A LAST FAREWELL TO THE SILVER PLATED FOXES BEFORE THEY ENTER THE JUNGLE
By that I knew that some of the fellows up at camp had been down to Warner’s the night before and put it there, because they knew that would be the last store we’d go to.
Harry Donnelle said, “All right, line up.” So we all sat in a row and some summer people who were in there began to laugh. What did we care? One girl said she wished she was a boy; girls are always saying that. So that proves we have plenty of fun. I could see Harry Donnelle wink at Mr. Warner while the latter (that means Mr. Warner) was getting the sodas ready. Then all of a sudden Harry said:
So then we all started at once and that was the beginning of the big hike. Just as I told you, it started at the top of the glasses in Warner’s and ended in the bottom of the glasses at Bennett’s. When you hear me say _M-mm-that’s good_ in Bennett’s, you’ll know the hike is over.
“Now to skirt the lonesome Catskills,” Harry said.
“Now to what them?” Dorry Benton asked him.
“Skirt them,” he said, “that’s Latin for hiking around the edge of them. We don’t want to be all the time stumbling over mountains.”
“Believe _me_, if I see one in the road, I’ll tell you,” I said.
“And we don’t want to get mixed up with panthers and wild cats either,” Harry said. And he gave me a wink.
“There aren’t any wild animals in the Catskills,” Charlie Seabury said.
“There are wild flowers,” I said, “but they won’t hurt anybody.”
“How about poison ivy?” Westy Martin said.
All the while as we hiked along the road toward Saugerties, we kept joking about the wild animals in the Catskills. Harry Donnelle said there used to be lots of wild cats and foxes, but not any more. He said there were some foxes, though.
Westy said, “I bet there are some bears; once Uncle Jeb saw a bear; he said there weren’t any foxes any more.”
“I guess there are some grey ones and maybe a few silver,” Harry Donnelle said.
“Silver?” I shouted. “Oh boy!” Then I asked him what they fed on mostly.
“Mostly on ice cream sodas,” he said; “they’re very dangerous after a half dozen raspberry sodas.”
We didn’t go near Saugerties, because we wanted to keep in the country, so we hit down southwest along the road that goes to Woodstock. Then we were going to hike it south past West Hurley so we’d bunk our noses right into the Ashokan Reservoir. And the next day we were going to spend trying to keep out of Kingston.