"He won't jump much with seven buckshot and a ball in him!" said Tom.
We left the empty sleigh there for three nights in succession; and every morning Tom came over to tell me that the lamb had been taken.
"The plan works just as old Hughy told me it would," he said; "but I've got only one lamb more, so we'll have to watch to-night. Don't tell anybody, but about bedtime you come over." Tom was full of eagerness.
I was in a feverish state of mind all day, especially as night drew on. If I had not been ashamed to fail Tom, I think I should have backed out. At eight o'clock I pretended to start for bed; then, stealing out at the back door, I hurried across the fields to the Edwards place. A new moon was shining faintly over the woods in the west.
Tom was in the wood-house, loading the gun, an old army rifle, bored out for shot. "I've got in six fingers of powder," he whispered.
We took a buffalo skin and a horse blanket from the stable, and armed with the gun, and an axe besides, proceeded cautiously out to the sleigh. Tom had laid the dead lamb on the knoll.
Climbing over the fence, we ensconced ourselves in the old sleigh. It was a chilly night, with gusts of wind from the northwest. We laid the axe where it would be at hand in case of need; and Tom trained the gun across the fence rail in the direction of the knoll.
"Like's not he won't come till toward morning," he whispered; "but we must stay awake and keep listening for him. Don't you go to sleep."
I thought that sleep was the last thing I was likely to be guilty of. I wished myself at home. The tales I had heard of the voracity and fierceness of the striped catamount were made much more terrible by the darkness. My position was so cramped and the old sleigh so hard that I had to squirm occasionally; but every time I did so, Tom whispered:
"Sh! Don't rattle round. He may hear us."