Читать книгу Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin - Mabel Osgood Wright - Страница 16

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ETCH yer blankets. Thar's yer lean-to and thar's yer stove," said Nez, pointing to the slanting hemlock roof and the line of glowing coals. "Now git out yer kit and yer grub, and let's see what sort of a feed we can cook up."

"The woman and the young uns are gone over the mountain to Chestnut Ridge tradin', but they'll be home b'fore night. I'd be pleased to have yer eat in the cabin b'yon' there, but yer seemed to want to play campin'."

The three children looked on in open-eyed wonder, but Olive, who had some experience in woodcraft, began sorting and arranging the things that Mr. Blake, the Doctor, and Nez brought up from the wagon.

First she put the food and cooking utensils on planks near the fire, and then spread the wagon cushions at the back of the brush lean-to, and laid some extra horse blankets upon them.

"I wonder why uncle brought six blankets when there are only two horses," said Nat.

"We'll see before we get home," said Dodo; "we always do."

Next Olive filled the tea-kettle from a pail of water Nez brought from a spring on the hill above the cabin, and hung it on the crossbar over the fire.

"I know what that stick is for, anyway," said Nat.

"I've fixed sticks like that to hold a kettle, and I've roasted chestnuts and potatoes in hot ashes," said Rap; "but I can't think what those two logs are for, and why they are fixed wider apart at one end than at the other."

"That is easily explained," said Mr. Blake, beginning to untie his packages of groceries. "You see the bottom of the coffee-pot is smaller than the tin kettle, and the frying-pan is larger than either. Now, if we set the coffee-pot on the narrow end, it fits nicely, but the kettle would not get enough heat, so that stands where the logs are wider apart, and the frying-pan further along; and if we wanted to cook something in a wire broiler, it could go at the very end. Isn't this log stove a great invention?"

"Y-e-s," said the children; "but what are you going to cook?"

"Roast the potatoes in the ashes, boil the coffee, fry the ham and eggs in this pan, tie strings to the stems of these apples and hang them on the rod by the tea-kettle.

"We will begin with the potatoes and apples," said Mr. Blake, "for they take the longest to cook. How is it for game about here, Nez? I brought my gun, thinking I might get a few Quail; but it's taken us so long to come up that there is not time."

"Quail and Grouse, plenty, and some Woodcock, if you know where to go. The woman is takin' a bunch now to trade over the mountain, and Stubble, my dog, has gone with her, or I'd send him out with you. Here's a pair o' Grouse that have hung since day before yesterday; they'll roast first-rate, if you'll have 'em."

Nez went to the shed and brought back a pair of Partridges, or Ruffed Grouse, as they should be called, both males, with ruffs of lustrous green feathers.

"How pretty!" said Dodo, stroking them; "would it be any harm for me to wear those wings in my hat after we have eaten the birds?"

"It is no harm to use the wings of food birds for ornament; the only danger is that people, who do not care or know the difference, or understand about Citizen Bird, may wear the wings of Song Birds by mistake."

"How can we roast them without an oven?" asked Rap, as they watched Nez pulling off the wing and tail feathers, but not otherwise plucking the Grouse. "Hang them with a string over the fire?"

"In the ashes along o' the potatoes," replied Nez, at the same time going near the spring and bringing a spadeful of pliable, clayey earth, which, by wetting, he kneaded into two sheets a little thicker than pie crust.

"What can he be doing?" whispered Dodo to Olive; "do you suppose he really eats mud pies?"

"No, dear; of course not. Watch!"

Nez laid a bird in the centre of each sheet of clay dough, after wetting its feathers, which he wrapped all around it as if it were an apple in a little dumpling. Then he dug out a small oven-like hole under the broadest part of the fire, into which he put the Grouse, covered them with ashes, and raked the live coals back over the spot.

"Won't they be all burned and dirty?" whispered Dodo to Olive.

"Wait and see," was her answer.

While the dinner was cooking, Nez led the party, all except the cook, about his clearing, as he called it.

At first the cabin seemed very dark, but they soon saw that it had two rooms separated by a great chimney piled up of broad rough stones. One room was the kitchen and living room, and the other the bedroom. This had berths nailed to the wall, not unlike those in a ship or sleeping car. The bedding consisted of coarse gray blankets, spread over fresh hemlock boughs and straw.

The fireplace was open and wide, and on the living-room side some long logs were piled one on top of the other, with smaller sticks and kindlings in front.

"We keep er sort uv campfire in here cold nights, yer see, Doctor. When once you've been uster sleepin' by a fire, you miss it dredful. I've got a stove in here," he said, pointing to the kitchen; "but in warm weather we cook outside on the logs. When you've spent twenty or thirty years sleepin' mostly under the sky, any kind uv a roof seems crampy, so in summer season I lie out yet."

"Did you ever sleep all night outdoors, like daddy and uncle, with no tent or anything?" asked Dodo, in an awe-struck tone, leaving the boys, who were looking at the strange assortment of things that hung from the rafters of the cabin, stood in corners, or were stuck in the little cracks between the logs.—Fishing-poles, a Winchester rifle, a double-barrel shot-gun, bunches of herbs, the furry skins of several kinds of small beasts, a Fox tail fastened to a stick for a duster, and many other fascinating objects.

"Sleep out all night, missy?" said Nez in astonishment; "why, o' course, that wuz always the kind of campin' I did when I wuz trappin'."

"Why didn't wild beasts eat you, and why didn't you get all damp and mouldy?" persisted Dodo.

"Mostly on account of the dry air in those places, and campfires, I reckon, and sleepin' with one eye open," said Nez, laughing. "Here comes Renny, he wants his supper, I guess."

"Why, it's a Fox! Won't he bite? I thought Foxes were wild beasts," said Nat, as a young Fox, looking something like a small collie dog, trotted up to the cabin, sniffing about and eyeing the strangers suspiciously.

"That Fox won't bite, he's a pet of the young uns. His mother was killed for chicken stealin', I reckon, along in May; and Stubble nosed out the hole on the other side of the mountain, and I found two pups in it. One died, and we raised this. We've got a young Coon, too, somewhere about."

"He is just as pretty as a dog. Will he never run away and try to find his mother?" asked Rap. "I had a tame Coon once, and it stayed round all right, but along in the second spring it ran away."

"I reckon the Fox will too, when he gits old enough to take a mate and set up house for himself. They all do,—birds and beasts and folks too,—everybody likes to have a place of his own. Don't he, Doctor? Here I was a-roamin' all over creation, no idea uv stayin' put anywhere, and here I am settled down and what they call civilized."

The Doctor laughed and walked off with Nez to see his charcoal pit and bit of cleared land, where he raised potatoes and beans, while the children still looked wonderingly about the cabin.

"I wonder why the leaves are swept away so clean all about here?" said Dodo. "It looks so much prettier to have leaves and pine needles on the ground."

"On account of fire," said Olive. "When you camp out, you have to be very careful about fire, especially in places where there are many evergreen trees. Nez cooks out of doors and works often under that shed, and has a log fire to warm him; and if the ground were covered with dry leaves, the fire might spread all through the woods."

"I'm so very hungry," said Dodo, presently; "suppose we go over and see how daddy is getting along with his cooking."

"There must be Coons living around here," said Rap, looking eagerly into some old trees. "I see lots of likely holes, and there's a splendid lot of brush down hill there for Rabbits. Say, Nat, I wonder when we learn to shoot if Nez wouldn't let us come here and get something to eat and then cook it? It would be great sport!"

"We can ask him, anyhow. There, daddy is beckoning to us, and I smell ham. C-o-m-i-n-g, c-o-m-i-n-g," Nat shouted.

"It's all ready," said Dodo, who had gone ahead, "only Uncle Roy and Nez have wandered away, and daddy says we must not dig out the roast birds until they come back. Can't you moo-oo to call them, daddy, the same way that Nez did?"

"I can try, girlie. Nat, go over to the cabin and see if you can find a great cone-shaped thing made of bark."

Nat soon returned breathless, but with the desired article. "It was hanging by the chimney on an old pair of some kind of queer flat spiked Deer horns."

"Antlers, Nat; we don't call those things horns when they belong to Deer. They must be the antlers of Nez' famous Moose. You must ask him to tell you about it some day. Let me have the horn."

"It's like a little megaphone, you know," said Nat; "the thing they called out the programme with at the circus, only that was tin and this is old dry bark."

"So it is, and that, like many other things, had its beginning in some simple invention of a woodsman. Let me have it—Moo-oo-oo-o! Wher! Moo-oo-oo-o!"

"Oh, what a queer foggy noise!" cried Dodo, stopping up her ears.

"I'm afraid, Uncle Jack," said Olive, "if I were a Moose I should run away from a mate with such a voice."

"May I try?" said Rap.

"Certainty. I never was a good Moose caller, it always gave me a sore throat."

Rap took the cone and called gently at first, raising the horn and then lowering it to the ground, making a very good imitation of Nez' call.

"Bravo!" cried Mr. Blake; "some one must have taught you that, my boy."

"I've seen the lumbermen do it over at the far mountain."

"Are there Moose anywhere near here?" asked Olive.

"Oh, no; but the men had worked in North Maine and Canada, and they used to sit round the fire and tell boast stories of what they had done, and showed how they called Moose."

"Boast stories, what are those?" asked Olive.

"Stories about animals they had hunted so long ago that every time they told about the beast it got bigger and bigger, until it wouldn't have known itself."

Mr. Blake laughed heartily at Rap's description, as if he thoroughly appreciated his meaning.

"When we sit by the campfire thinking of past days that have pleased us, we often see them through the firelight as we do things in dreams, which are part imagination and part memory. Always remember, boys, that the adventures we have under the open sky and the friends we make around the campfires and in the silence of strange places—open prairie or trackless wood—are different from the doings and acquaintances of every day, and the account of them must always seem unreal to those who have not been there."

"You called fust rate the second time," said Nez to Mr. Blake, returning from showing his farm, as he called it. "It was a little onsertin at fust—"

"Praise Rap; the call I gave was called a 'foggy noise' by Dodo."

"Was that you, little chap? Want to know! Was you raised in the North Woods?"

"No, but I've always wanted to live in the woods the way you do; but you see woods are too far away from people for mother to get any washing to do."

"Never you mind," said Nez, "after the first snow you come up and stop with me a spell, and I'll show you how to git some Rabbits and a Grouse or two for your mammy, when I've got my Muskrat and Mink traps set. There's no big game hereabouts, at least none bigger than a Fox or a Porkipine, a Coon or maybe a couple o' Wild Cats strayin' about. But you can see how the night comes in the woods, and I'd learn you the tracks of some o' the fur beasts. If we get good deep snow down along the river medders, I'll show you how to walk on snow-shoes, too; maybe it'll come in handy some day."

"I couldn't learn that on account of my leg, but Nat could, and he'd love it," said Rap, cheerfully.

"Dinner, dinner," called the Doctor, "and stories afterward. Dodo is very anxious to see you open the mud pies, Nez."

"Come and sit on the cushions under this nice wind break," said Olive, going to the lean-to that Nez had made of the hemlock boughs. "Here are your plates and cups,—you be waiter, Nat, and take them to Uncle Jack."

"What do you call your camp, Nez?" asked Mr. Blake.

"Settledown," said Nez, laughing, "'cause we've settled here nigh two years."

"Bill of Fare for Dinner at Camp Settledown, served by Chef Jacque," called Mr. Blake. "Ham and eggs, potatoes in jackets, frying-pan bread, roast Grouse with clay pastry. Dessert—roast apples on strings, ginger cookies, and"—as Nez came from the cabin with a jar—"wild plum jam, and coffee with condensed cream!"

The first course was eaten with much relish, and then they gathered around the fire to see Nez uncover his famous pies. The first one being opened disclosed a mass of blackened feathers.

"I knew it wouldn't be any good," whispered Dodo to Nat.

"You know too soon then," he replied, as Nez with a skilful pull took feathers, skin, and all from the bird, showing its smoking, nicely cooked body all ready to be eaten.

"Oh!" said the children, as they cut it, or, I should say more truthfully, pulled it apart.

"It's terribly good with a little salt on it," said Dodo; "here's a dear little wish-bone for you, Olive, and both top legs." And for the next half hour the conversation was nearly extinguished by the food.

"Please, are you going to tell us a story now?" asked Dodo of Nez, as he began collecting the tin plates, cups, pots, and pans.

"Wash up yer kit first, then campfire and talking. You see, missy, in the woods it don't do to let yer vittles cool on the dishes; it's too hard to clean 'em. Got a kittle? Yes?" and he filled the largest tin with water, which he set on the fire to heat for dish-washing.

"Any dish-rag?" and Nez carefully put the good scraps in a pail to feed to Stubble when he should return, wiped each article out with a handful of leaves which he carefully burned as soon as soiled,—then the dish-washing was an easy matter.

"You see," he explained, "if you are camping in any one place for a spell, it gets dreadful mussy if you don't keep cleaned up, and then you may want yer duds in a hurry. Always keep yer kit ready, whether it's guns, or harness, or kittles; that's camp law."

So the children strayed about for an hour or so until Nez and their father had finished their work and smoked their after-dinner pipes.

"Now we'll have a campfire, though it's the wrong time o' day," continued Nez, piling some logs from his shed against a couple of charred tree trunks that stood side by side about four feet apart; he put sticks and kindling in front of the logs, arranging the heap so that the wind blew from the front to the back.

"Why don't you put the sticks in a stack, like corn stalks?" asked Nat. "That is the way we do when Uncle Roy lets us make bonfires in the gravel-bank lot; it burns up as quick as a flash, only it eats a great lot of wood."

"That's the reason we don't do it," said Nez, "just 'cause it does burn up quick and eat the wood so fast and then slumps out. This isn't the real time o' day that in natur' a woodsman or a plainsman would stop to build a campfire, but it'll do to show you by."

"When do people generally build them?" asked Rap.

"Along about dark," said Nez, "after supper, when the day's work is done, if it's a cattle round-up, or a huntin' or a lumber camp. In the north and northwest country the air is dry and fine enough in the daytime, but as soon as the sun goes down—down goes the weather, too. If you go to sleep with no fire, or let your fire go out, you'll get up with stumblin' feet and hands all thumbs in the morning. That's why we pile the logs this way, so that the fire gets a good hold and creeps up slowly, and lasts long.

"Then you'll lie under yer bush shanty, or lean-to, or canvas, or whatever kind of a shelter you have, or stretch out on the ground in yer blanket, and yer so glad of rest that yer wouldn't change with any one in a castle. Some one throws on the logs, and the camp settles down for the night to smoke and talk and then sleep. Wolves may bark in the distance, and Wildcats yowl and sneeze; as long as the fire blazes they'll keep away."

"Please tell us about all the sorts of tents you've slept in," said Olive.

"And about the wild beasts that sneezed at you," added Nat, as they all watched the fire dreamily in the comfortable silence brought by a day in the open air and a good meal.

"My furst reglar campin' was in a lumber camp in Canada, the Saskatchewan country they call it. All day long we were out in the woods cutting trees, trimming them down and branding the logs to be hauled over the snow in the winter to the river, so that the spring freshets would wash them down. I don't think I ever struck a camp that had more game, big and little, come about it. Maybe it was 'cause I was young then, and everything seemed wonderful.

"The camp was clear out in the wilderness, in a sort of holler between a marshy place all brushed over and a woody hill; it was just half dugout, half log-cabin, like my own yonder. In fact, I made this as like as I could to the remembrance of that one. Only, like most camps thereabouts, it had a pair uv Moose horns over the door to bring good huntin'.

"It was the furst winter that I was there I learned from the Indians and half-breeds how to read signs; to know by the footprints jest what animal had been that way, and by the way young twigs were nibbled and torn whether it was a Moose,—if it was a bull with antlers or the smaller cow without them. Then I learnt the footmarks of all the fur beasts, and their toothmarks on the bark, and when there were scratches on the trees I knew how big a B'ar had sharpened his claws there, and how tall he was."

"Oh, uncle, don't you remember how you said the Wise Men made animals into classes by looking at their feet and teeth, but I didn't know people could tell them only by their footprints.

"Please, Nez, can you tell by smell where all the different animals are, as uncle says they can tell about each other?" asked Nat.

"Not quite," said Nez, laughing, "though there are a few I can nose out besides Skunks. I did some tall huntin' and trappin' then for a season or two, before the game got too skary, and folks came that killed just for getting the antlers of the bulls and leavin' the meat to rot,—folks that took a fawn or doe just the same as a buck. Hunting Wolves, I call them, for a Wolf is a wasteful beast in his killin'."

"That's what daddy calls such people, too. Tell us the names of some of the beasts you saw," coaxed Nat.

"It would be easier to name those I didn't," said Nez, hesitating; "but of a moonlight night after an early snow, when all of the outfit but me was away, I've seen a Moose come from the windward side of the cabin, while a Fox sulked in the shade of some firs watching the Skunks fighting over the scrap-pail, and a Lynx crouched, grinning, on a log, taking it all in. Meanwhile white northern Hares and Ermines nosed about dreadful careless, not knowing when they might make food for Owls, and Meadow Mice squealed among the logs and left their little tracks like birds' claws in the snow. When they think there's nobody round, beasts have their playtime, just like folks."

The Lumber Camp.

Wolf. Skunks. Canada Lynx. Moose.

"Oh!" sighed Rap and Nat in chorus, "all those beasts you saw are four-footed Americans; if we could only live in a camp and see them."

"It was a nice place to see the animals, but pshaw, some folks would find the camp smoky in winter and full o' black flies in summer. Don't I remember the time I shot my big Moose? I'll tell you that story some day, and about another time out in Montana how your dad was huntin' for Sheep and met a Grizzly B'ar. That is, if he don't."

"And did you ever see a great white Polar Bear, or find Seals swimming on the ice?" asked Dodo.

"No, I never was so far north. There is a friend of mine, a Finlander, who follows the sea, who has been as fur north as most men go and get back again, and he knows those beasts and their ways. He's comin' to stop with me a spell this snowfall, and he's been fishin' and keepin' a light down on the shore two summers. I thought maybe you'd met him, his name is—"

"Olaf!" cried the children and Olive in chorus.

"Want to know!" said Nez, looking pleased, and puffing vigorously at his pipe.

"Oh, uncle! Oh, daddy!" cried Nat and Dodo, rolling off the blankets in their excitement. "Nez knows Olaf and he's coming here! Don't you see how much we could learn about the fourfoots if we could only live up here in a log house?"

"Doubtless you could, and you would perhaps enjoy it vastly for a while, but how about school? You must begin by being fitted for your lives as House People; few of us can live the wild life, except now and then for pleasure and as a rest from too much tameness. Don't look so blue, Nat. Dodo, cheer up, even if you may not live in a log house you are not going to be shut up in a prison this winter. Listen, and I will tell you the whole of the surprise that you partly learned yesterday."

Four heads crowded together, and eight wide-open eyes gazed at Dr. Roy, for Olive was as much in the dark as the others.

"Must we guess?" asked Dodo, clapping her hands.

"You may all try, if you like, but I do not think you can possibly guess the whole of the secret."

"We are coming up here on Saturdays to learn to shoot and hear Nez tell stories," ventured Nat.

"No," said Olive, "it can't be that, because it would be too far and too cold in winter. Perhaps you will ask Nez to come down some time and tell us stories," said Olive.

"It takes too long to guess," cried Dodo, wriggling about in her impatience, "please tell us now!"

"Very well; the surprise has three parts to it. Sit still, Dodo, and remember that you are not to jump up and down or hug me until I have quite finished.

"You all remember the old summer kitchen at the farm that is filled with boxes, tools, and rubbish,—the long, low room back of the dairy, with the brick floor and wide fireplace?"

"Oh, yes," said Nat, "I've looked in there trying to find Bats that I've seen go through a place where the glass was broken, but it was stuffed so full of everything that I couldn't get in at the door."

"Now," continued the Doctor, "this very day Rod is clearing out all the rubbish, and I am going to let you fit up that old room like a log-cabin camp. The fireplace is large enough to hold a fine campfire. This is part first.

"Part second.—Every Saturday afternoon that it is pleasant your father or I will teach you to shoot at a target.

"Part third.—When it is dark you shall go into 'camp' and cook your own supper, after the same fashion as you have seen the dinner cooked to-day, then after supper we will have stories about the four-footed Americans. Nez has promised to tell some of them, and Olaf others. Rap can tell what he knows of the nearby beasts, while your father and I will fill in the chinks."

"How did you ever think of anything so lovely?" exclaimed Olive.

"I can hug you now," said Dodo, immediately doing it vigorously.

"Hurrah! Moo-oo-o!" was Nat's response, trying to blow a joyful blast on the Moose horn, and failing utterly, while Rap sat in silence, but with a beaming face.

"Let's go home and begin right away," said Dodo.

"It is high time to go home," said Mr. Blake, jumping up. "Who would think it was nearly five o'clock? The sun sets in a hurry these days, and we shall have to ask the moon to escort us, I think. Cold ham and cookies must do for supper."

"Somebody is coming," said Rap, pointing to the path that wound around the steep, wooded crest, where his quick ears detected a rustling in the dead leaves. At the same time a ginger-colored setter dog came in sight, followed by two sturdy little boys, who, on seeing strangers, dodged into the cabin like frightened Rabbits.

"That's Toinette and the young uns," said Nez. Then added by way of apology, "The young uns don't see many folk and they are skary. Here, Toinette," speaking to a rather pretty, dark-haired, black-eyed young woman, who came up carrying a basket on her head, "make you acquainted with some old tent mates o' mine."

The woman gravely held out her hand to each with a pretty gesture of welcome that said more than words.

"She's half French, you see," explained Nez, "and she isn't much on talkin' American."

But the moment Mr. Blake spoke to her in the soft slurring French of the Canadian woods, she answered readily, and her face was wreathed with smiles.

"You must bring your wife and children down to visit us, Nez," said the Doctor; "it will do them good to see other young folks."

"I reckon it would. The boys go to school now, over the mountain; book learnin' is some good even to woodsmen, I say, and by the time they've grown up there won't be much of a livin' left in the woods, anyhow."

"But it's more than five miles over to the Ridge school by the road."

"Yes, but that's nothin' fine days, and when snow comes I calkerlate ter put on snow-shoes and ride 'em, one on each shoulder, across country; they don't weigh much compared to camp kits and Deer I've carried."

"Dodo, how would you like to go ten miles a day through the woods to school?" asked her father, for Dodo sometimes grumbled at walking the smooth mile that lay between the farm and schoolhouse.

"At first, for about a week, it would be fun, and then perfectly dreadful," she answered promptly.

They left Nez' camp reluctantly, and returned to where they had left the wagon and horses, who greeted them with neighs of pleasure. Tom had walked so many times around the tree to which he was tethered that he was wound up tight to the trunk, while Jerry had nibbled his rope loose and was having a fine time rolling on the ground, though his thick coat, long mane, and tail were knotted with burrs which would give Rod a good hour's work to comb out.

"Never mind," he neighed, as the Doctor said "Look at what a pickle Jerry is in,"—"I've had my fun to-day as well as you."

The sun disappeared exactly at the moment that the wagon turned into the lane again, and every one waved good-by to Nez, who watched them out of sight.

"I know what all the extra blankets and things were put in for," said Dodo, as her father made her sit on a blanket which he folded over her knees and drew about her shoulders like a shawl, so that only her head peeped out, while the others arranged theirs to match. "It's like being in a bag. How nice and warm it feels," she said, nestling down. "I didn't know just one blanket could be so comfortable."

"Just one skin robe or wool blanket is all that the Indian hunter, or plainsman, has to stand between him and the bitter cold night," said the Doctor; "so that many people who are living the out-door life continually, have their blankets sewed into this shape and lined with fur, and they are called sleeping bags."

"That is what Dodo's blanket will be long before we get home," said Olive, as Dodo nodded and swayed on the seat.

"No, I'm going to stay awake so as to see everything," said she, suddenly stiffening up and opening her eyes very wide.

"Look at the mist coming up out of the river and lowlands," said Rap; "it's just as if they had gone to sleep and it was their breath."

"We shall save three miles by following the river lane," said the Doctor to Mr. Blake, who was driving.

By this time the light that guided them came from the great full hunter's moon, and all that was left of daylight was a few dull red shadows in the west.

"There are lots of little beasts out to-night," said Rap, his eyes being almost as keen in the darkness as a cat's. "Oh, Doctor, do you hear that barking down the river bank? I'm as sure as anything that it's a dog that has treed a Coon, for the noise keeps coming from the same place. Can't we stop and see?"

Mr. Blake drew in the horses, and they all listened for several minutes. The barking turned to a yelp and then a baying, and almost at the same time a good-sized beast, bigger than the largest Angora cat, with a full tail, sprang from the bushes into the road, stopped to listen, and then scenting the horses continued on its way through the bushes and disappeared among the rocks, while the barking dog seemed to be taking a zig-zag course in the opposite direction.

"We have seen the Coon without leaving the wagon," said Mr. Blake, whipping up again. "He evidently sprang from the tree across one of the brooks that feed the river, and the dog has lost the scent."

"It is a very queer animal," said Olive. "Father, did you notice when it sat up to listen it looked like a little Bear, in spite of its long tail?"

"That is not strange, considering that it is a cousin of Bears," said the Doctor.

"Coons are real clever," said Rap. "The one I had could do ever so many tricks, and used its paws as if they were hands."

"What are Coons good for—to eat or wear?" asked Dodo.

"Both," said the Doctor. "Their fur is soft and prettily brindled, and if they are young, the flesh is not unlike Rabbit."

"Mammy Bun says they used to have Coons down where she lived, but their fur wasn't good for much."

"The fur of an animal living in the South is never as good as the fur of the same species living in the North."

"Why is that?" asked Nat.

"Because fur is given animals to protect them from the cold; the summer coat of a fur beast is thin, as you see the summer coat of a horse is short, compared to the thick coat that grows out at the first cold weather. (Look at Tom and Jerry and see how woolly they are now.) As it is never very cold in the South, the fur animals do not need such thick, soft coats as they do here, while in Canada and northward, where the winter is far longer and colder than with us, the fur is heavier yet."

"There is a word I've heard hunters use for the fur of animals, the same as plumage means the feathers of birds, only I've forgotten it," said Rap.

"Pelage, is it not? It comes from peau (pelt), which means furry skin, a skin used for the leather instead of fur is called a hide."

Two men stepped across the road, with what looked like Rabbits and Grouse hanging over their shoulders, but slunk into the shadow of some bushes when they saw the wagon.

"Pot hunters, I know," said Mr. Blake, "snaring and trapping, as usual."

"How do you know they trapped the birds, daddy?" said Nat.

"Because they had no guns and hid when they saw us. If you watch wood life much, my boy, you will soon learn to see the reason why for things, and it is very often the reason that helps you to see the thing itself."

"Hoo-hoo-hoooo!" came a cry from over a very dark bit of road through which they were going.

"Nat, there is one of your friends,—the Great Horned Owl," said the Doctor.

"What is that—a Skunk?" asked Olive, as something black and white ran across the road. "It is striped so that it hardly shows in the moonlight."

"Yes; a Skunk, or rather what Tommy Anne calls a 'Scent Cat.' There is a great deal of argument as to whether its black and white coat protects it or not."

"I should say that it certainly did protect it on moonlight nights, but not on very dark nights," said Mr. Blake.

"I shouldn't think that would count; on dark nights you couldn't see it at all—only smell it," said Dodo, and then every one laughed at her matter-of-fact way of looking at things.

Between talking and listening to the strange sounds of night, it seemed but a short drive home. They left Rap at his gate, and soon the lamp on the porch at the farm was making their eyes blink, and when the children were unwrapped from their blankets, Dodo was really asleep in her bag.

"I might as well be sleepy now as not," she murmured, as her father lifted her down, "because we can't begin to fix our camp until next Saturday, can we?"

"Neigh, n-e-i-g-h!" snorted Tom and Jerry, knowing their supper was waiting for them at the barn, but Dodo was so sleepy that she thought they were answering her.