Each one will be filled with all
the field and woods legitimately falling to its location and
peopled with the best men and women I have known."
Chapter 1
THE RAT-CATCHERS OF THE WABASH
"Hey, you swate-scented little heart-warmer!" cried Jimmy Malone,
as he lifted his tenth trap, weighted with a struggling muskrat,
from the Wabash. "Varmint you may be to all the rist of
creation, but you mane a night at Casey's to me."
Jimmy whistled softly as he reset the trap. For the moment he
forgot that he was five miles from home, that it was a mile
farther to the end of his line at the lower curve of Horseshoe
Bend, that his feet and fingers were almost freezing, and that
every rat of the ten now in the bag on his back had made him
thirstier. He shivered as the cold wind sweeping the curves of
the river struck him; but when an unusually heavy gust dropped
the ice and snow from a branch above him on the back of his
head, he laughed, as he ducked and cried: "Kape your snowballing
till the Fourth of July, will you!"
"Chick-a-dee-dee-dee!" remarked a tiny gray bird on the tree
above him. Jimmy glanced up. "Chickie, Chickie, Chickie," he
said. "I can't till by your dress whether you are a hin or a
rooster. But I can till by your employmint that you are working
for grub.
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