New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1905-12-03
euNNERs CLASS AT THE NEWPORT
THE SOUTHERN SW4JfPER.
Continued from third page.

of rage and hate showed that he would share
with none the right to rule that small patch Of
safety where all around flowed death. That ne
had ruled right royalty and Toasted, too, like
monarch, the little lonely bit of ground bore
proof; for it was covered with the bones and
half eaten carcasses of animals both fierce and
fearful. On the further side, belly deep in the
tawny flow, stood three frightened does, bodies
shrunken from starvation and eyes wild with
fear, while on the highest spot lay the bones and
antlers of their once lord and protector-dead,
doubtless. with hero's death, standing between
them and danger The rotten bough Of a fallen
tree stretched out over the water. The sWamper
knew that it was bough, for he had seen II
often before; but now it was living rope OF
rabbits, each trying to crowd his tiny, trembling
body a little further from the foe Overhead
wherever they could find limb stout enough TO
hold one of them, yet too slender TO admit the
weight of the panther, chung coons and pos
sums, each with his beady eyes fixed so steadily
on the common enemy that the new arriVal
scarcely evoked the culver of lash.
Rut the swamper saw none of this. His
vatchful vet astonished gaze never left the
form of the king of the dornick. He had come
here armed with axe only, because he had
thought to find the great beast so cowed by
starvation as to fall easy prey to the mighty
swing of his sure arm and his keen weapon but
this royaI lion of the swamps showed fat fierce
and wicked.
You all sho amt what 1 s'posed to fin
erumbIed the assaiIant to the assailed. AN
you'll sho put up some fight. But L dun come
fo' We, an yo' my meat
His majesty must have understood Tor ne
repIied in kind, and his defiance defed OF that
there was no doubt. And then the fight was
on. The panther sprang straight, and the
ctr iobt beast
have thrown his head aside ever so slightly,
for the sharp axe only shore off part of the scalp
and an ear Though almost staggering from
pain and shock as one great claw ploughed
bloody burrows down his left forearm, Ben
Standifer swore roundIy- He had noted the per-
feet condition of the brute and had determined
in his own mind that he could get good pay for
a rug with the head of the beast grinnlng as
it grinned at him on his landing, and now here
was an ear gone, when one stroke IN the throat
would have settled all But he was destined
to carve that hide yet more, in defending his
own. before the fight was over; and even at the
finish, when, weak from lost blood ana eA-
bausted. he finally got the body balanced on the
log that was his only way to home and life, his
skin had about as many holes in it as his vic
TINS.
Now. this fight was not mentioned merely
to recount Ben's little scrap as he always
calls it. but to illustrate the marvel that
swamper is on water; for, weak and bleeding as
he was his left arm put out of business entirely,
the clothing nearly torn from his body and his
skin almost as ragged as his apparel Ben not
only loaded the huge carcass of the DEAD pam
Their on his drift log, but. balanced it, his axe
and himself and with one hand padded the
awkward craft across more than mile or
swift running overflow to his cabin The
swamper is man.