624 
FOREST AND STREAM 
December, 1917 
A New Edition 
of 
NESSMUK’S 
“Woodcraft” 
The one real big 
popular “How 
Book” of Out¬ 
door Life will be 
published about 
December 1st, 
price $ 1.00 (no 
advance). 
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FOREST & STREAM 
BOOK DEPARTMENT 
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NEW YORK CITY 
SQUIRREL HUNTING WITH ELLY 
(continued from page 593) 
sight of the little animal, standing full- 
length almost flattened against a limb. His 
body now presented a good mark for her. 
Shooting ethics, being second nature to her, 
forbade her shot. She stepped back a few 
paces, grasped a small bush, and shook it. 
The squirrel turned, presenting a fair 
mark for my rifle. My second shot brought 
it dead to the ground. 
That well behaved Carlo simulated a 
strong inclination to pounce on the squir¬ 
rel, but immediately turned and flung him¬ 
self into three of hmis inimitable summer¬ 
saults, and at a twinkle from Elly’s for¬ 
midable brown eyes went again to his work. 
“Do yu’ns v/ant me to tote the squirrel ?” 
asked my guide, offering to relieve me of 
that insignificant burden. “Hit otta be 
cleaned ennyway, afore yu’ns totes hit all 
aroun’ the woods.” 
With Elly’s assistance we pitched into the 
work, but when in the midst of the delight¬ 
ful occupation of disemboweling the tree 
rat, Carlo spoke again. 
Elly winked, but completed her task. 
Then wiping the knife and her hands on a 
wisp of frost-wet sedge grass she returned 
the knife to me and picked up her rifle. 
We found Carlo attentively engaged at 
contemplating the base of an immense post 
oak. At one time the top had been blown 
off by a storm, leaving a wide, jagged 
wound. From my first glimpse I could see 
that there was a hole there, no doubt lead-, 
ing well down into the trunk of the tree. 
Elly stared at it, her figure erect, yet 
showing a pliant grace as she turned know¬ 
ingly to me. “I recken I’ll stand here,” she 
observed in her soft hill speech. “Now 
yu’ns go to the tree, take a stick, ’nd scrape 
hit up ’nd down as hard as yu’ns kin.” 
With a quizzical smile I proceeded to do 
as my guide directed—rubbing a dry stick 
briskly up and down the coarse bark. 
“Crack! Whine !” spoke the black pow¬ 
der muzzle loader. Then I heard a crack¬ 
ling of twigs above, and the next second 
the squirrel fell at my feet. 
“I didn’t think my scraping would bring 
him out!” I commented, beaming full ad¬ 
miration of her knowledge of the ways of 
the wild creatures. Immediately we were 
engaged in the disemboweling process. 
“Hit doan’ alius work,” she confessed 
laughingly. “In the fust place hit’s young 
squirrels that doan’ know nothin’; and then 
I ’low the hole haint very deep.” 
A T this juncture Carlo performed his 
repertoire, then once more projected 
his little body somewhere out into 
the screening sedge and undergrowths. 
With remarkable skill he found the tree 
rats, but it was always observed that his 
quarry was discovered invariably in the op¬ 
posite direction from where we had last 
sight of him. If he cast out on a hill he 
was sure to find his game in a low hollow. 
When he started from us in a flat, the next 
treed note came from some lofty summit, 
which exerted much work on the part of 
my reluctant legs to scale. 
My companion accepted all this sans re¬ 
mark, and at no time exhibited the slightest 
signs of weariness, as she stepped with 
deer-like agility from down timber to rock, 
and from rock to surer footing, beckoning 
me with averted head to follow. 
It was in a little flat between two hills 
that we responded to Carlo’s announcement. 
If his former vocal efforts had been merely 
speaking or talking, now he was indulging 
in prodigious flights of oratory. He danced 
around a pecan tree—the sole one of any 
kind within a radius of many yards. Then 
he stood upright, threatened to climb the 
tree, turned innumerable summersaults, 
continually barking at his highest tonal 
pitch. At intervals these antics were varied 
by a long run around the tree, then he 
resumed his first gymnastics with glee. 
“Tiler’s more than one squirrel up that 
pecan tree !” predicted the hill girl, 1 Carlo 
never takes on liken that ’lessen there is.” 
And Elly was right; before we left that 
tree we had killed nine squirrels that had 
been lured there by the abundance / of pe¬ 
cans. My hunting coat was showing an un¬ 
becoming bulge, and Elly had quite a num¬ 
ber on her miniature hickory gambrel stick. 
“This otta be a nuff fur us, and the hands 
down at the mill,” she observed, scarleting 
just for an instant, as she felt the weight 
of the kill. The blush had nothing to do 
with the amount of the kill, but more with 
the accidental reference to the mill hands. 
Undoubtedly she had trodden on forbidden 
territory in an unguarded moment. 
There was a certain amount of obvious 
fiction connected with that mill, for during 
my entire stay in the hills I had seen the 
hands going'to and coming from work, but 
the mill or anything akin to its operations 
had entirely eluded me. One thing I was 
positive of, as long as I was old Honey¬ 
cutt’s guest I would not evince the slight¬ 
est inclination to pry into his private affairs. 
Just as we turned our faces homeward 
Carlo sent a big fox squirrel across the 
ground in front of us in a fast race. It 
was well ahead of him. Elly and I shot 
at it, but all we managed to do was to 
send up two distinct handfulls of red dust 
from an old log immediately behind it. 
Then Elly saw it take a big black gum 
tree. She could not load her rifle quickly. 
“Here.” I proffered mine. 
She seized it, retained her big eyes fixedly 
on the climbing squirrel, pushed the safety 
to one side, brought the arm to her shoul- 
dre, steadied it, and pressed the trigger. 
She hit that squirrel with a twenty-two 
short apparently in midair, as it was leaping 
for an adjoining elm. 
I began to compliment her on the shot, 
but the hill girl only laughed. 
“That squirrel,” she explained, “wuz hit 
jist as hit started to leap at the end of the 
limb. Hit wuz the shock that made hit go 
up in the air ’nd yu’ns thout’ I hit it a 
jumpin’ ?” 
Slowly we dragged home with our load. 
Now the sun was beaming an uncomforta¬ 
ble summer warmth. 
“Carlo’s a wonder!” I volunteered. 
“And I am very proud of being half 
owner in such a wonderful little dog,” I 
continued. 
“Well, yu’ns sure otta,” she replied inno¬ 
cently, “for that’s what all them other men 
said that Pap sold a intrust in Carlo to!” 
