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As the good wife here will tell you, I've spent hours on hours at night, hidden in the woods, with a light fixed on some nest of a muskrat or gopher or fox, just to learn what the cunning little varmint did betimes; when of rights I should have been in my bed getting rested for another hard day's labor at my forge." "His holidays have always been taken up in the same way," interrupted Mrs.
After the usual affectionate good-bye, and the waving of farewell as we moved in single file into the denser forest, we followed a game trail that wound in and out among the trees and rocks always along the line of least resistance and for a while headed westward through the valley of Muskrat Creek.
"If I stand in one place all day," retorted the artichoke, "at least I don't swim around in stagnant water, and build my lodge in the mud." "You are jealous of my fine fur," sneered the muskrat. "I may build my lodge in the mud, but I always have a clean coat. But you are half buried in the ground, and when men dig you up, you are never clean."
The muskrat is easily tamed, and becomes familiar and docile. It is very intelligent, and will fondly caress the hand of its master. Indians and Canadian settlers often have them in their houses as pets; but there is so much of the rat in their appearance, and they emit such a disagreeable odour in the spring, as to prevent them from becoming general favourites.
Ye see he bed got the game outen the steel, an' was tryin' to sot the trap again so as I wouldn't know it. That proves he was sent up here by that sneakin' Bud Rabig; fur what would the boy know about fixin' a trap if he didn't git guided?" Jerry picked up the drowned muskrat and examined it. "Pretty soft fur it has. Lots of it used nowadays I understand," he observed.
The whole pool was his playground, the season which brought distress to so many creatures proving a blessing to him. The snapping turtle had burrowed into the ground for the winter; the hawk had vanished; and minks, those deadly enemies of the dwellers of the pool, were seldom seen. The muskrat had nothing to fear.
This was such a bold almost presumptuous, way of putting the matter that the old red chief looked at the young white chief in surprise; but as there was neither bluster nor presumption in the calm countenance of Lumley only firmness coupled with extreme good humour he felt somewhat disconcerted. "How will my white brother prevent war?" asked the old chief, whose name was Muskrat.
Here, too, the rock-maple reared its verdant masses, the beech its glistening leaves and clean, smooth stem, and behind, stiff and sombre, rose the balsam-fir. Here in the tortuous channels the muskrat swam and plunged, and the splashing wild duck dived beneath the alders or among the red and matted roots of thirsty water willows.
Teeters' hair, sleek, glossy, fragrant, and brushed straight back, gave him a marked resemblance to a muskrat that has just come up from a dive. With a sublimated confidence that was sickening to such citizens as had known him when he worked for wages and wore overalls, and particularly to Toomey, who took Teeters' success upon the ranch where he himself had failed as a personal affront, Mr.
Ephraim having some business here, we did not leave very speedily. This miller had shot an animal they call a muskrat, the skin of which we saw hanging up to dry. He told us they were numerous in the creeks.
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