What Might Have Been Expected

by Frank R. Stockton

CHAPTER V.

The Turkey-Hunter.

When Harry left Kate, he quietly walked by the side of Crooked Creek, keeping his eyes fixed on the tracks of the strange animal, and his thumb on the hammer of the right-hand barrel of his gun. Before long the tracks disappeared, and disappeared, too, directly in front of a hole in the bank; quite a large hole, big enough for a beaver or an otter. This was capital luck! Harry got down on his hands and knees and examined the tracks. Sure enough, the toes pointed toward the hole. It must be in there!

Harry cocked his gun and sat and waited. He was as still as a dead mouse. There was no earthly reason why the creature should not come out, except perhaps that it might not want to come out. At any rate, it could not know that Harry was outside waiting for it.

He waited a long time without ever thinking how the day was passing on; and it began to be a little darkish, just a little, before he thought that perhaps he had better go back to Kate.

But it might be just coming out, and what a shame to move! A skin that would bring five dollars was surely worth waiting for a little while longer, and he might never have such another chance. He certainly had never had such a one before.

And so he still sat and waited, and pretty soon he heard something. But it was not in the hole—not near him at all. It was farther along the creek, and sounded like the footsteps of some one walking stealthily.

Harry looked around quickly, and, about thirty yards from him, he saw a man with a gun. The man was now standing still, looking steadily at him. At least Harry thought he was, but there was so little light in the woods by this time that he could not be sure about it. What was that man after? Could he be watching him?

Harry was afraid to move. Perhaps the man mistook him for some kind of an animal. To be sure, he could not help thinking that boys were animals, but he did not suppose the man would want to shoot a boy, if he knew it. But how could any one tell that Harry was a boy at that distance, and in that light.

Poor Harry did not even dare to call out. He could not speak without moving something, his lips any way, and the man might fire at the slightest motion. He was so quiet that the musk-rat—it was a musk-rat that lived in the hole—came out of his house, and seeing the boy so still, supposed he was nothing of any consequence, and so trotted noiselessly along to the water and slipped in for a swim. Harry never saw him. His eyes were fixed on the man.