One of little Luke's best friends among the wild folk was A-bal-ka the
Chipmunk. He was a dainty little fellow about five inches long, with a
tail of the same length. His coat was of a yellowish-brown color, with
black stripes running down his back. This fine, striped coat made him
look much prettier than his cousin Mee-ko the Red Squirrel.
He was a clean, jolly, little chap, and very fond of singing, though he
knew but two songs. One was a sharp chip, chip, chip, which he would
sometimes keep up for a long time. At a distance it sounded like the
call note of some bird. The other was a cuck, cuck, cuck, which sounded
much like the song of the Cuckoo. A curious thing about this song was
that one could scarcely tell where it came from. Little Luke was often
deceived by it. Sometimes when it sounded as if A-bal-ka was near by, he
was really a good way off, and when it sounded as if he were a good way
off, he was really close by.
Beside these songs, A-bal-ka had an odd way of saying chip,
chur-r-r-r-r, when he was scared. This meant, "I am not afraid of you,"
and he never said it till he was safe in some hole where no one could
get at him.
A-bal-ka never harmed any one, nor did he scold and steal like Mee-ko
the Red Squirrel. Yet he had many foes. Ko-ko-ka the Owl, Ak-sip the
Hawk, Kee-wuk the Fox, Kag-ax the Weasel, Ko-sa the Mink, and A-tos-sa
the Snake were always ready to pounce upon him at sight and make a
meal of him. Even Mee-ko was not to be trusted. Sometimes he would
chase A-bal-ka and rob him of the nuts which he was carrying to his
storehouse. He would have robbed the storehouse, too, if he could have
got into it. But A-bal-ka's door was too small, and his hallways too
narrow for Mee-ko.
Little Luke knew all about A-bal-ka's underground dwelling. The way he
found out was this: Uncle Mark and Sam the hired man were digging stones
on the hillside in the edge of the woods for the foundations of a new
barn. While at this work, they uncovered the home of one of A-bal-ka's
brothers. It was made up of a long, winding passageway, ending in a
sleeping chamber, near which was a storehouse, and in this storehouse
there was a large quantity of nuts. These nuts were all good ones. The
greater part of them were little, three-cornered beech nuts, which the
squirrels like better than anything else. In all there was as much as
half a bushel of nuts, enough to last a chipmunk all winter. The bedroom
was a neat, little, round chamber, nicely filled with leaves, grass, and
moss. In such a house as this, with its store of nuts, a chipmunk could
live snug and warm all winter long and come out sleek and fat in the
spring.
Because of A-bal-ka's many enemies, he was very watchful. He seldom went
far from home, and when he did venture to go abroad, he nearly always
followed the same path. At first it ran along under the side of a fallen
log. From the end of this, a few quick leaps carried him to a brush
pile. A jump or two more brought him to a rock and yet a few more to a
stone fence. Once there, he felt safe. At the least alarm, he could run
into a hole too small for any of his foes except, perhaps, A-tos-sa,
whom he dreaded more than any of the others.
All along the stone fence stood nut trees,--oaks, hazels, walnuts,
beeches, and others. And at one end was a cornfield.
This made it very handy for A-bal-ka. He could gather the nuts which
fell upon the stone fence, and when he went for corn, he could keep to
the fence and thus avoid his enemies. Early in the fall he began to fill
his storehouse. To and fro he went along the fence with his
cheek-pouches full of corn and nuts.
Little Luke often amused himself by watching him. He would pick up the
nuts with his paws and put them into his cheek-pouches, and it was
amazing how many they would hold. When he started for home, his cheeks
sometimes looked as if he had a very severe case of the mumps.
One day in the autumn little Luke found out a queer thing about
A-bal-ka. He was going up the trail with Old John. A-bal-ka started to
cross the trail, but seeing the old Indian he became scared and ran up a
tree. This was a thing which he seldom did; never unless he was obliged
to, to escape from his enemies. He is a ground squirrel, and no tree
climber, like his cousins the Red and the Gray Squirrels.
"Now," said Old John, "I'll show you something." So he got a stout stick
and began to tap the tree. Tap, tap, tap, tap, as if he were beating
time to music. This tapping had a strange effect upon A-bal-ka. At first
he was greatly excited and tried to run farther up the tree. Soon he
gave this up, turned around, and began to come down head foremost. He
would lift his little feet and shake them as if something hurt them.
Lower and lower he came, until the old Indian could easily have killed
him with his club or caught him with his hand. He did neither. He just
laughed and threw away his stick.
"There," said he, "that's the way to make a chipmunk come down out of a
tree. They'll always do it, if you tap long enough,"
"That's queer," said the little boy; "what makes them come down? Why
don't they run farther up?"
"I don't know," said Old John, "perhaps they think you are trying to cut
down the tree, or maybe the jar hurts their feet. The Red Men used to
think that there was some kind of a magic charm about it."
"I am glad you didn't hurt him," said the little boy, as they went on up
the trail.
"Hurt him!" exclaimed the old Indian, "why, don't you know that no
Indian ever hurts a chipmunk?"
"Why is that?" asked the little boy.
"It's an old, old story," said Old John, "but come, let us sit down on
this log, and I'll tell it to you."
So when they were both comfortably seated, the old Indian began the tale
which you will find in the next chapter.
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