“About sundown I met with an unlucky accident, which dampened both my spirits and my powder. In crossing a swift brook, at a place where the ice was hardly thick enough to hold up its covering of snow, I broke through and was soaked. After fishing myself out with some difficulty, I found my gun was full of water which had frozen as it entered. Here was a pretty fix! The weapon was for the present utterly useless. I feared that most of my cartridges were in like condition. The prospect for the night, when the Indian devil should arrive upon the scene, was not a cheerful one. I pushed on miserably for another mile or so, and then prepared to camp.
“First of all, I built such a fire as I thought would impress upon the Indian devil a due sense of my importance and my mysterious powers. At a safe distance from the fire I spread out my cartridges to dry, in the fervent hope that the water had not penetrated far enough to render them useless. My gun I put where it would thaw as quickly as possible.
“Then I cut enough firewood to blaze all night. With my snow-shoes I dug a deep hollow at one side of the fire. The fire soon melted the snow beneath it, and brought it down to the level whereon I was to place my couch. I may say that the ground I had selected was a gentle slope, and the fire was below my bed, so that the melting snow could run off freely. Over my head I fixed a good, firm ‘lean-to’ of spruce saplings, thickly thatched with boughs. Thus I secured myself in such a way that the Indian devil could come at me only from the side on which the fire was burning. Such approach, I congratulated myself, would be little to his Catship’s taste.
“By the time my shelter was completed, it was full night in the woods. My fire made a ruddy circle about the camp, and presently I discerned the panther gliding in and out among the tree-trunks on the outer edges of the circle. He stared at me with his round green eyes, and I returned the gaze with cold indifference. I was busy putting my gun in order. I would not encourage him, lest he might grow too familiar before I was ready for his reception.
“Between my gleaming walls of snow I had worked up a temperature that was fairly tropical. Away up overhead, among the pine-tops, a few large stars glimmered lonesomely. How far away seemed the world of my friends on whom these same stars were looking down! I wondered how those at home would feel if they could see me there by my solitary camp-fire, watched relentlessly by that prowling and vindictive beast.
“Presently, finding that I made no attack upon him, the brute slipped noiselessly up to within a dozen paces of the fire. There he crouched down in the snow and glared upon me. I hurled a flaming brand at him, and he sprang backward, snarling, into the gloom. But the brand spluttered in the snow and went out, whereupon the brute returned to his post. Then I threw another at him; but he regarded it this time with contempt, merely drawing aside to give it room. When it had gone black out, he approached, pawed it over, and sniffed in supremest contempt. Then he came much nearer, so that I thought he was about to spring upon me. I moved discreetly to the other side of the fire.
“By this time the gun was ready for action, but not so the cartridges. They were lying farther from the fire and dangerously near my unwelcome visitor. I perceived that I must make a diversion at once.
“Selecting a resinous stick into which the fire had eaten deeply, so that it held a mass of glowing coals, I launched it suddenly with such careful aim that it struck right between the brute’s fore-legs. As it scorched there, he caught and bit at it angrily, dropped it with a screaming snarl, and shrank farther away. When he crouched down, biting the snow, I followed up my advantage by rushing upon him with a blazing roll of birch-bark. He did not await my onset, but bounded off among the trees, where I could hear him grumbling in the darkness over his smarting mouth. I left the bark blazing in the snow while I went back to see to my precious cartridges.
“Before long the panther reappeared at the limits of the lighted circle, but seemed not quite so confident as before. Nevertheless, it was clear that he had set his heart on making a meal of me, and was not to be bluffed out of his design by a few firebrands.
“I discovered that all my ball-cartridges were spoiled; but there were a few loaded with shot which the water had not penetrated. From these I withdrew the shot, and substituted ball and slugs. Then, slipping a ball-cartridge into one barrel, slugs into the other, and three or four extra cartridges into a handy pocket, I waited for my opponent to recover his confidence. As he seemed content to wait a while, I set about broiling my partridges, for I was becoming clamorously hungry.