After Papa had pulled the nails, he lifted the coon's paw from the hole. There, clamped firmly in it, was the bright piece of tin.
In a low voice Papa said, 'Well, I'll be darned. All he had to do was open it up and he was free, but he wouldn't do it. Your grandfather was right.'
A sorrowful look came over Papa's face as he ran his fingers through the soft, yellow hair. 'Billy,' he said, 'I want you to take a hammer and pull the nails from every one of those traps. It's summertime now and their fur isn't any good. Besides, I don't think this is very sportsmanlike. The coon doesn't have a chance. It's all right this time. You needed this one, but from now on I want you to catch them with your dogs. That way they have a fifty-fifty chance.'
'I will, Papa,' I said. 'That's what I intended to do.'
While we were skinning the coon, Papa asked me when I was going to start training my dogs.
'I don't know,' I said. 'Do you think they're too young?'
'No, I don't think so,' he said. 'I've heard that the younger they are the better it is.'
'Well, in that case,' I said, 'I'll start tomorrow.'
With the help of my oldest sister, we started giving my pups their first lessons. She would hold their collars while I made trails with the hide for them to follow.
I'd climb trees that leaned out over the river, jump out into the water, swim to the other side, and make trails up and down the bank. With a long pole and wire, I'd drag the hide on top of rail fences, swing it through the air, and let it touch the ground twenty or thirty feet away. I did everything with that hide a coon would do and probably a lot of things a coon couldn't do.
It was a beautiful sight to see my pups work those trails. At first they were awkward and didn't know what to do, but they would never quit trying.
Old Dan would get so eager and excited, he would overrun a trail. Where it twisted or turned, he would run straight on, bawling up a storm. It didn't take him long to realize that a smart old coon didn't always run in a straight line.
Little Ann never overran a trail. She would wiggle and twist, cry and whine, and pretty soon she would figure it out.
At first they were afraid of water. I never would admit it even to myself. I always said that they just didn't like to get wet. They would follow the trail to the stream and stop. Sitting down on their rears, they would cry and beg for help. With a pup under each arm, I'd wade out into the stream and set them down in the cool water. Nine times out of ten, one pup would swim one way and the other one would go just the opposite way. I had a time with this part of their training, but my persistence had no bounds.
It wasn't long until they loved the water. Old Dan would jump as far out as he could and practically knock the river dry. Little Ann would ease herself in and swim like a muskrat for the opposite shore.
I taught my dogs every trick I knew and any new ones I heard about. I taught them how to split up on a riverbank to search for the hidden trail, because it was impossible to tell where a coon would come out of the water. Sometimes he might swim downstream and other times he might swim upstream. Maybe he would come back to the bank he had just left, or he would cross over to the other side. Perhaps he would stop in the middle of the stream on an old drift.
Sometimes he would come out of the water by catching the dangling limbs of a leaning birch and climbing up, never touching the bank. Or he could come out on the same trail he used to go in, and backtrack. He would sometimes crawl up under an undermined bank or into an old muskrat den.
One of the favorite tricks of a smart old ringtail is the treebarking trick. This he accomplished by running far up on the side of a tree and using his stout legs for leverage, springing twenty or thirty feet away before touching the ground. Dumb hounds trail up to the tree and start bawling treed. I taught my dogs to circle for a good hundred yards to be sure he was still in the tree before bawling.
In order to learn more about coon hunting, I'd hang around my grandfather's store and listen to the stories told by the coon hunters. Some of the tales I heard were long and tall, but I believed them all.
I could always tell when Grandpa was kidding me by the twinkle in his eyes. He told me how a coon could climb right up the fog and disappear in the stars, and how he could leap on a horse's back and run him over your dogs. I didn't care, for I loved to hear the tall tales. Anything that had a coon hair in it I believed completely.
All through that summer and into the late fall the training went on. Although I was worn down to a frazzle, I was a happy boy. I figured I was ready for the ringtails.
Late one evening, tired and exhausted, I sat down by a big sycamore and called my dogs to me. 'It's all 'over,' I said. 'There'll be no more lessons. I've worked hard and I've done my best. From now on it's all up to you. Hunting
