Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [141]
Or maybe it wasn’t snoring at all. To the right of the stone shelf there was something, low and dark against the ground, pressed against it, and above and behind this faint black shape, something switched tensely from side to side. Forrest made that out before the rest: the flicking tip of the panther’s tail, clear now against a patch of starlight between the thinning trees.
It wasn’t snoring, then. It was what a cat that size did instead of purr.
He could see the ears now, just the tips of them, revolving forward. He thought of other cats he had seen stalk. But if he were the thing being stalked, then the panther would certainly have seen him move. Would be thinking it over now, considering its chances.
Come on, Forrest thought. Come ahead and let’s see what you’re made of.
The panther stood up, shoulders hunched high, the head still low. It looked jet-black, though that was only because of the darkness. Forrest had heard tell of jungle panthers in South America who really were that color.
One of the embers broke in the fire and a little flame shot up, catching the yellow gleam of the panther’s eyes. Forrest held the look, for a long moment. Then the panther raised its head and looked away, shrugging almost, like any cat pretending it never really cared for its quarry. Just stretching …
Like that it had turned and was going away. Long tail still switching. Forrest caught his gun belt free of his blanket roll as he stood up, and slung it over his left shoulder. The second pistol, in its holster, slapped against his heart. He ran lightfooted to the tree line, stopped. The panther had opened up a long lolloping stride and was well away, high on a slope of trampled pasture, above where Forrest stood staring after it. In the brighter light of the open area, the big cat looked more gray than black, except the black spot he could now make out on the very tip of its tail.
He watched it go, feeling his own edge soften, half-regretting he hadn’t shot the panther, half-glad of it. A varmint, troublesome—but there were Yankees aplenty yet to be killed and no need to spend powder and shot on a varmint.
He strapped on his belt and holstered the pistol in his right hand, then yawned and rolled his shoulders. That wound in his back itched him now, but the itch only told him it was healing. The itch that couldn’t be scratched was that he’d let Cowan buffalo him into taking a drink of medicinal whiskey, soon after he’d been hit. Well, let that go.
It would be an hour yet until dawn. Forrest turned back to the campfire, concentric rings of sleeping men, lying there quiet as children. A memory of little Fan flashed upon him and he sent it away with a quick sharp hand clap.
The sleeper came up alert from the stone. Willie turned over, coughed, still dreaming.
“Boots and saddles!” Forrest called. He had not taken off his own boots to sleep. And Jerry was already bringing him a fresh horse: a big, stout-looking bay, with a blue-black mane. I won’t bother given this’n a name, Forrest thought. The death of Highlander, two days before, still lay heavy on his mind.
He rode with some four hundred men at his back, in varying states of readiness, some already keenly focused on the horizon ahead them, others still rubbing sleep from their eyes, blinking into the predawn darkness. The moon had long since set, and mist on the fields confused the starlight. The Yankees would be running for the pass over Missionary Ridge at Rossville, Forrest thought, trying to calculate what gain they might have made in the dark. With