“Don’t know about that!” said the woodsman, looking around upon the familiar fields and the old woods glowing in the sunshine. “I’d ruther be dead than shet up—never to see all this no more!” And he made a sweep with his hand that seemed to caress the sweet and lonely landscape.
“Tut! Jabe!” said the Boy, bluntly. “Then you’ve got no imagination. I’ll bet Red Fox has lots. I know which he’d choose, anyway, if it was put up to him. So I’m going to choose for him, if you’ll agree. Death’s the only thing that can’t be reconsidered. Why, suppose you were shut up for life, there might come an earthquake some day, and split open your stone walls, and let you walk right out! Speaking for Red Fox, I take the circus. What do you say?”
“All right,” assented the backwoodsman, slowly. “Only, let’s git him, quick! He’s fooled us all too long.”
“Do you know,” said the Boy, “he’s a queer beast, that! I’ve found his tracks about your farm—the most dangerous place in the whole settlement for him—oftener than anywhere else. Haven’t you?”
“Of course I hev’!” answered the backwoodsman. “And he’s took to follerin’ me, in the woods, too. Looks like he had it in for me special. What do you s’pose he’s up to?”
“Perhaps he’s just particularly scared of you, and so wants to keep an eye on you. Or, maybe, knowing you are already his enemy, he thinks it safer to steal your chickens than to risk making other enemies by stealing somebody else’s!”
“He ain’t got none of mine yet!” declared the woodsman with emphasis.
“Then I’ll bet it’s because he hasn’t wanted to,” said the Boy. “I’ve seen him looking around your place, and lying in the bushes watching, while the hens caught grasshoppers out in the stubble not ten feet away, where he could grab them without any trouble at all. And I’ve seen him on his hind legs behind the hen-house looking in through a crack,—at some hen on the nest, most likely. If he has spared you, Jabe, it’s been just because he chose to. You may be sure of that. He’s had some good reason in his wise red noddle.”
“He’d better hurry up, then!” growled Jabe. “He ain’t got much more time to spare. What do you reckon we’d better do, now, to circumvent the varmint?”
“Come along and I’ll show you!” said the Boy, leading the way to Jabe’s chicken-house.