? Let's get him,
anyway, and take him apart!"

"'So they all begin to jump again and can't quite make it till their
leader says he'll show 'em a real jump. He backs off a little to get a
run and lands right on the log. Then he wished he hadn't. Old Kate
worked so quick I couldn't hardly follow it. In about three seconds this
leader lands on his back down in the bunch, squealing like one of these
Italian sopranos when the flute follows her up. He crawls off on his
stomach, still howling, and I see he's had a couple of wipes over the
eye, and one of his ears is shredded.

"'A couple of the others come over to ask him how it happened, and what
he quit for, and did his foot slip; and he says: "Mark my words,
gentlemen; we got our work cut out for us here. That animal is acting
less and less like a rabbit every minute. He's more turbulent and he's
got spurs on." He goes on talking this way while the others bark at
Kate, and Kate dares any one of 'em to come on up there and have it out,
man to man. Finally another lands on the tree trunk and gets what the
first one got. I could see it this time. Kate done some dandy shortarm
work in the clinches and hurled him off on his back like the other one;
then he stands there sharpening his claws on the bark and grinning in a
masterful way. He was saying: "You will, will you?"

"'Then one of these beetles must of said, "Come on, boys--all together
now!" for four of 'em landed up on the trunk all to once. And Kate
wasn't there. He'd had the top of this fallen tree at his back, and he
kites up a limb about ten feet above their heads and stretches out for a
rest, cool as anything, licking his paws and purring like he enjoyed the
beautiful summer day, and wasn't everything calm and lovely? It was
awful insulting the way he looked down on 'em, with his eyes half shut.
And you never seen beetles so astonished in your life. They just
couldn't believe their eyes, seeing a rabbit act that way! The leader
limps over and says: "There! What did I tell you, smarties? I guess next
time you'll take my word for it. I guess you can see plain enough now he
ain't no rabbit, the way he skinned up that tree."

"'They calm down a mite at this, and one or two says they thought he was
right from the first; and some others says: "Well, it wouldn't make no
difference what he was, rabbit or no rabbit, if he'd just come down and
meet the bunch of us fair and square; but the dirty coward is afraid to
fight us,