Mr. Wolf, otherwise known as Ben Uncas, and Waddles were the leading members of a curious sort of club that hunted fur, and, as a usual thing, let feathers severely alone. This club now numbered six members of various sizes and breeds, and when the queerly assorted pack started off for a day or night outing, the House People of Dogtown, hearing the babel of cries, said, “Ben Uncas & Co. are on the war-path!”
Until this particular season the club had consisted of the St. Bernard, its leader, Waddles, Colin, Tip, and Quick; now Hamlet had been initiated, and was one of the most daring members, especially in the matter of sometimes swimming down even the web-footed muskrats, who sought safety by taking to the water.
The animals that the club hunted ranged in size from meadow-mice, moles, chipmunks, muskrats, rabbits, skunks, woodchucks, foxes, coons, and occasionally a rare and wily opossum, while these native animals were liberally punctuated by an assortment of cats. Now this matter of cat hunting by Ben Uncas & Co. has a very dreadful sound, and requires a word of explanation.
It had its origin in what some shiftless sort of House People called “their tender feelings” in this way. Any number of people living in the farms and on the country edge of the village kept cats which they fed and housed after a fashion, but when kittens were born, instead of humanely destroying those for which they could not care, they simply shifted the responsibility to the poor kittens, allowing them to grow up as best they might and provide for themselves.
Those that did not starve to death soon formed a roving band of feline bandits of every age, sex, and colour, that haunted deserted barns, remote haymows, and even hollow trees in the deep woods, living by preying upon song and game birds, rabbits, and barnyard fowls.
Waddles’s fierce old enemy, Tiger, the miller’s cat, had been adopted from this race, and so constantly had Waddles, as well as Mr. Wolf and the smaller dogs, heard the cry of “cats!” and been called to hunt the enemy from a chicken coop or an orchard full of nestlings, that they regarded wildcats as lawful hunting.
One thing, however, was a proof of the wonderful intelligence of the hunters; they knew perfectly well the difference between the pet cats of the neighbourhood and the wild tribe, and if, as happened but very rarely, in the heat of the run they made a mistake, after one experience and its punishment they never again bore the victim home as a trophy, as they would a woodchuck, muskrat, or weasel, but hid it carefully in bushes or tall grass, and pretended that the chase was a failure. But when the kill was satisfactory, no matter who was the catcher, Mr. Wolf always took it home to Miss Jule, who rewarded the hunters with petting and a plate of tidbits.
Their hunting methods were also peculiar to themselves, and the labours were divided quite equally among the six.
Waddles and Tip, the little spaniel, had the keenest noses and the best minds for planning strategy. Quick, the fox terrier, who was all that his name implied, added to the endurance and bound of a collection of steel springs, was the explorer of small holes and the pioneer of attacks upon burrows that must be dug out or chinks between rocks that must be explored.