Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/149

 I’ve never yet heard a panther scream. I have inquired of scores of reliable, observing men who have spent their lives in the hills of the northwest where the lions range; in the deserts of the southwest, the range of the cougar; the swamp and hard-wood country of the eastern panther and in Mexico, the home of the puma. A very few of them have told me that once or twice in their lives they had heard a note which they believed to be that of the panther. Even they could not be sure.”

“But I’ve read—”

“That they wail like a woman screams,” Moran smilingly finished for her. “That their eyes glow like twin coals of fire in the night as they stalk men through the hills. As a matter of fact it’s only in legend that a panther has ever once attacked man; and no man ever saw, or ever will see, an animal’s eyes at night unless the orbs are struck by a strong, direct ray of light which reflects back from them. A tin can or bit of glass will do the same.”

Moran broke off to explain each new sound, Some of the more common ones she knew; the owls and coyotes; even when a series of high-pitched barks sounded from down the slope she knew they came from a band of cow elk on the