Bull stuck up his ears in a dignified way, and the three or four yellow curs who were Bull's satellites yelped delightedly and discordantly.
"Bill," said Bud Means to his brother, "ax the master ef he'd like to hunt coons.

I'd like to take the starch out uv the stuck-up feller." "'Nough said[3]," was Bill's reply.
"You durn't[4] do it," said Bud.
"I don't take no sech a dare[5]," returned Bill, and walked down to the gate, by which Ralph stood watching the stars come out, and half wishing he had never seen Flat Creek.
"I say, mister," began Bill, "mister, they's a coon what's been a eatin' our chickens lately, and we're goin' to try to ketch[6] the varmint.
You wouldn't like to take a coon hunt nor nothin', would you ?" "Why, yes," said Ralph, "there's nothing I should like better, if I could only be sure Bull wouldn't mistake me for the coon." And so, as a matter of policy, Ralph dragged his tired legs eight or ten miles, on hill and in hollow, after Bud, and Bill, and Bull, and the coon.

But the raccoon[7] climbed a tree.

The boys got into a quarrel about whose business it was to have brought the axe, and who was to blame that the tree could not be felled.

Now, if there was anything Ralph's muscles were good for, it was climbing.