I bent over to pick up a bit of shale to hurl at the dots, when, almost in my ears, that cry came once more; but this time the cry ended in a spitting snarl as of a tom-cat when possession of food is disputed!
With all my might I hurled the bit of shale I had lifted, straight at those dots of flame. At the same time I gave utterance to a yell that set the echoes rolling the length and breadth of the coulee. The echoes had not died away when the coulee was filled until it rang with that eery wailing—as though a hundred babies cried for mothers who did not come!
Then—great God!—I knew!
Bobcats! The coulee was alive with them! I was alone on the talus, two hundred yards from the safe haven of my cabin, and though I knew that one alone would not attack a man in the open, I had never heard whether they hunted in groups. For all I knew they might. At imminent risk of breaking my neck, I hurled myself down the slope and into the thicket of willows at the base. Through these and into the dry stream-bed I blundered, still running. I kept this mad pace until I had reached the approximate point where the trail led to my cabin, climbed the bank of the dry stream and sought for the aisle through the willows.
Though I searched carefully for a hundred yards on each hand I could not find the path. And I feared to enter the willow thicket and beat about. The ominous wailing had stopped suddenly, as though at a signal, and I believed that the bobcats had taken to the trees at the foot of the talus. I studied the dark shadows for dots of flame in pairs, but could see none. I knew from reading about them that bobcats have been known to drop on solitary travelers from the limbs of trees. Their sudden silence was weighted with ponderous menace.
I was afraid—afraid! Scared as I had never been in my life before—and I had gone through a certain town in Flanders without a gas mask.
Why the sudden, eery silence? I would have welcomed that vast chorus of wailing, had it begun again. But it did not.
When I crept back to the bank of the stream-bed a pale moon had come up, partly dispelling the shadows in Steamboat Coulee. The sand in the stream-bed glistened frostily in the moonlight, making me think of the blinking eyes of a multitude of toads.
Where, in Steamboat, was the cabin with its cheery fire? I had closed the door to keep my courage from failing me, and now there was no light to guide me.
It is hell to be alone in such a place, miles from the nearest other human being.
I sat down on the high bank, half sidewise so that I could watch the shadows among the willows, and tried mentally to retrace my steps, hoping that I could reason out the exact location of the cabin in the thicket.
Sitting as I was, I could see for a hundred yards or so down the stream-bed. I studied its almost straight course for a moment or two, for no reason that I can assign. I saw a black shadow dart across the open space, swift as a breath of wind, and disappear in the thicket on the opposite side. It was larger than a cat, smaller than the average dog. A bobcat had changed his base hurriedly, and in silence.
Silence! That was the thing that was now weighing upon me, more even than thought of my failure to locate the little cabin. Why had the cats stopped their wailing so suddenly, as though they waited for something? This thought deepened the feeling of dread that was upon me. If the cats were waiting, for what were they waiting?
Then I breathed a sigh of relief. For, coming around a bend in the
