Page:Redcoat (1927).djvu/221

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quite different from the red, and much more simple, and far less cunning. But I will leave it to you Bud. I am in hopes you will find a way."

Bud folded the letter carefully and put it in his pocket, and after supper he went out to the harness room in the barn and took down a half pint bottle. It had stood there on a beam in the room for two years and he had not looked at it for several months, but now it held a great interest for the excited boy. It was a strange dark liquid which an old trapper from Canada had given him two years before. It was supposed to be a sort of fox charm. A medicine which would cause foxes to lose all their natural suspicion and cunning and follow this charm into any trap. Bud never had believed in the charm, but now it was his only chance. Perhaps it would work. The vile smelling stuff was compounded of beaver caster, the oil of anise seed and several other equally rank smelling substances. Perhaps it might smell good to a fox, but it made the boy fairly gag as he took a good whiff of it.