Swamp Cat Part 17

Frosty scrambled up the aspen and looked down contemptuously as the great creature raked the tree with his antlers, snorted and fell to sc.r.a.ping the earth with a front hoof. He reared--a move Frosty had antic.i.p.ated--and the black cat dug his nose with a single lightning-like thrust of his paw. Then he leaped out of the tree and, with the buck pounding behind him, dodged into the crevice.

Snorting and puffing, the buck stamped angrily back and forth. He stopped and tried to edge an antler into the crevice. When his nose came near enough, Frosty scratched it again. The buck, all fury, thought only of reaching and killing this insignificant thing that had dared defy him.

For a time Frosty amused himself by scratching the patriarch's nose every time it came within reach. Then he withdrew to the rear of the crevice and went to sleep. The buck could not reach him, and while the furious beast stood guard, nothing else would try. Frosty slept peacefully, wholly at ease.

Daylight had bloomed when he was awakened by footsteps. From their rhythm and cadence, he knew they were Andy's. The cat waited. He'd be happy to meet his partner again, providing Andy had left the shotgun home.

Then came a blast that outdid even the shotgun's and Frosty crouched very quietly in his crevice. Andy was still mad, the cat decided, for he was still going about making noises that could not possibly be tolerated by anything in its right mind. However, the buck had hit the ground very hard and very suddenly, and now it lay very still. Frosty heard Andy's amazed,

"I'll be dog-goned! Hunt _this_ buck for three years and then stumble right over him! Wonder how he got his nose dug that way?"

11

THE WAR OF THE OWLS

The next morning, knife in hand, Andy knelt beside his big buck and expertly skinned out both hindquarters. Frosty, entirely at ease as long as no rifles or shotguns were about, sat contentedly near and watched the proceedings with interest. Slitting the tendons, Andy tied a rope through each, slung the other ends of the ropes over a porch beam and made ready to hoist the carca.s.s aloft and finish skinning.

Frosty slipped into his favorite hiding place under the porch and did not come out again. Andy slackened the taut ropes and eased the buck down onto the floor. Frosty was not precisely a watch dog, but the boy had learned to tell from the big cat's actions when something was coming.

A little while later, Jud Casman appeared around a corner of the house.

He was dressed for hunting, but not precisely in the costume which fashion magazines say the well-dressed hunter should wear. He wore wool trousers whose legs had been slit so that they might fit over knee-length rubber boots. It was a good, practical arrangement; snow and water would run down the trouser legs, rather than inside the boots.

His upper torso was encased in a jacket over which he wore the cut-off upper half of some red woolen underwear. That, according to Jud, both enabled other hunters to see him and made the jacket snug enough so that some loose end wasn't forever catching in the brush. His hat might have descended to Jud from the first person ever to see the swamp. His rifle matched the costume.

It was a muzzle-loader of a type generally a.s.sociated with frontiersmen and Indian fighters, and it was almost as long as Jud was tall. A single shot, it had been handed down by Jud's father, who in turn had obtained it from his father. The bore had been re-reamed and re-rifled so many times that now it cast a slug approximately the size of a small cannon ball. A lot of people had laughed at Jud and his rifle, but on his side, Jud snickered at those who needed a whole handful of cartridges when, as any child should know, one ball was plenty, if you put it in the right place. Andy, who had seen Jud pick the heads off squirrels and grouse and shoot flying geese, knew that Jud killed whatever he shot at. He left no wounded creature to die in agony.

Jud eyed the big buck and expressed his opinion, "_Hm-m._"

Andy said, "It's the big one."

"Give ya a heap of trouble?"

"I walked right up to him," Andy admitted. "He didn't even run."

"I'll give ya a hand," Jud offered. "Just snug them ropes when I lift."

Jud leaned his rifle against the house. No big man, he lifted the 200-pound buck without visible strain or effort and Andy tightened the ropes. Saying not another word, Jud picked up his rifle and went into the swamp.

Andy resumed his work, cutting with the knife point and pulling the loosened skin down around the carca.s.s. Since this was deer season, obviously Jud was going into the swamp to get himself a deer. Andy knew where there were some, but if Jud had wanted advice, he'd have asked for it. Andy skinned his buck down and severed the head as close to the scalp as possible.

He grinned. Some years ago, Old Man Haroldson had taken a party deer hunting and among them they had shot five deer. When it came time to divide the venison, the hunters, with visions of choice steaks and roasts, had offered Old Man Haroldson the five necks. He had accepted with alacrity, and ever since had been gleefully telling how he put one over on the city-slickers, for the neck was the best part of any deer, in his opinion. Whether it was or not, Andy thought, there was a lot of good meat in it.

Frosty came out from beneath the porch and again sat companionably close. He turned up his nose at a little chunk of venison Andy threw him. Able to take his choice of the finest viands in the swamp, Frosty would accept second best only when he could not get first.

Andy looked with regret at the great antlers, a really fine trophy. But it cost money to have a deer head mounted, and he had no money to spare.

He consoled himself with the thought that the antlers, sawed from the scalp and nailed over his door, would still look very nice. He split the carca.s.s and made ready to separate it into the cuts he wanted.

A half-hour later, out in the swamp, Jud's rifle roared like a clap of thunder. Looking disgusted, Frosty departed to such peace and quiet as he might find under the porch. Andy glanced toward the swamp. Jud had shot. Therefore he had his buck.... In another twenty minutes, he appeared with it.

It was a fair-sized three-year-old. Jud had slit the tendons in the hind legs, thrust the front ones through, fastened them with pegs, and was carrying his buck as Andy would have carried a packsack. But, though the buck probably weighed 140 pounds, Jud was not laboring nor was he the least bit strained. He paused again beside the porch.

"Got one, huh?" Andy greeted him.

"Yep."

"Nice one, too."

"Nice eatin'," Jud grunted. "I take it you know they's owls in the swamp, Andy?"

"Owls?"

"Cat owls," Jud said. "I see six. I'd of shot some but I didn't know as you'd of wanted me to."

"Thanks, Jud."

"Don't mention it," Jud said politely.

He departed with his buck and Andy began to work furiously. "Cat owl"

was a local term for great horned owl, and if Jud had seen six during the short time he'd been absent, they had not only invaded the swamp in force but their invasion had occurred since yesterday. Andy nicked his finger, muttered to himself and continued to work feverishly.

One owl in the swamp was a threat. Six could mean only that game had already become scarce in other localities, and the owls were gathering in his swamp to find food. It was true that, in winter, much small game did seek a refuge in the swamp and, for that very reason, it had more than its winter-time quota of great horned owls and other predators.

This early in the season, Andy's muskrats must be the very lure that was attracting them. He had feared just such an invasion, and now he must fight it.

He wrapped the venison in flour sacking, hung the portions in his shed and closed the door behind him. Finished, he breathed a sigh of relief, took his .22 from its rack, filled the magazine, stuck a couple of extra boxes of cartridges in his pocket and started for the swamp.

Frosty, who shuddered at the sight of a shotgun but did not mind the .22, came happily to join him. Andy was rational again. They could take up their partnership where it had been broken off. Tail erect and even whiskers seeming to quiver with joy, Frosty trotted by Andy's side.

Andy set a direct course for the nearest trees. He searched eagerly, hoping he would not find what he feared he would, and optimism leaped in his breast when he saw nothing.

Then an owl, a huge bird with a mighty spread of wings, labored up from a slough with a muskrat in its talons. Andy leveled his rifle, holding it steady, even while he tried to conquer the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Compared to some other birds, the owls are not swift fliers and this one was furthered slowed by the burden it carried. It was possible to pick it out of the air with a rifle, but Andy held his fire because, obviously, the owl intended to light in one of the trees. A sitting shot was not sporting, but there was no question of sport connected with this and a sitting shot was far more certain.

The owl dipped gracefully toward a tree and Andy followed with the rifle sights. At exactly the right moment, he squeezed the trigger. The vicious little rifle spat its leaden death and the owl dropped limply.

He lay tumbled on the ground, talons still imbedded in the muskrat, when Andy reached him. It was a grip of steel, so powerful that the boy had to use the point of his knife to disengage each talon separately.

Andy skinned the still-warm muskrat, knowing as he did so that the pelt would bring less than a good price because the owl's talons had pierced it. But it was something salvaged.

The next owl was a dodging gray shape that winged erratically over the swamp gra.s.s, more than six hundred feet away. Andy leveled his rifle, sighted and shot. He shot a second time . . . and a third. On the third shot, a gray feather detached itself from the bird and floated gracefully downwards. But the shot also warned the owl. He dipped out of sight.

Hearing something in the gra.s.s that interested him, Frosty went to investigate. Andy strode grimly toward the next grove of trees. He scored a clean miss on an owl perched in a tree, then brought down one in flight. Quickly, he reloaded his little rifle. It was better than the shotgun for such hunting, partly because shotgun sh.e.l.ls were so much more expensive and partly because the shotgun was limited in range. He would certainly have killed the owl in the tree had he had the shotgun, but probably he would have merely wounded the pair he had brought down and even owls deserved better than that.

Far off, hopelessly out of range, Andy saw two owls in the hollow sycamore that overlooked the slough where the five muskrats lived. He stooped to crawl. When he was within rifle shot, he raised cautiously above the swamp gra.s.s--to see the sycamore empty. He muttered to himself. He did not think that he had frightened the owls, for they were incredibly bold. Doubtless they'd gone off to hunt, and almost surely they were hunting muskrats.

Rising, Andy walked to the hollow sycamore and cradled the rifle in the crook of his arm while he leaned against it. Five minutes later, a muskrat emerged from an underwater burrow, surfaced and swam in little circles. Only his head and back broke water. He regarded Andy with beady little eyes. Although less than ten feet away, the muskrat considered himself safe because he was in the water.

The owl came so silently and so eerily that, somehow, it seemed to have materialized out of thin air. Gliding over the slough, it took the swimming muskrat in both claws and never missed a wing beat as it flew on. Andy gasped. He leveled the rifle and shot five times, but the gathering dusk made his aim uncertain and again he missed. Andy's brain reeled.