Soon there was a shout from the man up the tree. “I’ve got him!”
The smoke had proved too much for Brer Raccoon, and he had sought to escape by the hole at the top, only to walk into the bag. In a moment more Tom had descended the tree with a squirming, snarling animal safely tied up in the bag.
On their return to the camp they were greeted by several of the jacks who had not yet gone to bed. The catch was exhibited, and one of the men produced an old dog collar from the bunkhouse. The collar was snapped on the coon’s neck, a stout rope was attached to the ring in the corner to be later tied securely to a nail at the corner of the bunkhouse.
“There,” remarked Tom, surveying the result of the night’s catch. “If you fellows will lay off and not tease him, and shinny out a little food for him once in a while, he’ll get tame as a kitten, and they are a lot of fun when they get tame. Almost as good as a monkey.”
“We’ll have to keep Sandy tied up for a while when he is not with us, or he’ll make short work of that coon,” remarked Garry.
“Oh, I’ll have ’em as friendly as two brothers in a few days,” was Tom’s verdict.
The boys later found that the man Tom had a reputation for being quite a hand with animals of every description, but future events will show why Sandy and the coon never got well acquainted. Things were on the verge of beginning to hum for all hands.
When the boys woke in the morning, they made two startling discoveries. The first one was that repeated calls failed to bring Sandy to them, and the boys had never remembered the morning when Sandy went so far abroad that a few whistles did not bring him back on the run to join his companions.
The second surprise was found when Garry noticed a familiar looking roll of birch bark at the entrance to the cabin, weighted down by a stone!