which may bend to the earth with her weight.
If the cat, when treed, does neither of these things, then the hunters divide forces and prepare to wait. Mr. Wolf, seating himself a few feet from the tree, where he can see well up into the branches (for in tree work sight supplements scent in a great degree) begins a monotonous and incessant barking. Quick going backward a couple of yards makes rapid runs at the tree-trunk, managing to scramble up six or eight feet before dropping back, or sometimes, if the branches are thick and low, landing securely upon one of them. Tip and Hamlet wait at a little distance in case the cat tries a long leap and run, while Waddles turns strategist and disappears, that is, as far as the cat is concerned. Really he is crouching close against the tree-trunk directly under the cat’s perch, silent, with glistening eyes, and, in spite of rheumatism, all his catapult force gathered in the muscles of his back like a bent bow, for in every chase Waddles lives over his youth and his feud with the miller’s cat.
On goes Mr. Wolf’s hypnotic chanting, echoed occasionally by Tip or carried into a banshee scream by Hamlet, who finds time hanging heavy to his impatient feet. At last the cat looks down, hesitates whether to climb higher or risk a long jump; confused by the noise, it does half of each, and as a result drops directly at the root of the tree. Waddles’s back straightens,—there is one bandit cat the less. Then the good news is passed quickly on by the gossips of Birdland, all a-twitter in the neighbouring trees.
Such hunting was wearing to a heavy dog past middle age like Mr. Wolf, and after each run that season he rested longer, and felt less appetite for his good dinner and go-to-bed bone.