other; no manglin' an' tormentin' for days. I tell ye that thar
new Otter trap that grabs them in iron claws ought to be forbid by
law; it ain't human.

"Same way about huntin'. Huntin's great sport, an' it can't be bad,
'cause I can't for the life of me see that it makes men bad. 'Pears
to me men as hunt is humaner than them as is above it; as for the
cruelty--wall, we know that no wild animal dies easy abed. They all
get killed soon or late, an' if it's any help to man to kill them I
reckon he has as good a right to do it as Wolves an' Wildcats. It
don't hurt any more--yes, a blame sight less--to be killed by a rifle
ball than to be chawed by Wolves. The on'y thing I says is don't do
it cruel--an' don't wipe out the hull bunch. If ye never kill a thing
that's no harm to ye 'live an' no good to ye dead nor more than the
country kin stand, 'pears to me ye won't do much harm, an' ye'll have
a lot o' real fun to think about afterward.

"But I mind a feller from Europe, some kind o' swell, that I was
guidin' out West. He had crippled a Deer so it couldn't get away. Then
he sat down to eat lunch right by, and every few moments he'd fire a
shot into some part or another, experimentin' an' aimin' not to kill
it for awhile. I heard the shootin' an' blattin', an when I come up I
tell ye it set my blood a-boilin'. I called him some names men don't
like, an' put that Deer out o' pain quick as I could pull trigger.
That bu'st up our party--I didn't want no more o' him. He come pretty
near lyin' by the Deer that day. It makes me hot yet when I think of
it.

"If he'd shot that Deer down runnin' an' killed it as quick as he
could it wouldn't 'a' suffered more than if it had been snagged a
little, 'cause bullets of right weight numb when they hit. The Deer
wouldn't have suffered more than he naturally would at his finish,
maybe less, an' he'd 'a' suffered it at a time when he could be some
good to them as hunted him. An' these yer new repeatin' guns is a
curse. A feller knows he has lots of shot and so blazes away into a
band o' Deer as long as he can see, an lots gets away crippled, to
suffer an' die; but when a feller has only one shot he's going to
place it mighty keerful. Ef it's sport ye want, get a single-shot
rifle, ef it's destruction, get a Gatling-gun.

"Sport's good, but I'm agin this yer wholesale killin' an' cruelty.
Steel traps, light-weight bullets an' repeatin' guns ain't human. I
tell ye it's them as makes all th