That night they sat near the stove, for it was bitter-cold outside, while Bill entertained them with yarns of hunting and trapping.
“Which is the hardest animal to catch?” inquired Ed.
“The fox,” Bill declared.
Then he explained how the fox cleverly overturned and sprang traps, helped himself to the bait, and went on unharmed. Bill said he had set a circle of traps around a bait, only to find each of them sprung and the bait gone when he visited the spot next morning.
He laughingly told of the time when he was a boy, and how he and a young friend had tried to bait and shoot a lynx. They took some meat to the foot of a tall hemlock-tree, near which neighbors said they had seen the lynx. It was a bright moonlight night, and the lads climbed into the tree to await their victim. They sat on a stout limb, shivering with excitement and jumping at every sound.
Suddenly clouds smothered the moon, and the watchers found themselves aloft in inky blackness. They had about decided to descend and hurry home when the worst racket they ever heard broke out below them. Yowls, hisses, and snarls filled the air and caused the hair of the frightened youngsters in the tree to stand on end.
“Hey, Bill, there are two of them, and they’re fighting!” cried his friend, in great alarm.
At that moment they heard something clawing its way frantically up the tree. A minute later two shining green eyes were peering into their own. It was too much for the startled hunters. Bill slid down the rough trunk and left the seat of his trousers on a stub, and his friend dropped through the branches.
Bruised and jarred, they scrambled to their feet. They were on the point of dashing home with a wild tale of adventure when their own house cat brushed lovingly against their shaking legs. Then a plaintive meow sounded from the tree-top as the second pussy hailed them.
The boys laughed at Bill’s story, and said it made them think of the night they climbed the tree in the swamp.