Three

That first night in the new valley Nate slept in a small clearing at the base of a cliff located almost a full mile north of the stream. With the rock wall at his back, he only had to worry about something coming at him from the front. He gathered several loads of dry wood, bedded down the horses close to the cliff, and spread out his blankets between them and the fire. The long day on the trail had left him too tired to bother hunting his supper. He settled for some of the pemmican his wife had thoughtfully packed.

As Nate munched, he pondered. The gigantic panther tracks weren’t much cause for alarm since the big cats were known to roam over a wide range and the one responsible for the prints might not show up in the valley again for many days, if not weeks. And when it did, the odds were that the panther, or mountain lion as a few of the trappers had taken to calling the breed, would just go about its business without bothering him.

Like wolves, panthers normally wanted nothing to do with humans.

Seated there close to the crackling flames, warm and content and drowsy, Nate felt a bit ashamed of his earlier misgivings. The valley was really no different from any other. Oh, its shape was extraordinary, but it still had a stream and grass and trees, just as others did. And while the surrounding peaks tended to shade the valley floor more hours of the day than was typical, shade in and of itself was hardly sinister. He laughed at his former feelings and took a swig of piping hot coffee.

Nate knew how a mind could play tricks on a person, especially in the rugged Rockies where the awe-inspiring landscape was a heady spectacle that stirred the emotions to undreamt of heights. The imagination was free to soar with the eagles, and if left unchecked, might soar into stormy clouds of worry and despair. Many a trapper had fallen prey to the ravings of his own mental fancies, and Nate had no intention of joining their ranks.

There had been one man in particular whose story Nate recalled vividly. The trapper, a greenhorn from North Carolina or some such Southern state, had outfitted himself in Missouri and traveled west with a rendezvous caravan. At the annual gathering he’d announced to all and sundry that he was going to bring back more furs the next year than any trapper had ever done before. And off he went to trap on his own. A few of the men offered to be his partner, but he’d refused each and every one.

The next rendezvous came along and the Southerner failed to show. Some wondered about the loud greenhorn, speculating on his possible fate. Indians, a wild beast, a natural disaster like an avalanche, or an innocent accident might have cost the brash youngster his life.

Hundreds of trappers perished every year from those common hazards, and others.

Afterward, the North Carolinian was forgotten about until later that fall when a group of trappers riding into unknown land to the west found a crude cabin near a high pass. Bleached bones of horses long dead dotted the weeds choking the front of the structure. Inside they found human bones, a single skeleton in a heap beside a chair. They also uncovered a journal.

Evidently, the greenhorn had come on an area rich with beaver and decided to winter there. He’d built the cabin from downed trees, stored his bales inside, stocked up on jerky, and prepared to wait until Spring to head east. About halfway through the winter, however, the isolation got to the man.

His journal related the entire story. At first, the trapper complained of being spied on by unseen eyes. He thought he was being watched as he went about his daily chores, and he was certain hostiles were sizing him up to take his hair. Then he began hearing peculiar noises, mostly at night, scratching and rustling and low whispering. Yet when he dashed outside to confront the intruders, no one was there.

Several weeks of this ordeal had a terrible effect on the trapper’s fraying mental state. He wrote in his journal of seeing large, strange bugs crawling about in the forest behind his cabin and of hearing them on his roof after dark. He’d shoot at them, to no avail. He’d rail at them, and throw sticks and stones, but they refused to leave.

Finally came the day when the trapper barricaded himself inside. In his journal he told of a fierce siege by the bugs, and how he was valiantly fighting them off. Some, though, were getting in through cracks in the walls or chinks in the floor and crawling up under his buckskins to bite and tear at his flesh. He was doing the best he could to resist the dark tide, but he labored at a disadvantage since many of the bugs were invisible.

The trapper’s last entry spoke eloquently of his abject state. He’d stripped off his clothes so the bugs couldn’t hide on his person. He’d stabbed himself a few times in the belief he was stabbing attacking bugs. Desperate, in terrible agony, he’d decided to put an end to himself before the bugs crawled into his mouth and nose and ears and ate his innards, burrowing from the inside out. The man had sat in a makeshift chair, cocked a pistol, stuck the tip of the barrel in his mouth, and squeezed the trigger. Simple as that.

Nate had seen the journal and touched the drops of blood scattered over its last two pages. He remembered wondering if the same fate would one day befall him, remembered scoffing at the idea. Yet he had behaved the same way at sight of the valley.

Now, staring into the comforting fire, Nate grinned and slapped his leg, amused by his foolish behavior. It was all right for kids to be afraid of the dark and other imaginary demons; they didn’t know any better. But he was a grown man. He’d slain grizzlies, wolverines, and Apaches. He had nothing to fear but fear itself.

Later that night, snug under his blankets, his head propped on his hands, his gaze on the multitude of sparkling stars, Nate laid his plans for the next day. In the distance a coyote yipped, closer by an owl voiced its unique question. Gradually he drifted into dreamland and was on the verge of deep slumber when he heard something which made him sit bolt upright and grab for his Hawken.

From the west, from farther up the valley, wafted a menacing, guttural snarl totally unlike those of the wolves. It was deeper, louder, more ferocious, resembling muted thunder more than anything else, an elemental sound that inspired elemental dread.

Nate listened breathlessly. When the snarl died, he laid back down and tried telling himself the incident was of no consequence. So what if the panther was still in the valley? So what if it was on the prowl? He reminded himself that panthers seldom attacked people. To be on the safe side, though, he added fuel to the fire until the blaze was twice the size it had been. Then he reclined on his side, facing the woods, and cupped a palm around a pistol.

Sleep was a long time claiming him.

A pink glow tinged the eastern sky when Nate woke up and heated the coffee left over from the evening before. The strong brew and jerky sufficed for breakfast. His saddle went on the stallion, his parfleches and packs on one of the pack horses, and off he rode, savoring the tangy nip in the air. On all sides birds serenaded the rising sun.

Morning was one of Nate’s favorite times. It gave him a wholesome sense of renewal, of starting each day with a clean slate. He looked forward to the work he had to do, and to raising his first beaver. In a few days he would have some pelts ready to sell. In six weeks he would have bales of them.

First things first. Nate watered the horses, then rode westward, noting the locations of lodges and spots where trees had recently been felled. Midway up the valley he established his permanent camp in a sheltered clearing bordered by thickets on two sides, dense spruce on the third, and the stream on the fourth.

Taking a half-dozen traps, Nate retraced his route and placed them at suitable points. Most went close to lodges, others near runs made by the beaver when leaving or entering the water. He had to wade out into the stream, then position the set traps deep enough under the surface to drown the animals when caught. Each trap was baited with castorum, a yellow substance taken from their glands. The scent drew beavers like flowers drew bees.

Done with the first batch, Nate went back to camp and spent the next two hours erecting a sturdy lean-to, angled so it blocked the prevailing northwesterly winds. Some trappers liked to build their shelters of hides, but Nate considered the practice a horrible waste of prime fur.

The frame for stretching pelts was Nate’s subsequent chore. He used firm, trimmed limbs and lashed them together with whangs from his buckskins. A graining block had to be set up. And when that was done, Nate piled a store of wood.

Plenty of daylight remained, so Nate took his sack of Newhouses and went westward along the stream placing trap after trap. Newhouse was the name of the man who manufactured the traps, and many now called his product by his name. In additions Newhouse published a manual known as THE TRAPPERS GUIDE, a somewhat misleading book that had lured countless gullible souls to the mountains in search of fortune. Newhouse claimed trapping was a ‘gentlemanly’ occupation, and proved it by illustrating his guide with drawings of so-called trappers in refined city clothes doing things like skinning beaver and shooting game.

Still, the man made a fine steel trap. He’d wisely designed the jaws to be smooth, not jagged, so the fur wouldn’t be damaged. A disk at the bottom was the trigger that caused the leaf springs to fly up and lock the jaws in place. It all happened so fast, there was no time for an animal to pull its foot from harm’s way once the disk was stepped on.

Nate had to be careful. Quite a few trappers had lost thumbs or fingers after accidentally snaring their own hands in the snapping jaws. A moment’s distraction was all it took. He’d learned to concentrate on the trap and nothing but the trap when setting the trigger and lowering the device into the water.

Sixteen traps Nate was able to put out that afternoon. The sun crowned the mountains when he tied his sack to his saddle and trotted back to camp. Along the way, he double-checked to be sure he had blazed trees near each of the traps so he could find them again.

That night Nate ate rabbit stew spiced with wild onions and herbs. He treated himself to sugar in his coffee to celebrate the laying of his line. His dreams that night were of piles and piles of glossy peltries.

The next day was a repeat of the first. Nate succeeded in placing nearly half of his traps by sunset, and that evening, when making his rounds, he found the first snared beaver, a husky male with a lustrous coat. The animal had tried to bite its leg off to escape but fortunately failed.

By the end of the fourth day all the traps had been set out and Nate had his hands full tending to the hides of those caught. It always happened that more beaver were caught right after a trap line was laid out than later on. Once the beaver population started to dwindle, the survivors exercised more caution, steering clear of anything that smelled of man or metal. A trapper had to use more ingenuity in order to keep on catching them.

Nate had no such problem for the time being. Day after day went by, each rewarding him with five or six more beaver. His routine was always the same. Up at dawn to eat a hurried breakfast, a check of all the traps to retrieve any animals caught overnight, each of which had to be lugged to camp, then the late morning and early afternoon hours were spent working on pelts. Late afternoon was devoted to another patrol of the stream. Finally came supper, and more curing and scraping until he was too tired to stay awake another minute.

In this way four weeks elapsed. Nate lost all track of time, he was so immersed in his work. He trapped the main stream out and started on several branches where younger beaver had been driven by population pressure to establish their own lodges. Not once did Nate see another human being. Animals were his sole companions in the remote valley, deer and elk and countless smaller creatures.

Nate loved every minute. He often thought of his former job as an aspiring accountant in New York City, and he marveled that he had once seriously considered spending the rest of his life chained to a desk. He remembered the small work area he’d been given, and being huddled over ledgers late into the night to get caught up for a client. He remembered the reek of the lamps, the sore eyes, the cramps in his back. How could he have been so stupid?

All Nate had to do was pause and gaze at the majestic splendor all around him to see his former folly for what it had truly been. Give him the invigorating mountain air, spiced with the earthy scent of pine! Give him the deep blue sky, the rich brown earth and deep green forests! Give him the freedom to live as he damn well pleased instead of having to bow to every whim of a fickle employer! This was the life! The only life!

Early on, Nate forgot about the panther, forgot about his premonition, forgot about his feelings of unease. Trapping took all his time from sunrise to midnight. There weren’t any idle moments to spend in worthless musing. Gradually his collection of peltries grew and grew, and after a month he was the proud owner of one hundred and five hides.

Everything went extremely well until the day Nate approached his camp with a forty-pound beaver slung over a shoulder and heard his horses nickering. By their tone Nate realized they were upset. Grasping his Hawken tighter, he jogged the rest of the way and came to the edge of the clearing in time to glimpse a tawny form vanishing into the thicket on the other side. So fleeting was the glimpse that Nate couldn’t be sure if he’d seen a panther, a bobcat, or something else entirely.

The black stallion was nervously prancing back and forth. Dropping the beaver, Nate ran over and calmed the troubled horse before it could break loose from its tether. He scoured the underbrush but saw no sign of their visitor. Not satisfied, he tiptoed into the thicket and crouched low to the ground where he would be more likely to spot movement. The still plants mocked him. Whatever had been there was apparently gone.

Nate searched in vain for tracks, thanks to the hard soil and the thick grass. He made a circuit of the camp to see if the animal had left prints elsewhere and was disappointed to find none.

Vaguely troubled, Nate resumed working. The horses hadn’t been harmed and none of his belongings had been disturbed, so he shouldn’t be worried. Yet he couldn’t shake a persistent, nagging, trifling sense of impending trouble.

Butcher knife in hand, Nate set the beaver on its back and slit down the back of each hind leg. Cutting slowly, he opened a straight slit from the chin to the tail. Then, using his fingers, he peeled the beaver’s hide down over its head as he might peel a stocking from his foot. While peeling he had to cut ligaments and muscles holding the hide in place, remembering to always hold the edge of the knife slanted toward the body and not toward the hide to avoid nicking the valuable fur.

While the hide was still pliable, Nate attached it to the stretching frame he had made. A rough stone sufficed as a scraper, and with it he removed shreds of muscles and fat that had clung to the inside of the pelt. He also trimmed off a few ragged edges. Overall, though, the hide was as fine as any he’d ever collected.

That evening Nate half expected the horses to get the scent of something and act up again, or to hear the throaty cry of the giant panther. Neither occurred. Bad nerves again, he figured, and turned in when the fire was so low it was almost out.

What woke Nate up, he couldn’t say. One second he was sound asleep, the next he was lying there in near total darkness listening to his horses stomp and nicker. Instantly he pushed erect, rifle tucked to his shoulder. The snap of a twig to the west showed him which way to turn, and as he did he saw something at the edge of the spruce trees. He took a hasty bead, wishing he could see the thing clearly, when it suddenly disappeared. Puzzled, he bent at the waist and dashed forward.

Nate reached the thicket and halted. He glanced right, he glanced left. There was no sign of the creature. The horses were even more agitated now, the stallion trying to rear, one of the pack horses tugging furiously at its rope.

“Damn,” Nate muttered. He had no choice but to dash to the horses and try yet again to quiet them down. The stallion did so immediately but the pack horse was in a panic, forcing Nate to seize the tether and hold fast to stop the animal from trying to break free.

In the thicket to the east arose a faint rustling.

Nate twisted, whipping the Hawken up with one hand. He realized the nocturnal prowler had circled completely around his camp. Was it the huge panther? Or something else? The pack horse continued to strain against him and he was of half a mind to pound the rifle stock onto its thick skull to teach it a lesson, but he had never been one to brutalize animals and wasn’t about to start.

The rustling ceased. An eerie stillness gripped the gloomy forest. All Nate could hear was the sighing of the wind in the trees and the soft purling of the stream. Giving the rope a last pull to show the pack horse who was boss, he darted to his blankets and hastily crammed his pistols, knife, and tomahawk under his belt. Then, donning his hat, he sped into the thicket to the east, making no attempt to move stealthily in the hope he would flush the beast.

A flitting hint of a flashing inky shadow was the only clue Nate had to the creature’s location. He promptly veered toward it, but whatever the animal was, it easily outdistanced him, racing off with a speed even the black stallion would be hard pressed to match. Into the adjacent woods it ran, and there, oddly, it paused in the open and seemed to look back.

Nate sprinted in pursuit. As yet he had not had a clear view of the thing. The general shape, though, and its fluid, incredibly swift movements were consistent with those of a panther. He was within twenty feet of the creature and raising the Hawken when once again the animal fled.

In the act of slowing since he had no chance at all of catching it, Nate was mildly surprised when the cat—if such it was—stopped once more and looked back. The inexplicable behavior confused him. Was the panther taunting him or merely curious? Whichever, he couldn’t afford to let a panther skulk about his camp at will and perhaps eventually bring down one of his horses when temptation proved too much to resist. So he pressed on, his thumb resting on the Hawken’s hammer.

The big cat let him approach within twenty-five feet, then wheeled and flowed like quicksilver further into the trees. Yet it only ran another thirty feet or so when it halted again.

Nate was thoroughly confounded. He’d never heard tell of any panther behaving as this one was doing. The only explanation he could think of was that the cat had seldom if ever seen a human being and wasn’t sure whether he was a threat or not. In a way he regretted having to dispatch it. He slowed, thinking the cat would be less likely to run off, and lowered the Hawken to his side.

The panther waited until Nate was less than twenty feet away, then spun and glided into undergrowth to the south. Nate hurried to the vegetation and sank to one knee, seeking a target. Darkness and bushes were all he saw. Frustrated, he moved a few yards to the left to vary the angle. Somewhere in there the cat was hiding. He was sure of it.

But Nate was wrong.

A minute had gone by when frightened whinnies brought Nate to his feet in dismay. His gut balled into a knot as he perceived that the panther had circled once again, this time back to the clearing, back to the horses. Nate flew toward the camp, his moccasins slapping the earth in regular cadence. The whinnies grew more strident, loudest among them the deep cries of the stallion. But where the pack horses, all mares, were neighing out of fear, the stallion was in a fury. Nate prayed the black wouldn’t tear loose and fight the cat. The stallion was one of the best horses he had ever owned and he didn’t care for anything to happen to it.

Suddenly the whinnies of the stallion took a new, harsher tenor, and mingled with the stallion’s snorts and bellows were the low growls of an angry cat.

Nate’s worst fear had come to pass. He could distinguish the stallion through the thicket, rearing and kicking in wild abandon, the firelight highlighting the rippling muscles under its satiny coat. Clutching the rifle in both hands, he plunged into the thicket and barreled his way through to the clearing, there to behold a sight few men had ever witnessed.

The black stallion was engaged in mortal combat with a panther of such immense proportions it appeared more like a monster from prior ages than a mountain lion. Long of body, unnaturally thick through the middle, and powerfully endowed with bulging sinews, the cat was easily evading the stallion’s flailing hoofs. It leaped from side to side with effortless ease, its ears flattened against its round head, its lips curled to reveal its wicked teeth. At any second it might see an opening and pounce.

“No!” Nate roared, closing. Here was the clear shot he needed and he was going to take it, but as he brought the Hawken to bear the panther streaked out of the clearing to the west, a molten blur impossible to hit.

Nate cursed and stopped. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice and follow the cat into the forest. Simmering with baffled wrath, he glanced at the stallion, which was standing still, its sides heaving, its eyes fixed on the spot where the panther had entered the spruce trees.

“Well now,” Nate declared bitterly, “this changes everything, big fellow. I’m not about to leave this valley until I’m done trapping, so I guess that means we’re in for a heap of trouble.” He shook the rifle at the trees and repeated softly, “A heap of trouble.”