Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/259

 XXVI

TANKOO

ELL, I must leave you to imagine what my feelings were as I looked down, day after day, on that beautiful, bloody thing with my bullet in it. I can't tell you—it chokes me up now—unless a little story of Jon and me would do it.

I used to gun a good deal when I was young. Once, when I was out for rabbits I found a cunning young one just a couple of inches long, a regular little cotton-tail—with no parents about. I expect, maybe, that I had killed 'em. It was starving to death. I brung it home for Jon—about three or four year old then. Well, you never saw no better friends! Jon fed him like a mother and he took it. That little bunny would follow Jon about like they was brothers. 243