Way-Atcha, the Coon-Raccoon 
a Te Ho, ho! there it was again, that very smell that 
y "Wy > poor timid mother was in such fear of. Now he 
LA - . ; would examine it. He came down to the place, 
eat g : then sniffed about, yielded to his habit of feeling 
MJ J, ae in the mud as he glanced this way and that, when 
Ae ae “P . Bsnap, splash, and Way-atcha was a prisoner held 
firmly by one paw in a horrible trap of steel. 
Now he thought of mother, and raised the long 
soft whicker that is the call of his kind, but mother 
was far away. He himself had made sure of that, 
and he remembered the clam shell, but all his 
efforts to pull away or bite off that horrid hard 
thing were useless; there it clung to his paw, and 
hanging to it was a sort of strong twisted root that 
held him there. All night long in vain he whick- 
ered, whimpered, and struggled. He was worn out 
and hoarse as the sun came up, and when Indian 
Pete came around he was surprised to find in his 
Muskrat trap a baby Coon, nearly dead with cold 
and fright, and so weak that he couldn’t even bite. 
The trapper took the little creature from the 
trap and put him alive in his pocket, not knowing 
exactly what he meant to do with him. 
On the road home he passed by the Pigott home- 
~ | stead and showed his captive to the children. 
4 The little Coon was still cold and miserable, and 
‘| when put into the warm arms of the oldest girl he 
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