Steadily She Probed His Face, and Slowly SheNodded
Cat O’ Mountain
BY
ARTHUR O. FRIEL
Author of
“King—of Kearsarge”
Illustrated by
DONALD S. HUMPHREYS
THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA
1923
COPYRIGHT
1923 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
Cat o’ Mountain
Made in the U. S. A.
To
JAMES and CAROLINE MACK
whose unfailing kindliness
to the mysterious prowler of
The Traps
will long be remembered by
“The Detective”
FOREWORD
At the northern end of the Shawangunk range liesa region where the Maker of Mountains went mad.
Into his new-laid rock the giant crashed his hugehammer, smashing asunder his handiwork, gougingout chasms, splitting it into fissure and cavern andabyss, slashing its eastern edge into a frowning precipice.When he had gone, up into some of his hammer-scarswelled subterranean waters, forming crag-boundlakes hundreds of feet higher than the rugged valleyfloor. Other chasms became gulfs of verdure,crammed with a veritable jungle of hardwoods andevergreens. And there, in the labyrinth of tree andbowlder, fierce brutes and venomous snakes bred andfought and slew. It was the home of the wolf, thepanther, and the bear; of the rattlesnake and the copperhead.
Then came men: savages who killed and ate thewild beasts and clothed themselves in their furry hides.Through the gorges and down the slopes they laid theirtrails, along which they roved for centuries in huntand tribal war. At length they paused, staring eastwardat new fires burning below them—the fires ofwhite men.
The inevitable followed. First by firewater, then byfirearms, the Dutch settlers crowded the tawny[6]“duyvils” out of the forested lowlands between theriver of Hendrick Hudson and the mountain wall.But behind that wall, in the natural stronghold createdby the mad Mountain-Maker, the red men long heldtheir own. More, at times they swooped out from theone small gap in the cliffs on bloody raids. And whenthe vengeful whites retaliated with invasions of theirfastness, they ambushed those palefaces along theirtrails.
Then the settlers ended it. Trapped again and againwithin that gulf, they in turn became the trappers.Stealthily moving in force, they garrisoned the heightsof Mohonk and Minnewaska; they outwitted, outmanœuvred,outambushed the Indians; they herdedthem back against their own precipices, cornered t