"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 n.o.bodee 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 c.o.o.n'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 circ.u.mference--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 gra.s.s-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 gra.s.s 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 b.u.t.tons 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 n.o.ble heads, the gra.s.ses 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.

CHAPTER III

RACc.o.o.n JUNIOR

"Scout or no scout, you are not going to boss me!"

Thus Starrie Chase broke the breathless silence that reigned for half a minute in the woods, following upon Nixon's declaration that he was a boy scout, bound by the scout law to protect the weak among human beings and animals.

For the s.p.a.ce of that half-minute the tormenting stick had ceased to probe the hole. The wretched chipmunk, cowering in the farthest corner of its once neat retreat, had a respite.

But Leon--who was not inherently cruel so much as thoughtlessly teasing and the victim of a destructive habit of mind, now felt that should he yield a point to this fifteen-year-old lad from a distant city, the leadership which he so prized, among the boys of Exmouth, would be endangered. He was the recognized head of a certain youthful male gang, of which Colin and Coombsie--though the latter occasionally deplored his methods--were leading representatives.