292 WITH GUN AND GUIDE 



mephitica family with eyes of unusual brilliancy fixed 

 right upon us. 



This one was a male, and he was crowded back so 

 close to the cabin wall that his famous and dreaded tail 

 could not be held erect, because there wasn't room for 

 it. Kibbee, the " scientist," and the writer counseled 

 as to what was best to be done. 



Kibbee said that if left alone it might bite one of our 

 ears or noses while we slept. This, the scientist said, 

 was but " the fiction of a diseased brain," that there 

 was no case on record of any such happening. Kibbee 

 stuck to this belief, and wanted to shoot there and 

 then. 



He said that when he was a boy, his father, who 

 lived in Montana, used to dig the mephitis out of his 

 hole, and that when the animal first saw the light he 

 would turn himself around with his tail to the light. 

 His father would grab the tail with his hand, and, 

 holding the animal straight up by his caudal appendage, 

 he would chop his head off with an axe, for in this 

 position the mephitis was absolutely harmless. In 

 proof of Kibbee's assertion, this animal was even now 

 turning his tail to the light. 



He commenced to wriggle himself around so that 

 his head would be against the front of the cabin and 

 his dangerous tail would be free ; seeing this, Kibbee 

 said there was nothing now to be done but to " douse 

 the glim " and sleep it out, trusting to luck to awake 



