r
coon. The boys concluded to stay and eat their lunch before starting
back. We made them a cup of hot coffee and set out a plate of honey
and the boys ate their lunch, drank cider, and told stories until
nearly 1 o'clock.

They said that they had had a dandy time hunting coon along the last
of September while coon were working on the corn and they said that
they had killed about 30 and one wildcat. I asked if they did not
think September rather early in the season to kill coon? They said
that they thought that there was as much sport in it in September as
at any other time of the year. I asked if there was any more sport in
coon hunting in September than there was later in the season? They
said that they did not know that there was. I replied that then they
were out at least one-half or more on the price of the skins. They
replied that it would be a queer jay that would put off a coon hunt a
month for the difference that there might be in the price of a coon
skin. I saw that I was up against it and that my argument had no
weight in the matter, so I dropped it.

When told that we were putting in our time mostly hunting bees, the
boys said that we were losing the best time of our lives by not
having some good coon dogs along with us, and Smoky quite agreed with
them. However, I could not see it in that light. After the boys left,
Smoky and I had to laugh over the boys' jolly time until near
daybreak before we could get to sleep again and we quite agreed with
the boys that the second sleep was better than the first.

It was now the first of November and we had not put out any small
traps, as the weather was still very warm and dry for the season of
the year. Each day we could see away off to the southwest by the
black heavy smoke that the forest fires that had been burning in that
direction were coming nearer and nearer to us. Smoky said that he
thought that a coon skin in October was worth as much as in November.
He said by the time that we could get our traps out the forest fires
would have the whole country burned over and all the game driven out.
Smoky was not far from the mark in his prophesying.

We now began to put out the small traps at as good a "jag" as I was
able to stand the travel. We had, while bee hunting at odd times,
selected and prepared many of the sets so that we were now able to
set out many more traps in a day than we could have done had we not
fixed and selected many places for sets. The fourth