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Gammit's impatience overcame her curiosity. With a gentle motion of her wrist she turned the pepper-pot over, and softly shook it. The eyes of the wildcat were fixed upon that wonderful, unattainable herring-tub, and he saw nothing else. But Mrs. Gammit in the vivid moonlight saw a fine cloud of pepper sinking downwards slowly on the moveless air.
Gammit should fail to agree on any important point, so much the worse for the backwoods. And indeed, for nearly two years and a half everything had gone swimmingly. The solitude had never troubled Mrs. Gammit, to whom her own company was always congenial and, as she felt, the only company that one could depend upon.
Sitting there in ambush, Mrs. Gammit felt it all, and her eager face grew still and pale and solemn like a statue's. The moonlight crept down the roofs of the barn and shed and house, then down the walls, till only the ground was in shadow. And at last, through this lower stratum of obscurity, Mrs. Gammit saw two squat, sturdy shapes approaching leisurely from behind the barn.
The woodsman lifted his eyebrows in some surprise at the question. "Well, now, if I don't I'd oughter," said he, "seein' as how I've kinder lived round amongst 'em all my life. If I know anything, it's the backwoods an' all what pertains to that same!" "Yes, you'd oughter know more about them than I do!" assented Mrs. Gammit, with a touch of severity which seemed to add "and see that you do!"
What if he were right? Not that she would admit it, for one moment. But just supposing! Was she going to pour hot water on those porcupines, and scald all the bristles off their backs, if they really didn't come after her eggs? Mrs. Gammit was essentially just and kind-hearted, and she came to the conclusion that the scheme might be too cruel.
That same evening, when the last of the sunset was fading in pale violet over the stump pasture and her two cow-bells were tonk-tonking softly along the edge of the dim alder swamp, Mrs. Gammit stealthily placed the traps according to the woodsman's directions.
Of course, at this moment, when it was most needed, that usually exemplary article was not where it ought to have been standing beside the dresser. Having no time to look for it, Mrs. Gammit snatched up the potato-masher, and rushed forth into the moonlight with a gurgling yell, resolved to save the tub.
Gammit walked away with the three steel traps under her arm, she muttered to herself "Yes, Joe Barron, an' I'll show ye the thief. An' he'll have quills on him, sech as no weasel ain't never had on him, I reckon." On her return, Mrs. Gammit was greeted by the sound of high excitement among the poultry.
Gammit murmured thoughtfully: "I reckon as how I'm goin' to feel kinder sick o' turkey afore I git this all et up!" On the following day Mrs. Gammit carefully polished the gun with a duster, removing all trace of the indignities she had put upon it, and stood it away behind the dresser. She had resolved to conduct the rest of the campaign against the bears in her own way and with her own weapons.
The old turkey-cock, stretching his lean neck, glared down upon him with a terse qwit! qwit! of disapproval. When the bear stopped, in that resolute and threatening attitude, Mrs. Gammit instinctively stopped too. Not, as she would have explained had there been any one to explain to, that she was "one mite scairt," but that she wanted to try Joe Barren's gun.
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