Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 21, No. 115, June 1953

The Panther by Browning Norton

Author’s age: late thirties. Education: graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University. Occupation: newspaperman — Sunday editor of “The Youngstown Vindicator”... But such bare facts do not give a true insight into how and why Browning Norton wrote a story like “The Panther.” To know the how and why, we have to dig deeper...

The author was born in a small village in a rural county and lived there until he was sixteen years old. (Ah, now we’re getting at it!) For his prizewinning story, Mr. Norton went back to that small village, back in his memory to the people he knew as a child and teen-ager. (It’s clear now why “The Panther” is such an American story!) People in those days — people who lived in communities of 500 or less — were different somehow; at least, that is what Mr. Norton thinks in mature retrospect. They were, as he expresses it, “individualists with a capital I,” and the older Mr. Norton gets, the more clearly he seems to remember them.

So, there is the how and why... Mr. Norton’s story is rooted in memories of his own boyhood. It is a country story — of farmers and dogs and henhouses; of country men talking, at the grist mill and in the general store — talking of crops and feed prices and the terror lurking in the neighborhood after dark; of country women attending their weekly Sewing Circle and also talking about the terror hiding in the hills; and of the silence in country woods, “punctured by the cry of tree toad and cricket, the owl’s call, soft vague plops, swishes and whirs, that told of a world of night creatures abroad...”

It began when the farmers around the north district of Conroy County complained about something breaking into their henhouses. Hardly anyone padlocked henhouses those days, chickens being kind of a side issue in that end of the county, and henhouse doors were mostly flimsy affairs held by a peg. That served to keep out small predators — skunks and weasels — and anyhow the farm dogs usually took care of them. But an animal big enough to put some weight against a henhouse door could undoubtedly force it open.

That’s why the Conroy farmers figured whatever this was, it was big; that and some other things. It happened at the Coulter place, and at Parsons’, and at Dunlaps’ on the river road, and several other places at the foot of the hills. One or two fat hens missing, blood and feathers on the floor, and the thing so quiet and slick that the other chickens weren’t even disturbed. Another funny thing: all the farms had dogs, big shaggy cow dogs people called shepherds, and not afraid of anything. But only one of those dogs set up a fuss, and that was Dunlaps’ Caesar.

Caesar cut loose with a savage volley of barking about 3 a.m. and aroused old man Dunlap out of a sound sleep.

“Next thing I knowed,” old man Dunlap said later, “Caesar was yipping and kiyiing like a scared pup, an’ I heard him tear around the house and I knowed he was going under the porch. Hadn’t done that since he was weaned. Well, I got up and lit a lantern and grabbed my shotgun and went out back. One of my hens was a-laying on the ground all chewed up bloody. Pretty soon Caesar heard me cussing, and he came slinking out mighty sheepish. I gave him a look, and blamed if he wan’t trembling! I went to the henhouse and I see by the way the lower part of the door was sprung and the peg all skeejawed around, something good and strong thrun some weight against it. Two hens missing, one that was a-laying there on the ground, and another gone slick and clean!”

All this wouldn’t have got the district too excited, but there was something else. The dogs simply refused to trail the critter. The Coulter boys and Marv Parsons had coon dogs, and Pete Frazer foxhounds, but those dogs wouldn’t take the scent. They just sniffed around the farmyards and then quit cold, with a look that as much as said, “Sorry, this just ain’t in our line.”

Now, up to that time nobody had seen hide nor hair of any thing, but one night Merle Biggins, who lived over on Maple Grove Road, heard a go-round in his sheep pen, and he up and out with his gun — not waiting to get a lantern, for it was moonlight; and when he busted out the back door there was his old Shep holding up one foot and whimpering, but not making a move.

“Why, dang you, Shep!” Merle squalled. “Get outa the way if your belly’s turned yellow!” He kicked at him and went raring down to the pen and shed. The sheep were in a lather, tearing around and bleating, and when he made a fast count one of the lambs was missing.

Merle squinted around, under that three-quarter moon, and up toward the foot of the hills back of his place he saw something big and black sort of galloping along, and he thought he caught a glimpse of white, like maybe the lamb was in the thing’s mouth. So Merle up with his twelve-gauge and banged away, more to ease his feelings than anything else, for the range was too long for a shotgun, and when he lowered the gun and took another look, the thing was gone.

Next morning he was down to Delbert Tomkins’ grist mill at Hickock’s Corners, and naturally he embellished the story a little.

“Danged thing was big’s a calf and black as midnight!” he told the farmers who were in with their feed wagons. “Its fur kind of glistened in the moonlight. When I shot at it, it turned around and glared at me, holding the lamb in its mouth, and its eyes blazed like fire.”

Delbert’s tongue was hinged in the middle, and between him and the farmers who listened to Merle, the story went all over the district. Farmers whose places lay at the foot of the hills vowed to set a watch over their sheep pens and henhouses and see if they couldn’t get a crack at this varmint.

That afternoon the Seven Thrifty Sewers Club was meeting to Mrs. Irv Whitcomb’s place on Shanower Road.

“Kind of scairy,” the widow Bartlett said, settling back in a wing-chair, her hands fluttering over her hemstitching, “something prowl-prowling around amongst our places at night, soft-like, a-taking and a-taking, big and hot-breathy, and nobody a-knowing what it be.”

“Oh, stuff!” said bosomy Mrs. Kilrain. “I’m a mind Merle made it up for a joke.” But the others rejected the idea immediately.

“Oh, no, Pauline,” Mrs. Parsons protested. “Merle, he lost a lamb, all right. And we lost a couple hens last week. That makes five farms on Applegate Road.”

“Turn out t’be a fox, prob’ly,” Mrs. Kilrain said.

“But the dogs won’t trail!” put in Mrs. Dunlap.

“And the henhouse doors... all twisted!” said Mrs. Morse.

“Well,” Mrs. Kilrain demanded, “just what did Merle say he saw?”

The widow Bartlett dropped her needlework in her lap, her eyes looking afar. “Big and black,” she said dreamily, “the innocent lamb in its teeth, and kind of galloping away into the hills.” She lowered her voice. “Look for a cloven hoof, I says!”

Mrs. Irv Whitcomb stared. “Big and black... kind of galloping... Good land o’ Goshen!”

She was out of the room in a rush, startling them, and they stared at her rocker still rocking away as if she was in it. Presently she came back loaded down with an armful of newspapers. A great newspaper saver, Mrs. Whitcomb was, but everybody kind of saved papers those days. They got the city papers a day or two late on rural delivery.

Mrs. Whitcomb pawed through the back issues. “I know I seen it here not too long ago,” she said. And then she let out a little cry of triumph. “Here it is!” She hunted for the dateline. “The third... let’s see... three weeks ago. Look!”

They gathered around, peering over her shoulders, pushing glasses up, or down, as the case warranted. It was a brief account in the middle of the page. How the Dunbar Brothers Circus had lost a valuable panther. A dangerous animal, it said. Five hundred dollars reward. A keeper told of finding the cage door open and the panther gone when the circus train arrived in Portersville. The keeper was positive, he said, that the panther was in its cage when the train left Bolton. The panther’s name was Satan.

“The train goes across the northeast corner of the county,” Mrs. Morse breathed.

“Not ten miles from here,” Mrs. Parsons added.

“Yes, but its 80 miles from Bolton to Portersville,” Mrs. Kilrain objected. “It could have escaped anywhere along the line. No reason to think—”

“Satan!” the widow Bartlett gasped. “I told you! Satan!” She nodded her head rapidly.

A panther, a dangerous animal. That got around the district fast. People began going through old newspapers, pulling them off jelly cupboard shelves, out from under butter crocks on cellar floors, hunting the one that told about the circus animal. And when everybody had read it, the county began to get scared. Not in the daytime. Not with the sun shining down and work to be done. A cat is a night animal, sleeping by day and slinking around under the moon; and when the crickets began their evening song and dusk settled gently down, the district tensed up, moved jerkily, and watched from the corners of its eyes. Mothers spoke sharply to children wanting to linger outside, and hired men, plodding late up the pasture lanes, eyed every bush and took to peering over their shoulders.

Each morning some fresh depredation was reported and multiplied in the telling, now on the creek road... now Applegate... over Maple Grove way, but at last a pattern took shape. The raids were confined to a limited area, the farms bounded by Applegate Road, Maple Grove, and the river road that ran through Hickock’s Corners, a rough square whose fourth side was the hill called Little Mountain.

In Chatfield’s General Store at the Corners, Carl Morse held forth. “Ain’t safe for women and children t’be out after dark. I say the thing’s holing up on Little Mountain. We got to get us a posse and hunt it down!”

“Trouble is,” old man Dunlap said, shifting his chew, “the danged dogs won’t trail it, an’ can’t say’s I blame ’em. What you figure on, tramping that whole blamed mountain over? All you’ll do is kick it out ahead of you and never see it. It’ll circle around behind you laffin’ itself sick.”

The picture he conjured up was not heartening. Other farmers in Chatfield’s nodded, no one offered himself as a posse member, and some decided privately that setting a watch over henhouses wasn’t worth it either, all things considered. What was a twelve- or sixteen-gauge shotgun against a jungle critter you couldn’t hardly see until maybe it was too late?

But down Applegate Road, at the very foot of Little Mountain, Bill and Bob, the Coulter twins, were too riled up mad to be scared. Didn’t aim to keep their kids in the house forever for no damned cat, big or small, or worry and fuss about hens and stock. To say nothing about having the livers pestered out of them by their aunt, the widow Bartlett who lived on the next place over, with her constant jabbering about Satan and cloven hooves and being scared to stay alone. So the twins got down their heavy deer rifles, cleaned and oiled them, and talked it over.

“What we need,” Bob said, “is a dog ain’t scared to trail this here panther. Once we find out where he’s a-laying—”

“Ain’t but one dog like that around,” Bill said. “Old Major Tattersall’s Bones.”

“That’s the one,” Bob agreed.

“Come to think of it, I ain’t seen the major around lately.”

“Maybe,” Bob suggested, “he’s down to the county infirmary again. Funny geezer, the major.”

They sat in silence thinking about it while they put the deer rifles in working order. A gigantic gaunt old man, Bide Tattersall claimed to have been a major in the Union Army. None ever called old Bide a liar to his face, and anyway he had one thing that kind of proved it, a Union officer’s blue greatcoat, and he was as proud of it as the knights of old were of their armor. Hardly ever seen without it save in the hottest weather, and Old Bide, muffled to the chin in that greatcoat, with the gray mastiff, Bones, at his side, was a familiar figure striding along the roads of the district. He lived on his soldier’s pension, and had a cottage up on the ridge for him and Bones. Bide Tattersall claimed a rifle ball had creased his skull at Shiloh, Tenn. Sometimes the skull-ache made him go kind of queer; but he could always tell, he said, when a spell was coming on, and then he’d take Bones down the other side of the ridge and leave him with his neighbor, Leeland Stack, and walk the fifteen miles to the county infirmary at Conroy Village. Major Bide would stay there till he was all right again, and then come home.

“Well, let’s be going,” Bill Coulter said, “if we’re gonna ask the major to borrow Bones. It’s quite a walk up there.”

They took the deer rifles along just in case and began to foot it up the Little Mountain road. The dirt track wound up for half a mile under a canopy of trees, then leveled out for a ways into the ridge that circled the lower section of the mountain. They walked silently, with the distance-eating stride of country men, and all they saw was dappled sunlight on the pine beds, saucy jays, and frisking woodpeckers, and now and then a chipmunk and a slithering grass snake. They made the ridge and moved along it for another mile, and there on the right stood Bide Tattersall’s little house under a great elm.

“Bones shoulda winded us and been out by now,” Bob said in a low voice.

The cottage had a vacant sightless look, but just for luck Bill called out politely, “Major Tattersall... Major Tattersall, sir! Anyone about?”

No answer save an echo off Little Mountain’s rising face, and Bob shrugged. “Ain’t here.”

“Now we come this far,” Bill said. “Might as well cut down to Stack’s and see if he’s got Bones.”

When they got to his, place, Stack, a shiftless man, was resting on his shoulder blades under a pear tree, and he pulled himself up grudgingly to greet them. “Howdy, boys. Why the shooting irons? You hunting that wildcat that’s loose over in your section?”

“Just looking around,” Bill said. “You see Major Tattersall or Bones?”

“Yup,” Stack said, picking his teeth. “I got Bones on a line put back. The major, he felt another queer spell coming on couple weeks back and lit out for the ’firmary.”

“We’d like t’borrow Bones t’do a little hunting,” Bill said. “Don’t expect the major’d care, d’you?”

Stack hesitated and Bob spoke up. “We’ll take care of Bones, Lee. We’ll keep him on a chain. We just want to find out where this thing’s holing up. We’ll be responsible for Bones.”

“Well, all right,” Stack said. “If you will. Guess the major’d be willing. Come on, I’ll give you a chain.”

When they got Bones home they gave the big gray boy a pan of cool water in the shade and a good feed. Bones ate as if maybe Stack hadn’t been too generous, then he heaved a sigh and flopped down, looking at them with his tough knowing eyes like he was saying, “So, what next?”

Bob chuckled. “He’ll do! I’ll snap his chain on this here clothes wire, so he can move around, and we can put him in the barn nights. We’ll just have to wait till that cat cuts up some more didos somewhere, and then we’ll see.”

They didn’t have long to wait. About 3 o’clock in the morning Bob’s wife shook him awake.

“Listen!”

The frantic jerky clanging of Aunt Minnie Bartlett’s dinner bell cut into his sleepiness, and Bob hit the floor on the jump and was out in the hall yelling for Bill. The twins hustled into some clothes wordlessly, grabbed their rifles and a lantern, and took off on the run, and all the while that dinner bell kept clanging enough to wake the dead.

They had to take the widow Bartlett’s hands off the bell rope by main force. She was standing on the back stoop in a wrapper, a lantern at her feet, mouth contorted, and a wild glazed look in her eyes. They got her inside and into a kitchen chair, but they couldn’t get much sense out of her.

Bob slipped out for a moment, and when he returned he said quietly, “Henhouse door pushed in. Blood and feathers. Guess it was here.”

“He was!” The widow’s voice rose hysterically, then she moaned and covered her face with her hands. “Satan was here! I saw him!”

“Please, Auntie,” Bill urged, “tell us what happened. Bob and me aim to get this panther varmint.”

“Varmint?” she cried. “Oh, no, Satan it was!”

“Well,” Bill said edgily, “Satan, panther, varmint, whatever you want t’call it. Now, Auntie, please!”

She made a real effort. “I... I heard a noise outside, and I came down. I didn’t want to, but something seemed to make me. I lit a lantern and — and went out on the stoop. He was crouching fight there in the yard, gnawing on one of my hens, a-tearing at the feathers. Oh, horrible!” She raised her hands to her eyes again and began to shudder.

“What’d it look like, Auntie?” Bill urged sharply.

“Monstrous big and black,” she whispered. “Mouth all bloody... the devil’s face, Satan himself! Snarled at me and scurried away in the dark.”

In spite of themselves the twins were shaken.

“Shall I get Bones?” said Bill.

Bob considered. “Only two hours till daylight. Track won’t cool off too much, and I’d a sight rather see where I’m going. Go get Ma to stay with Auntie. We’ll start out with Bones soon’s it’s light.”

The sun had not yet risen, but dawn was in the sky and near objects were visible when the twins, leading Bones, returned to the Bartlett farmyard. If there was any thought in their minds that he might act like the shepherds had, it was quickly erased, for the mastiff sniffed over the yard eagerly, a small whimper of sound in his throat, and they could sense his rising excitement. They grinned at each other in satisfaction, and then Bones started off with a rush, nearly jerking Bill from his feet.

“I knew he’d do it!” Bob exulted, swinging his rifle high. “Good old Bones!”

The dog moved forward eagerly, the little whimper in his throat, and hauling Bill along like a monkey on a string. He led them a merry three-hour chase, sturdy legs churning, through the fields, across the corner of Parsons’ meadow and woodlot, then circling back, and shortly after 8 they were moving up a timber slash that led to the Little Mountain ridge. Suddenly Bones stopped stock still, stuck his great blunt nose in the air and seemed to test the wind, ears pricked. Then without warning he gave a great lunge, ripping the chain from Bill’s hand, and went kiting up the grade, and disappeared.

Cursing fervently, Bill danced around, holding his hand where the skin was ripped off by the chain jerk, and Bob stared.

“Well, where in the devil’s he going?”

“Damn him,” Bill said feelingly. “Hope he runs right into that panther! Hope he sticks his ugly head smack in its mouth!”

Bob grunted. “We got to follow him. We’re responsible.”

They changed course, moving along briskly, climbing, and soon they neared the rim of the ridge.

“Know where we’re gonna come out?” said Bob.

“Sure. Ridge Road, pretty close to the major’s cottage.”

Bob nodded and they went silently up over the rim and onto the ridge plateau, stepped out on the road, and sure enough, there was the major’s place a hundred yards to their left. On the tiny porch the major himself, in his shirt sleeves, sat quietly rocking, one hand absently fondling Bones, who lolled happily beside him. The twins waited for him to speak out as custom dictated, but he didn’t, so they moved toward the cottage anyhow. When they were just below it Bob said, “Morning, Major.”

Major Bide started. “Good... good morning.”

“We thought you was down t’the inf — the county seat,” Bill said.

The major frowned. “No,” he said. “Uh, that is, I was, but I got to feeling better, so I—” He stopped and seemed to ponder for a time, and then he added, “I come back.”

The twins exchanged a glance. The major looked a little off his feed, eyes sunken, beard ragged and yellow, not his usual style, and his big hands trembly.

“We took the liberty of borrowing Bones,” Bob said. “We got him off Stack to hunt down a varmint. He was trailing on the hill, and I guess he decided you was back. He broke away from us and came a-sailing up here. Hope you didn’t mind our using him.”

“What? Oh, no. No I didn’t mind.” He stroked Bones, and when the twins kept standing there he bestirred himself as if in thought. “You want to take Bones now?”

“If you don’t mind, Major.”

“No, I don’t. Go down to them, Bones. Go down, sir!”

The mastiff went unwillingly, dragging the chain, and Bob picked it up. “We’re obliged to you, Major. We’ll bring him home soon.”

Bide Tattersall didn’t answer, so they turned, feeling awkward, and moved away leading the reluctant mastiff. They walked down the road a long way out of earshot before Bob spoke again.

“Funny. Guess he come back too soon.”

“Yeah,” Bill agreed, “guess he did.”

“Too late to pick up that cold track now. I don’t even remember just where we were when Bones bolted.”

“Nor I, neither,” Bill said.

“Time we spend another hour casting around it’ll be stone cold. Bones ain’t got a hound’s nose; Better wait for another try.”

“Guess we had.”

The zest had slipped out of the day somehow, and they didn’t know why. But when they came down into the valley, lying hot under the high sun, and turned into their own farmyard, something happened to change the whole complexion of the affair. Marv Parsons was standing on the porch talking to Bill’s wife, and now he came hustling out across the yard, eager and anxious.

“Find anything?”

“Trail got cold,” Bob said briefly.

“Well, we found something!” There was hot excitement in Marv, and the twins felt their interest reviving. “Me and my oldest boy, Sam, was on the knoll this morning hunting genseng. Just above the ridge we run smack into the mouth of a kind of den where a big oak’d uprooted above a little hollow and made an overhang. Something’s been going in and out, and fresh chicken bones scattered around!”

Bill began, “See anything—”

“Hell, no! We lit out fast! Us with a couple baskets on our arms. Didn’t aim to tangle with no panther!”

“Find the place again, can you?”

“Sure.”

“Take us up and show us?”

“Well... Wanta get my shotgun. I talked Dunlap and Merle Biggins into saying they’d go along if you fellows went. All we got is twelve-gauges. Feel a lot better behind your rifles.”

It was late afternoon before the six — Bill and Bob, Marv Parsons, Merle Biggins, Dunlap, and Bones on his chain — had pushed up the ridge to the place where Parsons motioned for them to stop.

“Now,” he whispered, “right up off the road here to our left, ’bout a hundred yards in.”

They scrambled up, Merle taking Bones’ chain to leave the twins free with their rifles, and slipped quietly into the woods. Presently they came to the edge of a glade.

Parsons pointed nervously. “See that little knoll? Just beyond’s the hollow. See that overhang there? That’s the uprooted oak. There’s a clutter of chicken bones on the knoll.”

Bill said guardedly, “Bob and me’ll go up. If he gets by us he’ll have lead in him. Let Bones loose, if he does, and blaze away.”

The twins slipped forward softly, crossed the glade and crept slowly up the knoll. They peered down into the den. Hard-packed earth. A welter of bones, a lamb skin. A stench. The den was vacant.

The brothers came back. “Ain’t there,” Bob said, “but that’s his place. We’ll wait.”

“Wait?” Merle Biggins’ voice was shrill. “Flow long? Not into dark?”

Bill looked at him. “Came to get him, didn’t we? Nobody’s got to wait that don’t want to. Bob and me’ll stay.”

Parsons, old man Dunlap, and Merle studied each other. Old man Dunlap shrugged and spit. “If they’re game I am.”

“Well—” Parsons said. “Well—”

“All right,” Merle said. “We’re a bunch of damn’ fools, but all right!”

“Be a moon later,” Bob said, “but I’d like to have our dark lantern. We could use some sandwiches, too. I’d go back myself, or Bill would, but rifles are the best up here. Marv, will you go? My wife’ll fix some grub on the run, and don’t forget the lantern. Hate to ask you, but—”

“Sure,” Parsons said with alacrity. “Glad to.”

They settled down to wait, and the peace of the woods gradually eased the tension. They began to talk in low tones of everyday things — crops and feed prices, county doings. Parsons came back at sundown with the lantern and a basket of food. They ate standing up, as the shadows lengthened, and Bones fared as well as the rest. They finished in silence. Bob lit the dark lantern and closed the opening. Bill stationed them against trees around the rim of the glade. It was full dark now.

They settled down to wait. Time ran and ran on the spool, and nothing happened.

“Wish to lordy I could smoke,” Merle groaned at last.

“Go ahead,” Bob said.

A match flared briefly over Merle’s pipe, showing for an instant his strained face. Then darkness and silence. Not complete darkness, for the moon rode up now, throwing soft radiance into the glade, a half-light; and the silence only a woods silence, punctured by the cry of tree toad and cricket, the owl’s call, soft vague plops, swishes and whirs, that told of a world of night creatures abroad.

From far below came a familiar sound. The squawk of a hen.

“Ssh!” old man Dunlap rasped. “You hear that?”

They heard it again. Faint still, but nearer.

Bones whimpered deep in his chest, and Bob said fiercely, “Be quiet, sir!” He handed the chain to Parsons. “Keep him still, Marv!”

They stood for an eternity, then the hen squawked again very close down below them. They listened till their eardrums like to burst, hearts thudding, neck hair crawling. Then a snuffling panting sound behind them nearly sucked their hearts right out. A soft pad-padding and the thing was right in the glade, a great black shadow slinking toward the den opening.

Two sheets of flame as Bill and Bob fired together. A high tearing scream seared the night. They’d heard how a panther screams. They braced themselves for the rip of flesh-tearing claws and fangs, but instead came a scrambling, and the swish of bushes. Then silence. Bones gave a great howl, lunged, broke away from Marv, and rushed toward the den.

“Back, Bones, back!” Bill yelled. But Bones was gone. They waited fearfully, expecting sounds of mortal combat, but there was no sound at all. Nothing.

“We got him!” Bill exulted.

“Have to wait,” Bob warned.

And waiting for daybreak was the hardest job the five Conroy men had ever tackled. But they did it, with the lantern on the ground out in the glade where Bob carried it. At intervals Bill called, “Bones, Bones!” and got no answer. Finally he gave up, and the five of them stood like stone men, guns at the ready in cramped hands. But at last daylight sifted into the glade, paling the lantern; birds twittered and frisked in the trees, and a chipmunk ran into the open and stared curiously. It was light.

Three pairs of eyes in grim faces questioned Bill and Bob. The twins looked at each other. “You ready?” Bill said.

Bob nodded. They began to inch slowly up the knoll, guns well out in front of them. They were at the top now. One more step and they would look down into the den under the oak roots. They stood there and stared. Bob turned and motioned for the others to come up. Now all five were standing on the knoll gazing down unbelievingly. At the great body sprawled there. At the dead pullet.

Bones was lying there, too, head on forepaws, eyes mournful. The blue greatcoat was splotched and splattered with blood and grime. Blood and dirt matted the beard. But there was no madness marring the tired old face. Major Bide Tattersall was at peace.