Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 281, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 November 1914 — FOOLED THE PANTHER [ARTICLE]

FOOLED THE PANTHER

UNCLE BILL OBJECTED TO FURNISHING HER MEAL. - - * " did Frontiersman Naturally Delights Relating to His Grandchildren How Narrowly He Escaped From Hideous Death. Uncle Bill Joyce lives down in southwestern Missouri, on the edge of the Ozark country. He has lived ther< a great many yean, for he is an old man now, and he is full of entertaining reminiscence of the days when that corner of the state was still almost a wilderness. Among the stories he loves to tell the open-mouthed children of a more sheltered generation is this account of a lively adventure with the animal that all old frontiersmen used to call a “painter.” Uncle Bill will begin: One day in the summer of 1857, I shouldered my rifl.' and started for a day’s hunt. I was bound for a small prairie some five or six miles from home. After hunting for deer a spell without seeing a sign, I turned into a small grove of walnut, oak and mulberry to hunt for squirrels. I got a good many of them during the morning. Once or twice I stopped to listen to a queer noise that I could hardly hear, It was so far away. It was a long, quavering cry that died away gradually. But It came no nearer, and finally stopped altogether. When It came nod’., I went to a spring I knew of and ate the lunch that I had brought with me. Then I thought I would go on to the prairie and hunt for wild bees —that was really what I had in mind when I started. But I felt sleepy, and thought I would take a nap* first, and so I stretched myself In a shady place and fell asleep. I woke a little later to find myself covered with leaves and small brush. I was puzzled sure enough, fpr I couldn’t think what could have covered me up, but I decided to find out. First I got a dead lor 'about six feet long,” laid It where I had slept, and covered it with leaves and brush. I looked to see whether my gun was loaded, and then I hid in a clump of bushes some twenty or twenty-five yards away. After about twenty minutes I heard a noise. I peered out of the bushes, and saw a large shepanther coming through the trees, followed by a quarter-grown cub. She circled round Jthi mound of leaves a couple of times; the cub followed every action of Its mother.-. After the second round, the old panther crouched as If for a spring. She crouched lower and lower, and kept drawing her feet closer together. She kept her byes fastened on the mound of leaves all the time, and swayed her tail from side to side with a slow, regular motion. When she had gathered her feet as close together as she could, she sprang/for the pile of leaves. She landed in the very middle of the pile, and gave several long, wicked rakes with her hind feet. Then she began to smell and scratch in the leaves. It didn’t take her long to find out that there wap nothing but an old log there, and she stopped scratching and began to look about. I thought that now was the time to settle matters. I was a little to her left and behind her; I caught a sight just at the base of her ear, and fired. She gave one leap and a shrill scream, and then lay still. After making sure that she was dead, I loqked for the cub. It was sitting near by on the side of a leaning tree,, spitting and snarling angrily. I aoon put an end to' that with a rifle ball. Lmever knew a man so well huntgijr aSsJ was without being hurt She probably took me for dead, and covered me to keep other animals from finding me while she went'after her cub.—Youth’s Companion.