anything, that the beast would not give him time to reload the clumsy gun. At his first movement it would spring. And if he leaped into the water, it might follow him, considering its present savage mood. He beheld its muscles, which slipped so easily under the tawny skin, knotting themselves for a spring. The forelegs were drawn up under the breast the curved, sabre-sharp claws scratching the bark on the floating timber. In another instant the fatal leap would be made.

Never had the boy been in such danger. He did not utterly lose his presence of mind; but he was helpless. What chance had he with an empty gun before the savage brute? He seized the barrel in both hands and raised the weapon above his head. It was too heavy for him to swing with any ease, and being so would fall but lightly on the creature, did he succeed in reaching it at all. He could not hope to stun the cat at a single blow. And beside, the tree, rocking now like a water-logged canoe, made his footing more and more insecure. In a moment it would be among the boulders and at the first collision be overturned.

But he could not drag his eyes from those of the catamount. With a fierce snarl which ended in a thrilling scream, the brute cast itself into the air! At the moment it rose, exposing its lighter colored breast to view, a gun-shot shattered the silence of river and forest. The spring of the cat was not stayed, but its yell again changed–this time to a note of agony.

“Jump, lad, jump!” shouted a voice and Enoch, as though awaking from a dream, obeyed the command. He leaped sideways, and landed upon a slippery rock, falling to his knees, yet securing a hand-hold upon a protuberance. Nor did he lose hold of his gun with the other hand.

The body of the catamount landed just where he had stood; but then rolled off the log and disappeared in the rushing stream, while the timber itself crashed instantly into one of the larger boulders. Enoch staggered to his feet, his hand bleeding and also his knee, where the stocking had been torn away by the rock. The log swung broadside to the current again, and seeing his chance, the boy ran along its length and leaped from its end into comparatively shallow water under the bank.

His rescuer was at hand and dragged him, panting and exhausted, to the shore, where he fell weakly on the turf, unable for a moment to utter a word. The man who leaned over him was lean, as dark as an Indian, and in a day when smoothly shaven features were the rule, his face was marked by a tangled growth of iron-gray beard. His hair hung to the fringed collar of his deerskin shirt, and straggled over his low brow in careless locks, instead of being tightly drawn back and fastened in a queue; and out of this wilderness of hair and beard looked two eyes as sharp as the hawk’s.

He was so tall that there was a slight stoop to his shoulders as though, when he walked, he feared to collide with the branches of the trees under which he passed. Erect, he must have lacked but a few inches of seven feet and, possessing not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his big bones, his appearance was not impressive. The deerskin hunting shirt, worked in a curious pattern on the breast with red and blue porcupine quills, fitted him tightly, as did his linsey-woolsey breeches; and his thin shanks were covered with gray hose darned clumsily in more than one place. He would have been selected at first sight as a wood-ranger and hunter, and carried his long rifle with more grace than he ever held plough or wielded reaping-hook.

Indeed, Josiah Bolderwood was one of that strange class of white men so frequently found during the pioneer era of our Eastern country. He seemed to have been born, as he often said himself, with a gun in his hands. His mother, lying on her couch behind the double wall of a blockhouse in the Maine wilderness, loaded spare guns for her husband and his comrades while they beat off the yelling redskins, when Josiah was but a few days old. He was a ranger and trapper from the beginning. He had slept under the canopy of the forest more often than in a bed and beneath a roof made by men’s hands. From early youth he had hunted all through the northern wilderness, and had been no more able to tie himself to a farm, and earn his bread by tilling the soil, than an Indian. Indeed, he was more of an Indian than a white man in habits, tastes, and feelings; he lacked only that marvelous appreciation of signs and sounds in the forest, in which the white can never hope to equal the red man.

“Lad, that was a near chance for you!” he said, when he saw that Enoch was practically unhurt. “The Almighty surely brought me to this lick jest right. I knowed you was here when I heard the shot; but as your marm said you’d gone for a deer, I didn’t s’pose you’d be huntin’ for catamounts, too! Howsomever, somethin’ tol’ me ter run when I heard your gun, an’ run I did.”

“I didn’t shoot at the wild-cat, ’Siah,” said the boy, getting upon his feet. “See yonder; there’s the doe I knocked over. But the critter was after her, too, and it madded him when I fired, I s’pose.”

“And ye didn’t git your gun loaded again!” exclaimed Bolderwood.

His young friend blushed with shame. “I–I didn’t think. I ran over to look at the doe, and the critter jumped at me outer the tree. Then I got on the log and he follered me—”

“Jonas Harding’s boy’d oughter known better than that,” declared the old ranger, with some vexation.

“I know it, ’Siah. Poor father told me ’nough times never to move outer my tracks till I had loaded again. An’ I reckon this’ll be a lesson for me. I–I ain’t got over it yet.”

“Wal,” said Bolderwood, “while you git yer breath, Nuck, I’ll flay that critter and hang her up. I’m in somethin’ of a hurry this mornin’; but as the widder’s needin’ the meat, we won’t leave the carcass to the varmints.”

“You’ve been to my house, ’Siah?” cried Enoch, following him across the little glade.

“Yes. Jest stopped there on my way down from Manchester. That’s how I knew you was over here hunting.”

“But if you’re in a hurry, leave me to do that,” said the boy. “I’m all right now.”

“You’re in as big a hurry as I be, Nuck,” returned the ranger, with a grim smile. “I’m going to take you with me over to Mr. James Breckenridge’s. Ev’ry gun we kin git may count to-day, lad.”

“Did mother say I could go, ’Siah?” cried the youngster, with undoubted satisfaction in his voice. “You’re the best man that I know to get her to say ‘yes’!”

Bolderwood looked up from his work with much gravity. “This ain’t no funnin’ we’re goin’ on, Nuck. It’s serious business. You kin shoot straight, an’ that’s why I begged for ye. This may be the most turrible day you ever seen, my lad, for the day on which a man or boy sees bloodshed for the fust time, is a mem’ry that he takes with him to the grave.”

CHAPTER II
ENOCH HARDING FEELS HIMSELF A MAN

Although Enoch Harding had not grasped the serious nature of the matter which the ranger’s words suggested, there was something he had realized, however, and this thought sent the blood coursing through his veins with more than wonted vigor and his eyes sparkled. He was a man. He was to play a man’s part on this day and the neighbors–even the old ranger who had stood his friend on so many occasions already–recognized him as the head of the family.

Bolderwood saw this thought expressed in his face and without desiring to “take him down” and humble his pride, wished to show him the serious side of the situation. To this end he spoke upon another subject, beginning: “D’ye remember where we be, Nuck? ’Member this place? Seems strange that you sh’d have such a caper here with that catamount after what happened only last spring, doesn’t it?” He glanced