He was now ready to set out for home; and mounting his horse rode to Prescott’s, and exchanged his pack-saddle for a riding-saddle, and happened to mention to his neighbor that he had left a keg of molasses in the camp.
“You should not have done that, for if a bear happens to come along and smells it, he’ll set his wits at work to get to it.”
“Is that so?”
“Sartain; a bear is raving crazy after molasses or honey or sugar; he’ll stave the door in or make the bark fly off that roof a good deal faster than you put it on.”
“Then what will become of my corn while I am away?”
“There will be nothing to hinder all the wild animals from helping themselves.”
“They’ll destroy it all before I get back.”
“Oh, no, they won’t! They may hurt it a good deal, and they may not. There’s one thing in your favor: it is a great year for acorns and beech-nuts, and hickory, and all kinds of nuts and cranberries,—the bogs are full of cranberries, and the bears and coons love them dearly, so they won’t be so hard upon the corn as they would otherwise be. But I don’t think there are many bears round this fall; the coons and the turkeys are the worst, because there are so many of them; but the coons are ten times as bad as the wild turkeys, because there are so many of them, and they come when you are asleep—the turkeys come in the daytime, and a shot or two at them scares them off for a week, and they are first-rate eating. If they take the bread out of your mouth, they put meat into it.”
“I wouldn’t object to the bears if I was to be here—a bear’s skin is worth about thirty bushels of corn.”
“Ay; but you might lose your corn and not get the bear.”