Chapter 10

There was a fair illustration of the matchless agility of the crotalus when he cares to be quick. The cage was just twelve inches high in the clear; but before the falling mouse was halfway to the bottom, there was an indescribable gray blur, and I knew that the larger snake had hit him. I have improved numerous chances to study the stroke of rattlesnake, which is the swiftest motion made by any living creature; but that particular case, better than any other, gave me a conception of its actual rapidity. From years of experience with the pneumatic shutter in photographing objects in rapid motion, I should say the snake's head traversed that twelve or fifteen inches in something like the three-hundredth part of a second.

The mouse fell upon the floor of the cage, and it never moved again. The snake knew perfectly that it had done its work, for in place of "recovering" for another stroke, as they invariably do after a failure, he swallowed the mouse in the usual slow and painful fashion, with as much apparent effort as a morsel four times as large should have given him.

HARD TO HIT

By Ernest Ingersoll

The spring weather we sometimes have in March reminds me, especially in the evening, of some days passed so high up in the Rocky Mountains that the summer was left down in the valley. One such spring-like evening we camped close to the timber-limit, and I made my first trip into the region above, in which no trees grow. Having left the spruce-woods quickly behind, there came some stiff climbing up ledges of broken rocks, standing, cliff-like, to bar the way to the summit. These surmounted, the way was clear, for from the northeast--the side I was on--this mountain presents a smooth grassy slope to the very top; but the western side of the range is a series of rocky precipices, seamed and shattered. This is true of many mountains in Colorado.

Just above the cliffs grew a number of dwarfed spruces, some of them with trunks six inches in diameter, yet lying flat along the ground, so that the gnarled and wind-pressed boughs were scarcely knee-high. They stood so closely together, and were so stiff, that I could not pass between them; but, on the other hand, they were strong enough to bear my weight, so that I could walk over their tops when it was inconvenient to go around.

Some small brown sparrows, of two or three species, lived there, and they were very talkative. Sharp, metallic chirps were heard, also, as the blue snow-bird flitted about, showing the white feathers on either side of its tail, in scudding from one sheltering bush to another. Doubtless, careful search would have discovered its home, snugly built of circularly laid grasses, and tucked deeply into some cozy hollow beside the root of a spruce.

My pace now became slow, for in the thin air of a place twelve thousand feet above the sea-level, climbing is exhausting work. But before long I came to the top, and stood on the verge of a crag that showed the crumbling action of water and frost. Gaping cracks seamed its face, and an enormous mass of fallen rock covered the broad slope at its foot. The very moment I arrived there, I heard a most lively squeaking going on, apparently just under the edge of the cliff or in some of the cracks. It was an odd noise, something between a bark and scream, and I could think of nothing but young hawks as the authors of it. So I set at work to find the nest, but my search was in vain, while the sharp squeaking seemed to multiply and to come from a dozen different quarters. By this time I had crawled down the rough face of the cliff, and had reached the heaps of fallen rock. There I caught a glimpse of a little head with two black eyes, like a prairie-dog's, peering out of a crevice, and I was just in time to see him open his small jaws and say _"shink" _--about as a rusty hinge would pronounce it. I whipped my revolver out of my belt and fired, but the little fellow dodged the bullet and was gone. Echoes rattled about among the rocks, wandered up and down the canon, and hammered away at half a dozen stone walls before ceasing entirely. But when they had died away, not another sound was to be heard. Every little rascal had hid.

So I sat down and waited. In about five minutes a tiny, timid squeak broke the stillness, then a second a trifle louder, then one away under my feet in some subterranean passage. Hardly daring to breathe, I waited and watched. Finally the chorus became as loud as before, and I caught sight of one of the singers only about ten yards away, head and shoulders out of his hole, doubtless commenting to his neighbor in no complimentary way upon the strange intruder. Slowly lifting my pistol, I pulled the trigger. I was sure he had not seen me, yet a chip of rock flying from where he had stood was my only satisfaction; he had dodged again.

I had seen enough, however, to know that the noisy colony was a community of Little Chief hares (_Lagomys princeps,_ as they are named in the textbooks), or "conies," as the silver miners call them. They are related to the woodchucks as well as to the hare, and they live wholly at or above timber-line, burrowing among the fallen and decomposing rocks which crown the summits of all the mountains. Not every peak, by any means, harbors conies; on the contrary, they are rather uncommon, and are so difficult to shoot that their skins are rare in museums, and their ways are little known to naturalists. During the middle of the day they are asleep and quiet; but in the evening and all night when the moon shines they leave their rocky retreats and forage in the neighboring meadows, meeting the yellow-footed marmot and other neighbors. About the only enemies they have, I fancy, are the rattlesnake and weasel, excepting when a wild-cat may pounce upon one, or an owl swoop down and snatch up some rambler. In the cold season, of course, their burrows are deep in snow; but then the little fellows are taking their long winter sleep, and neither know nor care what the weather may be.

An Indian will eat a cony,--if he can catch it. He likes to use its fur, also, for braiding his locks into those long plaits which delight his soul; but the lively little rodents are pretty safe from all human foes, even one with a Colt's revolver!

THAT SLY OLD WOODCHUCK

By William O. Stoddard

"Deah me! Dey's jes' one moah row ob taters. I's hoein' de bes' I know."

Julius leaned on his hoe for a moment. His bright black face was turned a little anxiously toward the front fence. Over in the road beyond that there stood a white boy, of about his own size, and he was calling:

"Quib! Quib! Come here!"

"Dar he goes!" said Julius. "Dey'e got him agin. He's de bes' dog for woodchucks, he is! An' I can't go 'long. Tell you wot, dough, if I'd ha' t'ought he'd run away 'fore I'd hoed dese taters, I'd nebber hab gibben him dat big bone. De rascal! He's jes' hid it away, somewhar, down 'mong de cabbages."

That was what Quib had done with his precious bone; but now his little, lean, yellow legs were carrying him rapidly down the road, with half a dozen very noisy boys behind him.

"Pete! Pete Corry! Where was it you saw that woodchuck?"

"Finest woodchuck you ever saw in all your life!" was Pete's reply.

"He'll get away from us!"

"No, he won't. Abe Selover is watching for him. That woodchuck is in the stone-heap at the corner of old Hamburger's pasture-lot."

Quib must have understood what Mart Penniman said, for he did not halt for one second till he reached the bars that led into that very field. It was more than a quarter of a mile from the potato-patch, but Quib had barked all the way--probably out of respect for the size and importance of the coming woodchuck.

Mart Penniman and Abe Selover had started their great "game" on the way home from driving their cows. They had raced him across the pasture and along the fence, into the stone-heap, and then Abe had staid to keep watch while Mart went after Julius Davis's dog. That meant also, of course, as large a crowd of boys as he could pick up in going and coming.

It was a sad thing for Julius that his mother had set him at the potato-patch, and that Quib had broken his contract with the bone.

Quib was not usually so treacherous, but he happened to be on friendly terms with every boy of that hunting-party.

They had all helped him chase woodchucks at one time or another, and he had great confidence in them, but that was nothing at all to their confidence in him.

The pasture bars did not stop a single one of the woodchuck-hunters. All the boys went over while Quib was wriggling under, through a hole he knew, and there, almost right before them was the stone-heap. It was quite a large one, and it was thickly overgrown with wild raspberry vines.

"Abe--is he there?"

"He didn't get away, did he?"

"Are you sure he is in there?"

"Quib! Quib!" shouted Abe. "Woodchucks! Quib, woodchucks! Right in here. Find 'em!"

Quib was dancing around in a quiver of noisy excitement, for he had caught a sniff of something under the first bush he sprang into.

How he did bark and yelp and scratch, for about a minute!

"Poys! Poys! Vat is all dis? Vat you want vis mein stone-heap, eh?"

It was old Hamburger himself climbing the fence, and he looked longer and leaner just then, and had more pipe in his mouth, than the boys thought they had ever seen before.

"The finest woodchuck you ever saw, Mr. Hamburger," began Cole Thomas, by way of an apology.

"Vootchuck! Dat's it! Ant so you puts a tog into mein stone-heap, and you steps onto mein grass, ant you knock ober all mein beautiful mullein-stalks and mein thistles and mein scoke-veeds!"

Puff! puff! came the great clouds of smoke from the grim lips of the old German, but it struck Cole Thomas that Mr. Hamburger himself was on the watch for that woodchuck.

Bow-wow-yow-yelp! and Mart shouted:

"There he goes!"

"Hi! We'll get him!" screamed Abe.

"Take him, Quib! Take him!"

Quib had started a woodchuck.

There was never a stone-heap piled up that had room in it for both a dog and a woodchuck.

Mr. Hamburger took the pipe out of his mouth, which was a thing nobody could remember ever having seen him do.

"Dose poys! Dat vootchuck! De tog is a goot von. Dey vill preak dare little necks. Joost see how dey run! But de tog is de pest runner of dem poys, egsept de vootchuck."

Mr. Hamburger did not run. Nobody had ever seen him do any such thing as that.

But he walked on across the pasture-lot, toward the deep ravine that cut through the side of the hill to the valley.

All that time poor Julius had been hoeing away desperately upon the last row of his mother's potatoes, and she had been smiling at him from the window. She was anxious he should get through, for she meant to send him to the village for a quarter of a pound of tea.

It was just as Julius reached the last hill that the baby cried, and when Mrs. Davis returned to the window to say something about the store and the kind of tea she wanted, all she could see of Julius was the hoe lying beside that last hill.

"Ef he hasn't finished dem taters and run away!"

She would have been proud of him if she could have seen how wonderfully fast he did run away, down the road he had seen Quib and the other hunters.

"Dey's into de lot!" he exclaimed, when he came to the bars. "Dar's Pete Corry's ole straw hat lyin' by de stone-heap. Mus' hab been somefin' won'erful, or he'd nebber forgot his hat."

That was an old woodchuck, of course, or he would not have been so large, and it may be he knew those boys as well as Quib did. If not, it was his own fault, for every one of them had chased him before, and so had Quib.

He knew every inch of that pasture-lot, and he knew the shortest way to the head of the deep ravine.

"Boys!" shouted Abe Selover, with all the breath he had. "Boys! He's going for the glen! Now we've got him!"

The ravine was a rocky and wonderful place, and all the boys were perfectly familiar with it, and considered it the grandest play-house in the world, or, at least, in the vicinity of the village. If Quib once got the woodchuck penned up among those rocks, they could play hide-and-seek for him till they should find him.

Some city people that had a picnic there once had called it a "glen," and the name had stuck to it, mainly because it was shorter than any other the boys could think of; and, besides that, the schoolmaster of the district two years before (who didn't suit the trustees) had been named Glenn, and so the word must have been all right.

Some of the boys were near enough to see the woodchuck make for the two maples at the head of the ravine, and Bob Hicks tumbled over Andy Thompson while he was shouting:

"Catch him, Quib!"

After they got past those two maple trees there was no more fast running to be done.

Down, down, deeper and rockier and rougher every rod of it, the rugged chasm opened ahead of them, and it was necessary for the boys to mind their steps. It was a place where a woodchuck or a small dog could get around a good deal faster than any boy, but they all followed Quib in a way that would have scared their mothers if they had been there.

"It's grand fun!" said Mart Penniman. "Finest woodchuck you ever saw!"

"Come on, boys!" shouted Abe Selover, away ahead. "We'll get him, this time."

Abe had a way of being just the next boy behind the dog in any kind of chase, and they all clambered after him in hot haste.

On went Quib, and even Abe Selover could not see him more than half the time, for he had an immense deal of dodging to do, in and out among the rocks and trees, and it was dreadfully shady at the bottom of that ravine.

The walls of rock, where Abe was, rose more than sixty feet high on either side, and the glen was only a few rods wide at the widest place.

"He's holed him! He's holed him! Come on! we've got him, now!"

Quib was scratching and yelping like an insane dog at the bottom of what looked like a great crack between two rocks, in the left-hand side of the glen as you went down. The crack was only an inch or so wide at the bottom, and twisted a good deal as it went up, for the rock was of the kind known as "pudding-stone." There was a hole, just there, large enough for a woodchuck, but too small for a dog.

"Dig, boys! Dig!"

"Dig yourself," said Pete Corry. "Who's going to dig a rock, I'd like to know?"

"Let Quib in, anyhow. He'll drive him out."

Abe was prying at that hole with a dead branch of a tree, and, almost while he was speaking, a great piece of the loose pudding-stone fell off and came thumping down at his feet.

"A cave, boys, a cave! Just look in!"

Quib did not wait for anybody to look in, but bounded through the opening with a shrill yelp, and Abe Selover squeezed after him.

Pete Corry felt a little nervous when he saw how dark it was, but he followed Abe; and the other boys came on as fast as the width of the hole would let them.

That is, they crept through, one boy at a time.

What surprised them was, that the moment they had crawled through that hole they could stand up straight.

"Where's the woodchuck?" asked Bob Hicks.

"Woodchuck? Why, boys, this is a regular cave," replied Abe.

"Quib's in there, somewhere," said Mart Penniman. "Just hear him yelp!"

"Hold on," said Cole Thomas--"there's more light coming in. We shall be able to see, in a minute."

The fact was that it took a little time for their eyes to get accustomed to the small amount of light there was in that cave.

The cave itself was not very large.

It grew wider for about twenty feet from the hole they came in by, and the floor, which was covered with bits of rock, sloped upward like the roof of a house, only not quite so abruptly.

In the middle it was more than a rod wide. Then it grew narrower, and steeper, and darker with every step. But they knew about where the upper end must be, for they could hear Quib barking there.

"It's dark enough," said Andy.

"Come on, boys!" shouted Abe Selover. "We'll have that woodchuck this time. He's in this cave, somewhere."

They were not very much afraid to keep a little way behind Abe Selover, and in a few minutes they heard him say:

"Quib! Is he there? Have you got him?"

Quib barked and whined, and the sound seemed to come from away above them.

"Come on, boys! I can see a streak of light. It's like climbing up an old chimney. Quib's almost on him."

All that time, while they were groping through that cave, Julius Davis was looking around the pasture-lot after them.

He would have been glad of a small glimpse of Quib, but all he had found as yet was Mr. Hamburger, who was standing under an old butternut-tree and looking down at a round, hollow place in the ground.

He was smoking very hard.

"Hab you seen my dog?" asked Julius.

"Hold shtill, poy! Joost you vait. Hi! Dere goes dose vootshuck!"

"Dat's so. He's coming right up out ob de hole, and dar ain't no dog to foller him!"

Away went the woodchuck, and Julius gave him up for lost; but Mr. Hamburger smoked harder than ever and looked down at the hole.

"Hark! Hear dem? It is de tog. Pless mein eyes, if dey didn't chase dose vootshuck right oonder mein pasture-lot!"

Julius could hear Quib bark now, away down there in the ground, and he could not stand still on any one side of that hollow. So he danced up and down on every side of it.

One minute,--two, three minutes,--it was a dreadfully long time, --and then it was the voice of Abe Selover mixed with a long yelp from Quib.

"Come on, boys! I've shoved him through. I'm going right up after him. Nothing to pull away but some sods."

"Dat's de tog!" exclaimed Mr. Hamburger. "Keep shtill, black poy! De rest of dose vootshucks is coming. Keep shtill."

Nothing but some sods to pull away, to make that hole large enough, and then Abe Selover's curly head popped out, and the rest of him followed, grimy and dirty, but in a great fever of excitement and fun.

After him climbed the other boys, one by one.

"Mr. Hamburger, did you see where that woodchuck went to?"

"De vootshuck? I don't know him. But de black poy haf run after de tog, ant he vas run so fast as nefer you saw. Vare you leetle vootshucks coom from, eh? You climb oonder mein pasture?"

"No use, Abe," said Mart Penniman. "We've missed that woodchuck this time."

"We've found the cave, though," said Pete Corry. "It's through that he got away from us so many times."

"I dell you vat," said Mr. Hamburger; "de nex' time you leetle vootshucks vant to chase dat oder vootshuck, you put a pag ofer dese hole. Den you shace him round among de rocks, and you will catch de tog ant de vootshuck into de same pag."

"That's what we'll do," said Abe Selover. "But not to-day, boys. He was the finest woodchuck I ever saw, but we've missed him this time."

THE FAITHFUL LITTLE LIZARD

By Lieutenant-Colonel W. Hill James

On the diggings near the Avoca River the lizard's future master had, as was the digger's custom, come out of his hole, or shaft, at eleven o'clock for a short half-hour's rest between breakfast and the midday meal. He threw himself down in a half-sitting posture, and was dreamily smoking his pipe when from beneath a neighboring rock, popped out a little lizard who eyed the stranger with inquisitive interest, as quickly retiring, to return again in a few minutes.

This was repeated several times, the lizard's keen eyes always fixed on the face of the intruder.

Presently the digger's foot was approached, and evidently approved of for its warmth. After a retreat to the rock a farther advance was made, this time to the knee of the stranger, to whose face the two brilliant little eyes were still enquiringly directed. Before the half-hour's rest was over the left arm of the smoker had been mounted, his neck rounded, and the right arm descended, the venturesome journey ended by the lizard squatting contentedly on the back of his new-found friend's right hand. Confidence had thus been established between the two, but not to the extent of capture, for on the gold-seeker attempting to place his left hand over his new acquaintance, he scuttled away to his rock with almost inconceivable quickness. The digger's smoke over, he returned to his work in the hole, leaving his blouse where he had sat.

When the work of the day was finished the tired gold-seeker mounted to the surface and, taking up his blouse, was about to march to his camp, three miles away, when, to his great surprise, he discovered his little four-footed friend lying hidden in the fold of the garment. He carried him gently in the blouse to the camp, and there, with the usual courage and confidence of his race, the little reptile quickly adapted himself to his new surroundings in the digger's tent. He was carefully fed, kept warm at night, and soon began to like his new quarters with the gold-seekers. In return for much affectionate attention he was, in a few days, quite at home with all the party.

On the walk to camp he had made his home in his master's serge blouse, running up the arm of the loose garment or round the full front above the tight waistband, as fancy took him, and enjoying the warmth of his master's body. It was very interesting and amusing to see him poke his little head out between the buttons, or through a buttonhole of the blouse at intervals to ask, with glittering eye and jerky movement, for an occasional fly from his master's hand caught on the shafts or cover of the cart.

When the camp was pitched for the night, Master Lizard would employ himself by making the most inquisitive scrutiny and inspection of the immediate surroundings within and without the tent. He made himself acquainted with every stone, tuft, stump, or hole, within what he considered his domain, eventually retiring with the sun to the blanket on his master's bed, where he invariably slept.

On one occasion, during the darkness of the night, he became extremely restless, and ran about on the bed, evidently with a view to awakening his protector, who, being a sound sleeper, was not easily disturbed. Failing to attract attention, he proceeded to run rapidly backwards and forwards over the sleeper's face, making at the same time a low spitting noise, like an angry cat. By this means he at length roused his friend, who gently pushed him away several times, speaking soothingly to him in the hope of quieting the excited little animal.

But the lizard would not be soothed. Having attracted attention, he continued his inexplicable movements with redoubled energy, until at length his master, convinced that something must be amiss, got up, struck a light, and looked round the tent, the sharp eyes of the lizard following every movement with intense interest. As nothing unusual could be seen, the gold-hunter retired once more, after pooh-poohing the lizard for his fears.

Scarcely had he dropped off to sleep, when he was again disturbed, and, losing patience at these repeated interruptions to his slumbers, he seized the lizard and threw him lightly across the tent. In this involuntary flight the little creature unfortunately struck the tent-pole with considerable force, and half of his tail was broken off--a matter of no very great importance to a lizard, perhaps, but still a discouraging reward for a well-meant warning. Notwithstanding this the little reptile returned to the bed, keeping close to his master, but he continued to be very restless and excited for the remainder of the night.