uproariously. This was exactly what they wanted.
Skookum's first lesson was learned -- the duty of chasing
the big animal of that particular smell, then barking up
the tree it had climbed.

Quonab, armed with a forked stick and a cord noose,
now went up the tree. After much trouble he got the
noose around the coon's neck, then, with some rather
rough handling, the animal was dragged down, maneuvered
into the sack, and carried back to camp, where it was
chained up to serve in future lessons; the next two or three
being to tree the coon, as before; in the next, the coon
was to be freed and allowed to get out of sight, so that the
dog might find it by trailing, and the last, in which the
coon was to be trailed, treed, and shot out of the tree,
so that the dog should have the final joy of killing a
crippled coon, and the reward of a coon-meat feast. But
the last was not to be, for the night before it should have
taken place the coon managed to slip its bonds, and nothing
but the empty collar and idle chain were found in the
captive's place next morning.

These things were in the future however. Rolf was
intensely excited over all he had seen that day. His hunting
instincts were aroused. There had been no very obvious
or repellant cruelty; the dog alone had suffered, but
he seemed happy. The whole affair was so exactly in the
line of his tastes that the boy was in a sort of ecstatic
uplift, and already anticipating a real coon hunt, when
the dog should be properly trained. The episode so