The Wishing-Stone Stories

by Thornton W. Burgess

For the most part he kept near water. He dearly loved to explore a brook, running along beside it, swimming the pools, investigating every hole in the banks and the piles of drift stuff. When he was feeling lazy and there were no fish handy, he would catch a frog or two, or a couple of pollywogs, or a crayfish.

Occasionally he would leave the low land and the water for the high land and hunt rabbits and grouse. Sometimes he surprised other ground birds. Once he visited a farmyard and, slipping into the hen-house at night, killed three fat hens. Of course he could not eat the whole of even one.

Tommy asked no favors of any one. His was a happy, care-free life. To be sure he had few friends save among his own kind, but he didn’t mind this. He rather enjoyed the fact that all who were smaller, and some who were larger, than he feared him. He was lithe and strong and wonderfully quick.

Fighting was a joy. It was this as much as anything that led him into a fight with a big muskrat, much bigger than himself. The muskrat was stout, and his great teeth looked dangerous. But he was slow and clumsy in his movements compared with Tommy, and, though he was full of courage and fought hard, the battle was not long. After that Tommy hunted muskrats whenever the notion seized him.

Winter came, but Tommy minded it not at all. His thick fur coat kept him warm, and the air was like tonic in his veins. It was good to be alive. He hunted rabbits in the snow. He caught fish at spring-holes in the ice. He traveled long distances under the ice, running along the edge of the water where it had fallen away from the frozen crust, swimming when he had to, investigating muskrat holes, and now and then surprising the tenant.

Unlike his small cousin, Shadow the Weasel, he seldom hunted and killed just for the fun of killing. Sometimes, when fishing was especially good and he caught more than he could use, he would hide them away against a day of need. In killing, the mink is simply obeying the law of Old Mother Nature, for she has given him flesh-eating teeth, and without meat he could not live. In this respect he is no worse than man, for man kills to live.

For the most of the time, Tommy was just a happy-go-lucky traveler, who delighted in exploring new places and who saw more of the Great World than most of his neighbors. The weather never bothered him. He liked the sun, but he would just as soon travel in the rain. When a fierce snow-storm raged, he traveled under the ice along the bed of the nearest brook or river. It was just the life he had dreamed of as a boy. He was an adventurer, a freebooter, and all the world was his. He had no work. He had no fear, for as yet he had not encountered man. Hooty the Owl by night and certain of the big hawks by day were all he had to watch out for, and these he did not really fear, for he felt himself too smart for them.

But at last he did learn fear. It came to him when he discovered another Mink fast in a trap. He didn’t understand those strange jaws which bit into the flesh and held and yet were not alive. He hid near-by and watched, and he saw a great two-legged creature come and take the mink away. Then, cautiously, Tommy investigated. He caught the odor of the man scent, and a little chill of fear ran down his backbone.

But in spite of all his care there came a fateful day. He was running along a brook in shallow water when snap! from the bottom of the brook itself the dreadful jaws sprang up and caught him by a leg. There had been no smell of man to give him warning, for the running water had carried it away. Tommy gave a little shriek as he felt the dreadful thing, and then—he was just Tommy, sitting on the wishing-stone.

He stared thoughtfully over at the Green Forest. Then he shuddered. You see he remembered just how he had felt when that trap had snapped on his leg. “I don’t want your fur coat, Billy Mink,” said he, just as if Billy could hear him. “If it wasn’t for traps, you surely would enjoy life. Just the same I wouldn’t trade places with you, not even if I do have to hoe corn just when I want to go swimming!”