"The snow must have been fully six feet deep that year. One morning near the last of February I had set out on my round, and had made some three miles from our shanty, when I caught sight of a covey of partridges in the distance, and turned out of my way to get a shot at them. It had occurred to me that perchance a brace of them might make savory morsels for my supper. After a considerable _détour_, I bagged my birds, and recovered my trail near the last trap I had visited. My tracks, as I had left them, had been solitary enough; but now I found they were accompanied by the footprints of a large Indian devil.
"I didn't really expect to get a shot at the beast, but I loaded both barrels with ball-cartridges. As I went on, however, it began to strike me as strange that the brute should happen to be going so far in my direction. Step for step his footprints clung to mine. When I reached the place where I had branched off in search of the partridges, I found that the panther had branched off with me. So polite a conformity of his ways to mine could have but one significance. I was being tracked!
"The idea, when it first struck me, struck me with too much force to be agreeable. It was a very unusual proceeding on the part of an Indian devil, displaying a most imperfect conception of the fitness of things. That I should hunt him was proper and customary, but that he should think of hunting me was presumptuous and most unpleasant. I resolved that he should be made to repent it before night.
"The traps were unusually successful that trip, and at last I had to stop and make a _cache_ of my spoils. This unusual delay seemed to mislead my wily pursuer, who suddenly came out of a thicket while I was hidden behind a tree-trunk. As he crept stealthily along on my tracks, not fifty yards away, I was disgusted at his sleuth-hound persistence and crafty malignity. I raised my gun to my shoulder, and in another moment would have rid myself of his undesired attentions, but the animal must have caught a gleam from the shining barrels, for he turned like a flash, and buried himself in the nearest thicket.
"It was evident that he did not wish the matter forced to an immediate issue. As a consequence, I decided that it ought to be settled at once. I ran toward the thicket; but at the same time the panther stole out on the other side, and disappeared in the woods.