one of my very first experiences in the west was a midnight tussle with a fifty-four pound wildcat in a lonely cabin in the greenhorn mountains of colorado. i shall never forget my horror at the sight of that huge puss on a beam over my head; for i had had a serious experience with the wildcat of the northeast, and supposed that this fellow, who was twice as big, was likewise twice as much to be dreaded.
i did not know that the rocky mountain wildcat is not nearly so fierce, and that he never attacks man as does sometimes his cousin of the maine and new hampshire forests; and i had very slight hopes for the outcome of a struggle twice as severe as that which a furry freebooter in the pemigewassett wilderness gave me a good many years ago. i need not have worried. the colorado cat was easy game; and when the[286] last charge in my six-shooter had brought him to the floor, his life was soon ended.
that first encounter, in new hampshire, was more than thirty years ago—years filled with roving adventure and many other things which are apt to crowd the past back into forgetfulness. but i remember it as though it had been yesterday. small, white “exclamation-points” on my chest, with several other scars, occasionally call it to mind.
i had grown from a consumptive boy to a small but thoroughly athletic young man. wrestling, boxing, canoeing, hunting and fishing had brought me into good condition, and every muscle was hard as wire. but for that fact, i should not be writing this; for the fight took my utmost ounce of strength. had it come a year earlier, my grave would be in the wilderness to-day.
of the yearly thousands who visit the great summer hotels of the white and franconia mountains, extremely few ever penetrate the pemigewassett wilderness. the wild ranges wall its sides, and between them is a huge and virgin forest, full of game, dotted and seamed by lakes and brooks that swarm with trout. in this almost untrodden wild rises the east branch of the pemigewassett, the beautiful little river which later becomes the merrimac.
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i was hunting and fishing that spring on the head waters of the east branch. my canoe swam a lovely but nameless lakelet, and my camp, roofed with birch-bark, was near the shore. there were three brooks running into the lake noisily; and at the south end the clear young river slipped silently out through the dark trees.
it was the last day of may, and still cold in that mountain bowl. i had a fat deer hung high beside my shelter; so there was meat for some time. in a little while the fishing would be very tame, for there the trout have not fully learned what a deceiver man is, and there is little sport in standing almost astride a rill, and with a five-foot willow pulling a dozen or twenty fish out of one pool. but now i knew the big fish were around, and i determined to spend the day with my rod.
by ten o’clock i was well over toward mount lafayette, on the largest of the brooks which came into my lake from the west; and, descending the steep banks to the bed of the stream, prepared to fish down toward camp.
the brook fell very rapidly here, in a series of short falls, at the bottom of each of which was a deep, lovely pool of water, so clear that it seemed only air with a light[288] tinge of green. i could see pebbles ten feet below the surface, and the brown flashes of the sportive trout.
in five minutes i was landing my first fish, a game half-pounder, and others bit as fast as i could attend to them.
there was no need of covering much ground. i could have caught in fifty yards all i could eat in a week. but i kept moving homeward, taking only one or two of the largest fish from a pool and throwing back any accidental small ones.
in this way i had gone down, perhaps, half a mile, when i came to the largest pool i had found on that brook. here it seemed likely that there might be some particularly large trout. in fact, the first one i struck seemed to be much larger than any on my string; but he snapped the hook and was gone with a splash.
i had drawn an extra hook from my box and was “ganging” it upon the line, when some impulse caused me to look up. as i did so, the tin box fell clattering upon the rocks and my rod at my feet.
the brook here had cut a narrow gorge through a ridge, and the pool at whose head i stood touched on each side the very foot of a rocky wall nearly forty feet high. i was standing on a ledge whence the brook[289] dropped, perhaps, ten feet into the pool, and the banks were not nearly so high there. still, i presume the tops were fifteen feet above my head.
a giant pine had fallen across the gorge from bank to bank, making a knotty bridge, which was almost over me, but a little in front; and upon that great log was the something which had brought my heart up into my mouth with such a bump.
on the dark side of the tree, behind the stump of a huge limb, flat and motionless as you could press your hand upon the table, lay almost the last thing in the world that i desired to see there—a wildcat.
whether it was crouching there when i came, or, as is more likely, had crawled out from the bank to surprise me, i never knew; but there it was confronting me.
i could just see the fierce glints in its eyes; and when its gaze met mine, the tip of the ears, outlined on a patch of sky, seemed to flatten. my rifle was in camp, for it was too long a walk to bring it when i wished to fish. i had not even a revolver—nothing but a keen-edged, clip-point hunting-knife, which hung in its sheath on my left hip.
i hardly dared move, but that knife i must have. slipping my right hand cautiously[290] behind my back, i reached far around, till at last it touched the welcome hilt, and i began to slip the sheath slowly around my belt to the right side, where the knife could be drawn less ostentatiously.
all this time i had never taken my eyes from those of the unwelcome intruder, and i kept scowling at him with a savage expression which was meant to alarm him, but which sadly flattered my real feelings.
how long we stood eyeing each other thus, i do not know. it seemed an age and must have been several minutes. neither of us moved. he lay crouched and menacing; i stood outwardly defiant, with my hand on that precious buckhorn handle. and then my wet feet, chilled with the icy water of the brook, betrayed me. i felt a sneeze working toward the surface.
now, when i sneeze, it is no gentle tschoo! but half a dozen or more wild and uncontrollable explosions, which never fail to bring tears to my own eyes, if they are lucky enough not to scare some unsuspecting stranger.
i struggled to choke that sneeze, to hold it back; but i might as well have tried to hold the foaming brook.
ker-cheooo! ker-cheooo! ker-cheooo-oo! with each eruption my head flew down and[291] my body shook; and as i straightened up after the fifth burst, i saw—through the mist that filled my eyes—something dark descending upon me like a great, hazy bird.
i had not once changed my position since first seeing the wildcat. he was a trifle to my left, and my left foot and shoulder were pointed up-stream. our lives hang on such trifles as that! now, with the trained instinct of the boxer—who has first to learn to act without stopping to think how to act—i threw my left hand up and out! half-way to arms-length it met that furry avalanche, and broke its force. the cat landed full against my side.
its sharp hind claws sank into my thigh, and the sharper fore claws clutched me in the pectoral muscles in front and between the shoulder-blades behind. the pain was cruel, but i had no time even to cry out. at the instant i expected to feel those merciless jaws on my neck, and that would be the last.
the wildcat knows where the jugular vein is as well as the best surgeon of them all; and it is for that that he invariably jumps. animals killed by these cruel ambuscaders are sometimes left whole and unmangled, save for that wicked little gap at the side of the throat.
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but my boxing lessons had saved me. as my left hand went out in that “straight counter,” it struck full in the throat of the cat; and with the swift inspiration of desperate men, i clutched the folds of fur there with all my might.
the cat strained hard to pull-in to me—and that was a cruel leverage it had in my own flesh. but my arm, never a weak one, was doubly strong now; and, though i could not force him from his hold, i kept his head well away from mine, which i “ducked” to increase the still unsatisfactory distance.
then, drawing the keen six-inch blade, i drove it against his side. his left side was, of course, the one exposed to me; but we were so “mixed up” that i could take no accurate aim at his heart, and just thrust blindly and madly at that stretch of mottled fur.
nothing will ever dim my recollection of that desperate struggle; and yet i seemed in a sort of trance. you have had nightmares, wherein some savage beast pursued you, and you slammed vain doors on him which he brushed open, and fired ineffective rifles at him whose diminished pop did not affect him in the least; and, do what you would, nothing availed against that implacable[293] danger. so it was with me. i seemed under a spell.
those awful claws were tearing me everywhere; that fatal head was struggling to break down my tiring arm; and the desperate thrusts of the knife with all the force of my right arm seemed not even to penetrate the tough hide. they went deep enough, as i found later, but at the moment i was sure they hardly scratched him.
since that day i have been through a great many of the things of whose suspense we say, “they seemed eternities,” but never one, i think, that seemed so endless as that. and yet it could hardly have lasted a minute. i was growing very weak. blood was running down in my boots, and my weary left arm was no longer rigid. my right was no longer fully under control, and once, when the knife glanced a rib, it nearly flew from my hand.
once, too, i struck high, and the cat caught my right wrist between his savage teeth and tore out a piece. was he invulnerable? i began actually to believe so—to fancy that, after all, it must be a hideous dream.
you may imagine from that into what a state my mind had come. but still i plied the knife, and still with cramped and trembling arm held off the creature’s jaws.
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and then, on a sudden, a great wave of joy swept over me, and i yelled madly. the curving claws, set deep in my back and breast, relaxed. it was only the least bit in the world, but i could feel the exquisite pain of that slight withdrawal; and in another instant they came out altogether, and my foe fell limp upon the rocks beside me, where he never moved again.
i looked at him once; my eyes grew dim, and i fell across him.
when i recovered consciousness, we were lying in a heap, wet with our common blood. i crawled a couple of feet to the brook, and the icy water revived me, so that at last i could rise and limp about the field of our strange battle.
the cat was a mass of wounds; and as i counted the eleven fatal thrusts, i marvelled at his vitality and pluck—and very heartily respected them, too. any one of ten of them would have finally killed him, but he had kept his hold to the very last, which had sunk deep into his heart.
and such a small beast to attack the lord of creation! i do not think he weighed over thirty pounds; but what a model of compact strength and agility! his skin was so slashed as to be absolutely unsavable;[295] but i kept his scalp a long time, till the moths destroyed it.
as for myself, i was in little more attractive shape than he. of my stout duck coat and trousers only the right half remained. my duck vest and heavy flannel shirt boasted little but a few shreds two-thirds of the way around my body. i was half-naked, and my breast, back, left side and left thigh were laced with deep, bleeding gashes.
there is only one thing about that day which i do not remember; and that is, how i got back that ten miles to camp. but somehow i got there; for when i awoke next morning, very weak and stiff—for of all wounds i know of none so painful as those inflicted by a cat—i was under my roof of birch bark, and a spotted scalp lay on the sand beside me.
