“I wonder if that ar’ critter is anywhar ’bout yer,” remarked Black Tom, as they moved away together.
“I don’t,” replied old Stebbins.
“Why not?”
“’Cause yonder he is this very minute.”
As he spoke, the old hunter pointed upward to the top of a cliff, full five hundred feet above them, and several hundred yards distant. There, in full relief against the blue sky, stood the beast, his ungainly body so strangely striped and ringed, and its appearance so singular as to be almost indescribable.
For a minute the three men looked at it in silence, and then Teddy O’Doherty removed his coonskin cap and made a low obeisance.
“What’s that for?” asked Black Tom.
“I s’lute him, jist as the gintry in Tipperary used to s’lute me when they saw me ridin’ by on me own jackass, that belonged to another man. The baast is a gintleman, so long as he uses me in the shtyle of last night.”
“You’d better keep cl’ar of him, so long as you can.”
“I shan’t bother him, nor persoom too much on his good nature.”