WINKIE HEARS A NOISE
Blunk, the boy woodchuck, was so frightened by what he heard and
especially by what he saw――his sister falling in a heap amid the
clover――that for a little while he could do nothing. He stopped short,
and hid down under a big bunch of the red blossoms and green leaves.
“Oh! Oh! What has happened?” thought poor Blunk.
It was not the noise that he minded, for he had often heard thunder
when rain storms made the ground wet. Though now there was not a cloud
in the sky, which was bright blue, and the sun was gaily shining. So it
could not have been thunder.
“There!” cried the man. “I guess I shot one of them pesky woodchucks
that time! I’ll teach ’em to take my clover!”
There was a queer smell in the air――a powder smell, though Blunk did
not know what it was then. And there was a little cloud of blue smoke
near Farmer Tottle, for it was he who had fired the gun at Blunk and
Winkie.
“Yes, sir!” went on the farmer, lowering his gun, from the end of which
more blue smoke floated. “I got one of the woodchucks!”
“Ha!” suddenly cried Winkie, jumping up from the grass and clover where
she was hidden near Blunk. “He didn’t get me!”
“Oh!” cried Blunk, who was less quick-witted than his wily sister and
who was very much surprised when Winkie leaped up so suddenly. “Oh, I’m
so glad! I thought something had happened to you, Winkie!”
“Something really did happen,” said the girl woodchuck. “Keep still,
Blunk! Don’t move! Don’t look up!”
“Why not?”
“Because that man might shoot you! He’s got a gun! I saw him pointing
it, and, just in time, I stumbled and fell.”
“On purpose?” asked Blunk.
“Yes! Of course! Suppose I wanted to get shot? Keep still now!”
The two little woodchucks kept close together and hid themselves down
under the clover tops. They could hear the heavy, tramping feet of
Farmer Tottle, though of course they did not know his name.
“Keep still now――he’s coming!” whispered Winkie to Blunk. The little
girl woodchuck really did not need to tell her brother this. Blunk,
though slower witted than the wily Winkie, was not foolish, and did not
need be warned of his danger.
Of course they talked in woodchuck language, just as dogs talk in their
language and cats in theirs. Winkie and Blunk could not understand what
the man said, though they understood some of the things he did. Nor
could Farmer Tottle hear, much less understand, what the woodchucks
said. Animals seem able to talk to one another, even if they are from
different countries and are quite different one from the other.
Nearer and nearer came the heavy, tramping feet of the farmer. Winkie
and Blunk wanted to dart away and hide in their underground house, but
they did not dare come out from beneath the sheltering clover.
“That’s funny!” muttered the farmer to himself. “I’m sure I shot one of
them pesky woodchucks, but I can’t find it! There were two, but they’ve
got away somewhere. If I only had Buster, my dog, he’d nose ’em out.
Guess that’s what I’ll do――I’ll go get Buster!”
Winkie and Blunk kept so quiet under the clover that though the farmer
was very close to them he did not see them. And when he turned to go
back to the barn, to get his dog Buster, Winkie and Blunk thought this
would be a good time for them to run home.
[Illustration: And run home is what Winkie and Blunk did.]
Of course they did not know the farmer had gone after his dog, but the
woodchuck children knew they had been in danger; and where there is
danger once for an animal, there may be danger a second time.
“Come on, Winkie!” said Blunk in a low voice, as the footsteps of the
farmer died away in the distance. “Let’s run!”
“Do you want to play tag any more?” asked Winkie, astonished.
“Tag? No, indeed!” exclaimed her brother. “All I want to do is to get
home. And you’d better come with me. It’s a good thing Blinkie didn’t
come, for if there were three of us that man might more easily have
seen one of us. Come on now――let’s run!”
And run home is what Winkie and Blunk did. They ran as fast as when
they had been playing tag. But this was no joyful race; it was a race
full of danger. For there was no telling when the farmer might shoot
his gun again, or when he might return with his dog.
Though Winkie and Blunk felt pretty safe as they ran through the deep
clover, they also felt their little hearts beating very fast as they
neared their burrow, or underground house.
“My goodness!” exclaimed Blinkie, in woodchuck talk, as her brother and
sister came leaping up to the front door. “What’s your hurry on such a
hot day?”
“Hurry?” gasped Blunk. “I guess you’d be in a hurry if you’d seen and
heard what happened to us! Wouldn’t she, Winkie?”
“Indeed she would!” said Winkie. “Oh, such a terrible time!”
“What’s the matter?” asked Mother Woodchuck, coming up into the air
after her sleep. “What’s all the excitement about?”
“We were playing tag,” began Winkie, “when all at once there was a
noise like thunder――”
“But it wasn’t thunder. It was a man with a gun shooting at us,”
interrupted Blunk.
“Oh, my dears! A man with a gun, shooting!” cried Mrs. Woodchuck. “Oh,
my poor children! What shall we do? I wish your father was home! Oh,
this is dreadful!”
“Don’t worry, Mother!” said Blunk kindly. “We ran away from the man
with the gun, and I don’t believe he can find us. And neither of us got
shot. Winkie threw herself down in the clover and hid just in time.”
Blunk was proud of his clever, wily sister.
“Oh, but suppose he comes here!” cried Mrs. Woodchuck.
“I don’t believe he can find our burrow,” said Blinkie, a bit proudly.
“Daddy and you made our underground house in a place that isn’t easy
to find.”
“Besides, it has two doors,” said Winkie. “And you told us that made it
much safer, Mother.”
“I suppose it is as safe as any house can be,” said the woodchuck lady.
“Still, even with two doors, something may happen. I wish your father
would come home.”
And a little later Mr. Woodchuck came home. In his paws he carried some
yellow carrots and a white turnip.
“See what I have brought for you!” he cried, as he scrambled down the
front door of the underground house.
“Oh, how lovely!” cried Blinkie.
“Why, what is the matter?” asked Mr. Woodchuck, dropping the carrots
and the turnip in a heap on the floor. “Has anything happened?” he
asked, for he could tell by looking at his wife and children that
something was wrong.
“Winkie and Blunk were in great danger to-day,” said Mrs. Woodchuck.
“And I am afraid we shall have to move out of our lovely home. Tell
your father about the man with the gun, children!”
Winkie and Blunk related what had happened in the clover field when
they were playing tag. At the end of the story Mr. Woodchuck looked as
worried as did his wife.
“What are we going to do?” asked the woodchuck mother, looking
anxiously at her husband. “Shall we have to move?”
“Let me think a minute,” said the father woodchuck. “Tell me,” he went
on, speaking to Winkie and Blunk. “Did the man follow you all the way
to our burrow?”
“No. He turned around and went back after he shot at us and didn’t hit
either of us,” said Blunk.
“Well, then,” went on the father woodchuck, “I think we shall be safe
here for another day or so. Men are stupid creatures. It is only by
accident that he could find this burrow.”
“Maybe his dog could,” suggested Winkie.
“Yes, a dog is smarter than a man when it comes to that,” said Mr.
Woodchuck. “But don’t worry any more right away. Eat the good things I
brought home, and I will think what is best to do.”
The three woodchuck children, Winkie, Blinkie, and Blunk, soon forgot
their troubles in eating the sweet carrots and turnip. Even though
Blunk had eaten so much clover he could hardly run, he was now ready
for the good things his father had brought home.
“Where did you get them?” asked Blinkie, nibbling the end of a carrot.
“I found them in a field,” answered Mr. Woodchuck. “There were so many
I don’t believe the farmer will mind my taking a few.”
“Maybe they were planted by the same man who fired a gun at Winkie and
me,” suggested Blunk.
“Maybe,” said his father. “Why don’t you eat some?” he asked his wife,
for she had not even nibbled the outside skin of the turnip.
“I am too worried to eat!” she answered. “I hate to think of having to
move.”
“Perhaps we may not be driven to that,” said Mr. Woodchuck, who was
more cheerful than his wife. “And if we do, we can easily dig a new
burrow, or find a place to stay. This is summer, and the ground is soft.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he went on. “We’ll be ready to run away
at the slightest sign of danger. If that farmer comes to our front door
we’ll run out the back door; and if he comes to the back door we’ll
skip out the front, and all will be well.”
“It sounds all right,” said Mother Woodchuck. “I only hope it happens
that way.”
But it did not. Things in the woodchuck world, just as in your world
and mine, very often do not turn out the way they are expected to.
For several days, however, after the game of tag and the shooting of
the gun, nothing happened in the woodchuck home. For a time Winkie,
Blinkie, and Blunk hardly poked their noses outside the back or front
door. But as the days passed and no farmer with his gun and dog came,
the children became bolder.
They played tag and other games and ate the clover and the other good
things their father and mother brought home. Then, one morning, just as
Mr. Woodchuck was starting out to go to a distant field, and when the
children were about to go out and play, Winkie held up her paw and said:
“Listen! I hear a noise!”