The Healer by Daniel P. Mannix Read Free Book Online

ginseng plants were less than a foot high and except for the telltale gleam of the fruit, would have been invisible in the undergrowth.
    Billy fell on his knees and started pulling up the plants but Abe Zook stopped him. "The big ones only. Let the small ones grow yet." There were about a dozen of the large plants which Abe Zook carefully unearthed with his trowel, scraping off the dirt with his hands. He gave a satisfied cry and held one up. "A little man it is, say not?" Even to Billy the root did resemble a headless human. There was a body, two arms, and two legs.
    "What will you do with it?" he asked, taking the root and cradling it like a doll.
    "A man I know who lives in Chinatown in New York will give fifty dollars for this. He will keep it for a charm. The others can be made into tea, but first they must be well dried."
    They followed their own trail down the slope, retrieving Billy's basket, and hit the road again. It was growing late and the boy's legs hurt him from the long tramp. His sore hand was also aching. "Are we going back now?" he asked hopefully.
    "In a little." They cut across a meadow where cows were trying to find some of the late autumn grass and headed toward a big red barn. A score of white Leghorn chickens were scattered across the field, but Abe Zook avoided them and went to a little hill that overlooked the pasture. Here a shallow pit had been dug and filled with buckwheat chaff to make it level with the hilltop. Abe Zook knelt and examined the chaff. He chuckled.
    "Look once. The farmer here told me that a fox has been taking his chickens, so three weeks ago I dug this set. For one week, the fox walked around it but would not go in. Then mice found the grain in the chaff and began to dig in it. The fox smelt them and came here last night to dig some out. Then he rolled in the chaff. Foxes like to do that. Now he has no more fear of it, so we set the traps."
    Billy watched, revolted yet fascinated, while Zook took the three Number 2 traps from his belt and set them in different places in the pit, covering them lightly with chaff and burying the drags deeper. "If this was a fox living in the woods I would have to boil the traps so he could not smell my scent or the scent of the iron."
    "I know. Foxes are smart."
    "Well, they are afraid of anything strange. People think that a fox knows a trap will catch him so that is why he keeps away from it. That is foolish talk. You could be leaving a silver spoon in the woods and the fox would be afraid of it the same way. A fox knows nothing about a trap unless maybe he has been caught once and got away. A lot of fools set traps for foxes, but they use too light a trap or let stones get between the jaws or do not set it fine enough, so the fox gets away. Those people are not trapping foxes, they are only teaching them. A fox like that is very hard to trap. I do not think this fox has ever been caught by a trap, and as he has been much around a farm the smells of iron and people are known to him, so boiling the traps is not necessary."
    From his pocket he took a tightly sealed glass jar, opened it and poured some of the contents on the chaff, muttering, "In the name of God I set this trap. May it please God to assist me. Upon the holy assistance of God and my trap, I depend entirely. God alone be with us. Amen."
    "Does that make it work better?" asked Billy.
    "Perhaps not, but it makes me feel better—like swearing when something goes wrong. But the lure I pour on is something else yet. It is oil from dead fish I catch last summer. The fox smells that and will come to it."
    "Why? Because he wants to eat the fish?"
    "Because he wishes to know what it is. This is a lure such as all trappers use, but also every trapper has his own lure which he uses when all other lures fail. He thinks that he has found something that will bring any fox to it, but it is only that it is something so strange that a wise fox who knows and fears all the common lures does not know it