It was not very formal; the Farmer sat on his cultivator in the field and Mr. Henry leaned against the fence nearby.
“Well, how’s life at the cabin?” asked the Farmer.
“Very interesting. The wild creatures are growing tame again. They are around or in my cabin most of the day and night; it’s on account of them that I came to see you; I wondered whether you and I, working together, couldn’t stop the trapping that’s going on around here. Woods animals that do a lot of good are being killed off; there are the skunks for example, only a few old ones are left. Can’t we save them? What do you say?” Mr. Henry spoke seriously and the Farmer listened equally so. Once he looked up rather sharply, as if wondering how much the other man suspected the part he had taken in trapping during the autumn and winter, but he did not interrupt.
“I’ve been thinking about those skunks, Mr. Henry,” he replied. “I know you kept a watchful eye over the black one last autumn and I’m kind of glad of it now. All last year I saw their tracks over my field. I calculated they’d eat every vegetable and ear of corn I raised, and yet somehow I never had a better crop anywhere. I’ll admit it. No cutworms, no grubs, none of those big brown beetles, even no mice to speak of.
Skunk tracks.
“I didn’t know just what was doing the good work until I—that is, the trappers—caught off the skunks last autumn. I can tell you that after that the mice and rats nearly ate me up. Well, I still hadn’t studied it out when the other night I saw the queerest thing ever! Two skunks killing a sewer rat almost on my doorstep, and it an old fellow half as big as one of them. Such squealing you never heard, I guess! That big black skunk of yours was the one that did the trick; he wouldn’t let go, the other one just helped finish things. I tell you it was a real fight!” Farmer Slown chuckled at the recollection.
“That big black skunk of yours was the one that did the trick”
“That rat,” he continued, “had done a heap of damage already, gnawing and digging and carrying off little chickens; and neither I nor that dog of mine could ever get a hold of him. I have a feeling that the skunks take an egg whenever it’s left lying around, but they never come into my hen house like that rat.