Children of the Wild Part 4

"I guess _so_!" muttered the Babe in spite of himself, wagging his head sympathetically. He did not like rats.

"She was too frightened to save her strength, of course, and so kept flapping with all her might, as if she thought to fly away with scarecrow and all. The rat, however, was impatient. He clutched at the cord with his handlike claws and began trying to pull the imp down to him. At first he couldn't make much out of it, but as the imp weakened with her frantic efforts the cord began to shorten. Just about now the He imp, who had come down from the locust top and fluttered over the scene in pained curiosity, realized what was happening. He was game, all right, however b.u.mptious and self-satisfied. He set up a tremendous _ca-a-a-ing_, as a signal for all the crows within hearing to come to the rescue, and then made a sudden, savage side swoop at the foe.

"Taken thoroughly by surprise, the rat was toppled from his unsteady perch and fell among the strawberries. His head ringing from the stroke of that st.u.r.dy black wing, his plump flank smarting and bleeding from a fierce jab of that pointed beak of the imp's, he squeaked with rage and clambered up again to the battle. Mr. Rat, you know, is no coward and no quitter.

"And now he was more dangerous, because he was ready. He sat warily on his haunches, squeaking angrily, and turning his sharp head from side to side as he followed every swoop and rush of the He imp, snapping so dangerously that the latter did not dare come quite close enough to deliver another really effective blow. At the same time, being very clever indeed, the rat kept tugging, tugging, tugging at the cord. And the She imp, being quite gone out of her mind with the terror of that clutch on her leg, kept flapping crazily at the end of the cord instead of turning to, like a sensible crow, and helping her brother in the fight.

"As she grew weaker and weaker in her struggles, the cunning rat drew her lower and lower, till at last she seemed fairly within his reach.

He lifted himself on his hindquarters to snap his long teeth into her thigh and spring to the ground with her, where he would have her completely at his mercy. But as he rose the He imp, at sight of his sister's deadly peril, lost all sense of caution, and struck again with all his strength of beak and wing. And once more the rat, fairly bursting with rage, was swept to the ground.

"He was back to the attack again in a moment, and now more dangerous than ever. And at the same time the She imp, utterly worn out at last by her panic terror and her foolish violence, sank shuddering down upon her perch. Her brother struck the rat again frantically when the latter was halfway up the scarecrow's leg, but this time failed to dislodge him. And it looked as if the poor She imp would never again steal a strawberry or worry a pigeon. But at this moment the Boy appeared in the garden. He came running up noiselessly, anxious to see all that was happening. But the rat heard him. The rat had no use for the Boy whatever. He knew that the whole human race was his enemy. He dropped from the scarecrow's trouser leg and scurried off to his hole beneath the toolhouse. The Boy, his face a mixture of amus.e.m.e.nt and concern, picked up the captive without noticing her feeble pecks, undid the noose from her leg, and carried her over the hedge to rest and recover herself.

"'Now,' said he, 'you little imp of Satan, maybe you'll not come stealing any more of my strawberries or pulling any more straw out of my poor scarecrow's head!'

"And she never did!" concluded Uncle Andy, rising and stretching his legs. "Those two were not _reformed_, you may be sure. But they kept clear, after that, of the Boy's strawberry patch, and of _all scarecrows_. It's time we were getting back to camp for supper, or Bill will be feeling sour."

"But you haven't told me," protested the Babe, who had a most tenacious memory, "why those crows all flew away out of the pine-top so suddenly, as if they had just remembered something. And you haven't told me why you'd rather be a humming-bird than a crow. And you haven't--"

But Uncle Andy stopped him.

"If you think I'm going to tell you all I know," said he, "you're mistaken. If I did, you'd know as much as I do, and it wouldn't be any fun. Some day you'll be glad I've left something for you to find out for yourself."

CHAPTER III

YOUNG GRUMPY AND THE ONE-EYED GANDER

"My gracious! What's that?" cried the Babe, and nearly jumped out of his boots. A gray thing had come right at him, with an ugly, scurrying rush.

The bushes and bracken being thick, he had not got a very clear view of it--and he did not stop to try for a better one. In two seconds he was back at Uncle Andy's side, where the latter sat smoking on his favorite log by the water.

The Babe's eyes were very wide. He looked a bit startled.

"It ran _straight_ at me!" he declared. "What could it have been?"

"A bear, I suppose!" said Uncle Andy sarcastically.

"Of course not," answered the Babe in an injured voice. "If it had been a bear, I'd have been _frightened_."

"Oh!" said Uncle Andy. "I see. Well, what was it like? Seems to me you didn't take much time to look at it, even if you weren't frightened."

"I _did_ look," protested the Babe, glancing again, a little nervously, at the bushes. "It was like--like a tre-_mend_ous big fat guinea pig, with a fat tail and all kind of rusty gray."

"Now, that's not at all bad, considering you were in something of a hurry," said Uncle Andy approvingly. "That's really a very good description of a woodchuck. No one could possibly mistake it for a lobster or a lion."

"Of course, I couldn't see it very _plain_," added the Babe hastily, wondering if Uncle Andy was laughing at him. "But why did it run at me that way?"

"You see," said Uncle Andy seriously, repenting of his mockery, "the woodchuck is a queer, bad-tempered chap, with more pluck than sense sometimes. Once in a while he would run at anything that was new and strange to him, no matter how big it was, just to see if he couldn't frighten it."

"Would he run at you or Bill that way?" demanded the Babe in a voice of awe at the very thought of such temerity.

"Oh, he has seen lots of _men_," replied Uncle Andy. "We're nothing new to him. But most likely he had never seen a small boy before, and he did not know what kind of an animal it was. The very fact that he did not know made him angry--he's sometimes so quick-tempered, you know!"

"I'm glad he didn't frighten me--so _very_ much!" murmured the Babe, beginning to forget the exact degree of his alarm.

"I noticed you got out of his way pretty smart!" said Uncle Andy, eyeing him from under s.h.a.ggy brows. "But perhaps that was just because you were in a hurry to tell me about it!"

"No-o!" answered the Babe, hesitating but truthful. "I thought perhaps he was going to bite my legs, and I didn't want him to."

"That seems reasonable enough," agreed Uncle Andy heartily. "No sensible person wants a fool woodchuck biting his legs."

"But would he _really_ have bitten me?" asked the Babe, beginning to think that perhaps he ought to go back and find the presumptuous little animal and kick him.

"As I think I've already said, you never can tell exactly what a woodchuck is going to do," replied Uncle Andy. "You know that old rhyme about him:

"'How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, If a woodchuck could chuck wood?

He'd chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could If a woodchuck could chuck wood.'

"Now that goes to show what uncertainty people have about him. And it's no more than right. For instance, I was traveling through a wild part of New Brunswick once in a big red automobile, when, coming suddenly around a turn, we saw just ahead of us two old woodchucks sitting up on their fat haunches by the side of the road. I was beside the chauffeur, and could see just what happened. How those woodchucks' eyes stuck out! It was not more than three seconds before we were right up to them. Then one of the two, frightened to death, fairly turned a back somersault into the bushes. But the other was a hero. Perhaps he thought he was St.

George and the automobile a dragon. Anyhow, he did all a hero could. He jumped straight on to the front wheel and bit wildly at the tire. We stopped so short that we almost went out on our heads--but too late! The wheel had gone clean over him. We felt so sorry that we stopped and dug a hole by the roadside and gave the flattened little hero a very distinguished burial."

"Oh, but he must have been crazy!" exclaimed the Babe, rubbing his leg thoughtfully and congratulating himself that he had not lingered to study the being which had rushed at him in the underbrush.

"Perhaps," said Uncle Andy dryly. "If I remember rightly, that's just what has been said of lots of heroes before now."

He tapped his pipe on the log beside him to knock out the ashes, and proceeded thoughtfully to fill it up again. This second filling the Babe had learned to regard as a very hopeful sign. It usually meant that Uncle Andy was in the vein. Seating himself on the gra.s.s directly in front of his uncle, the Babe clasped his arms around his bare little brown, mosquito-bitten knees, and stared upward hopefully with grave, round eyes, as blue as the bluebells nodding beside him.

"Speaking of woodchucks," began Uncle Andy presently, "I've known a lot of them in my time, and I've almost always found them interesting. Like some people we know, they're sometimes most amusing when they are most serious."

"_Amusing_!" exclaimed the Babe, with a world of meaning in his voice.

That was the last word he expected to apply to such a bad-tempered little beast.

But his uncle paid no heed to the interruption.

"There was 'Young Grumpy,' now," he continued musingly. "As sober-minded a woodchuck as ever burrowed a bank. From his earliest days he took life seriously, and never seemed to think it worth his while to play as the other wild youngsters do. Yet in spite of himself he was sometimes quite amusing.

"He had the good fortune to be born in the back pasture of Anderson's Farm. That was where the Boy lived, you know, and where no one was allowed to shoot the crows. Being a place where no one did any more killing than was absolutely necessary, it was rather lucky for any of the Babes of the Wild to be born there--except weasels, of course."

"Why not for weasels?" demanded the Babe.

"Well, now, you might know that without my having to tell you," replied Uncle Andy. "The weasels are such merciless and murderous little killers themselves, killing just for the fun of it when they are already too full to eat what they have killed, that both Mr. Anderson and the Boy had no sympathy for them, and thought them better out of the way. I don't want to be too hard, even on a weasel; but I'm bound to say that most of the wild creatures feel much the same way about that blood-thirsty little pirate."

"I should think so!" agreed the Babe indignantly, resolving to devote his future largely to the extermination of weasels, and hoping thus to win the confidence and grat.i.tude of the kindred of the wild.

"Young Grumpy's home life," continued Uncle Andy, "with his father and mother and four brothers and sisters was not a pampered one. There are few wild parents less given to spoiling their young than a pair of grumbling old woodchucks. The father, who spent most of his time sleeping, rolled up in a ball at the bottom of the burrow, paid them no attention except to nip at them crossly when they tumbled over him. They were always relieved when he went off, three or four times a day, down into the neighboring clover field to make his meals. The little ones did not see what he was good for, anyhow, till one morning, when the black-and-yellow dog from the next farm happened along. The youngsters, with their mother, were basking in the sun just outside the front door.

As the dog sprang at them they all fairly fell, head over heels, back into the burrow. The dog, immensely disappointed, set to work frantically to dig them out. He felt sure that young woodchuck would be very good to eat.