With the first blundering rush of the ponies I unhooked my Winchester. The panther had no chance to take stock of the ponies’ careless approach. If they had started five minutes earlier he might have owed them something.
With the crack of the Winchester, the panther gave such a scream as, added to the jar of the gun – I was burning 120 grains of powder – served to make my ears sing. There were fear, amazement and pain all braided together in that yell. The flash of the discharge and the night shadows so blinded me that I did not make a second shot. I pumped in the cartridge with the instinct of precedent, but it was of no use. On the heels of it, our ponies, as if taking the shot to be an urgent invitation to make haste, came up on a canter, tearing through the bushes in a way to lose a stirrup if persisted in.
Bob had run forward. There was blood on the snow to a praiseworthy extent. As we gazed along the wounded animal’s line of flight there was more of it.
“He’s too hard hit to go far,” said Bob. “We’ll find him in the next canyon, or that blood’s a joke.” Bob walked along, looking at the blood-stained snow as if it were a lesson. Suddenly he halted, where the moonlight fell across it through the trees.
“You uncoupled him,” he said. “Broke his back plumb in two. See where he dragged his hind legs!”
“He can’t run far on those terms,” I suggested.
“I don’t know,” said Bob, doubtfully. “A mountain lion don’t die easy. Mountain lions is what an insurance sharp would call a good resk. But I’ll tell you how to carry on this campaign: I’ll take the horses and scout over to the left until I get into the canyon yonder. Then I’ll bear off up the canyon. If he crosses it – an’ goin’ on two legs that away, I don’t look for it – I’ll signal with a yell. If he don’t, I’ll circle him till I find the trail. Meanwhile you go straight ahead on his track afoot. Take it slow an’ easy, for he’s likely to be layin’ somewhere.”
The trail carried me a quarter of a mile. As nearly as I might infer from the story the panther’s passage had written in the snow, his speed held out. This last didn’t look much like weakness. Still, the course was a splash of blood in red contradiction. The direction he took was slightly uphill.
The trail ended sharp at the edge of a wide canyon. There was a shelf of scaly rock about twelve feet down the side. This had been protected from the storm by the overhanging brink of the canyon, and there was no snow on the shelf. That and the twelve feet of canyon side above it were the yellow colour of the earth.
Below the shelf the snow again was deep, as the sides took an easier slope toward the bottom of the canyon. The panther had evidently scrambled down to the shelf. It took me less than a second to follow his wounded example. Once down I looked over the edge at the snow a few feet below to catch the trail again. The unmarred snow voiced no report of the game I hunted. I stepped to the left a few paces, still looking over for signs in the snow. There were none. As the shelf came to an end in this direction, I returned along the ledge, still keeping a hawk’s eye on the snow below for the trail. I heard Bob riding in the canyon.
“Have you struck his trail?” I shouted.
“Thar’s been nothin’ down yere!” shouted Bob in reply. “The snow’s as unbroken as the cream-cap on a pan of milk.”
Where was my panther? I had begun to regard him as a chattel. As my eye journeyed along the ledge the mystery cleared up. There lay my yellow friend close in against the wall. I had walked within a yard of him, looking the other way while earnestly reading the snow.
The panther was sprawled flat like a rug, staring at me with green eyes. I had broken his back, as Bob said. As I brought the Winchester to my face, his gaze gave way. He turned his head as if to hide it between his shoulder and the wall. I was too near to talk of missing, even in the dim light, and the next instant he was hiccoughing with a bullet in his brain. Six and one-half feet from nose to tip was the measurement; whereof the tail, which these creatures grow foolishly long, furnished almost one-half.
MOLLIE MATCHES
It was clear and cold and dry – excellent weather, indeed, for a snowless Christmas. Everywhere one witnessed evidences of the season. One met more gay clothes than usual, with less of anxiety and an increase of smiling peace in the faces. Each window had its wreath of glistening green, whereof the red ribbon bow, that set off the garland, seemed than common a deeper and more ardent red. Or was the elevation in the faces, and the greenness of the wreaths, and the vivid sort of the ribbon, due to impressions, impalpable yet positive, of Christmas everywhere?
All about was Christmas. Even our Baxter Street doggery had attempted something in the nature of a bowl of dark, suspicious drink, to which the barkeeper – he was a careless man of his nomenclature, this barkeeper – gave the name of “apple toddy.” Apple toddy it might have been.
When Chucky came in, an uncertain shuffle which was company to his rather solid tread showed he was not alone. I looked up. Our acquaintance, Mollie Matches, expert pickpocket, – now helpless and broken, all his one time jauntiness of successful crime gone, – was with him.
“It was lonesome over be me joint,” vouchsafed Chucky, “wit’ me Bundle chased over to do her reg’lar anyooal confession to d’ priest, see! an’ so I fought youse wouldn’t mind an’ I bring Mollie along. Me old pal is still a bit shaky as to his hooks,” remarked Chucky, as he surveyed his tremulous companion, “an’ a sip of d’ booze wouldn’t do him no harm. It ain’t age; Mollie’s only come sixty spaces; it’s that Hum-min’ Boid about which I tells youse, that’s knocked his noive.”
Drinks were ordered; whiskey strong and straight for Matches. No; I’ve no apology for buying these folk drink. “Drink,” observed Johnson to the worthy Boswell, “drink, for one thing, makes a man pleased with himself, which is no small matter.” Heaven knows! my shady companions, for the reason announced by the sagacious doctor, needed something of the sort. Besides, I never molest my fellows in their drinking. I’ve slight personal use for breweries, distilleries, or wine presses; and gin mills in any form or phase woo me not; yet I would have nothing of interference with the cups of other men. In such behalf, I feel not unlike that fat, well-living bishop of Westminster who refused to sign a memorial to Parliament craving strict laws in behalf of total abstinence. “No,” said that sound priest, stoutly, “I will sign no such petition to Parliament. I want no such law. I would rather see Englishmen free than sober.”
It took five deep draughts of liquor, ardently raw, to put Matches in half control of his hands. What with the chill of the day, and what with the torn condition of his nerves, they shook like the oft-named aspen.
“Them don’t remind a guy,” said Matches, as he held up his quivering fingers, “of a day, twenty-five years ago, when I was d’ pick of d’ swell mob, an ‘d’ steadiest grafter that ever ringed a watch or weeded a leather! It would be safe for d’ Chief to take me mug out of d’ gallery now, an’ rub d’ name of Mollie Matches off d’ books. Me day is done, an’ I’ll graft no more.”
There was plaintiveness in the man’s tones as if he were mourning some virtue, departed with his age and weakness. Clearly Matches, off his guard and normal, found no peculiar fault with his past.
“How came you to be a thief?” I asked Matches bluntly. I had counted the sixth drink down his throat, which meant that he wouldn’t be sensitive.
“It’s too far off to say,” retorted Matches. “I can’t t’row back to d’ time when I wasn’t a crook. Do youse want to know d’ foist trick I loined? Well, it wasn’t t’ree blocks from here, over be d’ Bowery. I couldn’t be more’n five. There was a fakir, sellin’ soap. There was spec’ments of d’ long green all over his stand, wit’ cakes of