What Might Have Been Expected | Page 8

walking stealthily.
Harry looked around quickly, and, about thirty yards from him, he saw
a man with a gun. The man was now standing still, looking steadily at
him. At least Harry thought he was, but there was so little light in the
woods by this time that he could not be sure about it. What was that
man after? Could he be watching him?
Harry was afraid to move. Perhaps the man mistook him for some kind

of an animal. To be sure, he could not help thinking that boys were
animals, but he did not suppose the man would want to shoot a boy, if
he knew it. But how could any one tell that Harry was a boy at that
distance, and in that light.
Poor Harry did not even dare to call out. He could not speak without
moving something, his lips any way, and the man might fire at the
slightest motion. He was so quiet that the musk-rat--it was a musk-rat
that lived in the hole--came out of his house, and seeing the boy so still,
supposed he was nothing of any consequence, and so trotted noiselessly
along to the water and slipped in for a swim. Harry never saw him. His
eyes were fixed on the man.
For some minutes longer--they seemed like hours--he remained
motionless. And then he could bear it no longer.
"Hel-low!" he cried.
"Hel-low!" said the man.
Then Harry got up trembling and pale, and the man came toward him.
"Why, I didn't know what you were," said the man.
"Tony Kirk!" exclaimed Harry. Yes, it was Tony Kirk, sure enough, a
man who would never shoot a boy--if he knew it.
"What are you doing here," asked Tony, "a-squattin' in the dirt at
supper-time?"
Harry told him what he was doing, and how he had been frightened,
and then the remark about supper-time made him think of his sister.
"My senses!" he cried, "there's Kate! she must think I'm lost."
"Kate!" exclaimed Tony. "What Kate? You don't mean your sister!"
"Yes, I do," said Harry; and away he ran down the shore of the creek.
Tony followed, and when he reached the big pine-tree, there was Harry
gazing blankly around him.

"She's gone!" faltered the boy.
"I should think so," said Tony, "if she knew what was good for her.
What's this?" His quick eyes had discovered the paper on the tree.
Tony pulled the paper from the pine trunk and tried to read it, but Harry
was at his side in an instant, and saw it was Kate's writing. It was
almost too dark to read it, but he managed, by holding it toward the
west, to make it out.
"She's gone home," he said, "and I must be after her;" and he prepared
to start.
"Hold up!" cried Tony; "I'm going that way. And so you've been
getherin' sumac." Harry had read the paper aloud. "There's no use o'
leavin' yer bag. Git it out o' the bushes, and come along with me."
Harry soon found his bag, and then he and Tony set out along the road.
"What are you after?" asked Harry.
"Turkeys," said Tony.
Tony Kirk was always after turkeys. He was a wild-turkey hunter by
profession. It is true there were seasons of the year when he did not
shoot turkeys, but although at such times he worked a little at farming
and fished a little, he nearly always found it necessary to do something
that related to turkeys. He watched their haunts, he calculated their
increase, he worked out problems which proved to him where he would
find them most plentiful in the fall, and his mind was seldom free from
the consideration of the turkey question.
"Isn't it rather early for turkeys?" asked Harry.
"Well, yes," said Tony, "but I'm tired o' waitin."
"I'm goin' to make a short cut," continued Tony, striking out of the road
into a narrow path in the woods. "You can save half a mile by comin'
this way."

So Harry followed him.
"I don't mind takin' you," said Tony, "fur I know you kin keep a secret.
My turkey-blind is over yander;" and as he said this he put his hand
into his coat pocket and pulled out a handful of shelled corn, which he
began to scatter along the path, a grain or two at a time. After ten or
fifteen minutes' walking, Tony scattering corn all the way, they came to
a mass of oak and chestnut boughs, piled up on one side of the path like
a barrier. This was the turkey-blind. It was four or five feet high, and
behind it Tony was accustomed to sit in the early gray of the morning,
waiting for the turkeys which he hoped to entice that