# Landy the Little

A white man, an Indian and a cougar work their predatory instincts to a thrilling climax
Landy the Little
Stimulating Forests Do Not Make a Big Man of a Little One. There the Fittest Survive, as the Author Shows in This Stirring Bit of Life in the Wilds
By Edison Marshall Author of "The Heart of Little Shikara"—-winner of an O. Henry first prize
LANDY GIBBS lived in the deep forest, the last place on earth he should have lived. It takes big men to see over the pine-tops to the white wonder of the wilderness stars; but Landy was very little. This smallness was in his nature, which even in these raw wilds is a much more tragic thing than smallness of stature—a petulance, a delight in petty cruelty, a giving-way to frenzied rage that had before now led him into serious crime, all in a land where all things brood in sorrow but are never petulant, where cruelty, though omnipresent, is never petty, but rather an unimpassioned instrument of the vast, slow-moving aims of nature, and where the trees themselves, even in the rage of the storm, are the name of imperturbability and calm. Because this smallness was in his thoughts, and in a place behind his thoughts that was his soul, he was largely blind. He did not see the march of the tree army down one hill and up another until the clearest of human thought turns back within itself; and he missed the deathless beauty that bigger men not only see but smell and hear and feel.
The twilight dimmed him, one summer day, as he waited in a small covert of brush on a hillside above a tiny, thin pearl necklace of a mountain stream. The whole picture, except for him, was perfect beyond reach of thought. Back of him, the tree army did its ineffable grand march to music which mortals cannot hear, but which must be played in the region of the far stars. A chain of white peaks looked from afar, misty and incredible now that twilight was advancing; and the shadows, growing, softened all hard lines and blended one thing with another. The stream at the base of the hill was only a trickle of water at this season, but it lay in limpid pools with the clear darkness of a girl’s dark eyes; it gleamed under high granite stones; it crept like a moonbeam under dusky, fern-grown banks; and now and then, gurgling, it tumbled through rocky clefts in miniature cascades. But, still, one kept seeing Landy Gibbs waiting in his covert.
Landy had a rugged, wrestler’s build—deep, thick chest, heavy thighs; his arms were long, and to keep them in proportion, his thick, strong, queerly speckled hands were short and blunt. A hard trigger-pull was no bother to that stubby, powerful index-finger with its broken dull-red nail. He had a round bullet-head, rather wide-awake blue eyes, undistinguished features, and a blond skin that had the same speckled appearance as his hands. The short, bristly hair on his head was the nameless hue of wet straw.
He had no particular interest in the bewitching scene about him. Yet he was standing very watchful, very attentive. His eyes were upon what seemed to be a patch of mud that was half hidden in low ferns thirty yards down the stream.
This was the day’s work to Landy. The patch of mud was a deer-lick—a place where the wild things came for certain natural salts in formation in the rocks. Landy, after certain years of varied kinds of lawlessness, had taken to the pleasant occupation of poaching deer for their hides. He was a hide-hunter only, and his usual kill was around three deer a day.
He had heard the soft twitch and crack of a deer’s step in the brush; and it was only a matter of time until the animal would come in to the lick to be viewed along Landy’s sights. There was little to warn her of his presence. He had posted himself so that his smell was blown away. The eyes of the wild creatures cannot ordinarily interpret motionless forms; and Landy stood like a block of wood.
The hushed, furtive step drew nearer. A brown shadow flickered, fading again in the further shadows, and soon Landy caught a glimpse of a graceful lifted head. He glanced once at the breech of his rifle, and his hand stiffened where it held the forearm. And now, wholly unsuspecting, the doe was advancing straight into his ambush.
Landy held his fire. He was waiting to make sure, so that an extra cartridge—high-priced since the war in which Landy was not a participant—could be saved. And this small delay had extremely important consequences.
Just as the deer stepped into the lick, just as Landy was drawing his rifle to his shoulder, there occurred the most astonishing interruption. Landy had not watched the lick alone. A competitor of his in deer-slaying, as relentless a hunter as he himself, had made an ambush of the brush covert just beside the lick. Partly because his breed was one that steals like afternoon shadows, partly because the man’s gaze had been elsewhere, he had made the stalk to the lick unseen.
Landy had defeated his own ends when he had concealed himself so carefully. Otherwise, being one-tenth frenzied courage and nine-tenths coward, the second hunter would have discerned his presence and put several miles of mountain fastness between them. As it was, he waited breathless till the prey was just beside him; and then he pounced.
There was no withstanding that terrific leap. Cruel claws stretched; ivory fangs made a white streak as they caught the pale light, and the deer went swiftly to the earth. And Landy saw, with a yell of rage, that the flailing hind paws were ripping the deer’s precious pelt to ribbons.
Once glance at the round head, the tawny coat, the graceful feline form determined this rival’s breed. The indescribable snarl of savagery and blood-lust that the creature uttered as he struck would have identified him just as surely in the darkness. The fiendish kill-cry of the great cats was noted through a thousand square miles of unbroken forest. And it served not only as a relief-valve for the wild brute passions in the killer’s heart but also, for a fraction of a second, destroyed the fine edge of Landy’s nerve.
He shot; but he did not take quite long enough to make out his target through the sights. The ball sped like a hot iron along his rival’s scalp, taking off a narrow strip of fur and skin, and the creature’s snarl changed to a yell of pain and fear. Before Landy could fire again, he had gone.
He left his prey to Landy, but the man did not want it now. The precious pelt was not worth skinning. And he also left the knowledge that here was the beginning of a long rivalry, one that could never end as long as they hunted the same district—a bitter war between these two remorseless deer-slayers, Landy the hide-hunter, and tawny Pounce, the largest, strongest, most glorious of all the cougars that ranged the lake country.
THE wound on Pounce’s scalp had no more serious effect than to give him, at times, a racking headache, to increase his natural caution and to fill him with a deathless hatred for all mankind. He had no other real natural enemies. One glance at his lithe form, the muscles that rippled like water under his tawny skin, and one could understand why even the bull elk turned in terror at the cougar-smell on the wind.
Pounce measured almost nine feet from the tip of his long, ropelike tail to the end of his whiskers. His coat was largely a rich, tawny hue—not spotted, like his first cousins of the Old World—white on the inside of the legs and under the belly. He had a round head, powerful flanks, and his body had the length that marks all particularly agile creatures. At present, now that he was full-fed, his countenance was rather pleasant. He wore a tom-cat smile, and he purred gently as he prepared for his morning slumber. At present, his jaws were closed; otherwise, a spectator might have got an entirely different idea of Pounce’s character and disposition. In that mouth there was arranged, by an inscrutable nature, as efficient a set of deadly weapons as one would care to feel. In front were great dog-teeth—sharp fangs that could break an ordinary human vertebra at one closing. But, of course, ordinarily, human vertebræ were not in Pounce’s line. Any back-bone that was erect, instead of horizontal, filled his wicked heart with terror.
At present, his paws looked very soft and harmless, seemingly not to be taken seriously by any deer with antlers. No horned buck, however, ever made such a deadly mistake. Each of those paws had a most ingenuous mechanical contrivance, and at the least excitement it changed into a wicked, scrapping, flaying weapon such as no human inventor has ever improved upon. Long, hooked claws extended, each as sharp as needle-points. In the full stroke, they could easily rip away the barrier of flesh and bone that protects the heart.
It can readily be understood that old Ashur, the black bear, ordinarily a fish-eater and honey-grubber, but a slashing, smashing, chain-lightning fighter when he put his claws to it, had no wish deliberately to seek a fight with Pounce. But never let it be thought that he would turn tail in a crisis. Ashur was a discreet bear, afraid of his life of human beings, and with such a great bump of humor that he entirely missed the insufferable conceit that marks practically all of the larger beasts; but he was not a coward. Besides, he had a quick sideways slap that is just another name for death. Ashur avoided Pounce; but way down in the great cat’s cunning, wicked soul, he had a most wholesome fear of Ashur.
Even the gray wolves, the very carnate symbols of the wild and all that it means, kept carefully from Pounce’s trail. Such creatures as the coyote, a poor relation of the wolves who made the whole forest miserable with his forlorn wails in the twilight, and the lynx, a small edition of Pounce, with extra large and decorative hair tufts at his ears, and the almost vanished wolverene, who knows many things but never has learned yet when to stop fighting, had all about as much chance with Pounce as a magpie with a marten.
THE nights were beloved by Pounce past any speaking. Particularly the moonlit nights, when the strange argent beams probed through every rift in the tall, dusky pines. These were the nights when he knew that the deer were feeding on the hills. On such nights he could move unseen from covert to covert, from shadow to shadow, and the ear of a wolf could not hear him come.
On such nights Pounce’s blood seemed to turn to liquid fire in his viens. This was the very glory of hunting—the first glimpse of a buck, feeding quietly on the hillside—Pounce’s nose was not particularly keen, and he usually heard or saw his game before he caught a scent—the breathless stalk, the exquisite wait by the trail, the frightful leap when all his complex nervous system seemed to snap and break from inexpressible excitement—and then the triumph, the gorging, the long, full-fed slumber of contentment. He loved the life that had been ordained for him, this tawny deer-slayer of the southern Oregon lake country. The seasons passed one after another, giving him added weight and length, additional cunning and prowess, and he found his ordained delights in every one—summer, with its warm, pale nights; fall, with the changing leaves that grew so tawny in the frost that he could boldly stand then unseen, and the weird calls of the south-going water-fowl, and spring, when the doe’s eyes were lustrous with the deathless mystery of motherhood, the new green, the melting snow-bank. Even the cold fury of the mountain winter had no dread for Pounce. His business was with the deer, and he simply followed them down to the lower levels.
This deer business of his was making itself felt throughout all the great wooded expanse of his range. No cougar can kill three deer a week, fifty-two weeks in the year, and not have a disastrous effect on the fawn crop. Far below in the valleys, wise men were passing laws, ever more stringent laws in an effort to save this noble game for future generations. But for a long time no one thought of Pounce. Meanwhile, this remorseless deer-slayer plied through the forest at will, killing, killing, killing as he went. There was only one great source of interference—and that was not from a source that concerned itself with the perpetuation of the deer-herds. It was from a fellow murderer—a deer-hunter who outkilled him six to one.
Everywhere Pounce hunted he found Landy Gibbs ahead of him in the trail. The man seemed to have an unerring instinct as to what glades and hillsides the deer were using. The great cat was ever finding his fresh spore, hearing his heavy body in the brush, glimpsing him as he waited by the deer-licks. And more than once, just as the long tawny body lowered for the death-leap, the thunder-stick would roar in the brush beside and Pounce would be cheated of his prey.
No wonder pale-green flame played in his eyeballs at every fresh manifestation of his rival’s presence, and the truth was that each seemed to be the evil genius of the other. They were always crossing trails. Many and many the time Landy took the trail of a fine, fat buck only to find a half-devoured carcass—and a round print in the earth. Many the time the pungent cougar-scent frightened into panic a little herd, all of which might easily have fallen to Landy’s rifle. It was a rare day now that Landy took three hides. He did well to get one on the average—and the price of one hide hardly bought food, much less strong drink. His hatred for Pounce came as near being a religion as any emotion that had ever touched Indy’s life.
The thing got home to the man’s superstitions. It was as if Pounce were an evil spirit sent to plague him, a were-beast seeking revenge for the wound in his head. There seemed to be no conquering him by trap or poison. Both he passed by, with diabolical cunning; though sometimes he did visit the man’s camp and steal his fresh meat. The great cat even avoided him in their winter hunting-grounds in the foothills, when the round print showed plainly in the snow. Perhaps the man could have conquered with dogs—but for very good reasons Landy did not wish to go to the settlements and seek for dogs. Any number of things were wiser than that. Many times Pounce lay beside a trail and saw Landy pass in easy range beside him—but always the nine-tenths coward that dwelt under the tawny skin held him from the leap.
So it came about that these two deer-slayers continued to hunt each other—Pounce dogging the man’s trail for hours with never the courage to attack, Landy tracking the cougar for weary miles only to lose him at last in some mountain fastness.
CHATBURN, of the state Game Bureau, who knew the ways of beast and man as well as any state official could hope to know them, felt that there was some curious reason behind the sudden shortage of game in the Upper Umpqua country. With all the machinery of the state behind him, he went forth to find that reason. He talked with a trapper here and a hunter there; he ran down a rumor or two, and he even left his office and visited a member of the state Game Commission in one of the lower settlements of the Umpqua. Certain of the truth at last, he conferred with Anderson, a colleague.
“Of course we’ve got to get a hunter to go up after that big cat,” he said, “and the question is: Who can we get? Jenkins has a steady job hunting coyotes for the stock association; Schultz is with the government as a varmint-trapper, and most of the other birds I know would just fool along, making the job last as long as possible.”
“How about Long Tom?” Anderson interrupted. The curious name was accented on the “long,” rather than the “Tom.” “I happen to know he’s out of work——”
“Long Tom?” Chatburn echoed. “He’s an Indian.”
“Almost a pure-bred, I know. What about him?”
Chatburn paused to consider. It was true that Long Tom was out of work, that he would take the quest gladly, and, unlike many white men, he would hunt conscientiously, as many hours a day as he thought ought to constitute an honest day’s work, until the animal was taken. He would not pass up opportunities to kill the pest just to perpetuate his job. Yet he was an Indian, and he hunted according to his own private system—not with dogs, as a white man hunted, but with heathen stealth and animal cunning. He seemed to plan his campaign as if he were a beast himself, going where he thought a beast would likely go; and this was not Chatburn’s idea. Still, Long Tom now and then had been extraordinarily successful. He was badly in need of money, Anderson said, and he would try hard to earn it. The only thing that remained was that he was Indian, three-fourths pure, and though he lived mostly as white men lived, one had a haunting feeling that sometime, some way this red blood would assert itself.
“It shall be Long Tom,” said Chatburn, who made up his mind quickly. “Send for him, will you?”
In his little cabin on one of the tributaries of Cow Creek, Long Tom got the word that Chatburn desired him, and he would please come and confer at once. Long Tom’s thought-processes were very straight and sure, but also most matter of fact. So he waited just long enough to put on his hat. Then he strode down to the settlements.
“I’m going to give you a job, Tom,” Chatburn began, when they were together in Anderson’s office. “Mr. Anderson says you’re out of work.”
“Yes; me out of work,” Tom replied, nodding seriously. “Need money heap bad.”
This was quite true. All Long Tom’s white acquaintances—he had no real friends that were white—knew that he was planning early marriage with a girl of the Klamath tribes, and young Indian husbands, as well as every other kind, need money to start on.
The white man nodded, showing that he understood.
“Tom, there’s a great shortage of deer up in the Doe Creek hills this year. Do you know what’s the matter?”
“Maybe cougar,” Tom told him; “maybe hide-hunter.”
“I think it’s a cougar; but there’s a possibility that a skin-hunter is working up there.” He paused. “Of course, Landy Gibbs has never come out where he went in—but we’ve all supposed he went through to the Coast Range and is a thousand miles away by now. Tom, the truth is that the cougars are just about wiping out the deer. There’s one particular big brute. His track has been seen a dozen times by hunters, and one chap who got a glimpse of him says he’s got a white scar clear across the scalp. This big cat seemed to have a beat right about the Doe Creek hills—the best hunting-ground in these immediate parts. Since he’s so big, there’s a possibility at least that he’s kept any smaller cats out of the district—that he ranges it all by himself. He’s a destructive cuss—and dozens of hunters went out last fall, after making expensive trips from Seattle and Portland and San Francisco—and never got to see a deer, just because this big devil is keeping them so well cleared out. Tom, I want you to go and get him. We’ll pay you fifteen dollars a week to stay on the job and hunt him, and, of course, other varmints that you run across. Also, an extra bonus of fifty dollars—my own sportsmen’s club will contribute it if the state won’t back me up—will be paid you when you get this big devil——”
“Start to-morrow?” Tom interrupted, quietly.
Chatburn eyed him.
“Sure! And, by the way, Tom, about this bird, Landy Gibbs. He vanished in that country once, as you know. You might keep your eye out for him. I’ll not pay fifty dollars—but five hundred for his red scalp.”
Long Tom’s face was wholly impassive.
“Maybe get him, too.”
“I have no reason to think he’s up there, but you might keep your eyes open just the same. You remember him, of course—and you remember that ornery shooting-scrape he was in at Riddle. There’s five hundred reward for the man who arrests him or who brings proof of his death. So good-by, Tom. Good luck!”
When he was gone, Chatbum and Anderson reflected together.
“The only trouble I’ve ever had with Indians,” Anderson said, “is that they take you altogether too literally.”
“You needn’t worry in this case,” Chatburn replied. “I made myself entirely plain, said just what I meant to say, and am willing to be taken at my word.”
LONG TOM found, after weeks of most fatiguing work, that he was dealing with no ordinary cougar. Pounce avoided his traps and deadfalls as completely and as scornfully as those of Landy Gibbs. Long Tom also learned, past doubt, that some white man who chose to avoid him was spending his spare time hunting this same cougar. He knew he was white by certain characteristics of his footprints and the camps that he made in the forests; and he knew that he chose to avoid him by the fact that he found his fresh tracks, one morning, within a few yards of his own camp. There was nothing to say for sure, however, that the man was Landy Gibbs. As yet, Tom had had no glimpse of the man’s form in the thickets.
He got a fairly good idea soon of what was happening to the deer. The disastrous shortage could not be attributed to Pounce alone. One day, Tom encountered a set of broken and weather-stained racks where no less than a hundred skins had been cured in one summer.
THEY made a queer trio—the cat, the white man and the Indian. All three were really hunting one another. Sometimes when the moon was up and his glory upon him, Pounce trailed one or the other of the two men; but his great cowardice always commanded him in the end and kept him from success. Tom hunted both the cougar and the white man steadily and determinedly, because this was the deal he had made with Chatburn. Landy hunted Pounce because he hated him, because his depredations were spoiling his own profits, and he hunted Long Tom in self-defense. And it was not through any qualm of pity that he held his fire one breathless twilight when he saw the Indian’s form along his sights. The cause was not greatly different than that which checked the puma’s spring—because in his wicked heart he was afraid. He had met the law once before, and he had no wish to encounter it again.
Tom set cunning traps, and he laid out poison, and he watched with the patience of a cat itself the deer-licks and drinking-pools; but never a great cougar with a scarred scalp came to his ambush. It was true that he earned his pay. He caught many lynx, and once or twice he found lesser cougars, desperate and ready to fight in his traps. And before the summer was done, Long Tom came to the simple conclusion that he had failed—that both the great cat and the human deer-slayer were too much for him. It would be only the blindest chance, he thought, that could throw either one of them into his path.
When, finally, a chance did come, one late afternoon in August, he let it slip out of his grasp. For the past few weeks he had een making his base-camp in a log cabin at the end of the wagon-road—a strongly built hut that had once been the property of a miner or trapper—and once on his way home to its sheltering walls he forgot his quest. It had been an arduous day, and he forgot to stalk; thus his step was heavy on the dry earth. His rifle lay carelessly in his arms. For a single moment he was not earning the wage that Chatburn promised.
There was a sudden rush—simply a streak of light that sprang from the yawning doorway of the cabin into the shelter of the thickets just in front. The rifle leaped in Tom’s arms, gleaming steel itself, but there was no time for the keen black eyes to lower to the sights. Only the rustling of brush showed where the prey had gone.
There could be no doubt of the creature’s identity. The length of the streak, the size of the track in the mud named him plain enough. Besides, who but Pounce himself was bold enough to come to a man’s cabin in broad daylight, enter the door and help himself to a carcass of venison hanging just within the portals? Evidently his own heavy step on the trail had alarmed the beast almost the moment of its arrival; for as yet it had done nothing more than pull the meat down from the hook.
And as Tom stood staring, his despair passed away, and something that was very near to inspiration flamed in the recesses of his mind. He suddenly felt sure that Pounce would come again, when his own hated presence was far distant, to finish the feast.
How the Indian arrived at this conclusion he could not tell. Wise cougars ordinarily avoid the cabins of men, particularly when they have once been frightened away. By the rules of the woods, Pounce would not come again. But rules are made to be broken, and the law of the forest and the natures of wild beasts has not yet been wholly written down. Long Tom had sudden knowledge, given him, perhaps, because he was a born woods-creature, too, that before another sun had set Pounce would return.
His thought flew at once to steel traps. But Tom had shuffled off for the time being his usual habits of thinking, letting an inner knowledge that was really nothing more or less than instinct reign in their stead; and he knew that traps would not do. Pounce knew the cold steel of old, and was not likely to put his foot in leaping-range of the cruel jaws. To lay in ambush was no better—because Pounce would come at night.
BUT now he was visited by a bold idea—one that he had never heard of in the talk of experienced trappers. He went first to the door of the cabin, swinging it open and shut. He saw that, although it was strongly and heavily made, it moved easily on its hinges and that it possessed a good latch.
Then he examined the heavy walls of the hut, and particularly the single small window at one side. The window faced a steep slope just beside the cabin—the worst possible place to give light. It was also covered deep with dust and cobwebs, and when the heavy front door swung closed, the cabin lay in half-darkness. This point, however, did not concern him. He was anxious only as to the size of the window and the strength of its frame. The pane was hardly more than a foot square, and the casing was reënforced by the heavy logs of the wall itself.
Assured of all these things, he went speedily to work. The door opened inwardly, after the manner of most cabin doors in snow-country, and with a rope and heavy stone he weighted it so that it would slam shut as soon as the hand was removed from the knob, after the manner of an ordinary weighted gate. Then he laid the venison on the table in the inside of the cabin, attaching a cord to it, which he led down to the floor, through a staple and up to the knob of the door, tying the door wide open. The pull of the weighted door was not strong enough to draw the heavy carcass from the table, but as soon as the deer was dragged down to the floor, the cord would slack sufficiently to let the door swung shut.
It was the simplest kind of device. But Tom knew that by simplicity alone could he outwit the great cougar that he had been sent to slay.
This work done, Tom took a pack of supplies—blankets and food—and removed his unwanted presence. The shadows were already deepening in the thickets. It was almost Pounce’s time of glory—the beginning of his hunting.
The truth was that Tom had guessed just right as to the mental processes of the great cat. Pounce slept off his fear in the coverts and wakened desperately hungry. Five days had passed since he had last taken deer. The shortage of game that so irritated his rival slayer, Landy, and which was a topic of wonder at sportsmen’s clubs in the valleys, was beginning to oppress him, too. Many a time of late Pounce had watched all night by the licks, and not even a fawn had come to break his fast. He remembered with surging eagerness the fat carcass he had sniffed at that afternoon.
The memory strengthened as one hour after another found him unfed. And when the moon was up and its glory upon him, he turned softly down toward the cabin.
The moon, rolling through the clouds and its white beams flicking through the tree-limbs, made no less sound than he. He slipped from shadow to shadow like a serpent, and the twin moons of his eyes were terrible to see. He paused, watching and alert, at the edge of the thickets.
He crept slowly round the cabin, pausing at the least little sound of a chipmunk in the weeds. But he was reassured at last. None of his foes was here. The venison lay waiting for his pleasure.
He crept softly toward the door. Only the darkness lay within. Again he waited, and again he moved forward. In an instant more he stood at the threshold.
His enemy had been here, but he had gone away. There was no feeling of cold steel waiting in his path. And now his flaming eyes made out the outline of the venison but a few feet further in the almost impenetrable darkness of the room.
He moved toward it, sniffing. Not even a pack-rat scratched in the walls. His white fangs closed, and he wrenched sharply. The carcass rolled from the table on the floor.
Pounce was expecting the sound of the falling venison. The thing he did not expect, and which almost killed him with terror, was the slam of the door swinging shut behind him. The moonlight had been streaming through the doorway, but it winked out as the door closed, and left only an imponderable darkness that pressed upon him like death. Even his cat’s eyes were blinded.
Instincts born of terror siezed him, and he made one reckless spring toward the only source of light that remained—the little pale square of the window. So dark it was—hardly differentiated from the black walls—it was a wonder that even these knife-edge senses had discerned it; yet there was no measuring the speed of that flash of instinct, and the thud of the falling vension, the slam of the closing door and the smashing crash of his body against the pane of glass came so swiftly upon each other that they seemed as one great sound. But though Pounce leaped as he had never leaped before, with all the smashing strength of his two hundred pounds of bone and tried muscles, the strong window-casing held, and he dropped, half stunned, to the floor.
He did not waste his strength in leaping again. His infallible instincts told him it would be of no use. Instead, he played the cat’s game—drawing back into a corner to wait his fate. Every nerve was keyed to the highest pitch; every muscle was set.
LANDY GIBBS took considerable interest in the fact that Long Tom was not sleeping at home to-night. He caught the gleam of his camp-fire across a half mile of cañon, and, as might one of the wild things that he hunted, he started to make investigations. Even such as see in the dark—wolf and lynx and owl—did not make out his furtive form as he stole up softly to the flickering edge of the Indian’s firelight. He knew how to stalk, and the faint sounds that Tom’s keen ears might have heard in that profound stillness were easily attributed to such little scurrying folk—gopher and chipmunks and their fellows—as might be curious as to the nature of his blaze. Gibbs stood at last not fifty feet distant in the shadows, his presence absolutely unguessed, and watched the Indian cook supper.
The latter made a perfect target; and Gibbs’ hands fumbled hungrily at his rifle. Many times, the last few months, he had fought this same temptation. One little lifting of the weapon, softly, so that the brush might not betray him with its crack and rustle, one glance along the sights, a little half-ounce of pressure at the trigger, and Tom’s next report would be made to the buzzards that gather from the sky. Nor was it mercy that restrained Landy’s trigger-finger. It was simply fear—that of the law, from which he was now a fugitive.
He decided at once that Tom was hunting—perhaps the cougar, possibly on Landy’s own trail. He carried outfit for a two nights’ camp.
The smell of frying bacon was enticing. Indeed, the man’s pack seemed crammed with “store” food—flour and coffee and sugar and such supplies as he likely kept in great abundance at his main supply-cabin, farther up-stream. And Long Tom did not sleep at home to-night. The greater share of his stores, his rifle-cartridges, unset traps and all the equipment that made life possible in the wilds were left unguarded!
Landy Gibbs did not require any great length of time to decide on his course. It was really the opportunity of a lifetime. Those stores meant independence—supplies with which he could flee far back into the unsurveyed where even the arm of the law could not reach. He could leave Tom lying in his ashes then, and not be afraid of pursuit. He could leave him thus now if he knew for certain the real extent of the stores. Shivering with hatred, he turned back to his own camp.
He was never without his gun; now he procured in addition his ax, a gunny-sack or two and an old-fashioned dark lantern, burning a candle that he used for camp-light. Then, striding swiftly, he followed up the stream and soon made out the cabin, ghostly in the moonlight, on the hillside. No lamp burned in its windows; there was no further need for caution. Likely the door was not locked. If it was, he would break it with his ax.
He walked boldly to the door. Tom had attached a crude device to make it stay closed; but there was no lock as far as Gibbs could see. There was no need whatever for stealth. Except for Tom himself, he was the only human being in a thousand square miles of forest. He tried the knob.
The door opened easily, he thought. He stepped into the gloom, only slightly startled when the door slammed loudly shut behind him. The deep quality of the darkness, however, was somewhat oppressive. Likely the place was filthy with pack-rats; he thought he heard a faint rustle. He fumbled with his dark lantern.
His fingers did not at once encounter the catch that slipped back the protecting steel He was not, however, greatly distressed; nor was he alarmed by the fact that, in working with the light, he had become bewildered as to the exact location of the door. Suddenly he found the catch, slid back the steel shade, and the wan light streamed out.
He turned it slowly in his hand, seeking the door. He was entirely calm now. It was wonderful how even such a dim light steadied the nerves. The feeble rays swept round the little room. The place was teeming with stores, and all that remained was to take them and go. There was, however, one thing else that remained. The rays suddenly found an answering light—two curious pale-blue circles glowing in a corner.
Just an instant’s further glance, in the midst of a scream, showed Landy the truth. The truth was that the wilderness vengeance, infinitely patient, had tracked him down and seized him at last.
Tandy decided not to wait to get supplies. The light showed the long tawny body of Pounce, the great cougar—desperate with rage and terror, poised and ready to spring. The man groped for the door, and he actually succeeded in opening it half-way. Then something that was like a resistless storm beat down upon him.
The little woods-creatures that had seen him go in waited a long time for him to reappear again. They heard the sound of a great battle, a fight to the death in which an old feud was being settled for good and all. Man was given in the beginning a fighter’s build—as perfect a construction for physical activity as nature ever hit upon—and it can be said for Landy that he made the most of it. He was tough as forged iron, and, besides, he managed to whip his knife from his belt as he went down. The cougar found need for all his mighty strength before this hated prey would lie still. Indeed, it was as good hunting as these two killers could ask for—and the best of it was they could hurt no one but each other.
They fought a great fight in the close darkness, claws and fangs, wrenching muscles and surging shoulders, and the cruel knife drinking blood. It was true that some of Long Tom’s best furniture was broken to kindling and his device for closing the door irremediably ruined. There was also the noise of conflict that disturbed the little forest people scurrying on the hill. But even this ceased after a time. There were a few curious rustlings and thrashings, and then the silence came creeping back. Outside, the forest things waited for the victor to reappear.
It didn’t make a great deal of difference which if them won, the wild things told each other. The work of killing would go on apace. But it was a curious thing that, after a slowly passing hour, both contestants still lingered in the darkened cabin.
Finally, a gopher, who couldn’t see clearly at a distance with his half-blind eyes, crept near and peeped in the moonlit doorway. Then he scampered swiftly back to his people with the word that Pounce and Landy had indeed made truce. But it was the kind of peace-pact that delighted every living creature far and wide through a thousand square miles of forest.
They lay snugly, side by side, sleeping peacefully and without dreams. Both were killers, tried and true, and it had been a most successful evening for both of them.
IN HIS office in the settlements, Chatburn of the state Game Department received a most interesting little package. There was no letter with it, only a name scrawled above the address on the outside, but Chatburn understood at once that here was a claim for bounty. One of his hunters in the hills was sending proofs of certain deaths—indeed, certain violent deaths, deeply deplored, that had come to pass in the far upper waters of the Umpqua.
The package contained two rather curious objects. One was a little piece of furry skin that had evidently been taken from the skull of a large cougar, and the most interesting thing about it was that it contained a long white scar of an old wound. The other puzzled Chatburn for a moment—until he recalled his last conversation with his colleague, Anderson.
“The trouble with Indians,” Anderson had said, “is that they take you altogether too literally.”
This conversation with Anderson and subsequent remarks to Long Tom explained very easily the other object in the package. Chatburn rubbed his chin, grinning, and uttered some mild exclamation as to the ways of Indians. The second object was also a round piece of skin, incontrovertible proof of a death greatly desired by the commonwealth. It was carefully dried, and the hair that grew upon it was about the color of wet straw.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1959, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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