Mastodonia Read Online Free PDF Page B

I know where a she-fox has her den, hidden well away. She has raised six litters there, and once the cubs are grown a bit, they come out and play around the den, little awkward things that fight among themselves, play fighting, that is, wrestling and tusseling, and I have a place where I can sit and watch them. I think the old she-fox must know that I am there, but she doesn’t seem to mind. After all these years, she knows I mean no harm.”
    The shack crouched against the steep hillside just above a stream that dashed and chattered down its rocky bed. Trees crowded close and a short distance up the hill from the shack, a rocky outcropping thrust out of the sloping earth. The chairs in which we sat, in front of the shack, had their back legs sawed short to equalize the slope. A pail and washbasin stood on a bench beside the open door. Against one wall of the shack was ranged a pile of firewood. Smoke streamed lazily from the chimney.
    â€œI am comfortable here,” said Ezra. “Being comfortable comes from not wanting much. Folks up in town will tell you that I’m worthless and I suppose I am, but who are they to measure worth? They say I do some drinking and that is the honest truth. Couple of times a year I go off on a bender, but I never hurt no one. I never cheated anyone that I can think of. I’ve never told a lie. I have one real bad failing. I talk too much, but that comes from hardly ever seeing anyone to talk with. When someone does come visiting, it seems that I can’t stop. But enough of that. You came to hear about Ranger’s pal.”
    â€œAsa never told me that creature was Ranger’s pal.”
    â€œOh, he’s Ranger’s pal all right.”
    â€œBut you and Ranger hunt him.”
    â€œMaybe at one time, but not any more. In my younger days, I was a hunter and a trapper. But I haven’t done any of either for several years. I hung up my traps with a feeling of shame that I had ever used them. I still knock over a squirrel every now and then for stew and a rabbit or a grouse. I still hunt some, but only as the Indians hunted: for meat to fill the pot. There are times when I don’t even do that, when I stay my hand. I suppose that as a predator, I have the right to hunt—at least, that is what I tell myself—but I do not have the license to kill, without cause or reason, my brothers of the woods. Of all the hunting, I liked coon hunting best. Have you ever hunted coon?”
    â€œNo, I never have,” said Rila. “I’ve never hunted anything.”
    â€œYou hunt coon only in the fall. The dog runs the coon until he puts him up a tree, then you try to locate him in the tree and shoot him. Mostly for his pelt, or, what is worse, for the sport of it—if you can call killing sport. Although when I killed coon, I killed not for the pelt alone, but for eating, too. There are people who believe that coon are not fit to eat, but, I tell you, they are wrong. It’s not the hunting though; it’s the crispness of the autumn night, the sharp briskness of the air, the smell of fallen leaves, the closeness that you feel with nature. That and the thrill of the hunt; for I do admit there is a thrill in hunting.
    â€œBut there finally came a time, when Ranger was a pup—and he’s an old dog now—that I quit killing coon. I did not quit the hunting, but I quit the killing. Ranger went out of nights and we hunted coon. When he put one up a tree, I would hunt it out and aim the gun at it, but I did not pull the trigger. Hunting without shooting, without killing. Ranger didn’t understand at first, but finally he did. I thought that not killing, I might ruin him, but he understood. Dogs can understand a lot if you are patient with them.
    â€œSo we hunted without killing, Ranger and I, and, in time, I became aware that there was one coon which led us a sterner chase than any of the others. He knew all the tricks of the hunted