Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 1, February/March, 1966

“Get out a here, Tanner!” Ramsay said, and he started to get up. There was a hollow feeling above his solar plexus and the blood was tingling away from his face. He didn’t like fighting — always avoided one if he could — but he couldn’t go on listening to Tanner insult Harris while Harris just sat there and took it.

Tanner crouched, catlike, and his right hand flashed a hunting knife. Ramsay looked at the knife. The blade gleamed, the thin red light from the fire dancing along the edge like blood.

“Sit down, Ram!” Harris’ voice was sharp. “He’s trying to herd me into going at him. Then he’ll make with that fool knife of his and call it self-defense, and you’ll be his witness.” He looked at Tanner again and shook his head.

“Better get along, Coz. Go poach some wild orchids or some more tree snails. Ramsay ain’t goan fight you neither.”

Tanner wagged the blade at Ramsay, insinuatingly.

“I reckon he ain’t at that,” he sneered. He started backing, moving absolutely without sound, as if he were not actually touching the ground. Then the night shut him off, and all they heard was his voice — “I’ll be around, boy.”

Ramsay sat down, feeling the blood rush back to his cheeks. He looked at Harris who was complacently sipping his coffee. There was such a thing as being too passive, he thought. And for the first time he wondered if the patrolman was gutless.

In the heron chuckling dark a godawful outcry ripped across the swamp night. It sounded as if wildcats were being skinned alive. Harris scrambled up, saying, “C’mon! We got us one.”

Holding the.22 in one hand, a flashlight in the other, he led the way through the moony palmettos, heading upstream. It was a puma, a big tan male with a bloody mouth. He was snapping at the steel jaws of the trap in his pain and outrage as he writhed in the weeds like something gone crazy.

The trap had him by the left hind leg and the iron drag hook was pronged in the pindowns, holding him in place. When the beam of light hit him his wild eyes sparked liquid fire and he leaped at Harris like something from a catapult.

Ramsay sprang aside in a frantic jump — but the hook’s chain stopped the cat short in midair and piled him on his back. And then Harris stepped in, pointing the flashlight in the cat’s face, and as the big sleek snarling head started to come up he pulled the trigger and the.22 went pak.

And that was that. Straight through the left eye to the brain.

“My gawd,” Ramsay breathed, and then he started to laugh, from nerves mostly. “And I was wondering if you were gutless!”

Harris smiled, nudging the dead cat with his foot.

“If you can get in a shot like that, it gives you a nice whole hide. Bet Tanner would give his grampa for a skin like this.”

They cut a sapling carrying pole and toted the heavy carcass back to camp, where Harris went to work skinning the big cat.

“Mebbe tomorrow will wind it up,” he said. “Mebbe we’ll get lucky and catch that she painter right off.”

Tomorrow...

Now was the tomorrow that Harris had talked about the night before. And now Ramsay was bending over his knifed body.

Tanner has to be close by, he thought, or he would’ve already hauled Harris’ body into a slough and left it for the gators. He must’ve heard me coming back and hid in the brush.

He broke out in a cold sweat as an almost hysterical terror stole over him. He could feel Tanner watching him. Crawling into the puptent, he pawed wildly through Harris’ gear until he uncovered the.22 pistol. His head jerked up — listening.

Something crackled in the underbush. Animal — or Tanner?

He tried to think rationally. Tanner probably had a gun, but likely he wouldn’t use it unless he had to. Nobody could detect a knife thrust after the gators were through with a body, but a bullet too often left obvious bone damage. And there was a good chance that Tanner didn’t know about the target pistol.

The 22 will keep him away from me, he thought. At least until he decides he has to shoot me.

His best course would be to slip back to the airboat and go for the law. And quick. Tanner might already be creeping up on the tent. Again the hollow feeling came to his solar plexus, and he knew that he was scared. Honestly and completely scared.

He scooted out of the tent like a cat from a bag — expecting the shocking smash of a rifle bullet in the back at every step. Then he was breasting the whipping palmettos and he sprawled into the sand and scrambled under the cover of the avid fronds.

No rifle shot. Nothing. The silence was complete, but ominous too — like a mute monster watching solemnly from the jungle.