THE WAR OF THE OWLS
The next morning, knife in hand, Andy knelt beside his big buck and expertly skinned out both hindquarters. Frosty, entirely at ease as long as no rifles or shotguns were about, sat contentedly near and watched the proceedings with interest. Slitting the tendons, Andy tied a rope through each, slung the other ends of the ropes over a porch beam and made ready to hoist the carcass aloft and finish skinning.
Frosty slipped into his favorite hiding place under the porch and did not come out again. Andy slackened the taut ropes and eased the buck down onto the floor. Frosty was not precisely a watch dog, but the boy had learned to tell from the big cat's actions when something was coming.
A little while later, Jud Casman appeared around a corner of the house. He was dressed for hunting, but not precisely in the costume which fashion magazines say the well-dressed hunter should wear. He wore wool trousers whose legs had been slit so that they might fit over knee-length rubber boots. It was a good, practical arrangement; snow and water would run down the trouser legs, rather than inside the boots. His upper torso was encased in a jacket over which he wore the cut-off upper half of some red woolen underwear. That, according to Jud, both enabled other hunters to see him and made the jacket snug enough so that some loose end wasn't forever catching in the brush. His hat might have descended to Jud from the first person ever to see the swamp. His rifle matched the costume.
It was a muzzle-loader of a type generally associated with frontiersmen and Indian fighters, and it was almost as long as Jud was tall. A single shot, it had been handed down by Jud's father, who in turn had obtained it from his father. The bore had been re-reamed and re-rifled so many times that now it cast a slug approximately the size of a small cannon ball. A lot of people had laughed at Jud and his rifle, but on his side, Jud snickered at those who needed a whole handful of cartridges when, as any child should know, one ball was plenty, if you put it in the right place. Andy, who had seen Jud pick the heads off squirrels and grouse and shoot flying geese, knew that Jud killed whatever he shot at. He left no wounded creature to die in agony.
Jud eyed the big buck and expressed his opinion, "Hm-m."
Andy said, "It's the big one."
"Give ya a heap of trouble?"
"I walked right up to him," Andy admitted. "He didn't even run."
"I'll give ya a hand," Jud offered. "Just snug them ropes when I lift."