What Might Have Been Expected | Page 8

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 way by means of his long line of shelled corn.
"You see I build my blind," said he to Harry, "and then I don't come here till I've sprinkled my corn for about a week, and got the turkeys used to comin' this way after it. Then I get back o' that thar at night and wait till the airly mornin', when they're sartin to come gobblin' along, till I can get a good crack at 'em." With this he sat down on a log, which Harry could scarcely see, so dark was it in the woods by this time.
"Are you tired?" said Harry.
"No," answered Tony; "I'm goin' to stop here. I want to be ready fur 'em before it begins to be light."
"But how am I to get home?" said Harry.
"Oh, jist keep straight on in that track. It'll take yer straight to the store, ef ye don't turn out uv it."
"Can't you come along and show me?" said Harry. "I can't find the way through these