But age, and his pampered life, greatly disqualified the noble mastiff for such a struggle. In everything but courage, he was only the vestige of what he had once been.
A higher bound than ever raised the wary and furious beast far beyond the reach of the dog, who was making a desperate but fruitless dash at her, from which she alighted in a favorable position, on the back of her aged foe.
For a single moment only could the panther remain there, the great strength of the dog returning with a convulsive effort.
But Elizabeth saw, as Brave fastened his teeth in the side of his enemy, that the collar of brass around his neck, which had been glittering throughout the fray, was of the color of blood, and directly that his frame was sinking to the earth, where it soon lay prostrate and helpless.
Several mighty efforts of the wild-cat to extricate herself from the jaws of the dog followed, but they were fruitless, until the mastiff turned on his back, his lips collapsed, and his teeth loosened, when the short convulsions and stillness that succeeded announced the death of poor Brave.
Elizabeth now lay wholly at the mercy of the beast. There is said to be something in the front of the image of the Maker that daunts the hearts of the inferior beings of his creation; and it would seem that some such power, in the present instance, suspended the threatened blow. The eyes of the monster and the kneeling maiden met for an instant, when the former stooped to examine her fallen foe; next, to scent her luckless cub. From the latter examination it turned, however, with its eyes apparently emitting flashes of fire, its tail lashing its sides furiously, and its claws projecting inches from her broad feet.
Miss Temple did not or could not move.
Her hands were clasped in the attitude of prayer, but her eyes were still drawn to her terrible enemy—her cheeks were blanched to the whiteness of marble, and her lips were slightly separated with horror.
The moment seemed now to have arrived for the fatal termination, and the beautiful figure of Elizabeth was bowing meekly to the stroke, when a rustling of leaves behind seemed rather to mock the organs than to meet her ears.
“Hist! hist!” said a low voice, “stoop lower, gal; your bonnet hides the creatur’s head.”
It was rather the yielding of nature than a compliance with this unexpected order, that caused the head of our heroine to sink on her bosom; when she heard the report of the rifle, the whizzing of the bullet, and the enraged cries of the beast, who was rolling over on the earth, biting its own flesh, and tearing the twigs and branches within its reach.
At the next instant the form of the Leather-Stocking rushed by her, and he called aloud:
“Come in, Hector! come in, old fool; ‘tis a hard-lived animal, and may jump agin.”
Natty fearlessly maintained his position in front of the females, notwithstanding the violent bounds and threatening aspect of the wounded panther, which gave several indications of returning strength and ferocity, until his rifle was again loaded, when he stepped up to the enraged animal, and, placing the muzzle close to its head, every spark of life was extinguished by the discharge.
The death of her terrible enemy appeared to Elizabeth like a resurrection from her own grave.
There was an elasticity in the mind of our heroine that rose to meet the pressure of instant danger, and the more direct it had been, the more her nature had struggled to overcome them.
But still she was a woman.
Had she been left to herself in her late extremity, she would probably have used her faculties to the utmost, and with discretion, in protecting her person; but, encumbered with her inanimate friend, retreat was a thing not to be attempted.
Notwithstanding the fearful aspect of her foe, the eye of Elizabeth had never shrunk from its gaze, and long after the event her thoughts would recur to her passing sensations, and the sweetness of her midnight sleep would be disturbed, as her active fancy conjured, in dreams, the most trifling movements of savage fury that the beast had exhibited in its moment of power.
We shall leave the reader to imagine the restoration of Louisa’s senses, and the expressions of gratitude which fell from the young women. The former was effected by a little water, that was brought from one of the thousand springs of those mountains, in the cap of the Leather-Stocking; and the latter were uttered with the warmth that might be expected from the character of Elizabeth.
Natty received her vehement protestations of gratitude with a simple expression of good-will, and with indulgence for her present excitement, but with a carelessness that showed how little he thought of the service he had rendered.
“Well, well,” he said, “be it so, gal; let it be so, if you wish it—we’ll talk the thing over another time.
Come, come—let us get into the road, for you’ve had terror enough to make you wish yourself in your father’s house agin.”
This was uttered as they were proceeding, at a pace that was adapted to the weakness of Louisa, toward the highway; on reaching which the ladies separated from their guide, declaring themselves equal to the remainder of the walk without his assistance, and feeling encouraged by the sight of the village which lay beneath their feet like a picture, with its limpid lake in front, the winding stream along its margin, and its hundred chimneys of whitened bricks.
The reader need not be told the nature of the emotions which two youthful, ingenuous, and well-educated girls would experience at their escape from a death so horrid as the one which had impended over them, while they pursued their way in silence along the track on the side of the mountain; nor how deep were their mental thanks to that Power which had given them their existence, and which had not deserted them in their extremity; neither how often they pressed each other’s arms as the assurance of their present safety came, like a healing balm, athwart their troubled spirits, when their thoughts were recurring to the recent moments of horror.
Leather-Stocking remained on the hill, gazing after their retiring figures, until they were hidden by a bend in the road, when he whistled in his dogs, and shouldering his rifle, he returned into the forest.
“Well, it was a skeary thing to the young creatur’s,” said Natty, while he retrod the path toward the plain.
“It might frighten an older woman, to see a she-painter so near her, with a dead cub by its side.
I wonder if I had aimed at the varmint’s eye, if I shouldn’t have touched the life sooner than in the forehead; but they are hard-lived animals, and it was a good shot, consid’ring that I could see nothing but the head and the peak of its tail. Hah! who goes there?”
“How goes it, Natty?” said Mr. Doolittle, stepping out of the bushes, with a motion that was a good deal accelerated by the sight of the rifle, that was already lowered in his direction.
“What! shooting this warm day!
Mind, old man, the law don’t get hold on you.”
“The law, squire!
I have shook hands with the law these forty year,” returned Natty; “for what has a man who lives in the wilderness to do with the ways of the law?”
“Not much, maybe,” said Hiram; “but you sometimes trade in venison.
I s’pose you know, Leather-Stocking, that there is an act passed to lay a fine of five pounds currency, or twelve dollars and fifty cents, by decimals, on every man who kills a deer betwixt January and August.
The Judge had a great hand in getting the law through.”
“I can believe it,” returned the old hunter; “I can believe that or anything of a man who carries on as he does in the country.”
“Yes, the law is quite positive, and the Judge is bent on putting it in force—five pounds penalty.
I thought I heard your hounds out on the scent of so’thing this morning; I didn’t know but they might get you in difficulty.”
“They know their manners too well,” said Natty carelessly.
“And how much goes to the State’s evidence, squire?”
“How much?” repeated Hiram, quailing under the honest but sharp look of the hunter; “the informer gets half, I—I believe—yes, I guess it’s half.
But there’s blood on your sleeve, man—you haven’t been shooting anything this morning?”
“I have, though,” said the hunter, nodding his head significantly to the other, “and a good shot I made of it.”
“H-e-m!” ejaculated the magistrate; “and where is the game?
I s’pose it’s of a good natur’, for your dogs won’t hunt anything that isn’t choice.”
“They’ll hunt anything I tell them to, squire,” cried Natty, favoring the other with his laugh.
“They’ll hunt you, if I say so.
He-e-e-re, he-e-e-re, Hector—he-e-e-re, slut—come this a-way, pups—come this a-way—-come hither.”