Pa was putting on his boots. He put his foot in, and he put his fingers through the strap-ears at the top of the long boot leg. Then he gave a mighty pull, and he stamped hard on the floor, and that boot was on.
“Maybe Scott is sick,” he said, pulling on the other boot.
“You don’t suppose—?” Ma asked, low.
“No,” said Pa. “I keep telling you they won’t make any trouble. They’re perfectly quiet and peaceable down in those camps among the bluffs.”
Laura began to climb out of bed, but Ma said, “Lie down and be still, Laura.” So she lay down.
Pa put on his warm, bright plaid coat, and his fur cap, and his muffler. He lighted the candle in the lantern, took his gun, and hurried outdoors.
Before he shut the door behind him, Laura saw the night outside. It was black dark. Not one star was shining. Laura had never seen such solid darkness.
“Ma?” she said.
“What, Laura?”
“What makes it so dark?”
“It’s going to storm,” Ma answered. She pulled the latch-string in and put a stick of wood on the fire. Then she went back to bed. “Go to sleep, Mary and Laura,” she said. But Ma did not go to sleep, and neither did Mary and Laura. They lay wide awake and listened. They could not hear anything but the wind.
Mary put her head under the quilt and whispered to Laura, “I wish Pa’d come back.”
Laura nodded her head on the pillow, but she couldn’t say anything. She seemed to see Pa striding along the top of the bluff, on the path that went toward Mr. Scott’s house. Tiny bright spots of candlelight darted here and there from the holes cut in the tin lantern. The little flickering lights seemed to be lost in the black dark.
After a long time Laura whispered, “It must be ’most morning.” And Mary nodded. All that time they had been lying and listening to the wind, and Pa had not come back.
Then, high above the shrieking of the wind they heard again that terrible scream. It seemed quite close to the house.
Laura screamed, too, and leaped out of bed. Mary ducked under the covers. Ma got up and began to dress in a hurry. She put another stick of wood on the fire and told Laura to go back to bed. But Laura begged so hard that Ma said she could stay up. “Wrap yourself in the shawl,” Ma said.
They stood by the fire and listened. They couldn’t hear anything but the wind. And they could not do anything. But at least they were not lying down in bed.
Suddenly fists pounded on the door and Pa shouted: “Let me in! Quick, Caroline!”
Ma opened the door and Pa slammed it quickly behind him. He was out of breath. He pushed back his cap and said: “Whew! I’m scared yet.”
“What was it, Charles?” said Ma.
“A panther,” Pa said.
He had hurried as fast as he could go to Mr. Scott’s. When he got there, the house was dark and everything was quiet. Pa went all around the house, listening, and looking with the lantern. He could not find a sign of anything wrong. So he felt like a fool, to think he had got up and dressed in the middle of the night and walked two miles, all because he heard the wind howl.
He did not want Mr. and Mrs. Scott to know about it. So he did not wake them up. He c
ame home as fast as he could because the wind was bitter cold. And he was hurrying along the path, where it went on the edge of the bluff, when all of a sudden he heard that scream right under his feet.
“I tell you my hair stood up till it lifted my cap,” he told Laura. “I lit out for home like a scared rabbit.”
“Where was the panther, Pa?” she asked him.
“In a tree-top,” said Pa. “In the top of that big cottonwood that grows against the bluffs there.”
“Pa, did it come after you?” Laura asked, and he said, “I don’t know, Laura.”
“Well, you’re safe now, Charles,” said Ma.
“Yes, and I’m glad of it. This is too dark a night to be out with panthers,” Pa said. “Now, Laura, where’s my bootjack?”