With Trapper Jim in the North Woods Part 13

"We will, thank you," the others sang out in a chorus. "Oh, you skunk, we like you--at a distance! Go ahead, Max, fix him!"

Having dropped the weeds Jim had selected down the flue, Max only waited until the black smoke began to pour out.

Then he quickly clapped a board Jim happened to own over the top.

"That ends my part of the work here," he called out, crawling over to the side of the cabin where he could have an un.o.bstructed view.

Heads appeared around the corners of the structure, but no soul was venturesome enough to dare show himself in plain view.

And so they waited to see what the result of the bright plan would be.

Already smoke was oozing out of the opening on the side, and it did not seem possible that anything but a salamander could stand the stifling fumes much longer.

CHAPTER IX.

BEFORE THE BLAZING LOGS.

"He's coming!" called out Max from above.

"Take care, everybody!" cried Trapper Jim.

In one way it was laughable to see the tremendous excitement caused by the small striped animal with the bushy tail. The skunk emerged from the window in something of haste. Reaching the ground it seemed to cast one look backward, as though either feeling provoked at being forced to vacate such nice quarters, or else wondering what all that rank odor of smoldering weeds meant.

Then the skunk sauntered jauntily off toward the woods, looking as saucy as you please. The dogs bayed from their place of confinement; the boys stepped out to wave their hands after their departing guest; but not one was bold enough to wish to lay a hand on him.

"Good-by and good luck!" called Trapper Jim.

"Next time don't stay so long," laughed Owen.

"He's little, but oh, my, how mighty!" remarked Steve.

"Look out, he's stopped!" shrieked Bandy-legs, and with that everybody made a headlong plunge back of the cabin again.

Indeed, Bandy-legs himself hid in a thicket and looked rather white on reappearing again after Max sang out that the coast was clear.

"They say one swallow don't make a spring," remarked Owen, when all danger was over, "but it strikes me one polecat does."

Of course, since the object of his labor had now been successfully accomplished, Max took the board away from the top of the chimney.

This allowed the smoke to escape in a normal way.

But when they stepped inside the cabin the boys were loud in their expressions of disgust.

"That weed was sure a corker for smell as well as smoke, Uncle Jim!"

declared Owen.

"Well, I guess you're right there," chuckled the trapper. "I admit it does run a pretty fair race with Mr. Skunk himself, and that's why they give it his name. But it did the business all right, eh, boys?"

"That's what," a.s.sented Steve, who had been holding his breath until he could get used to the tainted atmosphere.

"And we ought to be thankful it's no worse," declared Max, joining them.

"Yes," Trapper Jim went on to say, "I remember a case where in a logging camp some greenhorn was foolish enough to kill one of the animals, and the result was they had to build new quarters. n.o.body could stand it in the old place. There's nothing more lasting."

"It ain't overly nice right now," a.s.serted Steve. "I'm wondering which I like least, the perfume our visitor left or the one your old skunkweed made."

"Oh, we'll soon change all that, boys," declared Trapper Jim. "Build up the fire and we'll get busy. Just wait and see how it's done."

It was, after all, a very simple thing.

Trapper Jim's idea seemed to be built on the principle that "like is cured by like." He believed in overpowering one odor with another.

And when that cabin began to fill up with the appetizing scent of frying onions, flanked by that of some ground coffee, which Jim allowed to scorch close to the flames, even "hard-to-please Steve" admitted that everything seemed peaceful and lovely again.

"But after this," he remarked, "I hope when we all go away from home we'll be careful to close the blinds as well as the door."

"Yes," added Owen, "and hang out a sign 'This house is taken; no skunks need apply.' One dose was enough for me."

"But, s-s-say, wasn't it a c-c-cunning little b-b-beast," observed Toby, "and d-d-didn't he look real sa.s.sy when he m-m-marched off with his t-t-tail up over his s-s-shoulder?"

Steve looked at him severely.

"You'd better be mighty careful how you admire one of them striped critters at close quarters, Toby, if ever you meet one in the woods," he remarked.

"S-s-sure I will be careful," replied the other, with a wide grin.

"Because," Steve went on to say, "if you ever do get in collision with one, we'll have to bury every st.i.tch you've got on, crop your hair close, and make you sleep and live in some old hollow tree. Ain't that so, Uncle Jim!"

"I guess that's about the size of it," came the reply.

"Oh, you d-d-don't need to w-w-worry about me," Toby hastened to say. "I know enough to k-k-keep out of the r-r-rain. I d-d-don't like his l-l-loud ways any b-b-better'n the rest of you."

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you," Steve continued, severely. "I'm a little suspicious about you, Toby, because you always did like cats. And I'm going to keep an eye out to-morrow for a handy hollow tree so's to be all ready."

"Oh, s-s-shucks! I h-h-hope you'll n-n-need it your own self," was what Toby sent back at him.

By the time supper was ready the boys were as hungry as a pack of wolves in January. And everything tasted so good, too.

Trapper Jim showed them how to cook some of the venison in a most appetizing way. It was "some tough," as even the proud Steve admitted; but, then, what boy with a gnawing appet.i.te ever bothered about such a small thing?

The idea that they had actually shot the deer themselves would cover a mult.i.tude of sins in the eyes of the young Nimrods.

And while they were satisfied that the disagreeable odor left behind by their unwelcome guest had been dissipated, Trapper Jim knew better. They would detect faint traces of it about the place for days to come, and find no difficulty about believing the trapper's story about the abandonment of a lumber camp.

"Are all s-s-skunks s-s-striped like that one was?" asked Toby, during the progress of the meal.