280 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
strike in the water, and by now had landed and 
was on his way up the mountain toward his den, 
to sleep himself back to normal in his nest of dead 
leaves. 
Wolf’s master’s mistress said, when her drip- 
ping husband arrived home and emptied the mud 
out of his boots, that she should think he’d had 
about enough of ’coon hunting, and he replied 
that he guessed he had. But a few nights later, 
when it was frosty cold and clear, with a golden 
October moon shining on the last shreds of golden 
foliage in the maples, and Wolf had healed up a 
bit (though one ear would never be the same 
again!), and his master’s boots had quite dried, 
and the mud was scraped off and they were 
freshly oiled, the man was seen by his wife to be 
filling his tobacco pouch and testing the oil in his 
lantern and the battery in his flashlight. 
“Again?” she said. 
“ Just for a bit of a ramble over the mountain,” 
he answered. “ It’s such a beautiful night.” 
“ Beautiful fiddlesticks!”’ said she, showing 
that women are incapable of understanding the 
lure of a ’coon hunt. 
