“We’d better arm ourselves while we’ve got the chance,” said Randy. “There’s no telling what that old fox may start to do.”
“I don’t think I want to kill her,” said Fred. “If you did that, you’d have to kill her young ones too.”
The boys were now standing in a group in the rain, not knowing what to do next. Presently Jack and Gif walked around one side of the cabin. They were just in time to see the nose of the fox disappearing from a small hole in the side of the woodshed.
“She’s in there all right enough,” said Gif.
“And she can stay there for all of me,” answered Jack. “I suppose it would be the proper thing to kill that fox and also her young. But somehow, after looking at the little things, I haven’t got the heart to do it.”
Jack and Gif joined the others and found that they had brought forth from the cabin all the firearms the party carried.
“An old mother fox like that can make a lot of trouble for a farmer’s chickens,” said Gif. “Really more trouble than the crows. She ought to be slaughtered and the young ones ought to be slaughtered too.”
“Well, do you want to do the slaughtering, Gif?” questioned Fred quickly. “I declare I don’t.”
“Well, I—er—I think it ought to be done,” stammered the youth who had been at the head of the Colby Hall Athletic Association.
“All right then, we’ll appoint you the head of the committee to do the deed,” declared Spouter.