“What next?” asked the assistant, awakening a little.
“Well, he chewed the uppers off’n your rubber boots, them ones you said cost five dollars——”
“Name o’ sin, no! Did he? Where’s the gun, quick——”
“Hold on a bit. Wait a minute,” interrupted Ripley. “There aint no hurry about the case. I was jest a-sayin’——”
“Go on,” said the assistant earnestly.
“Well, then, don’t interrupt me no more. That blamed critter got old red-head by th’ neck an’ walked off with him, an’ there aint no better rooster ever been hatched. That’s erbout all.”
“You kin hand me down the rifle,” said the assistant; “that critter or me leaves this here island, an’ that’s a fact.”
The track led down the beach, and there was no trouble following it. The assistant started off at a swinging pace, determined to cover the distance between himself and the thief before midday.
But the track soon led into the scrub and was lost. When it was taken up again it was a good half-mile farther down the shore. Here it swung along easily for a short distance until a heavy belt of timber was reached, and where the ground was hard and covered with pine-needles. There all trace of it was swallowed up as soon as it struck the pines. The assistant came home that evening a tired but no wiser man. That night the outcast saw the man-tracks, and knew he had been followed, and the spirit of deviltry entered deeper into his pariah soul. He would make them sorry for his nightly visits. All were enemies to him, and the more harm he could do to everything alive the better it would be. Savagely he snarled at the footprints. As the moon rose he saw the beautiful light silvering the cold ocean, and it stirred something in his hard heart. He raised his nose high in the air and let forth a long howl of fierce defiance and wrath.
Slinking through the darkening shadows of the forest, the outcast made his way to the clearing wherein the great eye rose above the ground to the height of a hundred feet or more. Here he halted upon the outer edge, where the thicket hid him in its black shadow. Then he raised his voice in such a prolonged howl that the fowls secured within the coops of the yard set up a vast cackling. He changed his position in time to avoid a charge of buckshot which tore through the thicket and rattled about the leaves beneath the trees. Then he slunk away for a little while, only to return again and give vent to his feelings in a succession of yelping barks, such as had never disturbed the quiet of the island before. Another charge of shot rattled about him, but he was now far too wary to get hit, and his hatred was greater than his fear. It gave him a savage joy to listen to the crack of the gun or the sharper snap of the rifle, for he knew it worried the keeper to hear him and know he was near. Night after night he now came, and many were the shots fired at him, but all to no avail. He would do any mischief he could, and woe to any duck or chicken that came within his reach. His high, yelping howl resounded through the clearing and sounded above the dull roar of the surf, making night hideous to the keeper on watch in the light above.