PHOBY-CATS 75 



he give in and we crawled into bed and went to sleep. 

 " Didn't seem like mor'n five minutes afterward 

 when we was woke up by the worst screechin' you 

 ever hear. Ole Sam was settin' up in bed a-pullin' 

 a skunk off en one ear. An' he was shore hollerin' 

 lust-ly, as the feller says. 



"Well, we kilt th' skunk an' didn't think no more 

 about it t'well about a week later when we wuz 

 hustlin' for town, havin' run might' nigh out of 

 chuck. All on a sudden Ole Sam took convulsions 

 and begin foamin' at th' mouth and we had to tie 

 him down out thar in th' woods an' leave him, seein' 

 as we couldn't very well take him along the way he 

 was actin' up. We shore hated to drop th' ole fel- 

 ler," lamented the narrator, sadly, "but they wa'nt 

 nothin' else to do." 



"Good Lord," cried Conway, "you didn't leave 

 him to die that way, did you!" 



"Naw," returned Brown, more dolefully than be- 

 fore, "we shot him afore we left." 



"Tom Mestic got off luckier than Ole Sam," re- 

 marked the cook, after a short general silence, "the 

 time he got bit. ' ' 



"Don't seem's if I remember that," Brown came 

 back. 



" 'Twas a little before Sam died. We was camped 

 on the Seco. Tom an' me and Sam Morgan and Bill 

 Sanders didn't know there was any phoby-cats in 

 the neighbourhood till one night a skunk came into 

 camp an' bit Tom plumb through the upper lip 



