The jaguar dropped dead in its tracks: a bullet having entered its body, and traversed the spine in a longitudinal direction.
Which of the two was entitled to the credit of the successful shot? Calhoun claimed it, and so did the young planter.
The shots had been fired simultaneously, and only one of them had hit.
“I shall show you,” confidently asserted the ex-officer, dismounting beside the dead jaguar, and unsheathing his knife. “You see, gentlemen, the ball is still in the animal’s body? If it’s mine, you’ll find my initials on it—C.C.—with a crescent. I mould my bullets so that I can always tell when I’ve killed my game.”
The swaggering air with which he held up the leaden missile after extracting it told that he had spoken the truth. A few of the more curious drew near and examined the bullet. Sure enough it was moulded as Calhoun had declared, and the dispute ended in the discomfiture of the young planter.
The party soon after came up with the tracker, waiting to conduct them along a fresh trail.
It was no longer a track made by two horses, with shod hooves. The turf showed only the hoof-marks of one; and so indistinctly, that at times they were undiscernible to all eyes save those of the tracker himself.
The trace carried them through the thicket, from glade to glade—after a circuitous march—bringing them back into the lane-like opening, at a point still further to the west.
Spangler—though far from being the most accomplished of his calling—took it; up as fast as the people could ride after him. In his own mind he had determined the character of the animal whose footmarks he was following. He knew it to be a mustang—the same that had stood under the cottonwood whilst its rider was smoking a cigar—the same whose hoof-mark he had seen deeply indented in a sod saturated with human blood.
The track of the States horse he had also followed for a short distance—in the interval, when he was left alone. He saw that it would conduct him back to the prairie through which they had passed; and thence, in all likelihood, to the settlements on the Leona.