While people generally scoffed at the idea of panthers roaming the woods, there were some who said it was not altogether improbable—that one might have escaped from a menagerie. You must understand that practically all the older men here at that time had come from panther states back East—and, I might say, the rising generation had more or less been steeped in panther talk. It is written in the family records, and was generally known here then, that the grandmother of Bill and Ben Porter was killed and partly devoured by a panther back in Indiana. She would have been the great-grandmother of Jim and Bill Porter, and Zada Shumaker and Harry Porter. Also, there is one man now living in Wetmore—G. C. Swecker—who would tell you how one of those ferocious beasts hopped upon the roof of his father’s hunting lodge, while occupied, back in Virginia and ripped the clapboards off. He also declares that panthers do scream like a woman. And, as one old fellow around the fire had said, they do sometimes migrate. I myself recall that during a severe winter in the Rocky mountains nearly a half century ago, that those killers actually came right down into Colorado Springs. At that time panthers were quite numerous in the Missouri hills across the river from Atchison—and with the Missouri river frozen in the severe winters of the old days, it would have been an easy matter for them to cross on the ice to this side; and then only a distance of forty miles to get out here. And supposing—just supposing—that, perchance, they might have come over in pairs, and carried on in the usual cat tradition, there was the bare possibility of our coon-hunters even running into a “family” of them. The panther’s young stay with the mother until grown. Let’s say, then, that there was just enough to it to keep timid people on edge. I doubt if there ever was a night coon-hunt in those days when some of the hunters didn’t give some thought to that killer. The thought seemed to hit one the moment he was in the deep woods. And on moonlight nights that thought was simply unshakeable. A shadow in the wood—a shadow that was somehow alive—could be highly disquieting. Uncle Nick and the men, with the dogs on leash, took a turn about the woods while waiting for my father and the inevitable Thuse Peters to arrive. They would be coming out from town. I had gone out earlier that evening with my cousin, Burrel. Uncle Nick bade me remain at the fire so as to direct Dad and Thuse when, and if, they should come while the hunters were away. Ambrose Porter said, “Nick, you’re not going to leave that boy all alone out here. I’ll- stay with him.” Uncle Nick said, quietly, “Oh no, you won’t.” Uncle knew that Ambrose never liked to exert himself needlessly. If not inclined to discount my statements — and you really should not—you are now maybe thinking what I thought that night—that it was a darned shame to leave a boy all alone out there in the woods like that.