ther its little white tail or its pitiful baby eyes."

As a matter of fact Aggie wouldn't touch the rabbit and I did not care
much about it myself. I do not like to kill things. My Aunt Sarah
Mackintosh once killed a white hen that lived twenty minutes without its
head; two weeks later she dreamed that that same hen, without a head,
was sitting on the footboard of the bed, and the next day she got word
that her cousin's husband in Sacramento had died of the hiccoughs.

It ended with Tish giving me the fire-making materials and stalking off
into the woods with the rabbit in one hand and the knife in the other.

[Illustration: It ended with Tish stalking off into the woods with the
rabbit in one hand and the knife in the other]

Tish is nothing if not thorough, but she seemed to me inconsistent. She
brought blankets and a canvas tepee and sandals and an aluminum kettle,
but she disdained matches. I rubbed with that silly drill and a sort of
bow arrangement until my wrists ached, but I did not get even a spark of
fire. When Tish came back with the rabbit there was no fire, and Aggie
had taken out her watch crystal and was holding it in the sun over a
pile of leaves.

Tish got out the "Young Woodsman" from the suitcase. It seems I had
followed cuts I and II, but had neglected cut III, which is: Hold the
left wrist against the left shin, and the left foot on the fireblock. I
had got my feet mixed and was trying to hold my left wrist against my
right shin, which is exceedingly difficult. Tish got a fire in fourteen
minutes and thirty-one seconds by Aggie's watch, and had to wear a
bandage on her hand for a week.

But we had a fire. We cooked the rabbit, which proved to be much older
than Aggie had thought, and ate what we could. Personally I am not fond
of rabbit, and our enjoyment was rather chastened by the fear that some
mushrooms Tish had collected and added to the stew were toadstools
_incognito_. To make things worse, Aggie saw some goldenrod nearby and
began to sneeze.

It was after five o'clock, but it seemed wisest to move on toward the
lake.

"Even if we don't make it," said Tish, "we'll be on our way, and while
that bear is likely harmless we needn't thrust temptation in his way."

We carried the fire with us in the kettle and we took turns with the
tepee, which was heavy. Our suitcases with our city clothes in them we
hid in a hollow tree, and one after the other, with Aggie last, we
started on.

The t