Lance pushed among the dogs, kicking and cuffing them out of his way, and sounded the tree with the back of a hatchet.
"Ah 'low hit's gone all the way up," he cried.
"Well, chop hit 'n fin' out!" returned his friends, impatiently.
He began cutting a square and soon broke through the outer shell.
"Gimme a glove, one o' you fellers," he cried. "Ah ain' aimin' to have a finger chewed off this time."
Some one tossed him the desired protection. He put it on and thrust his arm into the hole, while the crowd pushed up on to the dogs, and they yelped excitedly.
"Ah tol' ye so. Hit's holler clear up's fur's Ah c'n reach."
"All right. We'll smoke him out, then. Git out o' here, you dogs, an' give us a chance at this fireplace."
The hole at the base of the tree was quickly enlarged enough to push in a smudge, and the opening which Lance had made above was closed with moss and green leaves.
"Hi, there she comes," cried some one, enthusiastically, as the thick white smoke made its way out of the broken top. "The varmint won' stan' that long."
Soon, indeed, amid a shower of bark and burning punk, a black and white ball scrambled into the air and dropped from the ragged splinters that offered no sufficient hold for its claws.
As swift as sight, 'Gene Frady dashed close to the bole and caught the falling creature in his hands. High above the leaping dogs he held it, while they snarled, defrauded of their prey.
"Quick, that crocus sack," he called. "Ah promised the kids to bring one home. Give him a switch, Mitchell."
The 'possum, rousing from the semi-stupor into which the smoke and the shock of his fall had thrown him, was beginning to struggle violently. Robertson broke a finger-thick stick and thrust it between the snapping jaws, that clamped upon it fiercely. The rat-like tail wound about the other end of the rod, and the bag was drawn over him while he clung to his fancied means of safety. Frady flung his burden high on his back to secure it from the dogs, and the others put out the fire in the tree, and again fell into open order to beat the woods.
The next 'possum which they discovered, more fortunate than his brother, who had been sighted on the ground where locomotion is slow and awkward for his kind, was aloft in the branches when the dogs spied him. He clambered dexterously about with his hand-like extremities, aiding his progress with his prehensile tail; but he had not calculated upon the added heaviness which his autumn diet had given him. He ventured upon a sapling that bent beneath him. Wendell added his weight to bear it to the ground, and the dogs leaped at their victim and tore him into bits.