Scat

Following Duane Jr., Nick and the rest of the party hike out into the swamp with the baby panther. Nick is impressed by Duane Jr.’s silent, perceptive tracking skills: “Smoke advanced steadily in pursuit of the mother panther, pausing now and then to point out a broken sprig, a flattened tuft of grass, or a partial paw print” (326). Suddenly he motions for everyone to stop, and Mrs. Starch sets the cub down, hoping that its cries will draw the mother panther toward them. Squirt walks to the base of a tree, sits down, and begins to cry. When the mother panther finally appears and approaches the kitten, she is scared away by a sudden gunshot. 

Back at the drilling site, Jimmy Lee Bayliss and Drake McBride are arguing about how to handle the Fish and Wildlife officer. McBride suggests setting another, bigger fire, while Bayliss wants to ditch the equipment and flee to Mexico. While they are bickering, they hear something moving in the woods nearby; it is, of course, the panther: “The fog parted and a tawny shape materialized, sleek and low-slung. It was poised on muscled haunches barely ten yards away, its pale gold eyes locked on the two startled men” (333). McBride, in panic, grabs his gun and fires at the panther, which runs away. As Bayliss and McBride wrestle over the gun, they suddenly hear a voice commanding them to drop the weapon and put their hands up. The sound of gunfire has revealed their location to Torkelsen and Detective Marshall, who have come to arrest them. Bayliss surrenders obediently, but McBride runs off into the swamp. 

After the gunfire stops, Nick gets up from the ground and checks on his companions. Mrs. Starch has been shot and is bleeding badly from the leg; Twilly and Duane Jr., the strongest in the group, immediately volunteer to carry her to the car, leaving Nick and Marta with the baby panther. Twilly gives Marta his rifle, and Nick picks up the cub, who is cowering under a tree. After catching sight of the mother panther’s shadow high up in a pine tree, Nick climbs. Drake McBride, running from the cops and desperate to keep the Fish and Wildlife officers away, approaches the tree and takes aim at Nick. Another muffled gunshot rings out, and Nick’s right arm goes dead. Marta takes Twilly’s gun and scares McBride away. In the tree, Nick refuses to let go, and “reaching up with his good arm—the left arm, the same arm he’d been training with and building up for weeks” (341), he drags himself up to the highest branch. He holds up the panther cub and as it cries, the mother panther comes nearer. Knowing she won’t take the cub while he is nearby, Nick places Squirt on a branch and lets himself fall from the tree. He and Marta watch the mother panther carry off her cub by the scruff of its neck. 

Drake McBride is stuck in a tree, having been chased there by Horace the bloodhound. Hours later, Twilly Spree finds them, and Drake McBride offers Twilly a bribe to help him get out of the swamp and escape the police. Twilly leaves him there, stranded. 

It is a month later, and Mrs. Starch, Nick, Marta, and Duane Jr. are all back at school. Jimmy Lee Bayliss and Drake McBride are both in jail, awaiting charges; Bayliss has agreed to testify against his former boss in exchange for a lighter sentence. Duane Jr. was made to serve a two-week jail sentence for evading arrest. But the story of the baby panther rescue has made the local and national news, and he, Nick, Marta, and Mrs. Starch are all greeted as heroes at the Truman School. When Mrs. Starch enters the classroom, still on crutches from her gunshot wound, the class applauds. She makes a point to return Duane Jr.’s pimple paper —the one Wendell Waxmo had given a D minus— in front of the class with an A, praising his humor and research skills. 

Duane Sr. has finally started to pick up the pieces after his divorce: he is giving piano lessons and dating again. Twilly, after sending Mrs. Starch to the hospital with Duane Jr. and returning to help Nick and Marta, has gone back into the wilderness in his canoe. The novel ends with Nick and his father—who now has a prosthetic arm—fishing on a bay in the Everglades. They see a man in a canoe disappearing into the distance.