ONLY A CHIP'
"Oh! I wish I had worn my tramping togs," exclaimed Nixon Warren as the
four boys, after covering an easy mile along the highroad and over the
uplands that lay between marsh and woodland, plunged, whooping, in amid
the forest shadows roofed by the meeting branches of pines, hemlocks,
oaks, and birches, with here and there a maple already turning ruddy,
that formed the outposts of the dense woods.
A dwarf counterpart of the same trees laced with vines and prickly
brambles made an undergrowth so thick that they parted with shreds of
their clothing as they went threshing through it, in a fascinating
gold-misted twilight, through which the slender sunbeams flashed like
fairy knitting-needles weaving a scarf of light and shade around each
tall trunk.
"Why! you're better 'togged' for the woods than the rest of us are,"
answered Leon Starr Chase, looking askance at the new boy. "That's a
dandy hat; must shade your eyes a whole lot when you're tramping on
open ground! I guess ours don't need any shading!"
A wandering sunbeam kindled a brassy spark in Leon's brown eye which
looked as if it could face anything unabashed. In his mind lurked the
same suspicion that had hovered over Colin's at first sight of Nixon,
that this newcomer from a distant city might be somewhat of a flowerpot
fellow, delicately reared and coddled, not a hardy plant that could
revel and rough it in the wilderness atmosphere of the thick woods.
Nothing about the boy-stranger supported such an idea for a moment,
except to Leon, as the party progressed, the interest which he took in
the floral life of the woodland: in objects which Starrie Chase who
invariably "hit the woods" as he phrased it, with destruction in the
forefront of his thoughts, generally overlooked, and therefore did not
consider worth a second glance.
He stood and gaped as Nixon, with a shout of delight, pounced upon some
rosy pepper-grass, stooped to pick a wood aster or gentian, or pointed
out to Coombsie the green sarsaparilla plant flaunting and prolific
between the trees.
"What do you call this, Marcoo?" the strange boy would exclaim
delightedly, finding novel treasure trove in the rare white blossoms of
Labrador tea. "I don't remember to have seen this flower on any of our
hikes through the Pennsylvania woods!"
To which Coombsie would make answer:--
"Don't ask me, Nix; I know a little about birds, but when it comes to
knowing anything of flowers or plants--excepting those that are under
our feet every day--I 'fall down flunk!' Hullo! though, here are some
devil's pitchforks--or stick-tight--I do know them!"
"So do I!" Nixon stooped over the tall bristly flower-heads, rusty green
in color, and gathered a few of the two-pronged seed-vessels that cling
so readily to the fur of an animal or the clothing of a boy. "It's funny
to think how they have to depend upon some passing animal to propagate
the seeds. Say! but they do stick tight, don't they?" And he slyly
slipped a few of the russet pitchforks inside Leon's collar--whereupon a
whooping scuffle ensued.
"It looks to me as if _some_ lightfooted animal were in the habit of
passing here that might carry the seeds along," said the perpetrator of
the prank presently, dropping upon his hands and knees to examine
breathlessly the leaves and brambles pressed down into a trail so light
that it seemed the mere shadow of a pathway leading off into the woods
at right angles from where the boys stood.
"You're right. It's a fox-path!" Leon was examining the shadow-tracks
too. "A fox trots along here to his hunting-ground where he catches
shrews an' mice or grasshoppers even, when he can't get hold of a plump
quail or partridge. Whew! I wish I'd brought my gun."
Dead silence for two minutes, while each ear was intently strained to
catch the sound of a sly footfall and heard nothing but the noisy
shrilling of the cicada, or seventeen-year locust, with the pipe of
kindred insects.
"Look! there's been a partridge at work here," cried Nixon by and by,
when the still game was over and the boys were forging ahead again.
He pointed to a decayed log whose flaky wood, garnished here and there
with a tiny buff feather, was mostly pecked away and reduced to brown
powder by the busy bird which had wallowed there.
"He's been trying to get at some insects in the wood. See how he has
dusted it all up with his claws an' feathers!" went on the excited
speaker. "Oh--but I tell you what makes you feel happy!" He drew a long
breath, turning suddenly, impulsively, to the boys behind him. "It's
when you're out on a hike an' a partridge rises right in front of
you--and you hear his wings sing!"
Colin and Coombsie stared. The strange boy's look flashed with such
frank gladness, doubled and trebled by sharing sympathetically, in so
far as he could, each bounding thrill that animated the wild, free life
about him! They had often been moved by the liquid notes from a
songster's throat, but had not come enough into loving touch with Nature
to hear music in a bird's wings.
If Leon had heard it, his one idea would have been to silence it with a
shot. He stood still in his tracks, bristling like his dog.
"Ughr-r! 'Singing wings'!" he sneered. "Aw! take that talk home to
Mamma."
"Say that once again, and I'll lick you!" The stranger's gaze became,
now, very straight and inviting from under his broad-brimmed hat.
The atmosphere felt highly charged--unpleasantly so for the other two
boys. But at that critical moment an extraordinary sound of other
singing--human singing--was borne to them in faint merriment upon the
woodland breeze, so primitive, so unlike anything modern, that it might
have been Robin Hood himself or one of his green-coated Merry Men
singing a roundelay in the woods to the accompaniment of a
woodchopper's axe.
"Rond! Rond! Rond! peti' pie pon' ton'!
Rond! rond! rond! peti' pie pon' ton'!"
"_What is it?_ Who is--it?" Nixon's stiffening fists unclosed. His eye
was bright with bewilderment.
"Houp-la! it's Toiney--Toiney Leduc." Colin broke into an exultant
whoop. "Now we'll have fun! Toiney is a funny one, for sure!"
"He's more fun than a circus," corroborated Coombsie. "We're coming to a
little farm-clearing in the woods now, Nix," he explained, falling in by
his cousin's side as the four boys moved hastily ahead, challenges
forgotten. "There's a house on it, the last for miles. It's owned by a
man called Greer, and Toiney Leduc works for him during the summer an'
fall. Toiney is a French-Canadian who came here about a year ago; his
brother is employed in one of the shipbuilding yards on the river."
The merry, oft-repeated strain came to them more distinctly now, rolling
among the trees:--
"Rond, rond, rond, peti' pie pon' ton'!
C'eta't une bonne femme,
Qui garda't sex moutons,
Rond', rond', rond, peti' pie pon' ton'!"
"He's singing about the woman who was taking care of her sheep and how
the lamb got his chin in the milk! He translated it for me," said Colin.
"'Translate!' He doesn't know enough English to say 'Boo!' straight,"
threw back Leon, as he gained the edge of the clearing. "It is Toiney!"
he cried exultingly. "Toiney--and the _Hare_!"
"The--what? My word! there are surprises enough in these woods--what
with forest paintpots--and the rest." Nixon, as he spoke, was bounding
out into the open too, thrilled by expectation: a musical woodchopper
attended by a tame rodent would certainly be a unique item upon the
forest playbill which promised a variety of attractions already.
But he saw no skipping hare upon the green patch of clearing--nothing
but a boy of twelve whose full forehead and pointed face was very
slightly rodent-like in shape, but whose eyes, which at this startled
moment showed little save their whites, were as shy and frightened as a
rabbit's, while he shrank close to Toiney's side.
"My brother says that whenever he sees that boy he feels like offering
him a bunch of clover or a lettuce leaf!" laughed Leon, repeating the
thoughtless speech of an adult. He stooped suddenly, picked some of the
shaded clover leaves and a pink blossom: "Eh! want some clover, 'Hare'?"
he asked teasingly, thrusting the green stuff close to the face of the
abnormally frightened boy.
The hapless, human Hare sought to efface himself behind Toiney's back.
And the woodchopper began to execute an excited war-dance, flourishing
the axe wherewith he had been musically felling a young birch tree for
fuel.
"Ha! you Leon, you _coquin_, _gamin_--rogue--you'll say dat one time
more, den I go lick you, me!" he cried in his imperfect English eked out
with indignant French.
"No, you won't go lick me--you!" Nevertheless Starrie Chase and his
mocking face retreated a little; he had no fancy for tackling Toiney and
the axe.
"That boy's name is Harold Greer; it's too bad about him," Coombsie was
whispering in Nix Warren's ear. "The doctor says he's 'all there,'
nothing wrong with him mentally. But he was born frightened--abnormally
timid--and he seems to get worse instead o' better. He's afraid of
everything, of his own shadow, I think, and more still of the shadows of
others: I mean he's so shy that he won't speak to anybody--if he can
help it--except his grandfather and Toiney and the old woman who keeps
house for them."
Nixon looked pityingly at the boy who lived thus in his own shadow--the
shadow of a baseless fear.
"Whew! it must be bad to be born scared!" he gasped. "I wish we could
get Toiney to sing some more."
At this moment there came a wild shout from Colin who had been exploring
the clearing and stumbled upon something near the outhouses.
"Gracious! what is it--a wildcat?" he cried. "It isn't a fox--though it
has a bushy tail! It's as big as half a dozen squirrels. Hulloo-oo!" in
yelling excitement, "it must be a coon--a young coon."
There was a general stampede for the hen-house, amid the squawking
cackle of its rightful inhabitants.
Toiney followed, so did the human Hare, keeping always behind his back
and casting nervous glances in Leon's direction.
"Ha! _le petit raton_--de littal coon!" gasped the woodchopper. "W'en I
go on top of hen-house dis morning w'at you t'ink I fin' dere, engh? I
fin' heem littal coon! I'll t'ink he kill two, t'ree poulets--littal
chick!" gesticulating fiercely at the dead marauder and at the bodies of
some slain chickens. "Dog he kill heem; but, _sapre_! he fight lak
_diable_! Engh?"
The last exclamation was a grunt of inquiry as to whether the boys
understood how that young raccoon, about two-thirds grown, had fought.
Toiney shruggingly rubbed his hands on his blue shirt-sleeves while he
pointed to a mongrel dog, the other participant in that early-morning
battle, with whom Leon's terrier had been exchanging canine courtesies.
Blink forsook his scarred brother now and sniffed eagerly at the coon's
dead body as he had sniffed at the poor yellow-legs in the dust.
"Where did he come from, Toiney? Do you suppose he strayed from the
coon's hole that you found in the woods, among some ledges near Big
Swamp?" Colin, together with the other boys, was stooping down to
examine the dead body of the wild animal which measured nearly a foot
and a half from the tip of its sharp nose to the beginning of the bushy
tail that was handsomely ringed with black and a shading buff-color.
"Yaas, he'll com' out f'om de foret--f'om among heem beeg tree." Toiney
Leduc, letting his axe fall to the ground, waved an eloquent right arm
in its flannel shirt-sleeve toward the woods beyond the clearing.
"Isn't his fur long and thick--more like coarse gray hair than fur?"
Nixon stroked the raccoon's shaggy coat.
"Tell us how to find those ledges where the hole is? There may be some
live ones in it. I'd give anything to see a live coon," urged Coombsie.
"Ah! la! la! You no fin' dat ledge en dat swamp. Eet's littal black in
dere, in gran' foret--in dem big ole hood," came the dissuading answer.
"He always says 'hood' for 'wood,'" explained Marcoo _sotto voce_.
"Ciel! w'en you go for fin' dat hole, dat's de time you get los'--engh?"
urged Toiney, suddenly very earnest. "You walkee, walkee--lak wit' eye
shut--den you haf so tire' en so lonesam' you go--_deaded_."
He flung out his hands with an eloquent gesture of blind despair upon
the last word, which shot a warning thrill to the boys' hearts. Three of
them looked rather apprehensively toward the dense woods that stretched
away interminably beyond the clearing.
But the fourth, Leon, was not to be intimidated by anything short of
Toiney brandishing the woodchopper's axe.
He paused in his gesture of slyly offering more clover to the boy with
the frightened eyes.
"Oh! I know the woods pretty well, Toiney," he said. "I've been far into
them with my father. I can find the way to Big Swamp."
"I'll bet me you' head you get los'--hein?"
"Why don't you bet your own seal-head, Toiney? You can't say 'Boo!'
straight." Leon scathingly pointed to the Canadian's bare, closely
cropped head, dark and shiny as sealskin.
"_Sapre!_ I'll no bet yous head--you Leon--for nobodee want heem, axcep'
for play ping-pong," screamed the enraged Toiney.
There was a general mirthful roar. Leon reddened.
"Oh, come; let's 'beat it'!" he cried. "We'll never find that coon's
burrow, or anything else, if we stand here chattering with a Canuck.
Look at Blink! He's after something on the edge of the woods. A red
squirrel, I think!"
He set off in the wake of the terrier, and his companions followed,
disregarding further protests in Toiney's ragged English.
Once more they were immersed in the woods beyond the clearing. The
terrier was barking furiously up a pine tree, on whose lowest branch sat
the squirrel getting off an angry patter of "Quek-Quik!
Quek-quek-quek-quik!" punctuated with shrill little cries.
"Hear him chittering an' chattering! There's some fire to that
conversation. See! the squirrel looks all red mouth," laughed Nixon.
The mouth of the little tree-climbing fury yawned, indeed, like a tiny
coral cave decorated with minute ivories as he sat bolt upright on the
dry branch, scolding the dog.
"Oh! come on, Blink, you can't get at him. You can chase a woodchuck or
something else that isn't quite so quick, and kill it!" cried his
master.
The "something else" was presently started in the form of a little
chipmunk, ground brother to the squirrel, which had been holding
solitary revel with a sunbeam on a rock.
With a frightened flick of its gold-brown tail it sought shelter in a
cleft of a low, natural wall where some large stones were piled one upon
another.
Instantly it discovered that this shallow refuge offered no sure shelter
from the dog following hot upon its trail. Forth it popped again, with
a plaintive, chirping "Chip! Chip! Chir-r-r!" of extreme terror and
fled, like a tuft of fur wafted by the breeze, to its real fortress, the
deep, narrow hole which it had tunneled in under a rock, and which it
was so shy of revealing to strangers that it would never have sought
shelter there save in dire extremity.
It was such a very small hole as regards the round entrance through
which the chipmunk had squeezed, which did not measure three inches in
circumference--and such a touchingly neat little hole, for there was no
trace of the earth which the little creature had scattered in burrowing
it--that it might well have moved any heart to pity.
The terrier finding himself baffled, sat down before it, and pointed his
ears at his master, inquiring about the prospects of a successful siege.
"He was too quick for you that time, Blinkie. But you'll get another
chance at him, pup," guaranteed Leon, while his companions were
endeavoring to solve the riddle--one of the minor charming mysteries of
the woods--namely, what the ground-squirrel does with the earth which he
scatters in tunneling his grass-fringed hole.
No such marvel appealed to Leon Chase! With lightning rapidity he was
wrenching a thin, rodlike stick from a near-by white birch, and tearing
the leaves off. Before one of the other boys could stop him, he had
inserted this as a long probe in the hole, working the cruel goad
ruthlessly from side to side, scattering earth enough now and torn grass
on either side of the spic-and-span entrance.
"Ha! you haven't seen the last of him, Blink!" he cried. "I'll soon
'podge' him out of that! This hole runs in under a rock; so there can't
be a sharp turn in it, as is the case with the chip-squirrel's hole
generally! I guess I can reach him with the stick; then he'll be so
frightened that he'll pop out right in your face," forming a quick
deduction that did credit to his powers of observation and made it seem
a bruising pity as well for persecutor as persecuted that such boyish
ingenuity should be turned to miserable ends.
Leon's eyes were beady with malicious triumph. His breath came in short
excited puffs. So did the terrier's. It boded ill for the tormented
chipmunk cowering at the farthest end of the desecrated hole.
"Hullo! that's two against one and it isn't fair play. _Quit it!_"
suddenly burst forth a ringing boyish voice. "The chip' was faster than
the dog--he ought to have an even chance for his life, anyhow!"
Leon, crouching by the hole, looked up in petrified amazement. It was
Nixon Warren, the stranger to these woods, who spoke. The tormentor
broke into an insulting laugh.
"Eh--what's the matter with _you_, Chicken-heart?" he sneered. "None o'
your business whether it's fair or not!"
A flash leaped from the gray eyes under Nixon's broad hat that defied
the sneer applied to him. His chest heaved under the Khaki shirt with
whose metal buttons a sunbeam played winsomely, while with defiant
vehemence Leon worked his probing stick deeper, deeper into the hole
where the mite of a chipmunk shrank before the cruel goad that would
ultimately force it forth to meet the whirlwind of the dog's attack.
Colin and Coombsie held their breath, feeling as if they could see the
trembling "chipping" fugitive pressed against the farthest wall of its
enlarged retreat.
Another minute, and out it must pop to death.
But upon the dragging, prodding seconds of that minute broke again the
voice of the chipmunk's champion--hot and ringing.
"_Quit that!_" it exploded. "Stop wiggling the stick in the hole--or
I'll make you!"
"You'll make me, eh? Oh! run along home to Mamma--that's where your
place is!" But right upon the heels of the sneer a sharp question rushed
from Leon's lips: "Who are you--anyhow--to tell me to stop?"
And the tall trees bowed their noble heads, the grasses ceased their
whispering, even the seventeen-year locust, shrilling in the distance,
seemed to suspend its piping note to listen to the answer that rushed
bravely forth:--
"I'm a Boy Scout! A Boy Scout of America! I've promised to do a good
turn to somebody--or something--every day. I'm going to do it to that
chipmunk! Stop working that stick in the hole!"
"Gee whiz! I thought there was something queer about you from the
first."
The mouth of Starrie Chase yawned until it rivaled the enlarged hole.
Sitting on his heels, his cruel probing momentarily suspended, he gazed
up, as at a newfangled sort of animal, at this daring Boy Scout of
America--this Scout of the U.S.A.