Gwen"s brow was wrinkled in thought for a moment.
"Yes, I think it would," she said suddenly. "I think it would be a berry!
How"d you like to be the clown?"
"I wasn"t in aviation in the Army," smiled Johnny.
"No, but really, would you?"
"Why! Why! Yes, I might. It might be better than boxing the bear, and since I"ve got to stick around, I might as well be a clown as anything."
"Stick around?" she asked. "Why do you have to stick around?"
For an instant the words were on the tip of Johnny"s tongue which would have told her the whole truth. But his lips would not frame the sentence.
"Why, I--I," he stammered; "just my nature, I guess. Always did like the circus."
Johnny was not a great success as a boxer that morning. He was thinking of the diamond ring, and wondering why he had not demanded the right to keep it, once he had it in his grasp; wondering, too, how it happened that Millie had it one day, and Gwen another. "Queer mixup," was his mental comment.
Late that night, after the show was over, when the lights were dim, Johnny wandered into the animal tent. He was just pa.s.sing the cage of the black leopard when a low hiss halted him. Then he felt a grip on his arm.
It was Pant.
"Sit down here in the dark, Johnny," he whispered. "I"ll tell you the story of that black beast. I can tell it better with his wicked red eyes burning holes at me through the dark, just as they did once before, and him a free black cat!"
Johnny started as he stared at the cage where, on a narrow wooden shelf, the leopard must be reposing. All he could see was a pair of red b.a.l.l.s of fire, and it seemed to him that in all his life he had never seen anything so full of hate as was the red gleam that seemed fairly to shoot out from them.
CHAPTER XIII PANT"S STORY OF THE BLACK CAT
"Life"s like this," Pant gripped Johnny"s arm, as the two red b.a.l.l.s in the back of the dark cage shifted from side to side; "life"s just like this: When once you"ve done a thing, you want to do it again. That"s why we have to watch our habits, if we want our lives to count for something.
Lots of fellows don"t watch them. I told you about killing the old tiger and his mate, and bringing in the cubs to the doctor, so he could sell them to the traders and buy supplies for his hospital. Well, once I had done that, I wanted to do it again. I guess there was something of my old desire to study cats in me yet, for I was overjoyed when I heard wild stories about a giant black leopard that haunted the trail far up the river. You see, the mountain streams were drying up, and the big cats were being driven out of the mountain forests to the river jungles.
"The stories they told about that big black cat made a fellow"s blood run cold. He was big as a tiger. He was a fierce man-eater. His fangs were twice the size of a tiger"s, and each one like a knife blade. He had been seen to seize a full grown man, and before the man"s companions could fire upon him, to leap to the bough of a tree, ten feet from the ground, the man in his jaws, too. The others had fled in terror. They never knew what terrible fate had overtaken their companion until a few days later a second party pa.s.sing that way had found his bones strewn beneath that tree.
"Of course I laughed at their stories. A black cat do a thing like that?
Why, the one in the zoo back home was not three times the size of a house cat, and he, the keeper had told me, was eight years old.
"I did not believe their stories, but the natives believed them, and would not stir up the river road; and none would come down it, either; so those who were sick could not come to the hospital I had helped to make better. This made me angry.
""I will go and kill that black cat," I said to the doctor. "I will have his skin for a foot mat!"
"He smiled in a friendly way, and bade me not be rash. The black leopard, he told me, was much more to be feared than the tiger. Unlike the tiger, he killed for the fun of killing. He climbed trees, and there on the dark trunk, seeming but a part of the tree itself, he waited for his prey. In the gloom of the forest, he dropped without a sound, and his attack was most terrible. He was truly large, too, six feet in length from tip of nose to base of tail.
"I did not believe the doctor. Had I not seen a full grown black leopard in the zoo? Was he not an insignificant fellow? And yet, I was a little afraid, for I remembered that the black cat in the zoo had not been afraid, when all the other great cats cringed in dark corners of their cages. I was a little afraid, but I would not admit it.
""Just because you have told me he is terrible," I said, "I will take along a strong cage. I will bring him to you alive. We will sell him to the traders, and buy more beds for our hospital."
"Then the doctor begged me not to be foolhardy. But I would not listen.
With four natives to carry the cage, with a rifle in my hand, and a big knife at my belt, I went--went far up the river trail. When the natives would go no farther, I called them dirty cowards, and putting my rifle inside the cage, dragged the cage after me until I had come to a place where, in a deep forest, at the bend of the river, the black cat was said to make his stand.
"I was frightened a little, Johnny, when I saw the bleached bones of a man lying beneath a great tree where mosses and vines hung thick, but I rea.s.sured myself by saying the man had died there alone, and the jackals had picked his bones.
""That"s the origin of the wild story," I told myself. "Like as not there is no black cat at all, and I shall go home disappointed."
"But I didn"t, Johnny, I didn"t."
Johnny could feel Pant"s hand grip his arm hard, as the black creature in the cage stirred and gave forth a sort of hissing yawn.
"You were never in the jungle at night?" Pant"s tense, vibrant whisper told more plainly than words that he was living over again those hours in the jungle alone.
"No," breathed Johnny.
"It"s wonderful, and terrible. The sun sinks from sight. Darkness comes and then out shines the moon. And the moonlight! Nowhere else is it like it is in the jungle. It creeps down among the ma.s.ses of leaves, transforming swinging, swaying limbs into gigantic, twisting serpents, ready at any moment to swing down upon you. It turns every shadow-dotted tree trunk into a beast ready to leap at your throat. It"s weird, fascinating, terrible. Down at the river some beast plunges into the water. You hear the splash, then the swish, swish of his strokes. He is coming to your bank, you are sure. You are afraid. Who would not be?
"But me, I sat by my cage, with the rifle over one knee and watched. One hour, two hours, three hours I watched, until at last all the twisting branches, the spotted tree trunks were familiar to me.
"And then, then he came; the black beast, the great black cat, he came."
Pant paused. There came a hiss from the cage, as if the black cat, too, was living those hours over again.
"I saw him, Johnny, I saw him. I caught the wicked gleam of his two red eyes." Pant gripped Johnny"s arm until it hurt. "He was not thirty feet from me. Flattened against a broad tree trunk, he was glaring at me out of the dark. How he came so close without my seeing him, I cannot tell.
He was a devil. Perhaps he had been there all that time. Who knows?
"Anyway, there he was. I cast my charm upon him. And I had him, Johnny, I had him. With my rifle I could have shot him on the instant. But he had me, too. He was so wonderful. I have told you about the wonder of the tiger"s coat. It is nothing to the coat of a black leopard in the jungle.
You have seen him. You know how immense he is; seven feet from tip of nose to base of tail. You have seen him in his cage, but will never see him as I saw him that night, a free beast in his own wilderness, and I a stranger, an intruder.
"But I thought I had him. I wanted to study him: to learn his secrets. I planned how I would follow him day after day, and learn all his secrets.
I was mad, stark mad."
Pant paused again as if for breath. The black beast moved nearer on his shelf within the cage. The thrashing of his tail was like the dull beat of a drum.
"Just when I was thinking all this," Pant rose upon his knees in his excitement, "just when I thought I had him, he gave one piercing scream and leaped. My man, what a leap! He struck me all unprepared; struck me with fangs and claws tearing at my flesh. Yet my right hand was free. It was a tense, agonizing second. In some way I got out my knife and slashed away with it. The next instant I lost consciousness."
Pant paused again. Once more the leopard moved his length along the cage.
"But, Johnny, here"s the strangest part of all. I cannot explain it; only know it"s true. They say that sometimes, in moments of great shock, men lose their personality and become another person; that when they come back to themselves they have done things they know nothing of, yet others have seen them do. It may have been like that with me. And then, a great teacher in the heart of India once told me that there was a great spirit of the forest who looked after brave hunters, and did things for them in time of great danger which they could not do for themselves. It may have been that, too. Whatever way it may have been, it was strange; so strange that you would not believe me were I not your friend who always told you the truth.
"Listen, Johnny! When I came to myself I was weak, terribly weak from loss of blood; but the cat, the big black cat, he was raging in the cage, and the door was fastened tight."
Pant paused. The animal tent was still. Suddenly a crimson flash gleamed.
For an instant it turned the black cat blood red. The next moment, with a wild snarl, the beast flattened himself against the bars of his cage.
A keeper sprang out of the darkness.
"What"s that?" he demanded.