202 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
acres, and there digged a pit (where nature had 
aided him by an old erosion gully), across which 
he placed boughs and bait in the shape of a lump 
or two of salt, a few oats and several juicy leaves 
of Swiss chard from his wife’s weedy vegetable 
garden. Wilbur Bailey didn’t care for vege- 
tables himself, certainly not enough to weed ’em. 
He preferred meat. 
But Wilbur’s toil (considerable enough to have 
cultivated a large corn field) availed him less than 
he hoped (as well as more than he expected), 
from two causes. One cause was biological—an 
adult deer’s ability to jump out of a hole. The 
second cause was international. It would be too 
long a story to tell how the Polacks first came into 
the hills, buying abandoned farms, or even how 
the Hill Billies, Yankees all, scorned them, and 
how feuds arose over tumble-down fences and 
consequent incursions of Polish kine. Suffice it 
to report that young Ignace Raufkowsky, a son 
of Wilbur’s next neighbor down the road, and 
whose father was even then “ at law” with Wil- 
bur over a fence, had learned a thing or two dur- 
ing his “ Americanization ” process, besides how 
