“The old Captain then turned to the boys and said he knowed it was a fisher the moment he sot eyes on it, and he hadn’t seen one for goin’ on eleven year, now.
“Then he went to braggin’ so much about what good eatin’ fisher was, that the boys all got awful anxious to be tryin’ some of the critter.
“But the Captain said fisher warn’t good till it had first been well parboiled; that we must put him in the camp-kettle and bile him that night, then stew him down in a pan for breakfast.
“When we went to bed we left the fisher gently simmerin’ over the fire, and by mornin’ he was not only biled, but too much so—was biled to rags.
“The Captain looked a litle puzzled at this phernominon, but the boys said it was all the better.
“We fried as much of the animal as we could stack into two pans and had a reg’lar feast of fisher; as the fellers all believed the thing to be.
“Old Captain Crooks was delighted. He had his plate filled about five times, and told the boys, as all were squatted in a circle round about on the ground, how he used to have big times up in Wisconsin a catchin’ and a cookin’ of fishers.
“I’d finished my breakfast and started to go and ketch up my horse, when I came to the skunk skin, layin’ in the bushes whar I’d hid it away. An idea popped into my head. I looked at the great black-and-white, woolly hide, then at the ole Captain, who, with his knife and fork balanced acrost his fingers, was showin’ the boys how to set a trap for a fisher. He still had in his lap ’bout half a plate of greasy, steamin’ fisher stew, and the fellers was all still a shovelin’ in fisher, watchin’.[watchin’.], between mouthfuls, the trap the Captain was fixen up for ’em.
“‘I’ll do it!’ says I, to myself. Pickin’ up the skin by ’bout six of the long white hairs in the end of the tail, I marched up to where all war squatted.
“Hy‘ar, fellers,’ says I, ‘blame me if hyar ain’t that dam fisher skin now!’[now!’]