"Come, Sammy," said Archie, "get Harry's bow and arrow, and go with us: we're going to shoot pigeons and coons, and want to shoot fish."
The boys were in the habit of shooting fish when they came near the surface in the shoal-water; but they sometimes lost both arrow and fish.
Sammy made no objections to going this time, as he had used up all his clay, and knew he should need help from his mates, and that he must gratify them if he desired their aid.
"It's no good for me to take Harry's bow. I'll take Knuck's: I'd ruther have that. I can't begin to bend Harry's."
As the baby was asleep in the cradle, and could make no objection, they took the bear with them. There were several dogs: Will Redmond had brought Mr. Honeywood's Fan, the mother of the whole litter; Sammy had one; and Tony's had come visiting of his own free will.
The boys would have taken them all; but Mrs. Sumerford objected, because, though the dogs and the bear agreed well at home where they had been taught to show due respect to his bearship, it was quite the reverse when they were not under the inspection of their masters, the dogs always being the aggressors. Therefore the dogs were shut up in the house till the boys were gone, when Mrs. Sumerford let them out, and gave them their breakfast.
Coons are wont to sleep in the daytime, and forage in the night. A favorite resort of these creatures is the evergreen trees with close foliage, among which it is not easy to see them. There, after a hearty meal, they coil themselves around the tree, lying upon the limbs at their junction with the trunks, and sleeping. The boys were no novices in the art of finding them: one or two would climb the tree, and drive them to the top, or upon the outer limbs, and the others shoot them. They liked best to shoot pigeons when they could find them on the ground, or on low bushes feeding on berries.
In shooting into the tops of trees, if they missed their aim, the arrows were likely to stick in a limb or some part of the tree, in which case it was not only some work to recover them, but the points of the flint ones were liable to be broken, and those of the iron ones bent, or if steel they were sometimes broken.
They had killed four coons, finding a whole family in one tree, and a partridge, and were now in pursuit of pigeons, creeping on their hands and knees among the bushes; and the bear, as fond of berries as the pigeons, was improving the opportunity, lying down on the loaded bushes, and eating while the juice ran in streams from either side of his mouth.