“You should not have done that, for if a bear happens to come along and smells it, he’ll set his wits at work to get to it.”
“Sartain; a bear is raving crazy after molasses or honey or sugar; he’ll stave the door in or make the bark fly off that roof a good deal faster than you put it on.”
“Then what will become of my corn while I am away?”
“There will be nothing to hinder all the wild animals from helping themselves.”
“They’ll destroy it all before I get back.”
“Oh, no, they won’t! They may hurt it a good deal, and they may not. There’s one thing in your favor: it is a great year for acorns and beech-nuts, and hickory, and all kinds of nuts and cranberries,—the bogs are full of cranberries, and the bears and coons love them dearly, so they won’t be so hard upon the corn as they would otherwise be. But I don’t think there are many bears round this fall; the coons and the turkeys are the worst, because there are so many of them; but the coons are ten times as bad as the wild turkeys, because there are so many of them, and they come when you are asleep—the turkeys come in the daytime, and a shot or two at them scares them off for a week, and they are first-rate eating. If they take the bread out of your mouth, they put meat into it.”
“I wouldn’t object to the bears if I was to be here—a bear’s skin is worth about thirty bushels of corn.”
“Ay; but you might lose your corn and not get the bear.”
“I wish I had sowed wheat on the burn, I could have taken care of that before I went; but I think I’ll go back and get the molasses, and leave it here.”
“I think I can help you, neighbor. Here’s my Dan; he’s the master critter for hunting and trapping you ever saw—plagues me to death with his nonsense. He’d sit up two nights to shoot one coon. We arn’t much driven with work now, and shan’t be till you get back, and if you’ll let him use some of your traps, I know he’d be tickled to death to live in your camp and hunt and trap; and you may depend on it no wild critter will do any damage while he’s around, for he’d take the dog with him, and nothing can stir in the night but the dog will let him know it.”
“I should be very glad to have him, and will pay him.”
“The traps will be pay enough and more too.”