When they had finished skinning the skunk my father walked over to the fire and threw the carcass into the flames. He and Thuse then went over to an open spring that came out from under the roots of a big elm tree on the Theodore Wolfley farm west of town, and washed their hands. They had returned to the fire and were bending over the blaze drying their hands, when my father said, “So you boys think you’re too nice to help your old daddy skin a skunk.” He laughed. Methuselah chuckled. Then, spreading his hands with a sort of satisfied air, my father said, “It’s as easy as falling off a log when you know how.” Thuse chuckled again, and said, “Pshaw—of course it is!” And then, as if giving instructions for his sons to note, my father went on, “I shot him in the head before he had time to kick up a stink and of course we were careful not to cut into the stink-sack.” Charley said, “Smart guys—you two.” Father gave him a withering look, but said nothing. Thus chagrined, Charley and I started away to gather some more fuel. Then there was a sharp pop—a sort of explosion, as it were—in the fire. We looked around into an atmosphere suddenly made blue with sickening fumes and sulphurous words of condemnation. We saw Pop clawing frantically at his whiskers—he wore a full beard then—and the two Willies were dancing around the fire like Comanche Indians. It was all so sudden. That darned skunk carcass, as if in a last noble effort of defense, had exploded and the contents of that carefully handled stink-sack was hurled at those two self-assured skinners, with my father’s whiskers as the central target for some of the solids. Pugh! It was awful! Adopting Indian lingo, Charley laughed, “Heap brave skunk-skinners!” Father said, “I don’t like the way you said that, young man. One more crack out of you—and I’ll tan your hide.” But he wouldn’t have done that. Charley was a model of perfection, and no one appreciated that fact more than did his daddy. Now, have a look at Thuse. A weazened little wisp of a man in his twenties—wrinkled, uncouth, slouched in his clothes always much too big for him, he looked as if he had already lived a goodly portion of the long span of years accredited to the ancient Methuselah. On the way home, Methuselah, speaking to my father, said, “They’ll want to run us out of town, Bill, when we get back to Wetmore.” My father said he could bury his clothes, but still he was greatly worried about his whiskers. And, naturally, he was thinking about my mother, too. Charley said, soothingly, “Oh, just go on home Dad, and play her Money Musk, and everything will be fine. Money talks, you know. You’ve got as good as four dollars in your game sack, and God only knows how much musk, if you want to call it that, you and Thuse have got on your own hides.”