Jules Damand was a cool, hardy fellow, and had been in danger before now. But, there was something so frightful in the load upon his breast, that for a moment his heart failed him. He lay silent, and put out his hand toward a pistol by slow degrees.
The strange thing uttered, now and then, a low, chuckling laugh, horrible to hear. Ben, who lay near the door of the cabin, heard the sound and stirred uneasily in his sleep. Jules, silent as the grave, allowed his hand to slide along the ground toward the pistol-butt. Even the slight motion he made annoyed the savage brute, and he uttered a sort of low snarl. Jules stopped and waited for him to become quiet. He was in an uncomfortable position, flat upon his back, with his right arm lying under the body of the assailant, who grinned and chattered at him, and scratched at his throat with his long nails in a playful manner.
“Sacré!” muttered Jules. “If I could only get my right arm free.”
He found that impossible; the whole weight of the hairy body lay upon it and fixed it like a rock. Jules again began to feel for his pistol, and laid his hand upon it, when the hairy palm of the Mountain Devil suddenly closed upon it. There seemed to be something in the touch of the cold steel which roused his hate, for he darted his long nails into the face of the trapper, and left bleeding furrows from brow to chin. At the same time Jules managed to get the pistol partly free, and made a shot at him in the dark.
The creature had some powers of memory; he knew that the ball which had pierced his arm that morning had been accompanied by a sound like the crack of the pistol, and he sprung away for a little distance, and stood licking the blood from another wound in his arm. The report of the pistol had roused everybody, and they came out in great haste, Ben leading the way with his rifle in his hand. At the sight of him the wild creature bounded away, and hurried up the mountain side. It was plain that he remembered Ben as the man who had injured him in the morning. He snarled and screamed as he disappeared from view, while Jan stood with chattering teeth and shaking limbs, glaring after the form which was disappearing behind the hills.
“Ach, mein Gott! Dere he ish again. Now you mine vat I says. Dat ish ter tuyvel. Don’ you co to say ash it vas not. Dat ish ter tuyvel, unt no mistake. My prains are all hurly-purly. I mos’ deat mit fright.”