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Updated: May 12, 2025
Gammit picked up the feathers, and examined them with discriminating eyes to see which hen had suffered the loss. "Lands sakes!" she exclaimed presently, "ef 'tain't the old rooster! He's made a fight fer that 'ere aig! Lucky he didn't git stuck full o' quills!" Then, for perhaps the hundredth time, she ran fiercely and noisily behind the barn, in the hope of surprising the enemy.
And to emphasize the fact, she sniffed scornfully. "To be sure! An' a fine, handsome nose it is, Mrs. Gammit!" replied the woodsman, diplomatically. "But what you don't appear to know about skunks is that when they're up to mischief is jest the time when you don't smell 'em. Ye got to bear that in mind!" Mrs. Gammit looked at him with suspicion. "Be that reelly so?" demanded she, sternly.
Gammit stirred a muscle, he would have marked her; but in her movelessness her head and hand passed for some harmless natural phenomenon. The wildcat crept softly up, and as he drew near, the porcupines raised their quills threateningly, till nothing could be seen of their bodies but their blunt snouts still busy on the herring-tub.
But now, at last, she was finding herself baffled. Joe Barron waited with the patience of the backwoodsman and the Indian, to whom, as to Nature herself, time seems no object, though they always somehow manage to be on time. Mrs. Gammit continued to fan her hot face with her sunbonnet, and to ponder her problems, while the lines deepened between her eyes.
She had done her part, that she knew, but the wretched weapon had played her false. Well, she had never thought much of guns, anyway. Henceforth she would depend on herself. The unfortunate turkey-cock now lay quite still. Mrs. Gammit crossed the yard and bent over the sprawling body in deep regret.
But there's one of 'em ain't no good." "Which one be it?" asked the woodsman as he took them. "I've marked it with a bit of string," replied Mrs. Gammit. "What's the matter with it? I don't see nawthin' wrong with it!" said Barron, examining it critically. "Tain't no good! You take my word fer it! That's all I've got to say!" persisted Mrs. Gammit. "Oh, well, seem' as it's you sez so, Mrs.
Gammit snorted at the sarcasm. "Mebbe," she sneered, "ye kin tell me why it's so impossible it could be porkypines. I seen a big porkypine back o' the barn, only yestiddy. An' that's more'n kin be said o' yer weasels, an' foxes, an' skunks, what ye're so sure about, Mr. Barron." "A porkypine ain't necessarily after aigs jest because he's back of a barn," said the woodsman.
Gammit, to be sure, for three months; but he had known all the time that she was there, on the other side of the ridge, one of his nearest neighbours, and not more than seven or eight miles away as the crow flies. "It's the bears!" she explained. "They do be gittin' jest a leetle mite too sassy, down to my place. There ain't no livin' with 'em. They come rootin' round in the garden, nights.
Two large tears of rage brimmed her eyes, and rolled down her battered cheeks; and backing off a few paces she sat down upon the saw-horse to consider the situation. But never would Mrs. Gammit have been what she was had she been capable of acknowledging defeat. In a very few moments her resourceful wits reasserted themselves. "Queer!" she mused.
All athrill with excitement, Mrs. Gammit hurried through her morning's chores, and allowed herself no breakfast except half a dozen violent cups of tea "with sweetenin'." Then, satisfied that the weasel in the rain-barrel was by this time securely and permanently dead, she fished it out, and reset the trap in its place under the barn.
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