SOMETHING white was moving warily through the shadows of Beech Hollow. It was near the turning of night, and the heart of the wide, uncleared knob area was quiet. Not the quiet of sleep, indeed, for the wood-folk were abroad in numbers, each bent upon a separate errand whose aim and end was death. But they moved without noise, from the largest to the smallest. A brown mink wriggled his serpentine way along the erratic path which a field-mouse had made; following him, perchance, with subtle cunning and fell purpose, was a wild-cat. A fox sniffed where a pheasant had passed, and trailed hungrily and swiftly for a dozen yards, to a point where the bird had risen in the air. So through the night they went, big and little, threading the secret ways of the underbrush, and sooner or later finding that for which they sought. Few went beyond the limits which marked Beech Hollow on every side. The lore of the wood-kind taught that this place was haunted by the ghost of a big coon, and that death awaited the invader into his precincts. By a secret telegraphic code, by purrings and by barks, there was not a denizen of the wild but knew the fact. More than one had seen the spectre. It was not the hallucination of a March-crazed cotton-tail. The ghost coon ran every night from the first cock-crow till near dawn, and his hunting ground was held inviolate by his four-footed flesh-and-blood kindred.

It was an opulent night in autumn. The half-naked beeches which gave the hollow its name shivered in their scant covering. The hillsides were heavy with drifted leaves, russet and gold and poppy-veined. Through the hollow purled a small stream, sleepily. Along the trunk of a long-dead beech, prostrate and blackened, moved something white, a figure almost ball-shaped. Its head was held low to the surface of the log; its body rose up in a peculiarly rounded hump, and its snow-white, bushy tail trailed along behind. It was the ghost coon of Beech Hollow on his nightly quest for food. His progress was most ungainly. The fore feet would move forward a few inches and the body would lengthen. Then the hind feet would get in motion and the back would assume an arc, and all the time the busy nose would be smelling to left and right. Reaching the end of the tree at last the coon reared upon his haunches, squirrel fashion, and gazed about him keenly. Nothing was stirring beyond a fluttering leaf; nothing was heard but the low soughing of the wind. Suddenly the triangular head went up a little higher, and the nose pointed directly across the hollow. Thus it was held rigidly for several moments, while the beady eyes glowed fiercely. Then a slender red tongue curved swiftly around his upper lip; he sank to the log again, and thence to the ground, and moved down the hillside with a shambling, awkward, yet incredibly swift gait.

That very day, as he was sleeping in his hollow tree at the end of the ravine, he had been awakened by the shots of some hunters in the corn-field bordering his valley of refuge. Then he had stretched himself and gone to sleep again, confident of a rich banquet in the hours of the coming night. He knew well—for he had learned the lesson when half grown—that frightened birds always take to the nearest cover when annoyed too much by men and dogs. Not long after sundown he had crawled out of his hole and crouched on the limb in front of it, and listened to the rallying call of the quail as they gathered together to squat for the night. Then, when the night was far enough advanced, he had slid down the tree like a patch of moonlight, and gone in search of his prey.

In a direct line with the coon’s progress, the stream below spread into a pool of considerable breadth and some depth, and as the soft-footed prowler gained its edge he stopped, leaned over the water, and eyed the surface intently. A born fisherman, he could not let the opportunity pass to land one of the small perch which had their home in this pool. For a number of minutes he stood as still as one of the stones lining the bank. Then he burst into action with the agility of one of the cat tribe. One claw-rimmed foot shot forward and downward, then up again all at one stroke, and the star rays glittered on a scaly body flying through the air. The fish had scarcely touched the ground when the nimble animal was beside it. Quickly the faithful paws pounced upon the flopping object and pinioned it to the earth. Then just back of the neck the sharp fangs crunched, and the ghostly ruler of the hollow ate leisurely of the toothsome dainty which his craft and skill had provided, spitting and clawing out the bones when in his greediness they stuck in his tongue. When his supper was over, the coon, his hunger appeased in a measure, did not at once take up the air-trail which was still wafted gently to him from the top of the other slope. He moved around and around the heap of bones and offal which marked his late repast, sniffing and nibbling by turns. Finally he veered about and started back over the track which he had come. Just then his nostrils were tickled by another light gust, laden with the partridge smell. It was too much to resist. He swerved again, and began to climb the slope of his temptation.

Nestling at the base of a rugged knob not two miles distant from Beech Hollow was a log-roller’s hut. Of its human inmates we have no word to say, for our story has naught to do with them. But of a certain low, heavy-bodied, vengeful, mongrel cur dog which harbored at this hut in the day, it becomes necessary now to speak. This dog feared nothing—absolutely nothing. He would bite at the thick sole of the shoe which kicked him; he would fight anything that walked upon two feet or four. He was totally wicked, totally merciless in his battles, and he cherished an inveterate hatred for coons. Throughout the day he would hang around the miserable shelter of the human-people—his companions, but not his masters—and when night sank down over the broad wastes of forest and hill he would go trailing through the dense passes of the wild, sharp-nosed and vigilant; his stub tail moving like the pendulum of a clock, and keeping time to his rapid footsteps. Once in his wanderings he had entered Beech Hollow, and had run upon that which the wood-folk feared. A large, white, ghostly figure coming towards him down the ravine. The cur yelped and fled. Gaining the open to the south of the hollow, the moonlight gave him courage, and he warily circled the place, coming in at the other end and running with his keen nose not an inch above the ground. He stumbled upon the scent quickly, and the chase-yelp bubbled to his throat. But he choked it back, for he was wiser than most coon dogs, who give tongue as soon as the trail is caught, and thus warn their quarry of danger. The trail that night led him to the base of a large beech tree, and there was the coon smell on the bark as high as he could reach by standing upon his hind legs. From that night the hollow held no terror for him. A coon had but one smell, and though this one was white, whereas all with whom he had drawn blood were gray with black-ringed tails, still it was a coon, and the one idea in his head now was to harass and harry it into open fight.

So he began to stalk the lonely hollow which was shunned by the forest-people, inbred guile driving him to all the cunning artifices known to the wood-dwellers. But the ghost coon was his match in subtlety. Never since that first night had the vindictive cur laid eyes upon the phantom, though two and three times a week he would come with his fangs whetted for fight. But upon that night in autumn when the coon feasted upon the fish, and subsequently started in quest of the huddled quail, a dark, noiseless shape entered the hollow from the north, and glided down it as a cloud shadow glides over a field. The cur struck the trail a few feet from the point where the coon had dropped from the prostrate tree, and instantly he crouched and grew rigid. The odor was fresh and strong, and he had waited long and travelled far for this chance. Flattening his body on the damp leaves, he looked about him with glowing eyes. Nothing was to be seen or heard. Which way was he to go? Had his prey gone up hill or down? Guided by that unerring instinct which all animals possess, the dog arose after an instant’s hesitation and moved down the hill with his black muzzle brushing the leaves.

At the top of the other slope the white marauder was slowly closing in upon his sleeping victims. Each step was taken with painful deliberateness and extreme care, for he knew that his journey would end in a clump of huckleberry bushes just at the edge of the wood. Onward he glided, his tiny feet as noiseless in their progress as the fall of a snowflake. Beneath a bending, berry-laden spray he stopped, and gazed gloatingly for a second upon a dozen or more brown bodies crowded together with their tails touching. Then he pounced. A few sleepy chirrups, a wild scramble, and the sound of whirring wings followed. The chagrined coon, cheated of his anticipated meal, shook a few downy feathers from the claws of his right fore foot, backed out of the bushes, and took the return trail for his tree of refuge. In his anger at failing in his last adventure, he neglected to scan the slope before him as he started down it. Soon he realized that a strange stump had taken root in his path since he had trodden it a few moments before. A squat, black, ugly thing, which he had not previously noticed. He came on stubbornly, however, and did not stop until he saw two blazing eyes looking at him with an expression of fiendish joy. There was nothing to do but fight.

For a very perceptible time the two glared at each other. The dog cruel, mean, wicked; the coon angry, furtive, sly. Then low sounds came from the throat of each. The dog gave a deep, muttering growl; the coon a succession of sharp hisses, not unlike those made by a goose, the while he withdrew into himself and glanced about as if meditating flight, though no tree grew near enough for him to reach. The dog quickly assumed the offensive, for his eager hate would not countenance delay. His spring was like the rebound of a cross-bow, but his enemy knew how to fight. While the cur was yet in air the ghost of the hollow had reared and fallen prone upon his back, his hind feet drawn close down upon his belly, and his fore feet arched and ready. At the right moment the hind feet shot up, and ripped a half dozen streaming seams in the flanks of the cur as he descended with snapping jaws. A screech, a scuffle, a howl of pain, and the dog leaped backward, drew his tongue rapidly across the stinging rents in his side, and bounded for the second time upon his foe. Aiming at the throat, his teeth found the loose skin at one side of the neck instead; the coon secured one of the stub ears of the attacker in his mouth, and thus they grappled. Strange sounds floated through the length of Beech Hollow that night; sounds which never before had disturbed its accustomed quiet. There were the sounds of heavy bodies threshing the earth, the rasping snarl, the yelp of distress, and the clashing of teeth. In the still night the noise carried far, and the keen ears of some wood-dwellers running on a near-by range heard it, and the forest-folk stopped, listened, and turned their faces from it, for it came from the haunted hollow.

On the leaf-strewn slope one great ball of intermingled black and white gradually drew near the bottom of the hill. Neither knew nor thought of the course the fight was taking. Their hearts were inflamed with the battle-lust, and with lightning-like movements they fought for the death-hold. After a time the level was reached, and here, by mere chance, the jaws of the dog found the throat of his enemy. The coon realized his strait, and plied all four feet with such good effect that the blood ran in streams from the ragged wounds which he inflicted. But his breath was shut off, and nothing can live or fight without air. It was then that he felt something cool clasp his hind leg. With his remaining strength he threw himself backward, dragging the cur with him, and the water of the pool closed over them both.

A coon can remain under water for a marvelously long time. A dog knows it, and will never attack them in or near a stream. The ghost coon sank, taking his enemy with him. In the foreign element the cur, confused, strangled, and frightened, loosed his hold, came to the surface and struck out for the shore. But the tables had turned, and the valiant old boar knew it. Rising also, he received the grateful rush of air into his strained lungs, and in another moment he was on the back of his opponent and forcing him under. Fastening his teeth in the loose folds of skin at the base of the skull he sank again, dragging the cur down with him. The water boiled like a caldron, and though a leg, or even a shoulder at times appeared, no head came into view. Soon the pool grew quiet. Then, near the bank, a sharp muzzle came up, slowly followed by the dripping form of the victor. His den-tree stood quite near the other end of the hollow, and as he painfully began his march towards it, leaving a trail of water and blood behind him as he went, his body swayed and his steps were uncertain. At last he stood among the roots which he knew so well, and with eyes which scarcely saw, looked up the bare trunk which he had been wont to climb with perfect ease. Feebly he reared, and began the ascent. Six feet from the ground he stopped, gently let his head fall forward upon the bark, quivered from end to end, and dropped to the earth, dead.