Tommy I’d take him with me, and, by jingles, I’m here to cash in on my word.”
“And my word is ‘No!’”
“Mama! Mama!” I cried with tears in my eyes. “Uncle Everett promised! I know how to hold on to the saddle. I ain’t afraid. Please, Mama! Please!”
“Don’t say ‘ain’t!’ Besides, your stepfather wouldn’t approve either. Even he’s got more sense than that.”
“I hate to tell you, my dearest,” Uncle Everett smirked, “but Marion and I have already talked about this. He’d be pleased for Tommy to go. Don’t naysay a child’s excitement. You know I’ll be careful.”
My mother turned and stared at me. She shook her head with disapproval, yet with an acquiescence that only a mother’s torn heart can grant. “Go! Go, then! But bring him back tomorrow at the latest.”
By noon, Uncle Everett and I had saddled Fred and were ascending a trail that deer had made from the Knobs into the orchard. Half-chewed apples, scattered piles of dark pellets, and flattened patches of grass revealed where the deer had foraged. Their trail led up through a stretch of locusts, maples, and poplars, and finally into stands of tall hickories, oaks, and graceful hemlocks. The dogs had displayed little enthusiasm until we came to a rocky ledge that overlooked my grandmother’s farm. They began to whine and sniff the base of a gnarled Virginia pine that leaned half-dead over a steep precipice on the opposite side of the ledge. From its open heights, a boulder-strewn ravine dropped off into a thicket of laurel and grove of beech trees below.
“One of its lair’s is right down there,” Uncle Everett pointed from the saddle. “But the dogs don’t seem that interested.”
Slowly, Uncle Everett guided Fred down a fresh game trail where the deer had scattered fallen leaves. Toward the bottom of the ravine, a dry creek bed’s tiny gravel indicated where spring rains had once gushed as a brook. Several paths branched off, all upslope. Roy picked up a scent of some magnitude and began to weave back and forth. Dixie whined and imitated him. Suddenly, the dogs bolted off in the direction of a huge boulder. The incline was too steep for Fred, so Uncle Everett dismounted and held the reins behind his back as he walked in front of the horse. With tremendous difficulty, we finally made our way parallel with the boulder, where the dogs had stopped to sniff again. While I clung to the saddle horn, Uncle Everett inspected the big rock and its lichen-dappled surface. He looked about the woods to his left, then right, and up the steep slope. He returned and we continued a steady but slow climb to the top of the ridge. The dogs appeared uninterested and, pausing in a grassy gap, we rested Fred before proceeding farther. From knob to knob and ridge to ridge, we followed what trails and scents the dogs seemed to favor. Toward dusk we ascended a rugged stretch of slippery shale and on the leeward side of the descent made camp under a stand of hemlock near a spring. Uncle Everett tied Fred to a nearby limb where the horse could feed on grass blades that poked up between humps of outcroppings. Uncle Everett had said very little all day, and I could sense that he was concealing his disappointment from me.
“No luck, yet!” he smiled, as he spread out a tarp and some blankets for us. He reached in one of the pockets of the saddlebag and handed me a bacon biscuit and fed several to the dogs. “Yes, sir, I thought we’d a treed him by now. But we’re near a second lair of his. It’s about a half-mile from here. He’ll come out tonight to hunt. Might already be around us. So we need to sleep light. If you hear anything in the dark, anything at all, the slightest sound, nudge me. The dogs’ll hear it first. Or smell him first. But sometimes even they can fall asleep.” He placed his rifle beside his blanket. “I’m going to build a small fire, because it’s going to get cold. But, you’ll stay warm.”
I helped him gather a pile of hemlock boughs, leaves, and dry wood and light the fire. It felt reassuring to hunch beside the bright blaze and rub the big dogs’ ears. Gradually, I grew sleepy and curled up close to my uncle’s side and stared at the low orange flames. A huge part of me was too terrified to look, even into the woods. Yet, a deeper sphere felt perfectly at home, knowing that nothing bad could ever happen to me, so long as Uncle Everett was alive. That he might get hurt or killed lay beyond my capacity to imagine.
Darkness settled ever so stealthily about us. A pale moon climbed rusty yellow over the Knobs, then disappeared behind clouds. Tree frogs squeaked their nightly vespers with throbbing annoyance; then grew silent. A whippoorwill repeated its cry over and over. I felt warm, snug, excited, but exhausted, and drifted into sleep.
Sometime around midnight or 1:00 a.m., I awakened with a startle. Uncle Everett lay asleep. Roy was licking my face and whining softly. Fred was snorting quietly, shifting his weight from leg to leg, and pawing the ground. I could hear him pulling on the rope where Uncle Everett had tied him to the limb. All else was deathly still. Roy continued to whine, ever so imperceptively. Only a few low flames flickered amid the red embers.
“Uncle Everett! Uncle Everett,” I shook him with trembling fingers. “Uncle Everett! Please, wake up!” My throat felt dry, my lips stuck to my mouth. No words were coming out.
Roy rose in a crouched position and burst into wild yelps. A pair of horrendous eyes glowed against the blackness of night. Suddenly, Uncle Everett sat up, swung his body about, and fumbled for his rifle. The snarling cat was almost in his face. He fired his rifle point-blank into the cat’s chest. The animal leaped straight up, emitted a muffled cough, and fell silently beside the coals. Both dogs began to rave and claw at the cat. But it was over. It was all over, and when I stood up, I realized my pants were wet, and I was shaking with shock. Uncle Everett produced a flashlight from his saddlebag and shined it on the big cat. The dying animal looked enormous in the fire’s glow. Uncle Everett had to pull the dogs off and chain them for the remainder of the night. Blood dripped from the cat’s mouth and nose. Uncle Everett dragged it out of sight while my eyes followed his every move. Finally, I rolled up in the tarp again and sank into a deep and marvelous sleep.
The following noon, when we returned to the meadow above the orchard, Jessie, his brother, Albert, and scores of farm people had gathered in the road, awaiting our return. Someone had heard the gun’s report in the night and was confident that “Mr. Edmonds had kilt that cat.” Marion and my mother were rocking on the front porch when we came out onto the road. We were dragging the big cat behind us, to the happy howling of the tail-wagging dogs. My grandmother came across the road to hug me, as Uncle Everett helped me down. Marion came behind her and carried me into the house. “Whew, Master Thomas!” he teased, as he got a whiff of my pants. “I won’t tell anybody, if you don’t.”
“No, sir!” I beamed, as I clasped his neck.
“What a boy!” he laughed as he mounted the steps and carried me into the hall, passed the stern, silent Captain’s gaze and the serene, Fraulein Quelle.
Jessie skinned and nailed the panther’s hide to the front of the tobacco barn. The cat measured eight feet in length, from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail. It weighed one-hundred and twenty pounds, dead. Passers-by stopped to gawk at it for the entire next year, until its skin rotted and all the fur sloughed off. What the chickens didn’t eat, a fox or some other scavenger finished. Such was the fate of little Ouida’s killer. “Just a cryin’ shame,” Earl would say from time to time.
While visiting my grandmother one weekend not long after that, an elderly widower by the name of Ambrose Stone stopped by the house for coffee. It was early Saturday morning, and Pearl’s body had begun to show definite signs of her pregnancy. Mr. Stone noticed but refrained from any direct comments. He wore a clean pair of overalls, a gray flannel shirt, a black, coffee-stained woolen jacket, white socks and brogans. Long hair flowed down the back of his neck and his cropped beard bore the tell-tales signs of tobacco juice. We were seated in the kitchen. It was obvious that my grandmother was hoping that he wouldn’t
