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All the time Jimmy Skunk was chuckling to himself, and the more he chuckled the angrier grew old Granny Fox. And all the time Jimmy Skunk kept moving toward old Granny Fox and Granny Fox kept backing away, for, like all the other little meadow and forest people, she has very great respect for Jimmy Skunk's little bag of scent.
If he takes a fancy to come here by it, and strikes your tracks as you two came into Skunk's Misery, the rest wouldn't take him long! I believe hang on a minute, while I speak to Baker!" He wheeled suddenly and disappeared into the dark of the cave where Baker stood aloof. "You needn't worry about Macartney," I said to Paulette. "We didn't leave any tracks, once we got into broken snow!"
As for his gang, the very bunk-house men he had told me to order out of the assay office, were just Macartney's own gang from Skunk's Misery, come over when they had silenced Thompson forever; at Macartney's elbow whenever he chose to murder the lot of us and commandeer the La Chance mine.
"And you got the stuff at Skunk's Misery, out of a bottle like this? Oh, I ought to have guessed" but she either checked herself, or her pause was absolutely natural "I should have guessed you'd had some sort of a horrible time that night you came home. You looked so tired. But what I meant to say was I don't see how such poor people would have a bottle of anything. Didn't they say what it was?"
He lay still and listened to Farmer Brown's boy poking around outside. He heard him exclaim: "Ah, I thought so!" and knew that he had found the tracks Jimmy Skunk had made in the snow. Unc' Billy almost chuckled again as he thought what a smart fellow he had been to step in Jimmy Skunk's tracks.
The black mark of their fire was plain against the rock face; the log floor was splintered by heavy boots with nails in them which did not speak of the moccasined return of the Frenchwoman's son and in the place where I had once made a bed of pine boughs and carried it away with me there lay a flurry of litter that spoke volumes: for among it was a corned-beef can that was no product of Skunk's Misery, where meat meant squirrels and rabbits, and a corked bottle of wolf dope!
In fact, Mr. Rabbit had become a nuisance." "Whenever Billy Mink stopped to pass the time of day with Jerry Muskrat they were sure to find Mr. Rabbit standing close by, listening to all they said. If Johnny Chuck's mother ran over to have a few minutes' chat with Jimmy Skunk's mother, the first thing they knew Mr. Rabbit would be squatting down in the grass right behind them.
"It must have been a Skunk," said Farmer Brown's boy, "and if it was, he must have left some tracks in the snow outside. I'll just look around a bit." Unc' Billy almost chuckled as he heard Farmer Brown's boy go out. "He'll find Jimmy Skunk's tracks, but he won't find mine," thought Unc' Billy. "Isn't it lucky that I thought to step right in Jimmy Skunk's tracks when I came here?"
I was starving, and it was noonday, when I came out of the bush and tramped into the Halfway, much as I had done that first time I came from Skunk's Misery and went home to La Chance. Only to-day Billy Jones was not sitting by his stove reading his ancient newspaper. He was standing in the kitchen with two teamsters from La Chance, looking down at a dead man.
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