It's Friday.
Laura screamed, too, and leaped out of bed. Mary ducked under the covers. Ma got up and began to dress in a hurry. She put another stick of wood on the fire and told Laura to go back to bed. But Laura begged so hard that Ma said she could stay up. Ma asked her to wrap herself in the shawl. They stood by the fire and listened. They couldn’t hear anything but the wind. And they could not do anything. But at least they were not lying down in bed. Suddenly fists pounded on the door and Pa shouted to let him in. Ma opened the door and Pa slammed it quickly behind him. He was out of breath. He pushed back his cap and said that he was scared yet. Ma asked what it had been. Pa said that it had been a panther. He had hurried as fast as he could go to Mr. Scott’s. When he got there, the house was dark and everything was quiet. Pa went all around the house, listening, and looking with the lantern. He could not find a sign of anything wrong. So he felt like a fool, to think he had got up and dressed in the middle of the night and walked two miles, all because he heard the wind howl. He did not want Mr. and Mrs. Scott to know about it. So he did not wake them up. He came home as fast as he could because the wind was bitter cold. And he was hurrying along the path, where it went on the edge of the bluff, when all of a sudden he heard that scream right under his feet. He told Laura that he told her that his hair had stood up till it had lifted his cap and he had lit out for home like a scared rabbit. She asked him where the panther had been. Pa said that it had been in a tree-top, in the top of that big cottonwood that grew against the bluffs there. Laura asked if it had come after him. He answered that he didn’t know. Ma said that he was safe now. Pa said yes and he was glad of it, and this was too dark a night to be out with panthers, and then he asked Laura where his bootjack was. Laura brought it to him.
