Baby Pitcher's Trials Part 11

"Ain't it a stunner?" said Charley.

"It is a proper large one," said Grandma. "It makes me think of your father, Amy, dear, when he was a boy. He was always fetching home some sort of a creetur. La! how natural it does seem. I remember once he took to killing black cats. He fetched home as many as twenty altogether, and their skins, stretched out to dry on the side of the barn, stared me in the face every time I went into the yard. How this creetur does carry a body back, to be sure."

"This fellow wears a pretty jacket," said Charley. "I wish we knew the easiest way of getting it off. Do you know, Grandma?"

"La, child, I never was no hand for such doings."

"What a question," said Amy. "Of course Grandma does not know."

"We had better commence operations, if we expect to get through before school time," said Bertie. "That is, if Grandma has looked at him long enough. Have you, Grandma?"

"Bless the child!" said Grandma, who had endured the creature simply to please her darlings. "Never mind staying longer on my account. But drop in as you go to school, and get your luncheon."

"Tarts?" queried Bertie.

But Grandma smiled and closed the window, to shut out, if possible, the stifling odor of musk.

"I almost wish I had taken up with Jack's offer," Bertie said to Charley, as they carried the musk-rat home.

"What was that?"

"He wanted to skin the fellow for me."

"I can boss that job," said Charley.

"And so can I?"

That was a part both understood, and it was the only part.

CHAPTER VIII

JACK PULLS OFF THE WARM JACKET.

Bertie sharpened his knife and prepared to commence operations, Charley, Amy and Flora looking on.

"You begin on the inside of the hind leg," said Charley.

"Oh, I know where to begin and where to leave off; but the thing is to do it neatly, without making a botch. Here goes."

Bertie flourished his knife and began to cut. He made a long slit on the inside of one hind leg.

"Treat them both alike," said Charley.

Flora, who had been watching the operation, suddenly cried out:

"Take your arms down and go away. You are a bad boy. Charley Waters says so; and I do."

Bertie turned quickly to see what, was the matter; and there stood Jack, with folded arms, resting upon the fence. He tried to call Flora off; but she flew at Jack with all the fury of a little terrier, her light curls flying and her dark eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

"You are a bad boy, and you must go away. You cut his head off and his feet. I looked under the table. He hadn't any clothes on. Had drumsticks on. Couldn't walk with drumsticks on. Bad boy!"

Here was a revelation that made Jack feel very small indeed. He came as near blus.h.i.+ng as was possible. The red blood actually showed through his dark, grimy skin. Bertie was sorry for him. He hastened to open the gate and bid him come in, a movement that astonished Flora. She had not another word to say. When the boy that killed the calico-rooster was invited to walk in at the gate, as if nothing had happened, she was struck dumb.

"You were very good to look in upon us," said Bertie, kindly, trying to make Jack comfortable. "Walk right along. You are in the nick of time; we had only just started."

Jack was completely taken aback by Flora's reception, for he was sure now that the fate of the calico was well known. There had been a pleasant doubt in his mind before. He had always said to himself, "They can't prove nothing." He hung his head in an awkward way, and blamed himself for getting into a sc.r.a.pe.

"I thought I'd peek in and see how you were getting along," he answered, sheepishly; "and now I am here, I may as well be a-lending a hand. Give us yer knife."

"I had barely got his stockings off," said Bertie, pa.s.sing the knife.

Jack felt the edge and then examined Bertie's work.

"Pooty well done to begin with, I call it."

"Do you, though?"

"For a green-horn, you know."

"Oh, yes, I know."

Jack began where Bertie left off, and he worked so skilfully that in a few minutes legs and arms were free, and the warm jacket was turned and pulled over the animal's head.

"He isn't quite so much of a beauty, come to peel him," said Jack.

"He is frightful!" declared Amy. "What a net-work of blue veins! They make me shudder."

"He looks like a map, with rivers running all over him," said Charley.

"And how he s.h.i.+nes. Ugh!"

Bertie held up the empty skin.

"He is as much beholden to dress as anybody that ever I saw, and he wears the best of cloth too. Custom made, and no danger of a misfit.

None of your slop work about _that_ garment!"

"I hope you don't call that a garment," said Amy.

"It is a wardrobe in itself, hat and boots included. He did not carry a 'Saratoga' when he went journeying."

"Not much," said Charley.

"What is Jack doing now?"

He was detaching the little sacks that hold the musk, and he pa.s.sed them to Bertie, with the remark that they were worth as much as the critter's hide.