12th June: The noose for the long-eared

"I'll wait." Pye smiled as the chick pecked at the offered finger. It was not a huge worm! It was soft and wiggly and attached to a palm and there were four more of it on the same hand. Too bad it was not a worm or else the chick thought that it would have food worth plenty of days.

"She likes you." He murmured observing the small being that he cared so much for. She was growing, steadily, but she was not yet ready to lay eggs or look the colour she would, when adult.

"Good. I like her too." Cotton stroked the fluff on her head before reaching for the Captain's sword. "Be back d'rectly minute," he added, getting to his feet.

The chick looked ready to follow Cotton to see where he was going and scampered to his side as he stood up. She looked back at Pye, briefly just to make sure he was still there.

"Do not haste yourself on me account." Pye said, but was smiling even so.

"As if I would," Cotton said lightly. "Best keep your eye on that chick. Mind me feet, Peggy!"

Pye grinned. It felt better, hearing Cotton say it in that manner. So much better. His chick was called back to him, but ignored him seeing the adventure with the other rifleman as something she wanted to go and experience! He had to go somewhere that there was food and then he would feed her and then they would see so many other things that she could not, when cooped in that haversack.

She chirped happily and moved ahead, but rather close, of the rifleman. "Peggy, come now. Over 'ere." Pye called to her again, but the little bird was stubborn.

"Pye, I think mebbe you'd best pick her up afore I step on her," Cotton said, looking down at the fluff-ball that was running around his feet. "'Cause we don't want her to get squashed, do we?"

"No , we don't." As Pye rose, the chick ran to the other side of Cotton, so as to have the man between herself and Pye. As Pye went after her, she ran around the man, again trying to keep the younger rifleman away.

"Peggy!" Pye exclaimed but the chick clucked happily out of the way again. She hopped and ducked past Cotton, and seemed inclined to give Pye a worthy chase.

"Right, young scallywag," Cotton said, and bent to scoop the little creature up. "Here y'go. I'll be back in a minute." He held his cupped hand out towards Pye.

The chick was not happy at being tricked and made that known. But try as she might, Cotton was going and she was unable to follow. She finally settled down and only chirped unhappily. Pye kept a hold on her, not trusting her to stay put, if he were to put her down, even when Cotton was absent.

Cotton was back soon, although it took slightly longer than he had anticipated. The Captain had made him explain what he wanted to do, and then told him to wait while he wrote them a ticket, which Cotton shoved into his pocket as he came back over to Pye.

"Right, let's get goin', then," he said. "You got that snare?"

"Got it." Pye answered. He had thought that Cotton would not come, when it took him as long to return. He was about to stand up, torn between leaving and waiting some more, but then spotted the man. His mug was already empty of tea, which he head heartily drunk after his chick was returned to his haversack. There she remained to protest and chirp , but nothing was done to make her wish come true.

He dusted his trousers and held the snare out as an indication that he had it in his possession. "Better we don' find ourselves summat of a french leaping rabbit." He remembered how Newbury and the Hussar he forgot the name of, got into a bit of a pickle just for thinking the wrong thing to be game. He smiled and tucked his mug back into its place, looking at Cotton to lead the way.

"We ain't goin' for Frogs, we'm goin' for rabbits. Well, one rabbit anyway."

It was harder, going after rabbits when you didn't know the local warren, Cotton decided, but he soon found what he was looking for, and pointed it out to Pye. "Look, you can see here how all the grass is a lot shorter than the grass either side, an' look where it goes under that bush."

Pye observed the land and the dissimilarity in the part of it, that Cotton was pointing to. It was a way a rifleman needed to see his surroundings. To notice that something was off, that something alive must have carved its path across so in ways the lesson was not only on how to snare a rabbit, but something more.

"I see. That is where the rabbit might have gone or frequents?" He asked taking a shorter path towards the marked grounds.

"It's a rabbit path - they come along here all the time, to keep the grass as short as that," Cotton said, and reached for his ball of string. "The best place to set it up is right where it goes under that bush there - they won't go around it there." He held his hand out for the snare.

"Why doesn't a rabbit use a new trail each time? Ain't it more dangerous for it ter frequent t' same place? It's like goin' across the same lawn 'front of an estate owner and expecting that he ain't going ter see you one of those days... and send dogs after ye." He shook his head. "It's daft when it's so visible, ain't it?" He indicated the small path, and then took his snare looking at the bush and wondering where he could tie it so the rabbit could not avoid it.

"Habit, I s'pose. I ain't a rabbit, so I dunno. It ain't all that visible, really - you'd have walked right past if I hadn't pointed it out to you." He tied one end of the string to the empty loop in the wire, and then tied the string to the bush, picking a very strong branch, and making sure that the big loop was about four inches from the ground.

"I need a couple of twigs now, if you can find a some," he said. "The sort with a fork to 'em are best."

True. But with some experience he would do better than to pass it blindly. He promised himself that. He turned about and searched the ground for the twigs that Cotton had suggested. The grass was rather free of them, so that he had to part some ways with Cotton to come closer to a set of trees and some low vegetation. There he discovered a few twigs. First few were useless as they were mostly just of one body without a fork anywhere on it. But then he broke of one from a low lying branch and took another from the ground and he gathered several more.

He glanced towards Cotton and lifted one he thought had been closest to Cotton's description. "These a'right?"

"Aye. Jus' need a couple like that." He took the offered twig and pushed it into the ground so that the large loop of wire was secured in the fork. "Stops it turnin' round in the wind, see. 'Cause if it's spinnin', it'll be easier seen an' avoided, an' you don't want that." He took a second twig and did the same with it.

"We'll come back in the mornin' an' see what we've got. Best thing to do, really, if you know the area, is set up two or three - though I used to do five or six on the common, back home, of a night." He grinned. "Either that, or go ferretin' - don't tell the Captain that, though."

"Ferretin'?" He grinned and shook his head. "Wouldn't dream o' telling him. I reckon... you'd done it though a lot, back home?" He was amused and could not have been in no way appalled to learn that Cotton 'broke the law' of his landlord in such manner.

He was the last person to consider another a thief and be judgemental about it! "If yer made that many traps out, how many would get their rabbit?" He noted how the sticks were placed for later and stepped aside. In the distance he observed movement. Small, a mere indication of a stir in the bush.

"Not that often. Often enough, though." He shrugged. "Set 'em up somewhere good, you'll gen'rally get summat. You don't want to put a snare in the same place every night, though, or they'll figure it out an' you'll stop catchin' em. If you was to go out every night for a week, you'd want about three different places to be able to change it every time."

He gestured back to their camp. "We need to leave it set up now, an' walk away. Don't be tempted to keep checkin' a snare. If you catch somethin', that's good. If you don't, well, there's allus next time." He grinned as they started walking. "The ferretin' was on the common, so it wasn't really poachin' - it's common land, see. That's why it's called a common. But there was folks as didn't like folks like us goin' out with ferrets to try an' get a bit more meat. They didn't really like the snares either, but they thought the ferrets was worser. Dunno for why. Silly of 'em, really. Though you get more with ferrets, but it takes more work."

"An' you need a ferret ter be raised ter do it's job first, don't ya? Where a snare's jus' a snare and knows ter do it's job. No matter wot' ye think o' it." He looked away from the movement, to his snare and wished that more hours would be quick in passing so that he could see if something had been caught. He knew checking back on it would only prevent anything of being caught because his smell would be there, and strong, but the temptation would be hard to resist.

"Why don' yer have any ferrets now?.. Hidden aways in yer hat? Or places?"

"Ferrets take a deal o' lookin' after - they smell, a lot. Easy enough to hide 'em if you'm in one place all the time, but not so easy to keep 'em if'n you'm movin' around like we do now." He chuckled. "It's summat else you learn, when you work on the land. Patience. You'll not make things happen jus' 'cause you want 'em to, right now."

Pye was as eager as any young lad, and watching him made Cotton feel old, which he wasn't, not really. He was only about... No. Was he really as much as ten years older than Pye - or more?

"Don't you stink worse after a long march n' any ferret could?" The boy looked fairly amused as he said that. It was not meant to critisize Cotton's bathing habits at all. Though, this did bring some mind to Pye needing a better scrub in the nearby river himself.

"Patience is... a dreadful demand." He scowled. " I know it's important.. " Though to wait a whole year to see what will grow that you have planted was unimaginable! Sure, waiting for a victim from whom one intended to steal, but that was at worst hours.. days maybe, not months to a year.

"Jus'.. it takes so long." He glanced past Cotton again." Might we have a... real short stop by t' river 'fore we get back?"

"Diff'rent sort of smell," Cotton said with a grin, and nodded. "Don't see why not. We ain't goin' anywheres else than back to camp, though." He gave the picquet a wave. The man acknowledged them, but as they weren't on the wrong side of him, he turned back to watching for the enemy.

"Any'ow, waitin' to see what you'm caught ain't goin' to take longer'n tonight," Cotton continued, pulling his canteen strap over his head and stooping to fill it.

"No. I wouldn't dream o' it." He had a shorter leash than Cotton. Whereas the other rifleman would be fairly trusted even if he had gone much further, or ever approached the picquets Pye felt that he would have been warned at the very least, or put under suspicion of attempting something bad.

"M' going ter jus' have a dip." He said , thinking it was better to explain than make Cotton start worrying he thought of swimming across the river all of a sudden. He did move downriver from where the other man was filling the canteen, not wanting to soil the water there.

"Stink is stink,.. sometimes worse in t' lads." He grinned. "But guess nothin' is as a defined smell as hard ridden horses, no?"