Death in the Darkness
Part 2
All Summer long, the big cat appeared every night. No one ever saw it, but they knew it came because of the carnage it left behind. It killed prized cattle and horses. Sometimes it ate what it killed. Sometimes, it just killed for the fun of killing. As the weeks passed, more and more people thought that it must be some sort of demon. Priests and ministers were consulted, but the livestock just kept dying.
One of the more useful decisions the Sheriff made was to bring in an outsider, a man from Colorado with a pack of mountain lion hounds to hunt down whatever was killing the livestock. He arrived on July 15th and was ready to go immediately.
The hounds were fearsome looking creatures, tall, lean, and mean. They were a different species from the farm dogs common in the area. They were bred to hunt and to fight and to kill. They lived to taste the blood of their prey. Their master, a dour man named Jenkins, was as mean as his dogs. He was a solid 260 pounds. He came for the money, not to make friends. The truth was that he cared more for his hounds than he did people.
After resting for a day, Jenkins took his hounds to the beast’s most recent kills, a pair of horses belonging to one of the leading citizens in the region. The Sheriff took Jenkins to the farm where the kills had occurred, and Jenkins examined the area. He had killed more than a hundred mountain lions and an even more bears, but never had he seen anything like the carnage he saw that morning. The creature had also left behind its telltale tracks. Jenkins examined them closely. They were at least twice the size of the largest mountain lion tracks he had ever seen.
The size of the tracks didn’t matter to Jenkins, however. He led his hounds to the beast’s tracks and unleashed them. After smelling the ground for a moment, the hounds were off at a full run. They disappeared into the high grass, and then Jenkins and Sheriff could hear them barking and bawling as they climbed the mountain. Soon they too far away to be heard.
In the animal kingdom, there are few things more powerful, or more feared, than a pack of wolves. Not even a grizzly bear will stand up to a pack. As descendants of wolves, dogs inherit this same ability to instill fear in other animals, especially when they are operating as a pack. These particular hounds were huge, and they had been hunting together for years. They had come across the largest black bear and the largest mountain lions, and their quarry had always fled. Occasionally, they would catch a younger mountain lion or a smaller bear on the ground and tear them apart.
After a night in the valley, the large cat had withdrawn into the mountains. He was starting to enjoy his new home. He had found a large rock overlooking his kingdom and liked to pass the day sunning himself. He was about five miles from his last kill, a short distance, but far enough to not worry about being followed. Not that he worried if he was followed.
When he heard the hounds, the cat knew what they were instantly. Millenia of instinct had taught his ancestors that these creatures were dangerous. He thought about running. The hounds were still a half mile away, and he could keep his distance from them for a while, if he wanted. He looked at his large left paw with its retractable claws. He then spread his toes, extending the two and a half inch long claws. They were as sharp as razors and could tear just about anything apart. In the end, the cat decided he would stay and fight.
As the hounds drew closer, the big cat got up from his slumbering place and followed his trail back up towards the top of the mountain looking for a satisfactory place for battle. He settled on a relatively flat area where there was a small clearing. He crouched at the edge of the clearing knowing the hounds would have to pass through it. There he stood and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long.
In a minute, the hounds were upon him, attempting to trap him in a circle. The cat backed himself against a large tree. Slowly, the hounds closed the circle around him. The cat ceded the initiative to the hounds. Finally, the leader of the pack could wait no longer. He charged the great cat. As he sprang into action, two other hounds took advantage of the distraction the lead hound cause to launch their own attacks.
With three quick strikes, three dogs were dead. The first hound died from a broken neck, a quick strike from a powerful swipe from the cat’s paw. The second dog had its internal organs torn from its body and died a couple minutes later. The third hound had its skull crushed in the cat’s powerful jaws.
The strength of the pack, however, is the commitment of the hounds, and two other hounds charged immediately in an effort to help their already dead or dying comrades. They died the in the same way their pack mates had.
Only one hound was left, and the cat was approaching him. The hound looked at the cat and knew he had no chance of survival. The hound turned and ran as fast as he could to his master. The cat pursued him for about a hundred yards, but it was not a serious pursuit.
The cat was annoyed. He surveyed the battlefield and looked at the dead dogs. They stank. He couldn’t enjoy this part of his kingdom with the awful scent they left behind. He would have to find another lair deeper in the woods.
The surviving hound made it back to its owner, but he would never go out on a hunt again. The next day, Jenkins left and returned to Colorado. He thought there wasn’t anything his hounds couldn’t handle. He was wrong.
The battle with the hounds was not the only fight the beast fought with the humans. As the Summer drew on, the men who lived on the farms were becoming more aggressive. First, two had come hunting him. They carried the firesticks the creature knew to be dangerous, but the two men moved through the forest like a pair of horses. They could never approach closer within half mile of the cat, because the cat always knew their location. Night was the great equalizer, and after avoiding them for two days, the cat decided to become the hunter the third night.
As far as the cat could tell, the humans had no senses. They could not see at night and had no ability to hear anything. They had perhaps the poorest sense of smell of any animal in the animal kingdom.
On that third night, they slept in the open, seated around a fire. Perhaps these men thought that the fire would protect them. It would not. As the cat watched, one of the men laid down and went to sleep.
That left only one awake, but he was sitting on a log and seemed to be concentrating on the fire for some reason. He didn’t move as he sat mesmerized. Slowly, the cat crept to within thirty feet of the human. It would be an easy kill. Every muscle in the cat tensed as he prepared for the attack. It was hidden by the dark. It waited for just the right moment.
Meanwhile, the man sat at the edge of the fire, his rifle cradled in his arms. The only sound he could hear was the popping of the fire. He saw no movement in the edges of the light cast by the fire. He did not feel any fear despite the fact that he was alone. The lever action .30–30 he held was more than sufficient to kill anything he would encounter in these woods, and he felt completely in control.
The cat flew from the darkness, its tightly coiled muscles launching him like a rocket at his prey.
The cat hit the man from behind at a speed approaching 40 miles per hour. His claws seized the man’s torso as his jaws caught the man’s head in a vice-like grip. The man was dead before he could scream. His rifle fell to the ground unused.
The other human slumbered a few feet away, but the sound of the cat hitting his brother woke him. Before he could open his eyes and focus on his surroundings, however, the great cat was upon him as well. He lived only twenty seconds longer than his brother.
Other men had come after the first two. Those who came by themselves or in groups of two or three died quickly. Twice, larger groups of humans came after him. The cat could not kill them all, but at night, it hid at the edge of their fires, and whenever one of the men would stray too far from the fire, he would die. None of the men stayed more that a night or two before leaving.
The creature was not a “man-eater” as some people were saying. He didn’t like the taste of men, and he did not like the way they smelled. Had they not come after him, he would not have killed them. It wasn’t that the cat had any feeling of sympathy or regret about the men he killed — it was more that killing them was a waste of the cat’s time.
Meanwhile, Noah was growing bored at his grandparent’s house.
“Grandpa, did you hear that animal killed a whole pack of dogs?” Noah asked his grandfather.
“I heard that,” Grandpa replied.
“Maybe it is some type of demon?” Noah asked.
“No, there is nothing unexplainable about the animal. It might be big, but I tell you, it’s a panther. I’ve killed many a panther myself back when they lived around here. They are crafty, and they kill livestock. The problem is that there aren’t no real hunters around here anymore.”
Grandpa looked at an old single shot twelve gauge shotgun hanging on the wall. He pointed to the gun.
“I tell you,” he said, “with that gun there, you could blow the animal’s head off.”
Noah got excited. “You mean like I used it when we hunted squirrels and rabbits?”
“Not exactly,” his grandfather said, “You’d have to use slugs. I still have a box of them from when I hunted deer with that rifle. But if someone was close enough, he could blow the animals head off with that shotgun.”
Noah wanted to be a hunter, and here he was with the perfect opportunity to show the world that he could be a great hunter. Later that night, after everyone had gone to bed, Noah got out of bed and dressed himself. He tiptoed through the house to the living room. He lifted the shotgun from the rack on the wall and grabbed a handful of shot shells loaded with slugs and stuck them into his pocket. He then moved silently to the front door and slipped out without making a sound. He had everything he needed to kill the beast that was terrorizing his neighbors.
By the time his grandparents awoke, Noah was already on the doorstep of the big woods. He carried the gun cradled in his right arm, loaded, and ready for the hunt.
