strous, the hugest beast of its
kind that he had ever beheld.

But the panther, despite its size and strength, would run away from man,
and Henry understood. The Indian ring had closed about it too, and,
frightened, it was seeking refuge. Powerful, clawed and toothed for
battle, it would not fight unless it was driven into a corner, and then
it would fight with ferocity. Henry reflected philosophically that the
net might miss the particular fish for which it was cast and yet catch
others. If the Indians closed in they had the panther and the black bear
and perhaps the pack of wolves too. What would they do with them? His
irrepressible mirth bubbled up. It was their problem, not his.

Resolved not to intervene again in these delicate affairs, he crouched
as closely as he could to the earth, wishing the panther neither to see
nor to hear him, but curious himself to know what it would do. The beast
stalked out into the open, and it was magnified greatly by the luminous
quality of the moonlight. It looked like one of its primitive ancestors
in the far dawn of time, when man fought for his life with the stone
axe. But the panther was afraid. The howls of the wolf, both the real
and the false, frightened him. His instinct too told him that he was
walled around by beings that could slay at a distance, and, within a
certain area, he was a prisoner. He was sorely troubled and his great
body trembled with nervous quivers. The wolf pack howled again, and he
must have found something more alarming than ever in it, as he sheered
off to one side, and his tawny eyes caught a glimpse of a black opening
that almost certainly led to a magnificent den and refuge.

But the panther was cautious. He lived a life in which the foresight
that comes from experience was compelled to play a great part. He did
not dive directly for the cleft, and he might not have gone in at all,
had not a sudden shift in the wind brought to him the human odor that
came from the body lying so near in the bushes. Driven by his impulse he
turned away and then sprang straight into the hollow.

Henry had not expected this sudden movement on the part of the panther,
and he rose to his knees to see what would happen. A terrible growling
and snarling and the shuffling of heavy bodies came instantly from the
dusky interior. A moment or two later the panther bounded out, a huge
ball of yellowish fur, in which two frightened and angry red eyes
glared. Henry saw several st