It's Saturday.
The bootjack was a thin oak slab with a notch in one end and a cleat across the middle of it. Laura laid it on the floor with the cleat down, and the cleat lifted up the notches end. Then Pa stood on it with one foot, he put the other foot into the notch, and the notch held the boot by the heel while Pa pulled his foot out. Then he pulled off his other boot, the same way. The boots clung tightly, but they had to come off. Laura watched him do this, and then she asked if a panther would carry off a little girl. Pa said yes and it would kill her and eat her, too, and he told her and Mary that they must stay in the house till he had shot that panther, and as soon as daylight came he would take his gun and go after him. All the next day Pa hunted that panther. And he hunted the next day and the next day. He found the panther’s tracks, and he found the hide and bones of an antelope that the panther had eaten, but he did not find the panther anywhere. The panther went swiftly through tree-tops, where it left no tracks. Pa said he would not stop till he killed that panther. He said that they couldn’t have panthers running around in a country where there were little girls. But he did not kill that panther, and he did stop hunting it. One day in the woods he met an Indian. They stood in the wet, cold woods and looked at each other, and they could not talk because they did not know each other’s words. But the Indian pointed to the panther’s tracks, and he made motions with his gun to show Pa that he had killed that panther. He pointed to the tree-tops and to the ground, to show that he had shot it out of a tree. And he motioned to the sky, and west and east, to say that he had killed it the day before. So that was all right. The panther was dead. Laura asked if a panther would carry off a little papoose and kill and eat her, and Pa said yes. Probably that was why the Indian had killed that panther.
