.
Probably it weighed over thirty pounds," said the experienced Garst.

"A fine tail it had too!" answered Dol; "all ringed with black and
buff--not black and white as the books say. There was hardly an inch of
white about the animal anywhere. Its thick gray hair was marked here and
there with black; wasn't it, Cy?"

"Rather with a darker shade of gray, bordering on black. I think old
Tiger can testify that the creature had capable teeth; and it possesses
a goodly number of them--forty in all; that's only two less than a bear,
an animal that might make six of it in size."

"Whew! No wonder it's a good fighter!" ejaculated Dol.

"But the funniest of the coon's or--to give the animal its proper
name--the raccoon's funny habits is, that while it eats anything and
everything, it souses all meat in water before beginning a feed. That's
what it would have done with our bit of pork,--dragged it to a stream,
and washed it well before swallowing a morsel.

"I caught glimpses of a raccoon chasing a jack-rabbit in this very
section of the woods, last year," went on the student, seeing that Dol
was breathlessly listening. "The big animal killed the little one under
a dead limb; and I traced its tracks through some mud, where it tugged
the rabbit to the brink of the nearest brook to be dipped and devoured.

"After the meal, Mr. Coon halted on an old bit of stump as gray as
himself, close to where I lay under cover, trying to get a peep at his
operations, but, unluckily, in my excitement I touched a bush, and broke
a twig not as big as my little finger. I tell you he just jumped off
that stump as if it scorched him, and disappeared."

"What about that tame coon you owned, Cy?" Dol asked. "You haven't got
him now."

"Bless your heart, I should think not!" Here the student indulged in a
chuckle of mirth. "That coon was the fun and bane of my life. No fear
of my being dull while I had him! I had him as a present, when he was
only a cub, from a man out here who is my special chum among woodsmen,
Herb Heal, the guide in whose company we're going to explore for moose,
and the soundest fellow in wind, limb, and temper that ever I had the
luck to meet. I guess you English boys will say the same when you know
him.

"Well! when my friend Herb bestowed upon me that baby raccoon, I called
the little innocent 'Zip,' and kept him in-doors, letting him roam at
will. But after he grew to manhood, I was obliged to banish him to our
yard an