“That is being a little too neighborly. I shouldn’t like to live quite so near the bears as that,” said Whistler.
“I should want something more than a club, if I had got to meet one,” said Clinton.
“But I shouldn’t be afraid to meet a fox, or a wild-cat, or a ’coon, in the woods,—should you?” added Whistler.
“I shouldn’t want any better fun than to meet a ’coon or a fox,” replied Clinton; “but if I had got to tackle a wild-cat, I should want to be pretty well armed. It isn’t every man that can ‘whip his weight in wild-cats,’ as they say out west.”
“Why, I had an idea they were a good deal like our house-cats, only they are not tame,” said Whistler.[[2]]
[2]. Whistler was partly right. The domestic cat, when deprived of a home, sometimes takes to the woods, and leads a savage life. It is then a wild-cat; but it is a very different pussy, for all that, from the large, tiger-like creature to which that name properly belongs.
“They do look something like a cat,” replied Clinton, “but they are twice as big, and almost as savage as tigers. I saw a dead one, once. They have little short tails, and very strong, ugly-looking jaws. A boy that lives at the Cross Roads killed the one I saw. He was hunting rabbits, about half a mile from the village, when he saw the head of a strange-looking animal in a tree right over him. He didn’t know what it was, but he concluded to fire; and, just as he did so, the creature sprang right at him. The shot didn’t seem to hurt him much, but he was in a terrible rage. The boy dodged him as he leaped from the tree, and then they had a pitched battle for three or four minutes. The fellow got some pretty hard scratches, and had his clothes torn; but he beat the wild-cat with the breach of his gun until he killed him. He lugged the body home, and he felt as grand as any body you ever saw, for a month afterwards. The wild-cat weighed about twenty-five pounds, and he had the skin stuffed, and has got it now.”
The slaughtered fowls were now all buried, and the boys went in to breakfast. In the course of the forenoon, after Clinton had done his work, he and his cousin went down to Mr. Preston’s, to get the trap. The story of the catastrophe awakened the interest and sympathy of the neighbors, and quite a discussion ensued as to the nature of the enemy that had done the mischief. Mr. Preston said it would not be at all strange if a wild-cat or fox was prowling around the neighboring woods, but he thought it quite as probable that a skunk had killed the fowls. He did not think it was a raccoon, as, he said, this animal eats only the heads of the poultry it kills. As Mr. Preston was an old logger, having spent his winters in the forests for many years, he was well acquainted with the wild animals in that quarter, and Clinton placed considerable confidence in his opinion. Still, he was not quite satisfied that his chickens had fallen a prey to the despised skunk, and Mr. Preston accordingly hunted up his rusty wolf-trap, and gave him some directions in regard to baiting and setting it.
Ella, who listened to this conversation, seemed somewhat alarmed to hear that the woods around Brookdale were ever visited by such strangers; and when Whistler told her that even wolves and bears sometimes came down into the neighborhood, she declared most vehemently that she should not dare to go out of sight of the house again while she stayed there.
“O, yes, you will; you will come over and see us,” said Clinton.