lar load of powder, takes aim at a big buck that's pretty busy at
the torturin', an' bangs away. It knocked her clean over backward, an'
her shoulder was lame all the rest of the way to Oregon, but she dropped
the big Indian deado. He never knew what struck 'm.

"But that wasn't the yarn I wanted to tell. It seems old Susan liked
John Barleycorn. She'd souse herself to the ears every chance she got.
An' her sons an' daughters an' the old man had to be mighty careful not
to leave any around where she could get hands on it."

"On what?" asked Saxon.

"On John Barleycorn.--Oh, you ain't on to that. It's the old fashioned
name for whisky. Well, one day all the folks was goin' away--that was
over somewhere at a place called Bodega, where they'd settled after
comin' down from Oregon. An' old Susan claimed her rheumatics was
hurtin' her an' so she couldn't go. But the family was on. There was
a two-gallon demijohn of whisky in the house. They said all right, but
before they left they sent one of the grandsons to climb a big tree in
the barnyard, where he tied the demijohn sixty feet from the ground.
Just the same, when they come home that night they found Susan on the
kitchen floor dead to the world."

"And she'd climbed the tree after all," Saxon hazarded, when Billy had
shown no inclination of going on.

"Not on your life," he laughed jubilantly. "All she'd done was to put
a washtub on the ground square under the demijohn. Then she got out her
old rifle an' shot the demijohn to smithereens, an' all she had to do
was lap the whisky outa the tub."

Again Saxon was drowsing, when the rustling sound was heard, this time
closer. To her excited apprehension there was something stealthy about
it, and she imagined a beast of prey creeping upon them. "Billy," she
whispered.

"Yes, I'm a-listenin' to it," came his wide awake answer.

"Mightn't that be a panther, or maybe... a wildcat?"

"It can't be. All the varmints was killed off long ago. This is
peaceable farmin' country."

A vagrant breeze sighed through the trees and made Saxon shiver. The
mysterious cricket-noise ceased with suspicious abruptness. Then, from
the rustling noise, ensued a dull but heavy thump that caused both Saxon
and Billy to sit up in the blankets. There were no further sounds, and
they lay down again, though the very silence now seemed ominous.

"Huh," Billy muttered with relief. "As though I don't know what it was.
It was a rabbit. I've heard ta