Lightnin’ Jack Hawkins led his party south along the banks of the Monongahela when a fierce storm hit them head-on. A driving rain drenched the men and their horses and slowed their progress to a crawl. Even worse was the hail that raised welts on exposed skin. Finally, Lightnin’ howled, “Head fer the hemlocks. Now!”

The storm raged for three more hours until the nerves of man and beast alike were stretched to the limit. When the downpour finally slowed and moved off to the east, a testy MacDonald drove the others from the trees and growled, “This is na a good place to camp. We best move on and find a cabin or cave.”

Reluctantly, Will Cutler and Jack Hawkins followed their partner back onto the trail. The deluge had turned it into a mire, and the travelers sunk into muck up to their ankles with each step they took. Instead of finding shelter, they entered a dense forest that hemmed them in like the sides of a tomb. There, huge mountain lion tracks were everywhere, and the horses grew twice as skittish as before. They bucked and snorted and became so unmanageable that finally even MacDonald was in favor of camping for the night.

After examining a vivid, clawed lion print at the side of the trail, Hawkins said, “We best build a roarin’ fire. That’ll keep the big cats at bay.”

“Aye,” agreed Mac. “We’ll gather lots o’ wood to feed it all night. Will, ye can take first watch. I’ll relieve ya in a few hours.”

“Don’t you think I should tend to the horses first?” replied Cutler.

“You’re right, laddie. Me brain must already be asleep.”

After Will unloaded the furs from the horses’ backs, he lovingly cleaned the mud from their coats with a currycomb. Then, he hobbled the animals and fed them handfuls of oats he fetched from his knapsack. MacDonald and Hawkins, meanwhile, snapped a huge mound of dry branches from the trunks of some nearby hemlocks and built a crackling bonfire. They barely finished their chores when darkness crept from the woods to blot out all features of the landscape around them. It was so black that the trees themselves were swallowed up.

“H-H-How did you become a mountain man, Lightnin’?” stammered Will, glancing nervously around him at the all-pervading gloom. “The r-r-rest of us told our stories. W-W-What’s yours?”

“Wall now, I sprung up like grass an’ have growed wild ever since,” replied Jack with a mighty yawn. “Ain’t no more to tell even if I weren’t bone tired.”
“Aye, good night, laddie,” grunted Mac. “An’ keep that fire a roarin’. Ye hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the boy. “See you in a couple of hours.”

Completely worn out from their strenuous journey, Mac and Jack collapsed on the damp ground and wound themselves in their blankets. They immediately fell into a dead slumber, leaving Will to his own fears. With a shiver, Cutler tossed more wood on the blaze and drew a little closer to it. Several times he heard furtive movement in the blackness behind him. The horses must have heard it, too, because they snorted nervously until Will added yet more hemlock branches to expand the firelight to where the nervous animals huddled together.

Despite his apprehension, Will’s eyelids got heavier and heavier. He stretched his neck, rubbed his cramped legs, and got up to stagger wearily around the fire. When he plopped back down, his head sunk between his shoulders, and his eyes swam with dizziness. To stave off sleep, he hummed a familiar hymn. Then, he thought about Bright Star until almost overcome by his narcotic dream of her. This, in turn, caused him to say his sisters’ names aloud: “Mary, Abbey, Judith, Jane, Lizzy, Sarah, Mary, Abbey. . .”

The next thing Will heard was an almost human shriek. He sprang to his feet to find himself in total darkness. Off to his left echoed a fearful snarling and whinnies of fear and distress. It was too dark to find his long rifle, so he drew his knife and rushed toward a sudden struggle that ensued from the black void of night.

Cutler almost reached the desperate neighing of a downed horse when he was bowled over by a powerful shadow. He hit the ground on his back with his muscular adversary on top of him. The beast’s hot breath reeking of horse blood made Will gag as he tried to fend it off. All the while sharp claws tore at his clothes and brought stinging pain to his extremities. When the hot breath closed on his throat, a sudden rush of adrenaline caused the lad to strike wildly with his now remembered knife. The blade struck home again and again, causing the creature he grappled to caterwaul and thrash wildly. Finally, after a particularly vicious slash, the beast gave one final shriek and went limp. Its dead weight was suffocating, and Will lost consciousness trying to push it off him.

Cutler woke to the sound of faraway voices. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and found Jack and Mac hovering over him with concern etched on their tan faces. The fire was again burning brightly, and in its eerie glow Will saw the gelding lying nearby with gore leaking from its rent throat. Still on top of him sprawled the tawny form of a great lion slashed in many places with crimson wounds. He started at the sight of it and cried, “G-G-Get him off me! Off me!”

A smile gleamed in Lightnin’s beard, and he chuckled, “That rascal won’t hurt ya none after ya done stabbed the tar out o’ ’im. You’re a real mountain man now, Will, an’ I’m gonna call ya Big Cat Cutler from this day on. Look at the size o’ that cuss you ventilated. Why, I’da had my hands full with a lion that huge.”