CHAPTER XII.
THE PRAIRIE FIRE.
The summer passed away amid sporting pleasures which, though they always consist of very monotonous events and results, still do not lose their charm for the man who feels a true passion for the chase. Otherwise how could a veteran sportsman, who in his time has shot so many thousand partridges, still feel a pleasure whenever he brings one down, and always find something new, something peculiar in the fact? How much greater and more permanent is this attraction in sports, where a thousand dangers offer themselves to the hunter, as is the case in hunting the larger animals of prey! I gratefully saluted every new day as the offerer of fresh joys: disregarding difficulties and fatigue, I constantly seized my good rifle again, and merrily followed the same routes.
The summer was at an end, and colder nights set in. On an autumn morning I was riding through the prairie about five miles from the fort; the grass was very high, and had been perfectly dried up by the burning summer sun, while the newly springing up grass grew splendidly in the shadow of the old. I had reached a bottom which was covered with a forest of sunflowers, which raised their golden disks high above my head, and whose long stems were girdled with bright varied creepers. I had not left this gleaming forest of flowers far behind when a very large deer got up from the grass just before me, arched its back, and then lay down again as if it had not seen me; while I noticed several old deer lying about in the grass.
Czar at once drooped his head as I raised the rifle to my shoulder. I shot the deer, but a little too far behind. It darted ahead, and Trusty looked up at me so imploringly, while showing the tip of his blood-red tongue, that I could not refuse him leave to follow the deer. I gave him a sign, and he shot through the grass along the blood-stained track. I loaded my rifle, while keeping my eye on the deer, which disappeared no great distance off in a small clump of low elms. I had just put on the cap when I heard Trusty's deep bass. I felt certain it was not the deer he was barking at, for he would have made but slight ceremony in that case, so I gave Czar his head, and in a few minutes reached the thicket.
I leapt down, ran in a stooping posture under the pendant elms, and saw Trusty lying on the ground defending himself with widely opened jaws against a tremendous panther, which was leaping over him, and every time it came down lacerated the dog's back with its tremendous hind claws. Trusty recognised the superiority of this savage foe, but defended himself as well as he could. But he hardly saw me arrive ere he leapt up with one bound, pinned the panther by the throat, and wrestled with it, while the latter dug its terrible fore claws into either side of his collar.