"Hoot mon!" answered the Scotchman, holding his nose tightly, "A didna ken 'twould cause sec' a tragedee!"
And after that we may be sure that Sandy let skunks severely alone.
Hunting in the summer time, or when the weather was but moderately cold, was well enough, but hunting in the dead of winter was quite a different thing. Then the thermometer would frequently drop to thirty and forty degrees below zero, and there would be a cutting "norther" fit to freeze the very marrow in one's bones. Seldom was there much snow, but when it came, it caused a veritable blizzard, during which neither man nor beast felt like stirring out.
It was during such weather that Theodore Roosevelt once had the tip of his nose and one cheek frozen—something that caused him not a little pain and trouble for a long time afterward.
It was in those dreary days that the logs were piled high in the broad fireplace of the ranch home, and Theodore Roosevelt spent his days in reading and studying, in writing letters to his friends and relatives, and in penning some of the hunting sketches that have won him literary fame.
One day, early in the winter, Theodore Roosevelt and his foreman went out to see if they could not bring in two white-tail deer which had been seen in the vicinity of the ranch the day before. One of the deer, a large buck, had been shot in the ankle by the foreman, so the beginning of the trail was easy to follow. The buck and his mate had gone into a thicket, and it was likely that there the pair had spent the night.
"We'll have our own trouble finding the tracks again," said the foreman. And so it proved; for during the night some cattle and other animals had passed in and out of the thicket, which covered a large extent of territory.
At last the hunters hit upon the right trail, and the foreman went ahead, leaving Roosevelt to keep somewhat toward the outside of the cover. Both were wide-awake and on the alert, and presently the foreman announced that he had found the spot where the wounded buck had passed the night.
"He is not very far from here," said the foreman, and hardly had he said this than Theodore Roosevelt heard a cracking of fallen twigs and a breaking of the brush and lower limbs of the trees as the buck rushed through the thicket. He ran with all speed in the direction and took station behind a large tree.
Only a few seconds passed, and then the buck showed his head and antlers among the brushwood. He was gazing ahead anxiously, no doubt trying to decide if it would be safe to leap into the open and run up the trail. Then he turned his gaze directly toward where Theodore Roosevelt was crouching, rifle in hand.