THE THEFT
From their cave in the cleft of Red Rock, where the half-uprooted pine-trees swung out across the ravine, the two panthers came padding noiselessly down the steep trail. In the abrupt descent their massive shoulders and haunches worked conspicuously under the tawny and supple hide, in a loose-jointed way that belied their enormous strength. Where the trail came out upon a patch of grassy level, starred with blossoms, beside the tumbling mountain stream, they parted company—the female turning off across the tangled and rocky slopes, while the male went on down to hunt in the heavy timber of the valley-bottom. Game was scarce that spring, and the hunt kept them both busy. They had no misgivings about leaving their two blind sprawling cubs to doze on their bed of dry grass in the dark inner corner of the cave. They knew very well that in all their range, for a radius of forty or fifty miles about the humped and massive hog-back of Red Rock, there was no beast so bold as to trespass on the panther’s lair.
It was, perhaps, a half hour later that a man came in sight, a half-breed squatter, moving stealthily up the farther bank of the stream. His dark figure appeared and disappeared, slipping from rock to tree, from tree to wild-vine thicket, as he picked his way furtively along the steep and obstructed slope. Not a twig cracked under his moccasined steps, so carefully did he go, though the soft roar of the stream would have covered any such light sound from all ears but the initiated and discriminating ones of the forest kindreds. His small watchful eyes took note of the grassy level on the other side of the stream, and, with a sure leap to a rock in mid channel, he came across. He arrived just a few feet below the spot where the female panther had taken her departure, digging in her broad pads heavily in the take-off of her leap. The grasses, trodden down in the heavy footprints, were still slowly lifting their heads. At sight of this trail, so startlingly fresh, the man crouched instantly back into the fringing bush, half lifting his rifle, and peering with vigilant eyes into the heart of every covert. He expected to see the beast’s eyes palely glaring at him from some near ambush.
In a few minutes, however, he satisfied himself that the panther had gone on. Emerging from the bushes, he knelt down and examined the footprints minutely. Yes, the trail was older than he had at first imagined, by a good half hour. Some of the trodden grass had perfectly recovered itself, and a crushed brown beetle was already surrounded by ants. He arose with a grim smile, and traced the trail back across the grass-patch till it mingled with the confusion of footprints, going and coming, which led up the mountains. In this confusion he overlooked the traces of the other panther, so he was led to the conclusion that only one of the pair had gone out. If this was the path to the lair, as he inferred both from the number of the tracks and the fitness of the country, then he must expect to find one of the pair at home. His crafty and deep-set eyes flamed at the thought, for he was a great hunter and a dead shot with his heavy Winchester.
For days the half-breed had been searching for the trail and the den of the panther pair. His object was the cubs, who, as he knew, would be still tiny and manageable at this season. A good panther skin was well worth the effort of the chase, but a man in the settlements, who was collecting wild animals for a circus, had offered him one hundred and fifty dollars for a pair of healthy cubs. The half-breed’s idea was to get the cubs as young as possible, and bring them up by bottle in his cabin till they should be big enough for delivery to the collector.
Before starting up the steep and difficult trail, the man examined his rifle. A panther at home, protecting her young, was not a foe with whom he could take risks. She commanded the tribute of his utmost precaution.
A careful survey of the slope before him convinced his practised eye that the den must be somewhere in that high cleft, where the broken faces of the red sandstone glowed brightly through dark patches and veils of clinging firs. He marked the great half-fallen pine-tree, with its top swung out from the rock face, and its branches curling upward. Somewhere not far from that, he concluded, would he come upon the object of his search.
Difficult as was the ascending trail, now slippery with wet moss, now obstructed with thick low branches which offered no obstacle to the panthers, but were seriously baffling to the man, he climbed swiftly and noiselessly. His lithe feet, in their flexible moose-hide moccasins, took firm hold of the irregularities of the trail, and he glided over or under the opposing branches with as little rustling as a black snake might have made. Every few moments he stiffened himself to the rigidity of a stump, and listened like a startled doe as he interrogated every rock and tree within reach of his eyes. Ready to match his trained senses against those of any of the wilderness kin, he felt confident of seeing or hearing any creature by which he might be seen or heard. Mounting thus warily, in some twenty minutes or thereabouts he came out upon a narrow shelf of rock beneath the downward swing of the old pine-tree.
Cautiously he peered about him, looking for some indication of the cave. This, as he told himself, was just the place for it. It could not be very far away. Then suddenly he shut himself down upon his heels, as if with a snap, and thrust upward the muzzle of his Winchester. Lifting his eyes, he had seen the black entrance of the cave almost on a level with the top of his head. A little chill ran down his spine as he realized that for those few seconds his scalp had perhaps been at the mercy of the occupant.
Why had the beast not struck?