CHAPTER III
RACCOON JUNIOR
"Scout or no scout, you are not going to boss me!"
Thus Starrie Chase broke the breathless silence that reigned for half aminute in the woods, following upon Nixon's declaration that he was aboy scout, bound by the scout law to protect the weak among human beingsand animals.
For the space of that half-minute the tormenting stick had ceased toprobe the hole. The wretched chipmunk, cowering in the farthest cornerof its once neat retreat, had a respite.
But Leon--who was not inherently cruel so much as thoughtlessly teasingand the victim of a destructive habit of mind, now felt that should heyield a point to this fifteen-year-old lad from a distant city, theleadership which he so prized, among the boys of Exmouth, would beendangered. He was the recognized head of a certain youthful male gang,of which Colin and Coombsie--though the latter occasionally deplored hismethods--were leading representatives.
"Go ahead, scout, prevent my doing anything I want to do--if you can!"he flung out, his brown eyes winking upward with that snapshot quicknessas if he were photographing on their retina the figure of that newspecies of animal, the scout of the U.S.A. "I've heard of your kindbefore; you know a lot of things that nobody else knows--or wants toknow either!"
The last words were to the accompaniment of the goading stick whichbegan to move vehemently to and fro in the hole again. That neat littlehole, which had been one of the humbler miracles of the woods, now gapedas an ugly, torn fissure beneath its roof of rock.
Before it was a defacing debris of torn grass and earth in which Blinkscratched impatiently, whining over the delay in the chip-squirrel'sexit.
"Oh! give it up, Leon; I believe I can hear him stirring in the hole!"pleaded Colin Estey.
Simultaneously the scout flung himself on his knees before thechipmunk's fortress, well-nigh captured, and seized the cruel goad.
"Let go of this stick or I'll lick you with it! I can; I'm as old--olderthan you are!" Leon was now a red-eyed savage.
"That would be like your notion of fair play! Oh! drop the stick an'come on with your fists! I'm not afraid of you."
The probable result of such a duel remains a problem; any slightadvantage in age was on Leon's side, but each alert movement of the boyscout showed that he possessed eye, mind, and muscle trained to thefullest to cope with any situation that might arise. Whoever might provevictor, the expedition to Varney's Paintpot would have been abruptlyfrustrated by a fight among the exploring party, had not Marcoo thetactful interfered.
"Oh! what's the use of fighting about a chip'?" he cried, thrusting aplump shoulder between the bristling combatants. "It's just this way,Leon: Nix is right; it's a mean business, trying to force that chipmunkout of its hole for the dog to catch it! You can withdraw the stickright now, come with us an' share our luncheon; or you can go off onyour own hook--and you don't get a crumb out of the basket--we'll findthe Paintpot without you!"
Leon drew a long wavering breath, looking at Colin for support.
But Public Opinion as represented by the two younger boys, was by thistime entirely with the scout. For it is the genius among boys, as amonggrown-ups, who voices what lies hidden and unexpressed, in the hearts ofothers; we are always moved by the bold utterance of that which we havesurreptitiously felt ourselves.
Both Colin Estey and Marcoo had known what it was to feel their sense ofpity and justice outraged by Leon's persecuting methods. But it neededthe trained boldness of the boy scout to put the sentiment into words;to be ready to fight for his knightly principles and win. For he hadwon.
Leon Chase fairly writhed at the choice set before him--at the necessityof yielding a point to the stranger! But he felt that it would be stillmore obnoxious to his feelings to be deserted by his companions, left tobeat a solitary retreat homeward with his dog or wander--alone andfasting--through the woods, a boy hermit!
"All right! Have your way! Come along," he cried crossly. "We'll neverget anywhere--that's sure--if we waste any more time on a chipmunk!"
Withdrawing the stick from the enlarged aperture, he flung it away andscrambled to his feet, whistling to the dog.
It needed much moral suasion on the part of all four boys to lure theterrier away from the raided hole with whose earth his slim white legswere coated. But he presently consented to explore the woods further insearch of diversion.
And the incident ended without any torn fur flying its flag of pain onthe summer air.
The flag of feud between the two boys, Starrie Chase and Nixon, was not,however, immediately lowered. Coombsie--a studious, thoughtful lad--hadthe unhappy feeling of having brought two strange fires together whichmight at any moment result in an explosion that would be especiallydisastrous on this the first day of his cousin's visit to him.
But as one lad has remarked: "Two boys cannot remain mad with each otherlong: there's always too much doing!"
And everybody knows that sawdust smothers smouldering fire! It did inthis instance. After about ten minutes of "grouchy" but uneventfultramping, the forest explorers came to a logging camp, a rude shanty,flanked by a yellow mountain of sawdust where a portable sawmill hadbeen set up during the preceding winter and taken down in spring.
In spite of the fact that so much lay before them to be seen in thewoods--if haply they might arrive at the various points of heart'sdesire--it was not in boy-nature to refrain from scaling that unstable,shelving sawdust peak for a better view onward into those shadowy woods.And a lusty sham battle ensued, in the midst of which Leon foundoccasion to repay the trick played on him with the pitchfork seeds byslipping a handful of sawdust inside the scout's khaki collar.
"Whew! that's worse than the devil's pitchforks," groaned the latter,writhing and squirming in his tan shirt.
But does not a trifling discomfort under such circumstances enhancewhile curbing the enjoyment of a boy, tying him to earth, when his youngspirit like an aeroplane, winged with sheer joy of life and youthfuldaring, feels as if it could spurn that earth sphere as too limited,and, riding on the breeze of heaven, seek adventure among the clouds?
In such a mood the four boys, drinking in the odor of the pine-trees asa fillip to delight, were presently exploring the loggers' shanty, withits rude bunks, oilcloth-covered table, here an old magazine, there aworn-out stocking, relics of human habitation.
"Nobody occupies this camp during the summer," said Leon. "I thinkToiney Leduc and another man worked up here last winter."
"I'm pretty sure that Toiney did! Look there!" The scout was unfolding apiece of charred paper pinioned in a corner by a tomato can; it was aprinted fragment of a French-Canadian _voyageur_ song, at sight of whichthe boys made the shanty ring with:--
"Rond! rond! rond! peti' pie pon' ton'!"
"But I'm not so sure that nobody is using the shanty now," remarkedNixon presently. "See that tobacco ash and the stains on the whiteoilcloth!" pointing to the dingy table. "Both look fresh; the ashcouldn't possibly have remained here since last winter; 'twould havebeen blown away long ago by the wind sweeping through the open shanty.There's some more of it on the mattress in this bunk," drawing himselfup to look over the side of the rude crib built into the wall. "I guesssomebody _does_ occupy the camp now--at night anyway!"
"Oh! so you set up to be a sort of Sherlock Holmes, do you?" jeeredLeon.
"I don't set up to be anything! But I can tell that the men ground theiraxes right here." The scout was now kicking over a small wooden troughthat had reposed, bottom uppermost, amid the long grass before theshanty.
"How can you make that out?" It was Colin who spoke.
"Because, look! there's rust on the inside of the trough, showing thatthere are steely particles mixed with the dust of the interior and thatwater has dripped into it from the revolving grindstone."
"Pshaw! anybody could find that out who set to work to think about it,"came in a chorus from his three companions.
But that "thinking" was just the point: the others would have passed by
that topsy-turvy wooden vessel, which might have been used for sundrypurposes, with its dusty interior exactly the hue of the yellow sawdust,without stopping to reason out the story of the patient axe-grindingwhich had gone on there during winter's bitter days.
"But, I say, what good does it do you to find out things like that?"questioned Starrie Chase, kicking over the trough, his shrewd young facea star of speculation. "If one should go about poking his nose intoeverything that had happened, why! he'd find stories in most things, Iguess! The woods would be full of them."
"So they are!" replied the scout quickly. "That's just what we'retaught: that every bird and animal, as well as everything which is doneby men, leaves its 'sign!' We must try to read that 'sign' and store upin our minds what we learn, as a squirrel stores his nuts for winter, sothat often we may find out things of importance to ourselves or others.And I'll tell you it makes life a jolly lot more interesting than whenone goes about 'lak wit' eye shut'! as Toiney says. I've never had suchgood times as since I've been a scout:--
Then hurrah for the woods, hurrah for the fields, Hurrah for the life that's free, With a heart and mind both clean and kind, The Scout's is the life for me!
And we'll shout, shout, shout, For the Scout, Scout, Scout, For the Scouts of the U.S.A.!"
The speaker exploded suddenly in a burst of song, throwing his broad hatinto the air with a yell on the refrain that woke the echoes of the logshanty, while the breezy orchestra in the tree-tops, like noisy reedinstruments, came in on the last line:--
"For the Scouts of the U.S.A.!"
Colin and Coombsie were enthusiastically shouting it too.
"Say! Col, that fellow suits me all right," whispered Marcoo, nudginghis chum and pointing toward the excited scout.
"Me, too!" returned Colin.
"Pshaw! he thinks he's It, but I think the opposite," murmured Leontruculently.
"To what troop or patrol do you belong, Nix?" questioned his cousin.
"Peewit Patrol, troop six, of Philadelphia! I was a tenderfoot for sixmonths; now I'm a second-degree scout--with hope of becoming afirst-class one soon. Want to see my badge?" pointing to his coat. "Eachpatrol is named after a bird or animal. We use the peewit's whistle forsignaling to each other: Tewitt! Tewitt!"
Again the woods rang with a fairly good imitation of the peewit's--orEuropean lapwing's--whistling note.
"Oh! I'd put a patent on that whistle if I were you," snapped Leonsarcastically: "I'm sure nothing like it was ever heard in these--or anyother--woods! We'd better be moving on or the mosquitoes will eat usup," he added hastily. "There hasn't been any frost to get rid of themyet."
But as the quartette of boys left the log-camp behind and, with theterrier in erratic attendance, plunged again into the thick woods, itby and by became apparent to each that, so far as a knowledge of theirexact whereabouts went or an ability to locate any point of destination,they were approaching the truth of Toiney's words and wandering "lakwit' eye shut!"
For a time they kept to a logging-road that branched off from theshanty, a mere grass-grown, root-obstructed pathway, over which, whenthat great white leveler, Winter, evened things up with his mantle ofsnow, the felled trees were drawn on a rough sled to some point wherestood the movable sawmill.
The dense woods were intersected at long intervals by suchhalf-obliterated paths; in their remote recesses lurked other roughshanties where a scout might read the "sign" that told of the hard lifeof the lumbermen.
But neither vine-laced road nor shanty was easy of discovery for theuninitiated.
"Whew! it kind o' brings the gooseflesh to be so far in the woods asthis without having the least idea whether we're getting anywhere ornot." Thus spoke Coombsie at the end of half an hour's steady trampingand plowing through the underbrush. "Are you sure that you know in whichdirection lies the cave called the Bear's Den, Leon? A logging-roadruns past that, so I've heard."
"Oh, we'll arrive there in time, I guess; Varney's Paintpot is somewherein the same direction as the cave," replied the pseudo-leader evasively."They're some distance apart, but we've made a bee-line from one to theother when I've been in the woods with my father or brother Jim."
But these woods were a different proposition now, without an older headand more experienced woodlore to rely upon: Leon, who had never beforeposed as a guide through their mazes, secretly acknowledged this.
He had not imagined that it would be so difficult to find one's way,unaided, in this wilderness of endless trees and underbrush, throughwhose changing aspects ran the same mystifying thread as if thegold-brown gloom of a shadowy hill-slope,--where only the sunbeamswaltzing on dry pine-needles seemed alive,--or the jeweled twilight of agrassy alley bound a gossamer handkerchief about one's eyes, so that onegroped blindfold against a blank wall of uncertainty.
"Say! but I wish I had brought my pocket compass with me," groaned thescout. "Guess I didn't live up to our scout motto: BE PREPARED! Butthen--" he looked at his cousin--"we started out with the intention ofgoing down the river and you objected to my trotting back for it,Marcoo, when we determined on a hike through the woods."
"I was afraid that if the men knew what we were planning, they'd haveheaded us off as Toiney tried to do," confessed Marcoo candidly.
"Well, I wish now that I had gone back; I could have packed the luncheoninto my knapsack; it would have been much more easily carried than inthis basket. I miss my staff too!" Nixon deposited the lunch-basket,with which he was now impeded, on the ground in a green woodland gladewhere the noble forest trees, red oak, cedar, maple, interspersed withan occasional pine, hemlock, or balsam fir, rose to a height of fromsixty to a hundred feet, bordering a patch of open ground, starred withwildflowers, dotted with berries.
Delicate queen's lace, purple gentians, starry wood-asters, waxen Indianpipes, made it seem as if this must be the wood-fairies' dancing-ground,where at night they rode a moonbeam from flower to flower, and sippedjuice from the milk-berries, bunch-berries or scarlet fox-berries thatstrayed at intervals along the ground.
"I'd like to stay _here_ forever." Colin stretched himself upon a bankof moss, his mind going back to the explorer's longing, to thewood-hunger which had consumed him, as he lay upon the fragrantmarsh-grass some hours before. He was getting his wish now--and noteverybody gets that without having to pay for it. "The trees look kindo' fatherly an' protecting; don't they?" he murmured lazily.
Yes, here one felt admitted to the companionship of those nobletrees,--the greatest story-tellers that ever were, when one listens andinterprets their conversations with the breeze. A "Hurrah for thewoods!" was on every tongue as the boys chewed a berry or smoked apearly orchid pipe.
Moods changed a little as they took up their wandering again andpresently waded, single file, through a jungle of bushes, scrub oak,dwarf pine, pigmy cedar and birch, laced with brambles. Here the treesoverhead were of less magnitude and the tall leafy undergrowth foamedabout their ears, giving them somewhat the distracted feeling of beingcast away on a trackless sea--each sequestered in his own littleboat--with emerald billows shutting out all view of port.
"Three cheers! We're almost through with this jungle. I guess we'recoming to more open ground again--none too soon, either!" cried Leon wholed, with his dog. "Shouldn't wonder if we were approaching a swamp: itmay be Big Swamp, as the men call that great alder-swamp that's allspongy in parts and dotted with deep bog-holes, where one might sink outof sight quick!
"For goodness' sake! look at the crows," he whooped three minutes later,as, leaving the wavy undergrowth behind, he plunged out on a mossy slopestrewn with an occasional boulder. "_The crows!_ What do you supposethey're after? They're teasing something! 'Hollering' at something!"
The same amazed exclamation broke from his companions' lips. Halfwaydown the slope was an old and leafy chestnut tree. Around this the crowswere circling, now alighting on the branches, now fluttering off againon sloping sable wing, their yellow beaks gleaming.
A cawing d
in filled the air, with an occasional loud "Quock!" of alarmor indignation.
"They're teasing something--perhaps it's a squirrel! I've seen them dothat before; they're regular pests!" exclaimed Leon, inconsistentlyfinding fault with the crows for being birds of the same feather withhimself.
"Whew! there's something doing here. Let's see what it is!" Nixon wasequally excited.
With the terrier scampering ahead, the four boys set off at a run towardthe crow-infested tree.
"I believe there's something--some animal--hidden in the hollow betweenthe branches!" Leon gave vent to a low shout, his brown eyes yellow withexcitement. "It's round that the crows are hovering!"
"There is! There is! I see the end of a big, bushy tail. It isn't asquirrel's tail either!" returned the scout in a fever of mystification."Let's go softly, so that we won't frighten the thing whatever itis--then we can have a good look at it!"
"Suppose it should be a wildcat, then we'd 'scat'!" gasped Colin,feeling his wildest hopes and tremors fulfilled. "I see its nose--ablack nose--over the edge of the hollow! It's like--Gee! it can't beanother coon from the swamp--like the dead one that Toiney found in thehencoop?"
Simultaneously the terrier, Blink, was launching himself like a whitearrow toward the spreading nut-tree, which stood upon a grassy knoll,while the woods rang with his fusillade of barking.
And from the hollow in the tree came a shrill whimpering cry, remarkablylike that of a small and frightened child.
Starrie Chase fairly gambolled with excitement: "That's where you'reright, Col," he panted. "If it isn't a coon--another young coon--I'm aDutchman! I hunted one in the woods, by night, with my brother, lastyear!"
"He keeps on singing," breathed Coombsie. "Isn't his cry like atwo-year-old child's?"
"Oh! if we only had my brother's coon dog here--and could get him downfrom the tree--the dog might finish him!" Leon seemed emitting sparks ofexcitement from his pointed elbows and other quivering joints. "Go forhim, Blink!" he raved, hardly knowing what he said. "You're not afraidof anything--you feel like a mastiff! Oh! we _must_ get him out of thattree-hollow on to the ground."
"Caw! Caw!... Caw!... Quock! Quock!" At the approach of the boys and dogthe crows set up a wilder din, describing broader circles round the treeor fluttering upward to its loftier branches.
Again came that petulant whimpering cry from the hollow of thechestnut, where a young raccoon (probably brother to the intruder whichhad made a short bee-line through the woods, guided by instinct and itsnose, to Toiney's hencoop) now wailed and quailed, finding himselfbetween two sets of enemies: the barking dog and excited boys below, thepestering crows above.
Abandoning the wise nocturnal habits of his forefathers, with therashness of youth, he too had strayed at sunrise from that secluded holeamong the ledges on the borders of Big Swamp, filled with dreams ofjuicy cornfields and other delicacies.
Not readily finding such a land of milk and honey, he climbed into thehollow of this chestnut tree, flanked by a young ash upon the knoll, andthere composed himself to sleep.
But thither the crows, flocking, found him; and recognizing in him anhereditary enemy of their eggs and nestlings, set to work to make hislife a burden.
Nevertheless Raccoon Junior preferred their society to that of the boysand dog which instinct warned him to dread above all other foes.
As the well-bred terrier--game enough to face any foe, though it mightprove a sorry day for him if he should tackle that youngraccoon--reared on his hind legs, and clawed the bark of the trunk inhis excitement, the rash Junior climbed swiftly out of the hollow andfled up among the branches of the tall chestnut tree, seeking to hidehimself among the long thick leaves amid a stormy "Quock!" and "Caw!Caw! Caw!" from the crows.
"Oh! there--there he goes! See his stout body and funny little legs!"
"And his long gray hair and the black patch over his eyes--makes himlook as if he wore spectacles!"
"And his bushy tail! Huh! there's some class to that tail--all ringedwith buff and black."
Such cries broke from three wildly excited throats. Leon spent no breathin admiration. Like lightning, he had snatched up a stone and sent itflying up the tree after the fugitive with such good aim that it struckone of the short, climbing legs.
Another whimpering cry--sharp and shrill as that of a woundedchild--rang down among the thick leaves.
"What did you do that for? You've broken one of his legs, I think!"exclaimed the scout.
"So much the better! If he should light down from the tree, he can't runso fast! I want that dandy tail of his--and his skin!" Starrie Chasewas now beside himself with the greedy feeling, that possessed himwhenever he saw a wild animal, that its own skin did not belong to it,but to him.
"Say, fellows!" he cried wildly, "if you'll stay right here by the treeand prevent his coming down, I--I'll run all the way back to thatfarm-clearing--I guess I can find my way--and bring back Toiney's gun,and shoot him. Say--will you?"
No such promise was forthcoming.
"Well, I know what I'll do!" Leon tore off his jacket. "I'll tie thesleeves of my coat round the trunk of the tree; that will prevent hiscoming down, so I've heard my father say. Bother! they won't meet. I'llhave to use your coat too, Nix!"
He snatched up the scout's Norfolk jacket, thrown down beside the basketat the foot of the tree, and was knotting it to his own, when there wasa wild shriek from Colin:--
"Look! Look! He's jumped over into the other tree. Oh! he's come down;he's on the ground now--there beyond the ash tree--rolling over like aball! Oh, he's going--going like a slate sliding downhill!"
While Leon had been so cleverly knotting the coats round thetree-trunk, and his terrier barking up it, the young coon had outwittedthem and dropped like an acrobat to the ground, having gained the oddsof a dozen yards in his race for safety.
Off went the terrier after him, now! Off went the four boys, hot on thetrail too, madly rushing down the hill clear to the edge of thealder-swamp toward which it sloped--yes! and into its quagmire borderstoo, while the crows, raving like a foghorn, supplied music for thechase.
But the speed of the limping wild animal enabled it, having gained itsshort legs--despite the injury of the stone--to reach the shelter of aquivering clump of alders where Blink worried in and out in vain, noseto the ground--sniffing and baffled.
"Oh, we've lost sight of him now! He's given us the slip," cried Colin,recklessly dashing for the alders.
Suddenly the air cracked with his cry that raved with terror like thecrows: "Help! _Help!_ I'm into it now--into it plunk--into Big Swamp!I'm sinking--s-sinking above my waist! Help! Help!"