Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1893 — TRAILED BY A PANTHER. [ARTICLE]

TRAILED BY A PANTHER.

In the spring of ’73 I entered the service of the Canadian Government in the capacity of a rodman in one of the numerous parties which at *hat time were engaged in trying to locate a practicable route for the projected Canadian Pacific Bailway through the howling wildnerncss which stretched away westward from the shores of Lake Superior. My party had spent the summer in running levels between Thunder Bay and Lake Shebandowan, and late in the fall had gone into camp near the first rapids of the Kaministiquia River, distant about twenty miles from its mouth. More than two months had passed since the receipt of our last mail; so immediately upon our arrival at the river, a messenger had been dispatched for it to Prince Arthur’s Landing, about twentythree miles down streaip, with instructions to return without delay. Six days had elapsed since Sandy Macpherson, our messenger, had donned a clean shirt and bade us good-bye, with many a hearty assurance of a speedy return; and we were still looking anxiously and vainly down the trail for the first sign of his bushy whiskers. On the evening of the day aforesaid the situation in camp had become simply desperate. Twenty big-fisted Highlanders sat on the trunk of a fallen tree just outside the camp and cursed Sandy Macpherson; and they were still at it when, late in the afternoon, I threw myself bodily into the ever-widening breach and announced my intention of starting for the Landing at once. A lull in the men’s swearing succeeded my declaration, and Sandy McPherson’s heartless desertion, of his brother Scotts in distress was forgotten as twenty pairs of hard, honest hands helped me to gird on my armor, which consisted of an old muzzle loading “Colt’s,” and a heavy hunting knife. The day had been a gloomy, threatening one, and just ns I had completed my arrangements for departure, a cold drizzling rain set in. But off I went at an Indian lope, a half hour of which brought me to the junction of the trail with the Pigeon River mailroad, at which point and close to the river bank, a crew of wood-choppers from the old Hudson Bay post of Fort William had recently erected a log shanty. As I was passing this lonely habitation two men, who were pushing a punt in the stream, hailed me and inquired whither I was bound. Upon learning that I was on my way to the settlement, they offered me a seat on a pile of empty meal sacks in the bpttom of the boat, informed me at the same time that they were about to pull down to the company’s farm, distant about six miles, to bring back a cargo of potatoes. I gladly accepted the invitation, and we were soon bowling down stream as fast as a two-mile current and four stout arms could send us. My fellow-voyagers, who were both Scotchmen, seemed well pleased to have a guest, and chatted almost incessantly as the ugly craft shot down the swollen current. We had been running in mid-stream from the start, but as the boat rounded a sharp bend in the river it shot info a narrow cove, which gradually terminated in a dark ravine. The craft was laid

alongside the banks, and after having been told fully half a dozen times that I would find the mail-road by striking out to the right from the head of the ravine, I leaped ashore amid a perfect shower of 4 *gude luck to ye.” I lost no time in getting out of the ravine, for night was closing fast, and it waa of the utmost importance that I should reach the road while light enough remained to keep three trees in line. Reaching the level, I laid my course carefully and followed it at a'run. I was going along in good shape when suddenly I found the ground sloping away sharply to the front, the slope terminating in a shallow ravine densely timbered with spruce and “Jack” pine. It was quite dark in tikis bottom, and the spruce grew in almost impenetrable clumps, making it impossible to follow a straight line. As I pushed my way with nervous haste through the dripping boughs I began to realise’ that the darkness about ms was not entirely due to the lay of the ground and thickness of timber growth, she dull twilight had faded out as suddenly as if the sun had been instantly

snuffed out of existance. As the daylight died the rain changed to a steady downpour, drenching me to the skin and chilling me to the marrow. After a half-hour of struggling through a tangle of hazel thickets where the branches thrust themselves aggressively into my eyes, and a few remaining watersoaked leaves clung to my cheeks with a contact like that of a drowned man's hand, I came to the conclusion that I had been traversing the ravine lengthwise and in a direction parallel to the line of the mail road. 1 was on the point of changing my course when the ground sloped abruptly upward, and, scrambling up abank of very greasy clay, I found myself in a clearing, one side of which seemed to me to stretch away indefinitely into the darkness. There was a smell of wet ashes and cinders in the air, and the half burned trunks of fallen trees were scattered about in a careless, unstudied manner. For the twelfth time I extricated myself from an involuntary embrace with Mother Earth, and I was groping around for my hat, which had been lost in the last tumble, when my hand suddenly slipped downward into space, and a black gulf yawned before me, from falling bodily into which I was saved only by throwing myself heavily backward; in falling my hand came in contact with a partly consumed pine not. This I grasped and threw far out into the darkness. One, two, three seconds passed, and then the sound of a faint splash came from somewhere bglqw. The missile had fallen into the river. Then for the first time I became vividly conscious of the disagreeable fact that I was lost, and I had presented to me the delightful alternative of perishing from cold if I remained much longer in a state of inaction, or of breaking my neck if I moved from the spot. As I sat staring into the darkness — my eyes gradually becoming accustomed to it—the indistinct outline of the river bank slowly unfolded itself to me. Trusting to my keenness of vision to keep me from tumbling over the bluff, I arose and began making my way slowly along it. I knew that down stream lay to the left, and I was making tolerably good time in that direction when suddenly, from out of the darkness behind me, there came a sound that seemed to draw the last drop of blood from the chilled extremities to the heart, stilling that organ until I fairly gasped for breath.

A laugh, a wild exulting laugh, rose high above the roaring of the storm, followed in the next instant by a succession of unearthly screams that caused each hair of my head to stand out as if electrified. While my hand instinctively clutched the butt of the revolver, yet I drew it forth with a feeling thut I had to contend with something more than mortal, against which earthly weapons would be of no avail. Cold, fatigue, the possibility ot perishing from exposure—all were forgotten as I listened to that thrilling cry. It was the cry of a panther—the mountain lion of California, the puma of Mexico, the jaguar of the Amazonian forests—and it came from the top of a clump of lofty pines not twenty yards away. Then I knew that the dark object which had glided past me in the darkness was no creature of the imagination, and my teeth chattered violently from something besides cold when I thought of how close the treacherous brute had been to me. Passing the Colt’s into the left hand I drew the hunting-knife and tightening the loop around my wrist, I dashed away down the river as fast ns the roughness of the country and the darkness would permit. I had no hope of eluding pursuit as I tore through hazel thickets, stumbled over fallen trees, tumbled into slippery gullies und scrambled frantically out of them again. But I knew that less than a mile down stream, on a narrow strip of bottom land, I should find—if I should ever live to reach it—a small block house w r hich for years had been occupied during the haying season by laborers from the Catholic mission at Fort William.

As I sped along I seemed to see my back trail stretching out in perspective before me as if reflected in a mirror. A deep gully whinch I at once recognized on account of having fallen into it—stood out with a startling clearness, and on its farther edge I saw the gaunt form of a gigantic panther, craning its long, sinewy neck out over the gulf as it sniffed vigorously at the spot where I had fallen. Suddenly it gathered itself up, gazed intently in the direction that Inad taken, cleared the gully with a vaulting spring and came bounding after me, screaming at every bound! There was no mistake about the screaming, for the forest was ringing with it ,when I staggered out into the clearing on the further side of which stood the block house. I knew that on the left of the clearing a deep pool lay, bordered by a quagmire, which, at one point, was separated from the river by a strip of low ground,scarcely ten yurds in width. This pool found an outlet into the river by means of a sluggish creek, about twenty feet in width, with a broad margin of deep mire. Fortunately I had visited this clearing early in the summer, while running “trail” lines out from Fort William, ana had taken many a meal with the mission haymakers in the old log house. Moreover, I had been specially assigned to the duty of charting the pool and its outlet, to which circumstance I am, no doubt, indebted for not having died a death by suffocation that night in the almost bottomless mire of the creek.

Near the creek stood a low haystack with its “binding poles” reaching nearly to the ground. Thrusting the revolver in its holster, and taking the knife in my teeth, I seized pne of these poles, tore it from its fastenings, and pushed it into the creek until its outer end was clear of the strip of mire. Although the pole sank under me until I Was knee deep in the clinging mud, I managed to reach the deep, open water. I knew that there was a good landing place near the mouth of the creek, so plunging in, I struck out down the stream. I had taken scarcely a dozen strokes when my knees bumped against a smooth, hard bottom. I reached the top of the bank with the utmost difficulty', my limbs had grown so benumbed. As I reeled against the blockhouse door I tried to shout for help, but the words died in my throat. I felt around for the old latch string, which I had always found “hanging outside." It was missing, and in its place was a huge padlock. The door was locked hard and fasti In vain I threw myself against it—equally vain was my search for something that could be used as a battering-ram. I had just given up trying to break the look with the butt of my revolver, when the panther broke cover across the creek. There was not a moment to lose, for I knew that my foe was a good swimmer. In the rear of the shanty, and about six feet from it stood a tall haystack, the Bides of which were almost perpendicular. My only remaining hope lay in reaching the top of that stack. The rough corners of the shanty afforded an excellent foothold, so that I reached the

roof without difficulty. Running along the ridge, knife in hand, I leaped to the stack, and driving knife downward into it, pulled myself to the top. Tearing away a portion of the thatch, I worked my way, head foremost, into the newly gathered hay, to the centre of the stack. Half dead from the cold and exhaustion, I lay there with the quick surge of my pulse sounding in my ears with the distinctness of a drum beat. While I did not care to hope that I had wholly outwitted the panther, I was at least safe from immediate attack. Moreover, I was assured of a breathing spell, without which I should have been as a child in the clutches of the powerful brute that was making the clearing resound with its cries.

Suddenly the cries ceased, and the stillness of death reigned in the great gloomy bottom. I clutched my knife tightly and listened. I had just begun to flatter myself that the panther had lost the trait at the creek, and had abandoned the pursuit, when a deep throated growl came from the roof of the shanty, and in the next breath the stack was shaken from top to bottom, as the savage beast landed upon it directly over my head. And there it lay, a dead, suffocating weight, waiting, no doubt, for some untoward accident to betray my true position. For fully fifteen minutes I lay there, hardly able to breathe, much less to stir a muscle, when I was suddenly taken with an acute chill, and in spite of every effort to keep it back, a convulsive shiver ran through •my frame. That settled it. In the next instant the swaying and rocking of the stack told me that the ferocious creature was digging down to me with teeth and talons, and that the crisis of my life was close at hand. The brute was digging right over the spot where my head lay. Changing my position slightly, I turned on my left side just as a paw was thrust into the space which my head had lately occupied. Of course I could not see the paw, but I could feel it, for it brushed against my face as it buried itself deeply into the hay alongside me. I knew that the sharp fangs would soon follow. I clutched the sinewy leg that rested so close to my face that I might have touched it by simply thrusting out my tongue. With a quick movement of my right hand I forced the knife upward through the hay until I felt a spasmodic twitching in the muscles of the leg, around which my left hand had closed in a death-grip. The point of the knife had found the panther’s hide. Throwing the whole of my failing strength into the effort I drove the knife sharply upward—once, twice, thrice, as far as the hilts would let it go—and loosened my grip on the leg. With a yell of agony the mortallystricken brute sprung upward, fell back on the staok, thrashed around there for a while, and, finally rolling off, struck the ground a dead thud, that told me how well the knife had done its work. I had not the faintest recollection of leaving my hiding place that night, but when morning dawned I was found by one of the Mission herders miles down the river wandering about the woods in a delirium of fever, and with a bloody hunting knife dangling by its loop from my wrist. In a little whitewashed bedroom of the old Mission I saw, during the following fortnight, panthers enough to have stocked a dozen menageries. When at last I was able to sit up and talk I learned that during the first week of my illness searching parties had scoured the woods in quest of the supposed victim of the bloody knife that had been found on my person. At last an Ojibway trapper struck my back trail and followed it up. At the foot of the haystack in the clearing he found the carcass of the panther lying just where it had fallen, with its heart divided in two. The creature weighed 102 pounds; and measured seven feet three from tip to tip.