Wild Folk Part 5

On these he lived largely during the first few weeks of spring. Then came a day when he entered his front door with a flying leap, only to find a burly and determined stranger blocking his way. A bustling and l.u.s.ty bachelor from another colony had spied the burrow from the stone wall, the broad highway of all chipmunks, and had decided to make it his own by right of conquest.

In vain Chippy fought for his home, at first desperately and then despairingly. The other chipmunk had the advantage of weight, experience, and position, and Chippy was forced slowly out into the wide world. Squealing and chirping with rage, with his soft fur fluffed up all over his sleek body, he came out into the sunlight. He saw nothing, heard nothing, scented nothing, hostile. Yet, obeying the little alarm-bell that rings in every chipmunk's brain, he dashed desperately for the shelter of the stone wall. It was well for him that he did. As he crossed the wide stretch of turf like a tawny streak, there was a whirl of wing-beats, the flash of a gray-brown body balanced by a narrow black-barred tail, and the shadow of death fell upon him even as he neared his refuge. With a frightened squeal, Chippy put every atom of the force which pulsed through his little vibrant body into one last spring. Even as he disappeared headlong into a c.h.i.n.k between two large stones, a set of keen claws clamped vainly through the long hairs of his vanis.h.i.+ng tail, as a sharp-s.h.i.+nned hawk somersaulted with a backward sweep of its wings, to avoid das.h.i.+ng itself against the wall. For a moment it vibrated in the air with cruel, crooked beak half-open, searching the wall with unflinching golden eyes, and then skimmed sullenly away.

In a minute a pointed nose was poked out from the stones and carefully winnowed the air. Satisfied that the coast was clear, Chippy at last scurried up to the top of the wall, where he could see on all sides, with a wide cranny conveniently near; for a chipmunk who desires to live out all his days must never be more than two jumps from a hole.

Sitting up on the stone, he produced from one of the pockets which he wore in either cheek a large hickory nut, which had been pouched there all through his fight and flight. Holding it firmly in both his little three-fingered, double-thumbed forepaws, he nibbled an alternate hole in either side, through which he extracted every last fragment of the rich, brown kernel within. While he ate, there was never a second during which his sharp black eyes were not scanning every inch of the circ.u.mference of which his stone was the centre. There was not an instant that his sharp ears were not p.r.i.c.ked up to catch the slightest sound, and his keen nostrils to sniff the faintest scent, that would indicate the approach of death in any of the many forms in which it comes to chipmunks.

His meal finished, Chippy turned his instantaneous mind to the next most important item of life. On his list of necessities, _Home_ stared at him in capitals just under the item _Food_. A stone wall makes a good lodging-house but a poor home, for it has too many doors.

Wherefore Chippy scampered along the top of the wall, his tail erect like a plume, scanning the hillside as he ran for a good building-site. At last, he came to a dry bank covered with short twisted ringlets of tough gra.s.s, which sloped up from the stone wall and ended in a clump of sweet fern. With a flying leap, he struck the middle of the bank, and with another bound was safe in the depths of the sweet fern.

From there he commenced to dig. No one has ever yet found a fleck or flake of loose earth near the entrance to a chipmunk home. This is because he always starts digging at the other end. Working like a little steam-shovel, within a few days Chippy had dug a series of intersecting tunnels, of which the main one ended between two stones at the base of the wall. Far down among the roots of a rotting stump, he made a warm nest of leaves and gra.s.s. From this sleeping-room a twisted pa.s.sage led to a rounded storeroom on the other side of the stump. No less than three emergency entrances and exits were made within a ten-foot circle; and beside the bedroom and storeroom he dug a kitchen midden, where all refuse and garbage could be deposited and covered with earth, in accordance with the custom of all properly brought-up chipmunks. When at last every grain of earth had been carried out through the first hole among the overshadowing ferns, he sealed it up from the outside, and covered the packed earth with leaves. Then he took a day off. Climbing to the top of the wall, he perched himself where a single bound would take him to the main entrance of his new home, and with his little nose pointed skyward told the world, at the rate of one hundred and thirty chirps per minute, what a wonderful home was his. Thereafter began an unending search for food. On the far side of the slope he found a thicket of hazel bushes, which had been overlooked by the rest of the colony.

Thence he would return to his burrow, looking as if he had a bad attack of mumps. Really it was only nuts. Twelve hazel-nuts, or four acorns, were Chippy's tonnage.

By the time the flood-tide of summer had set in, Chippy had reached the high watermark of his youth. Larger, stronger, and swifter than any of the younger members of the colony, he soon began to rival the elders of the community in wisdom. Then suddenly there came to the Little People of the Woods, a wandering demon of blood and carnage.

One sunny afternoon, while every chipmunk on that hillside was abroad, playing, feasting, h.o.a.rding, singing, there flashed in among them a reddish animal, with a long black-tipped tail, white chin and cheeks, and a fierce pointed head. Sniffing here and there like a trailing hound, it darted down upon the little colony.

It was the long-tailed, or great, weasel, whose movements are so swift as to baffle even the quickest eye. Caught too far from their burrows, the lives of four chipmunks went out like the puff of a candle. Then the high alarm-squeal ran up and down the hillside, and every chipmunk within hearing dived underground where they were all safe; for the great weasel is just one size too large to enter a chipmunk's burrow.

Hither and there the weasel wound its way, like some fierce swift snake. With its flaming eyes, white cheeks dabbled red with blood, and flat triangular head swaying from side to side on a long neck, it looked the very personification of sudden death.

Farthest from home of all the others, Chippy, the swift and wise, faced the death which had overtaken the slow and foolish. For the first time in his life he had climbed to the tiptop of an elm tree.

There among the topmost slender sprays he was feasting on elm-seeds, and came hurrying down at the first alarm-note. Just as he had nearly reached the ground, around the foot of the tree trunk was thrust the b.l.o.o.d.y face of the killer. There is something so devilish and implacable in the appearance of a hunting weasel, that it cows even the bravest of the smaller animals. A gray old rat, ordinarily a grim cynical fighter with no nerves to speak of, will run squealing in terror from before a weasel; while a rabbit, when it sees the red death on his trail, forgets his swiftness and cowers on the ground.

Something of the same spell came over Chippy as, for the first time, he faced the demon of his tribe. Yet he kept his head enough to realize that his only hope was aloft, and instantly whisked back up the great trunk. Unfortunately for him the versatile weasel is at home on, under, and above ground. The chipmunk had hardly reached the topmost branch, when he felt it sway under the quick, darting motions of his pursuer. Up and up he went, until he clung to the tiny swaying twigs at the very spire and summit of the elm, seventy-five feet from the ground.

In a moment, the b.l.o.o.d.y muzzle of his pursuer was sniffing along his trail. Hunting by scent, like all of its kind, the weasel wound his way up through the twigs, nearer and nearer to the trembling chipmunk.

Twelve inches away, the weasel stopped and, thrusting out its long neck, seemed for the first time to see the little animal just above. A green gleam showed in the depths of the malignant eyes.

As it s.h.i.+fted its weight on the swaying twigs preparatory to the lightning-like pounce which would end the chase, the chipmunk, with a little wailing cry, let go his hold and fell like a stone down through the green screen of leaves and twigs that stretched between him and the ground far below. Even as he whirled through s.p.a.ce, his little brain was alert to seize upon every chance for life. As he struck twig after twig, he clutched at them with his forepaws but could get no firm hand-hold. Fifty feet down, he managed to hook both of his little arms across a twig about the size of a man's thumb. A cross-twig kept his hold from slipping off, and swinging back and forth like a pendulum, he at last managed to clamber up into a crotch of this outer branch and crouched there, panting.

In a moment there was a scratching noise along the tree trunk, and the weasel came down in long spirals instead of climbing straight down as would a squirrel. The branch at the end of which the chipmunk was perched ran out from the main trunk, then turned at right angles and grew down almost perpendicularly, making a sharp elbow. The weasel descended, weaving his broad, triangular head back and forth, with little looping movements of his long neck, and sniffing the air as he came. When he reached the branch where the chipmunk was, he stopped and crept along the limb to the elbow. This was too much for him, skillful climber as he was. The perpendicular drop of the branch, its small size and smooth bark, all combined against him. Three times he tried to follow it down. Each time he slipped so that it became evident to him that another step would break his hold and send him cras.h.i.+ng to the ground.

All this time the chipmunk was in full sight, yet the bloodshot eyes of his enemy seemed to overlook him entirely. Again and again the weasel sniffed the air, and repeatedly returned to the limb, evidently convinced that his intended prey was there.

Throughout, the chipmunk clung to the branch, silent and motionless.

Only the throbbing of his silky white breast showed how his heart pounded as he watched the trailing death approaching. At last, the weasel seemed to give up the hunt and reluctantly wound his way down the main trunk and disappeared behind the tree.

For a full half-hour the chipmunk clung to his refuge without the slightest movement. Finally, when it seemed as if his pursuer were gone for good, the little animal moved cautiously up the branch, and managed to negotiate the elbow which had baffled his heavier pursuer.

With the same caution he crept down the trunk and, after looking all around, finally leaped to the turf beyond. As he struck the ground, there was a rustle from the depths of a thicket a few rods away, and out darted the weasel, which, with the fierce patience of his kind, had been lurking there and came between the chipmunk and the scattered homes of the colony.

Over the hilltop was the only way of escape. There lay a patch of deep woods, where the trees grew thick and dark over a ledge of rock which stretched up to the very summit. There, too, was hidden some mystery as black as the shade above that lonely ledge. Often there had been no return for chipmunks crossing that dark crest. Instinctively the fugitive avoided the woods and circled the hill hoping to find some refuge on the farther side.

Long ago, the weasel-folk have learned that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Wherefore to-day the hunter followed the diameter of the circle that the chipmunk was making around the wooded hilltop. Like a flash, with tail up and head down, the weasel wound his way among the rocks and crowded trees which covered the hill's crest. As his triangular head thrust itself beyond a pointed rock which jutted out from the ledge, his quick nostrils caught a sinister, sickly scent, and he checked in his stride but--too late. His flaming red eyes looked directly into the fixed glare of two other eyes, black, lidless, with strange oval pupils, and set deep in a cruel heart-shaped head, which showed a curious hole between eye and nostril, the hall-mark of the fatal family of pit-vipers to which the rattlesnake, copperhead, and moccasin belong.

For a second the fierce beast and the grim snake faced each other.

The eyes of none of the mammals have a fiercer, more compelling gaze than those of the weasel-folk when red with the rage of slaughter. Yet no beast can outstare that grim ruler of the dark places of the forest, the timber rattlesnake, and in a moment the weasel started to dodge back. Not even his flas.h.i.+ng speed, however, availed against the stroke of the snake. Faster than any eye could follow, the flat head shot forward, gaping horribly, while two keen movable fangs were thrust straight out like spear-points. They looked like crooked white needles, each with a hole in the side below the point, from which oozed the yellow venom. Before the darting weasel had time to gain the shelter of the rock, both fangs had pierced his side, and the great snake was back again in coil. Tottering as the deadly virus touched the tide of his fierce blood, and knowing that his life was numbered by seconds, the weasel yet sprang forward to die at death-grips with his foe. As he came, the great snake struck again, but as it snapped back into coil, the needle-like teeth of the other met in its brain.

The great reptile thrashed and rattled, but the grip of the red killer remained unbroken long after both were still and stark.

Beyond the black circle of the woods, away from the fatal ledge and through the sunlight, the chipmunk sped, expecting every minute to hear the fierce patter of his pursuer close behind. Little by little he circled, until at last, hardly able to believe in his own escape, he found himself once more in the depths of his own burrow.

As the spring lengthened into summer, Chippy found himself strangely interested in another burrow which had been dug near to his own. So, too, were half a dozen other gay young bucks of the colony, who, with tails erect and with sleek and well-groomed fur, frequently tried to visit the owner of said burrow. She treated them all alike. Every chipmunk who pa.s.sed her front door received such a succession of nips and scratches that he was only too glad to back out again in a hurry.

As time went by, with every new experience and with every new escape, Chippy grew larger and wiser and stronger. Then came the glittering summer afternoon when he won the right to rank with the bravest and best of the colony. The heat eddied across the hill in s.h.i.+mmering waves as he started home from where he had been foraging, his cheek-pockets full of samples for his storehouse. As he neared his front door by the stone wall he saw Death itself entering his little neighbor's burrow. Black, sinuous, terrible, a giant blacksnake over six feet in length had found its way from its den on the other side of the hill to the chipmunk colony. Its smooth scales showed an absolute black in the sunlight, and made a crisp, rustling noise as it streamed over the dry leaves and gra.s.s of the hillside. Except for that sound, there was silence. At times the great snake would stop and, raising its head two feet from the ground and swaying back and forth, would stare here and there with fixed lidless eyes while the white patch on its lower jaw gleamed in the sun, and its long, black forked tongue played in and out like the flicker of a flame.

Suddenly the snake shot into Chippy's burrow. Over a third of its length had disappeared from sight when Chippy showed a flash of that instantaneous, unreckoning courage which carries man or beast into the front ranks of his kind. Perhaps what he did was to save himself from future danger. Yet who can say that it was not a spark of the same divine fire which glows in the heart of man that made him risk his life for another? As he saw the fatal head disappear down the burrow, with a lightning-like spring he leaped upon the disappearing body, casting out his cherished nuts from his cheeks in mid-air. Opening his wide-set jaws, he clamped them shut where the supple, flexible spine of the snake ridged the smooth skin. The back of a blacksnake is a ma.s.s of tough muscles, and its spine has the strength of a steel spring. Yet the tremendous jaw-muscles of the chipmunk drove the needle-pointed teeth deep into the twisted, over-lapping fibres.

The black column stiffened like an iron bar. Bracing his paws against the sides of the hole, the chipmunk gnawed away desperately. Suddenly the keen teeth grated, and then locked in the sinuous spine itself. As they met, the great body surged forward and dragged the chipmunk into the burrow. Once deep underground, there was danger that the snake might find s.p.a.ce to double back on its length and gain a fatal head-hold with its sharp slanting teeth. Yet Chippy never loosed his grip for an instant. Dragging back with all his strength, he forced his clamped teeth deeper and deeper into the twisting spine. At last through the cold, bubbling blood, he felt the fibres of the vertebrae slowly give, until with a final rending tug he bit clear through the spinal cord.

By this time he was well below ground, and only the snake's tail thrashed and writhed ineffectually on the surface. Suddenly, as Chippy still gnawed and tugged, the las.h.i.+ngs of the tail lessened, and through his clenched teeth he could feel something tugging and biting at it. Little by little the struggles of the snake became fainter, and Chippy no longer felt himself dragged forward. When at last they had died down to convulsive twists and shudders, which would last for hours, the battling chipmunk unlocked his jaws and backed out of the burrow. b.l.o.o.d.y, bruised and exhausted he found himself once more safe in the sunlight.

Right in front of him was Nippy, worrying the wriggling tail with her sharp teeth like a little terrier. Aroused far underground by the sounds of the struggle she had rushed up toward the entrance. While still a long distance from it, her quick little ears caught the fierce hiss that the great snake gave at the first pang from the piercing teeth; and though this was her first year alone in the world, she knew that the sound meant death. Turning like a flash, she slipped into a by-pa.s.sage and escaped to the upper air by an emergency exit concealed under a huckleberry bush. At her front door she found the tail of the crippled snake thras.h.i.+ng back and forth, and pouncing upon it, she helped her unseen ally by biting through the spine in two places at its narrowest point. When Chippy appeared, she let go, and by degrees the writhing body disappeared from the sight of the sun. Then, while Chippy lay and panted, the little owner of the burrow began to seal up the entrance of the haunted home in token that it was hers no longer.

The front door once shut and locked, she moved slowly toward the top of the hill and--looked back.

Then was the time for Chippy to follow. Instead, he stiffly and haltingly betook himself to his own burrow. When, two days later, he came out, there was no trace of the fair and fleeting Nippy. For weeks he sought her everywhere, in the woods and pastures, and even to the sh.o.r.e of the little lake that cupped the farther side of the hill.

Then came a happening which drove all thoughts of anything but life and death from the minds of all the dwellers on the hillside. The doom which always hangs over the Little People fell upon them. In the gray hour just before the dawn, one fatal day, what looked like a brown squirrel, with a white throat and paws and a short tail, came to the chipmunk colony. Yet no squirrel ever had such bloodred eyes, such a serpent-like head, or a body so lithe and sinuous. The deadly visitor was none other than the lesser, or short-tailed, weasel, far more dangerous to the Little People than his larger kinsman, since he was small enough to enter their burrows.

To-day he slipped like a shadow into the first burrow he found. It happened to be the very one of which the stranger chipmunk had dispossessed Chippy months before. This morning he had just waked up in his round sleeping-room when he heard the patter of the weasel down the long entrance tunnel. Out of one of his many exits the chipmunk dashed, but as he came above ground, the weasel was hard on his heels, and he turned to do battle for his life. As he was nearly as large as the weasel, the fight did not seem an unequal one; yet the chipmunk never had a chance. For a second the two faced each other, the chipmunk crouched low, the weasel with its swaying head raised high.

Then the chipmunk lunged forward, desperately hoping to gain a grip with its two keen gnawing teeth. With a curve of its supple body, the weasel slipped the other's lead, and with almost the same motion gave that fatal counter which no animal has yet learned to parry. With a snap of the triangular muzzle, three of the long fighting teeth of the killer pierced with diabolical accuracy the chipmunk's skull at the exact point where it was thinnest, and crashed deep into its brain.

Stopping only to lap a little of the warm blood of its victim, the weasel flashed into the next burrow, where a mother chipmunk slept with her five babies, all rolled up in a round warm ball. To them all, death came mercifully swift. Then into the next burrow and the next this Death-in-the-dark hastened. None of the Little People he met escaped. Some fought, others fled, but neither courage nor fleetness availed. When, at last, the brown killer approached the burrow where Chippy lived, it had left behind it a trail of nearly a score of dead and dying victims, and yet was as tireless and terrible as ever. Each time that it slaked its vampire-thirst with fresh blood, it seemed to gain new strength and speed.

As the sun showed over Prindle Hill, Chippy started out of his front door. Even as he thrust his head into the open, he caught the sound of a faint squeal from a near-by burrow and saw the blood-stained muzzle of the weasel show in the early sunlight. As he dived back, his instantaneous brain seized upon the one way of escape remaining. The weasel could outrun him, and with his unerring nose unravel any tangle of tunnels. Yet the underground people have one last resource of their own, which a million years of being hunted to the death have taught them. To make use of this defense, however, the pursued must have a substantial start over the hunter, and to-day Chippy had but a few scant seconds, since the weasel had glimpsed the whisk of his tail as he plunged headlong down his front entrance, and had instantly started for his burrow.

With back humped high at every pattering plunge of its short legs, the weasel looked like a great inch-worm measuring its way toward its prey. Yet, clumsy as its gait appeared, it was scarcely an instant before the b.l.o.o.d.y muzzle and red glaring eyes were thrust into the hole down which the chipmunk had disappeared. Much can be done, however, even in seconds, with a hair-trigger brain and nerves and muscles tensed by the fear of death. Like a flash, Chippy traversed the main pa.s.sage of his burrow, dashed into a tunnel that forked off to the right, and then dived into a smaller branch, which angled off sharply from the larger tube. Then he suddenly doubled on his tracks, and popped into another pa.s.sage, which ran in a long slant up to within a few inches of the surface of the hillside.

Once beyond the entrance to this last tunnel, the chipmunk dug for his very life's sake. With flas.h.i.+ng strokes of his forepaws, he dislodged the soft earth at the sides of the pa.s.sage, sweeping it back with his hind feet; and, even as the weasel writhed his way along the main pa.s.sage, Chippy had sealed the doorway to the last tube which he had entered, so carefully that the blocked entrance could not be told from the rest of the surface of the pa.s.sage-wall. Then he hurried swiftly and silently toward the surface.

Even as he dug his way up through the tough gra.s.s-roots, his fierce pursuer flashed into the tube from which the walled-up doorway led.

With nose close to the ground, the weasel had followed the chipmunk's trail at full speed, nor had the branching and intersecting pa.s.sages slowed his speed even for a moment. Only when he came to the spot where the chipmunk had doubled back to the sealed-up doorway, was he checked. Even his keen nostrils could not follow the trail through four inches of fresh earth.

As he came to a standstill, his microphonic ears caught the sound of distant digging far above him. Instantly, without wasting any time in hunting for the sealed tunnel, he turned and raced back to the entrance-hole, with such speed that, just as the chipmunk pushed his way to the surface well up the hillside, the weasel burst out of the main entrance below and dashed after him.

If the weasel's speed had not been slowed by slaughter, the chase would have been a short one. As it was, the chipmunk went over the crest of the hill a few rods ahead; but the gap lessened as his pursuer struck his gait and shot forward like an uncoiling spring.

This time it seemed as if the chipmunk's last chance for life were gone. Above ground he was out-paced. To go underground again meant certain death. A miracle had saved him before from the other weasel--but nature seldom deals in miracles twice. Yet the little animal never weakened. A rabbit so close to death would have quit and cowered down, crying piteously until the weasel's teeth were in its throat. A rat would have lost its head and, running itself to a standstill, met its death frothing and squealing in mortal terror.

Chippy, however, concealed under his gentle, sprightly exterior a cool little brain, nor did ever a braver heart beat than throbbed under his white waistcoat. Although he seemed to be running at full speed, he was really holding something in reserve and already his flash-like mind had seized upon the one chance of life that was left. Earth and air had betrayed him. Perhaps water would be kinder. Straight toward the little lake he headed. Little by little the s.p.a.ce between him and the killer behind lessened. By the time he had reached the roots of a black willow tree which stretched far out over the water, the snake-head of the weasel was not six feet behind the fluffy tail which Chippy still flaunted, the unlowered banner of his courage. Out upon the tree trunk he rushed, until he reached the farthest fork. Then, gathering himself together, he sprang from all four feet as if driven by a released spring and struck far out in the still water.

The sound of his splash had hardly died away before his brown pursuer launched himself into the air with a sort of double jump, starting with a spring from his short forelegs and ending with a tremendous drive from his squat hind legs. In spite of this clumsy take-off, the fierce force that shows in everything a weasel does, drove him a foot ahead of the chipmunk's mark. Followed a desperate race. Swimming high with jerky, uneven, rapid strokes, the weasel rushed through the water and foot by foot cut down the chipmunk's lead, until his teeth gnashed a scant yard back of the other's shoulder. There however the weasel hung. Swimming deeper, and with slower and more powerful strokes, the chipmunk refused to break his stroke by looking back. Only when the recurring ripples warned him that his pursuer was closing in on him did he put more power into the deep, regular beat of his strong little legs.

Slowly, very slowly, the better stroke began to tell. At first the weasel only stopped gaining. Then, little by little, the gap between the two widened. When it had stretched out to ten feet, the chipmunk shot ahead as if the other were anch.o.r.ed. The weasel's strokes became slower, and at last stopped. Flesh and blood, however fierce, has its limitations. The weasel had risked everything on his first desperate sprint. That failing, his reserves were gone, and he turned and slowly and pantingly swam back to the sh.o.r.e and pa.s.sed out of Chippy's life forever.

Strongly and steadily the chipmunk swam on, until the farther sh.o.r.e, a quarter of a mile away, was reached. Wearily Chippy dragged himself up the beach to the dry hillside, staggering from exhaustion. There was no stone wall near, nor had he the strength to dig even the beginning of a burrow. Unprotected, in the open, he must take his chances until his strength came back. Then it was that nature relented, and once more another miracle was wrought for one of her loved Little People.

Out of a hole on the hillside half-hidden by the pink blossoms of a steeple-bush, popped a small head, and for a golden moment Chippy gazed long and long into the eyes of Nippy. Then she turned back into her burrow, with a look that drew him totteringly after her. At the flood-tide of their lives they had met to become the founders of another colony, and to pa.s.s on undimmed the divine spark of courage and endurance and love.

VI

THE PATH OF THE AIR