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 offen 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. 
<< *Pwas 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 
