THE WOODCHUCK HUNT
“Now, I got it all fixed, Tavia. You come along with us and see the
fun,” said Joe Dale, at luncheon time. “I’m sorry Dorothy’s gone over
to the post-office. She won’t find anything, I’m afraid. Nobody came
there this morning when _I_ was on watch,” he added, as though that was
conclusive.
“But she will expect me----”
“No, she won’t. Bob and Ned are going there right after two o’clock,
they say, and they’ll take her place.”
“If Bob Niles is going there I don’t want to go,” said Tavia, with a
toss of her head. “He’s getting too--numerous.”
“Come on with us and hunt woodchucks. We got the holes all marked this
morning,” said her brother Johnny. “And Rogue’s got a turtle--a real
snappy one, if it _is_ so early in the spring.”
“A turtle?” asked Tavia, wonderingly. “What do you do with a turtle
catching woodchucks?”
“Oh, you’ll see,” promised Joe. “Come on.”
And Tavia, who was just _crazy_ to run wild in the woods and fields
again, as she herself said, was over-ruled and went with the boys.
They went up into the fields near the Rouse farm. Had they gone by the
way of the railroad crossing they might have passed “the Dump,” as the
open lot was called, just about the time Dorothy was talking with Jane
Daggett and her hopeful son.
But Tavia and the boys--all Dorothy’s friends, in fact--were quite
unaware of the trouble into which Dorothy’s impetuosity had gotten her.
The old pasture in which the boys had discovered the woodchuck burrows
was full of sheltering clumps of dwarfed trees, and piles of stone. A
woodchuck always has two openings to his home, and unless a watch is
set at both holes no amount of smoking out will enable the hunter to
grab Mr. Woodchuck.
“But we got it cinched!” declared Joe Dale, with excitement. “See this
old mud turtle?”
The turtle produced was as large as the bottom of a two-quart pail.
Tavia, who knew lots about snaring and trapping small game, was frankly
puzzled over the use to which the turtle was to be put.
“Now you’ll see,” giggled her brother. “And we ain’t goin’ to hurt the
turtle a mite. Pull out his tail, Joe.”
“Yes, pull out his tail, brother,” urged Roger, dancing around the
group that hovered about one of the doors to Mr. Woodchuck’s den.
“Isn’t a turtle funny?” laughed Tavia. “He sits down, swallows his
head, and puts both his hands and feet in his pockets.”
“Now the string,” said Joe, seriously. He tied a piece of stout cord to
the creature’s tail.
“It’ll slip,” objected Johnny.
“No, ’twon’t!”
“Give me the wire, Rogue,” commanded Johnny.
The younger lad produced a piece of thin wire about two feet in length.
At one end was a loop, and to this the bit of stout cord was fastened.
Then, to the other end of the wire, Johnny attached a ball of cotton.
Joe produced a bottle of coal oil.
“Whatever are you horrid boys going to do?” demanded Tavia, suddenly.
“Now, we’re not going to hurt the turtle,” explained her brother,
calmly. “You needn’t fret. We’re going to get and bake Mr. Woodchuck.
He’s proper game. Mr. Turtle may be scared for a minute, or two, but
that’s all. He is a cold-blooded insect----”
“Insect! hear to him!” burst out Joe Dale, laughing uproariously.
“Oh--ah-ugh! I mean reptile,” grunted Johnny.
“That’s as bad as one of the fellows in school,” said Roger. “Teacher
asked him what an oyster was, and he told her it was a fish built like
a nut.”
“Goody!” chuckled Tavia. “So it is. But do you think this cold-blooded
reptile--which is also a good deal like a nut--needs warming up, boys?”
“We won’t warm him,” explained Johnny. “Don’t you see we’ve got the
wire tied to his tail with a piece of string? If the wire should get
hot _he’d_ never feel it. Now come on, Joe. Pour on the oil. You
watching that other hole, Rogue? We don’t want the old groundhog to
fool us.”
“He hasn’t poked his snout out here yet,” declared the smallest boy,
with confidence.
But Tavia, who had begun to look worried, suddenly interfered.
“Say! I want to know,” she demanded, “wherever you boys learned to
smoke a woodchuck out in this way? It’s not nice. I don’t like it----”
“Aw, listen to her!” ejaculated Johnny Travers. “Don’t be a softie,
Tavia.”
“I tell you it doesn’t hurt the turtle,” said Joe Dale.
“I don’t care,” said Tavia, warmly. “Even if it only _looks_ as though
it might hurt him, we shouldn’t do it. We shouldn’t even be willing
to stand for animals _appearing_ to be hurt. It’s not nice--it’s not
kindly----”
“Aw, shucks!” began her brother again; but Joe shut him up quickly:
“That’s all right, Jack. If Tavia says we’re not to do it, we won’t.
Let him go,” and in a moment he had released the reptile, which began
crawling off desperately as though he knew just how narrow an escape he
had had from becoming an animated torch.
For a minute or two Johnny was inclined to pout. But Tavia (who knew
as much about woodchuck hunting as the boys themselves) quickly made a
brush torch, and they saturated that with oil, touched it off with a
match, and pushed it down the woodchuck hole.
There was a big stack of corn fodder near at hand; but the interested
young folk did not pay much attention to it at the moment. They did
not even observe a certain rustling in the fodder when they first came
to the woodchuck burrow; nor did they see a pair of very bright eyes,
belonging to a young man with very red hair, that peered out at them
when they began smoking out the denizen of the hole in the hillside.
This red-haired person only grinned at them and then lay down for
another nap in the fodder. He was laying up sleep for the coming night,
for he expected to “jump” the fast freight to the West that passed
through Dalton at midnight, and only stopped at the water-tank below
this hill.
The three boys and Tavia waited at the other end of the woodchuck
burrow.
“If he doesn’t get heart-failure, or apoplexy, or something like that,
Mr. Woodchuck will run out in about two shakes of a lamb’s tail,”
chuckled Johnny Travers.
“Your lamb has an awful long tail, Johnny,” quoth his sister,
teasingly, after a minute or so.
And then she suddenly joined the boys in a whoop of excitement. The
nose of the woodchuck appeared. Little Rogue hit it a crack and the
creature didn’t run far. But Johnny waited with uplifted “whanger”
and there appeared a second woodchuck. They got that one, too--and
both were pretty plump, for all that they had been hived up during the
winter.
“We’ve got enough for a bake--a small one,” said Roger.
“Aw, wait,” said his brother. “There’s another hole. Come on, Johnny!
Let’s make a new torch.”
Johnny obeyed and Joe led the way around the stack. There were signs of
another woodchuck hollow. They repeated the performance with the torch
here, and then grouped about the other outlet to welcome the groundhog
when he appeared.
In ten minutes they had a third fat carcass, and the boys began to skin
and clean them.
“Nat was laughing at us,” said Joe Dale. “I reckon he and Cousin Ned
will be glad enough to eat some of these fellows.”
“Faugh! you wouldn’t really eat ’em?” began Tavia. But the boys laughed
uproariously.
“Ain’t that just like a girl?” cried Johnny. “Woodchuck is as good
eating as ’possum, or coon, or squirrel.”
“That’s all right,” laughed Tavia, tossing her head. “Everybody to
their taste, as the old woman said when she kissed her cow. I’ll choose
squirrel--and I reckon Doro will, too--and the bigger boys. And I know
where we can get some, for there’s no law on squirrels in this county.
We’ll have some potatoes in the bake, too.”
“Goody!” cried Roger, jumping around. “It takes girls to think of the
fixin’s.”
“That’s so,” agreed Johnny, getting over his little grouch.
“And let’s have the bake in Griscom’s grove--you know--back of the old
schoolhouse; there’s a fine place there. Don’t you remember, Johnny?”
“Of course,” said her brother. “There’s plenty of stones there for an
oven. And----”
“Oh, oh, oh!” screamed Tavia, suddenly.
“Whatever became of that torch, Rogue?” demanded Joe.
It was too late, however, to wonder about that. One side of the stack
of fodder was all ablaze.