“But if we build a house here we shall have three, and I’m sure that will be wrong,” I said.
Mr. Crusoe didn’t say anything, but just stood and looked at me.
“Then,” I went on, “your grandfather didn’t have a house in a cocoa-nut valley, but in a grape valley. Now this is a cocoa-nut valley, and I don’t believe your grandfather would ever have been willing to build a house right in the middle of a cocoa-nut grove. Why, it seems to me it would be almost wicked to do such a thing. Of course we should both be glad to build a new house, but I think we ought to be sure that it is the kind of thing that your grandfather would have done.”
Mr. Crusoe was so pleased that he was almost ready to hug me, and he said that we would wait a few days, and his grandfather would probably appear to him in a dream and tell him just what to do. So I got rid of building another house, for Mr. Crusoe was never able to dream about it, although he tried his best.
CHAPTER VI.
Mr. Crusoe had been so busy hunting for caves and valleys that he had not had time to hunt for goats; but after he had given up his idea of building another house, he said we would shoot two or three goats, and catch some more, so that we could have a flock of tame goats, and have milk and butter and cheese.
We each took two guns with us, but we left the swords and saws and hatchets at home. I wanted to go straight to the place where we saw the goats, but Mr. Crusoe said they were so wild that we could never get near enough to them to shoot them unless we could get on the top of a hill when the goats were in a valley. We found a good place half-way up a hill, where we could hide behind some bushes, and in a little while we saw a flock of about thirty goats, and shot two of them.
We carried the goats home, though they were pretty heavy, and then Mr. Crusoe skinned them, and put the skins out to dry in the sun, while I roasted a splendid big piece of goat for dinner. But we couldn’t eat it, because it was a piece of a goat old enough to have known Mr. Crusoe’s grandfather, and Mr. Crusoe said that we would go out again and shoot a kid. This time we shot a kid and another old goat, and when we had skinned them both we buried all three of the old goats, and had a good dinner of roast kid.
The next day Mr. Crusoe made me go with him into the valley where we killed the goats, and dig what he called a pitfall. This was a hole six feet deep and about three feet wide, and he meant it for a trap to catch goats. When it was finished he covered the top of it with big weeds like mullein-stalks, so that when the goats came to walk on it they would fall in.