High on the crags a panther screamed.

Savage, sinister, yet appallingly human like the malevolent squall of an infuriated hag the cry tore through the night shadows whelming the mountain-girt gulf of the Traps. Among the gigantic bowlders and the uncanny crevasses of Dickie Barre it hurtled in a shattered wave of sound. Out across the dense tangle of underbrush and the lazy-creeping water of Coxing Hill it fled, freezing in their tracks the smaller brethren of the wild fox and raccoon and rabbit and mink which moved there in their furtive foraging. From the forested steeps of Mohonk and Millbrook it reverberated, and among those trees it was swallowed up.

Again the malignant wail broke out; and now the beast which voiced it was not in the same spot as before. Somewhere on the very brink of the precipice of Dickie Barre the huge cat had been, and somewhere on that edge he still was. But he was moving, seeking a crack or crevice through which he might steal swiftly downward without hurling himself to death on the rubble of cliff-fragments below; and his failure to find it at once exasperated his ugly nature to its ugliest. His eyes told him something down there was moving. His nose said the thing was human, was hurt, was harmless. His fierce brain knew it would be an easy kill, and his ravening jaws slavered at the realization that after one rending attack he could gorge himself on the tender flesh of a woman.

Baffled, maddened, he screeched once more. Then he became silent. He had found something promising: not a direct line of descent, but a narrow shelf dipping diagonally down the face of the cliff. Along this he proceeded with swift, sure stealth.

Then, down in the density behind him, a light shot out from between two towering bowlders. A clean, brilliant beam it was the ray of a carbide camp-lamp. Its white sheen played up, down, right, left; and as it moved, the rock-masses and the trees and brush round about stood forth, then vanished again into the gloom. But it did not advance. Between those two colossal blocks it stayed, peering like a dazzling eye.

All at once it jumped. From the chaos of chunks between silent cat and silent light, a voice had cried out.

Help! Oh help!

It was a high, clear, penetrating call, with an under-note of terror and pain.

Two voices answered: one, a ferine snarl from the merciless cat-creature beyond; the other, a quick response in the tones of a man.

Right here! Where are you?

Here into the the rocks! Oh, hurry up, before that critter gits to me!

Coming!

The glaring white eye moved forward in haste. Behind it, boots scraped and bumped on rock. It rose in a steep slant, slid