Beautiful Joe [75]
and
set him on her. He jumped up and snapped at her flanks, and every few instants
she'd turn and give him a cuff, that would send him yards away. I followed her
up, and just back of the farm she and her cubs took into a tree. I sent my dog
home, and my father and some of the neighbors came. It had gotten dark by this
time, so we built a fire under the tree, and watched all night, and told stories
to keep each other awake. Toward morning we got sleepy, and the fire burnt low,
and didn't that old bear and one cub drop right down among us and start off to
the woods. That waked us up. We built up the fire and kept watch, so that the
one cub, still in the tree, couldn't get away. Until daylight the mother bear
hung around, calling to the cub to come down."
"Did you let it go, uncle?" asked Miss Laura.
"No, my dear, we shot it."
"How cruel!" cried Mrs. Wood.
"Yes, weren't we brutes?" said her husband; "but there was some excuse for us,
Hattie. The bears ruined our farms. This kind of hunting that hunts and kills
for the mere sake of slaughter is very different from that. I'll tell you what
I've no patience with, and that's with these English folks that dress themselves
up, and take fine horses and packs of dogs, and tear over the country after one
little fox or rabbit. Bah, it's contemptible. Now if they were hunting cruel,
man-eating tigers or animals that destroy property, it would be different
thing."
CHAPTER XXIV THE RABBIT AND THE HEN
"YOU had foxes up in Maine, I suppose Mr. Wood, hadn't you?" asked Mr. Maxwell.
"Heaps of them. I always want to laugh when I think of our foxes, for they were
so cute. Never a fox did I catch in a trap, though I'd set many a one. I'd take
the carcass of some creature that had died, a sheep, for instance, and put it in
a field near the woods, and the foxes would come and eat it. After they got
accustomed to come and eat and no harm befell them, they would be unsuspecting.
So just before a snowstorm, I'd take a trap and put it this spot. I'd handle it
with gloves, and I'd smoke it, and rub fir boughs on it to take away the human
smell, and then the snow would come and cover it up, and yet those foxes would
know it was a trap and walk all around it. It's a wonderful thing, that sense of
smell in animals, if it is a sense of smell. Joe here has got a good bit of it."
"What kind of traps were they, father?" asked Mr. Harry.
"Cruel ones steel ones. They'd catch an animal by the leg and sometimes break
the bone. The leg would bleed, and below the jaws of the trap it would freeze,
there being no circulation of the blood. Those steel traps are an abomination.
The people around here use one made on the same principle for catching rats. I
wouldn't have them on my place for any money. I believe we've got to give an
account for all the unnecessary suffering we put on animals."
"You'll have some to answer for, John, according to your own story," said Mrs.
Wood.
"I have suffered already," he said. "Many a night I've lain on my bed and
groaned, when I thought of needless cruelties I'd put upon animals when I was a
young, unthinking boy and I was pretty carefully brought up, too, according to
our light in those days. I often think that if I was cruel, with all the
instruction I had to be merciful, what can be expected of the children that get
no good teaching at all when they're young."
"Tell us some more about the foxes, Mr. Wood," said Mr. Maxwell.
"Well, we used to have rare sport hunting them with fox-hounds. I'd often go off
for the day with my hounds. Sometimes in the early morning they'd find a track
in the snow. The leader for scent would go back and forth, to find out which way
the fox was going. I can see him now. All the time that he ran, now one way and
now another on the track of the fox, he was silent, but kept his tail aloft,
wagging it as a signal to the hounds behind. He was leader in scent, but he did
not like bloody, dangerous fights. By-and-by, he would decide which
set him on her. He jumped up and snapped at her flanks, and every few instants
she'd turn and give him a cuff, that would send him yards away. I followed her
up, and just back of the farm she and her cubs took into a tree. I sent my dog
home, and my father and some of the neighbors came. It had gotten dark by this
time, so we built a fire under the tree, and watched all night, and told stories
to keep each other awake. Toward morning we got sleepy, and the fire burnt low,
and didn't that old bear and one cub drop right down among us and start off to
the woods. That waked us up. We built up the fire and kept watch, so that the
one cub, still in the tree, couldn't get away. Until daylight the mother bear
hung around, calling to the cub to come down."
"Did you let it go, uncle?" asked Miss Laura.
"No, my dear, we shot it."
"How cruel!" cried Mrs. Wood.
"Yes, weren't we brutes?" said her husband; "but there was some excuse for us,
Hattie. The bears ruined our farms. This kind of hunting that hunts and kills
for the mere sake of slaughter is very different from that. I'll tell you what
I've no patience with, and that's with these English folks that dress themselves
up, and take fine horses and packs of dogs, and tear over the country after one
little fox or rabbit. Bah, it's contemptible. Now if they were hunting cruel,
man-eating tigers or animals that destroy property, it would be different
thing."
CHAPTER XXIV THE RABBIT AND THE HEN
"YOU had foxes up in Maine, I suppose Mr. Wood, hadn't you?" asked Mr. Maxwell.
"Heaps of them. I always want to laugh when I think of our foxes, for they were
so cute. Never a fox did I catch in a trap, though I'd set many a one. I'd take
the carcass of some creature that had died, a sheep, for instance, and put it in
a field near the woods, and the foxes would come and eat it. After they got
accustomed to come and eat and no harm befell them, they would be unsuspecting.
So just before a snowstorm, I'd take a trap and put it this spot. I'd handle it
with gloves, and I'd smoke it, and rub fir boughs on it to take away the human
smell, and then the snow would come and cover it up, and yet those foxes would
know it was a trap and walk all around it. It's a wonderful thing, that sense of
smell in animals, if it is a sense of smell. Joe here has got a good bit of it."
"What kind of traps were they, father?" asked Mr. Harry.
"Cruel ones steel ones. They'd catch an animal by the leg and sometimes break
the bone. The leg would bleed, and below the jaws of the trap it would freeze,
there being no circulation of the blood. Those steel traps are an abomination.
The people around here use one made on the same principle for catching rats. I
wouldn't have them on my place for any money. I believe we've got to give an
account for all the unnecessary suffering we put on animals."
"You'll have some to answer for, John, according to your own story," said Mrs.
Wood.
"I have suffered already," he said. "Many a night I've lain on my bed and
groaned, when I thought of needless cruelties I'd put upon animals when I was a
young, unthinking boy and I was pretty carefully brought up, too, according to
our light in those days. I often think that if I was cruel, with all the
instruction I had to be merciful, what can be expected of the children that get
no good teaching at all when they're young."
"Tell us some more about the foxes, Mr. Wood," said Mr. Maxwell.
"Well, we used to have rare sport hunting them with fox-hounds. I'd often go off
for the day with my hounds. Sometimes in the early morning they'd find a track
in the snow. The leader for scent would go back and forth, to find out which way
the fox was going. I can see him now. All the time that he ran, now one way and
now another on the track of the fox, he was silent, but kept his tail aloft,
wagging it as a signal to the hounds behind. He was leader in scent, but he did
not like bloody, dangerous fights. By-and-by, he would decide which