The Red Chipmunk Mystery (4 page)

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Djuna said.

“They move in long, wave-like leaps,” the gamekeeper said, “hardly touching the ground, when they’re going home. And they always put the burrow openings under the edge of a stone, or under a stump or tree root.”

“Gee!” Djuna said with real interest. “I never knew they were so clever. Do you know just how they build their homes?”

“Well, I know quite a lot about them,” the gamekeeper said, “although I’m a little too big to get into one.” Djuna snickered and waited for him to go on. “They may start to dig the first hole right out in the open. After they’re down in the ground a little way they make passages in several different directions with rooms of different sizes, up to a foot in length, placed here and there. After they’ve dug for a long time the tunnel has at least two other entrances besides the first one. Then they close up the first one and only the hidden entrances are left. The tunnels are about two inches in width, several yards long, and from a foot to three or four feet below the surface, so they won’t freeze in the winter time.”

“Do they hiber—hiber—sleep all winter, like woodchucks?” Djuna asked.

“Hibernate?” the gamekeeper said and laughed. “Sleep
is
an easier word to say. Yes. This month and next month and during October they look as though they had the mumps, and a bad case at that, every time they come home with acorns and hickory nuts and sweet beechnuts. They put the stuff away in their underground store-rooms and just before they go to sleep in the autumn they have a good feast for supper. But they leave most of it for a good big, fat breakfast in the spring.” The gamekeeper patted Champ on the head again and stood up. “Well, I’ve got to be getting along,” he said.

“I wonder if you’d tell me just one more thing,” Djuna said thoughtfully.

“I’ll try.”

“How do the weasels get them,” Djuna asked, “if they have two openings to their homes?”

“A weasel is small enough so that it can follow them right into their home,” the gamekeeper said. “The only chance of escape for the chipmunk is for it to plug up the tunnel with dirt after it gets inside. Then it can escape from the other entrance.”

“Oh, I see,” Djuna said. “Thank you very much, sir. I guess I won’t have to worry very much about Champ catching a chipmunk.”

“I should say not,” the keeper said. “The only thing you have to worry about is that a couple of chipmunks might catch Champ. But I guess you won’t have to worry about that either because they’re too busy admiring themselves. … Well, good-bye, and good luck to you.”

“Good-bye,” Djuna said. “Good-bye, sir, and good luck to you.”

Djuna watched the big man climb over a stone wall and glide through the bushes and between the trees almost noiselessly. He looked back down the road for an instant, when he thought he heard an automobile coming from the direction of Thompsonville. When he looked forward again the man had disappeared.

Djuna stood up, and when he did he had to admit even to himself that he was getting a little tired.

Champ opened one eye to watch him and then wearily closed it again as Djuna snapped the leash on his collar. He pretended to be sound asleep when Djuna pulled on his leash. “Hey, come on!” Djuna said. “You wouldn’t be so tired if you hadn’t chased that cat all over Thompsonville.”

When Champ heard that he knew there wasn’t any use in trying to pretend any longer. He had thought that Djuna had forgotten about the cat. He got to his feet with as much dignity as he could and they started to trudge down the road again.

A moment later they both stopped as the unmistakable roar of a car engine reached them. Djuna pulled Champ over to the edge of the road to wait for the car to come into sight. When it came careering around a corner about a quarter of a mile away Djuna put his hand as far above his head as he could reach and began motioning with his thumb in the direction of Five-Mile Bridge.

But neither of the men in the front seat of the approaching car paid any attention to Djuna and Champ, as they came swaying down the uneven road. Djuna stood his ground, motioning frantically. Just before the car reached them it lurched, and for one terrifying instant Djuna thought it was going to hit them before he could yank Champ out of danger. They both fell backwards and sat down in the shallow brook that edged the road. But even as he was falling Djuna got a quick glance at the pasty faces of the two men in the car as they went by without even looking at him.

“
Jiminy crimps!
” said Djuna as he stared after the car with wide eyes. “What’s the
matter
with them!” Champ scrambled back to his feet as fast as he could, and when he found that his leash had fallen out of Djuna’s hand he went racing down the road as fast as his little black legs would carry him to bark dire threats after the speeding black car.

“Hey, for Pete’s sake, come back here!” Djuna shouted as he pulled himself out of the brook and surveyed his dripping clothes ruefully.

It was half-past one when Djuna and Champ came wearily over the brow of a hill and gazed down on a cluster of houses grouped around one end of a covered bridge. The sun had dried Djuna’s clothes very nicely but they were both pretty hot and more than a little hungry. The houses were the first ones they had seen since the macadam road had ended. For the past mile they had been walking in deep dust along a country road, and the sight of the sparkling narrow river below them and the cool-looking houses along its banks made them feel better, anyway. The only car that had passed them was the one that had caused them to fall in the brook, and Djuna was beginning to wonder if they would have to walk all the way to Riverton.

As they went slowly down the hill Djuna watched the swift water tumbling over the rocks in the rapids above the bridge and wondered if there were a pool somewhere close by where he could get a cool swim. At the bottom, among the half-dozen houses, Djuna saw a tiny little store that had the words
GENERAL MERCHANDISE
lettered on the window. He wondered why such a small store should have such a large sign but he didn’t say anything about it when he got inside. He left Champ tied to the railing outside because he knew some shopkeepers objected to having dogs inside their shops. A bell rang in a back room when he opened the door, and a moment later a little old man who just fitted behind the counter came to peer at him over his glasses.

“Sumpin’ you wanted?” he asked in a high, creaking voice.

“Yes, sir,” Djuna said. “I’d like to get a box of water biscuits if you have some.”

The man went down to the end of the counter and took a box of biscuits off a shelf and brought them back and put them down in front of Djuna. “How much are they, please?” Djuna asked as he put his hand in his pocket.

“Six cents,” the man creaked. Djuna gulped, jingled the pennies in his hand and wished there were some way he could stretch five pennies into six. He had counted the pennies at least a dozen times and he hadn’t been able to find any way.

“You don’t have some that are a little cheaper, do you?” he asked. “I hadn’t expected to pay quite that much.”

“Only ones I have,” the man snapped.

“Well, maybe you have an open package with a couple gone that I could have for five,” Djuna suggested unhappily. The man peered more closely at him and seemed to be thinking it over.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “I’m going to have a plate of soup in a few minutes. I’ll take a couple out to eat with my soup an’ you can have the rest for five.” When he said he was going to have a plate of soup in a couple of minutes it was almost more than Djuna could stand, because he could smell it.

“Thank you very much,” Djuna said and watched the man open the package. “What’s the name of this town?” he asked.

“Five-Mile Bridge.”

“Oh, then that stream out there must be the Herring River that empties into the London River up near Farmholme,” Djuna said.

“That’s right,” the man said and Djuna, watching him, saw that he had taken four biscuits out of the box before he closed it up again. “You a stranger around here?”

“Yes, sir,” Djuna said. “I’m on my way to Riverton, across the river from Farmholme.” He remembered how tired Champ was and mustered up courage to add, “Do you s’pose there is a barn around here where my dog and I could sleep?”

The old man looked at him suspiciously and said, “What are you … a vagrant?”

“Why, no, I don’t think so,” Djuna stammered. “I’m not sure what a va—va—what that is.”

“It’s a tramp,” the man snapped angrily, “an’ we don’t put up with ’em around here. Burnin’ down barns an’ stealin’ chickens, an’—–”

“Oh, excuse me, sir,” Djuna said hastily and put his five pennies on the counter and took the box of biscuits before the old man might change his mind. He untied Champ as fast as he could and they hurried down the road. When they had gone about a hundred yards he started to open the box of biscuits to give one to Champ, but when he looked around the old man was standing on the porch of the tiny store watching him. He closed the box up again and decided he had better wait until they were out of sight.

After they were around the first bend in the road they sat down in the shade of a maple tree and each had a dry biscuit. Djuna had a little trouble swallowing his, because they were so dry, but Champ didn’t seem to mind in the least. He gobbled his before Djuna was half through and nudged Djuna to ask for another one.

“Half now and half for supper,” Djuna warned him. “If we don’t get a lift before long we may have nothing more to eat before we get to Edenboro.”

When they had eaten half of the biscuits and Champ had made sure that he couldn’t get any more, he stretched his hind legs out behind him, put his chin on his front ones and went to sleep. Djuna, with his back against the maple tree, had no intention of going to sleep; but after a few minutes his eyelids began to droop and the next thing he knew he was dreaming about golden brown roast chicken with stuffing and big dishes of ice-cream with fat, red strawberries on them. The only trouble was that the chicken and ice-cream were on a wagon with four wheels, with a man pushing it. The faster Djuna ran, the faster the man ran away from him. Finally, Djuna made a flying leap to catch a drumstick that had bounced into the air from the wagon. Just as he got it Champ barked at him as though to say, “Hey! What’s the matter with you, anyway?” Djuna opened his eyes and found that he was pulling on one of Champ’s hind legs!

He sat up very quickly and saw that the sun was hovering closer and closer to the tops of the foothills to the west. He rose, while Champ stretched, and said, “We’ve got to get busy and find a place to sleep.” They started off down the dusty country road again and neither of them said very much.

They had gone over two miles when Champ barked to call Djuna’s attention to a sprawling old house on the top of a hill about a third of a mile away. As Djuna looked up at it the sun scudded behind a cloud and the turret-like towers at the front of the old house seemed to be scowling down on the valley below.

“Jeepers!” Djuna said as he gazed up at the ugly old house, “they must have
some
place for us to sleep.”

They went on down the road for a short distance and then turned up the road that went up the hill. They were both puffing when they had nearly reached the top of the hill, where the road turned left to run alongside a high stone wall that completely surrounded the place. Djuna had almost decided to turn and go back when the road widened and swung under an iron gateway with the word hilltop on it.

The two iron gates were swung back and only a huge iron chain across the gateway barred their passage. Two rows of half-dead locust trees, whose leafless branches reached like gnarled hands into the sky, edged the weed-grown driveway. At the end the huge old house squatted like an age-old toad determined to keep its secrets. Djuna leaned against the rusty chain and stared down the driveway.

Champ looked up at him and barked and Djuna said, “I guess nobody lives here any more, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be all right for us to stay here for the night.”

Champ, taking him at his word, went under the chain and started down the driveway with Djuna following. Champ had only gone a few feet when he began to snarl, and suddenly he rushed at a clump of bushes with his teeth bared.

“Stop it, Champ!” Djuna shouted. But the alarmed shout that came from behind the bushes drowned out Djuna’s words. The bushes parted and a boy about Djuna’s age came out. His hair was the colour of newly washed carrots. Djuna stared for a moment and then he shouted, “Be quiet, Champ!”

“Hallo!” the red-headed boy said, and he leaned down and patted Champ’s head and added, “Gosh! He certainly sounded like a pack of bloodhounds before I could see him.”

“Oh, he likes to try to scare people,” Djuna said. “Do you live here?”

“No. But I used to come here when I was a kid. My grandmother, Mrs. Hill, used to live here. I live over in Riverton. My name’s Buddy Turner,” the red-headed boy volunteered.

“Gee! I live over near Riverton, too,” Djuna said. “In Edenboro. How in the world did you ever get over here?”

“Well,” Buddy said, and he looked at Djuna and hesitated for an instant before he went on: “I was at a summer camp for boys over near Thompsonville. I had a letter from my mother saying my older brother was going to be home for a couple of days and I wanted to go home to see him, because he’s been away for almost three years. So-o-o!” Buddy stopped to grin. “I decided to go home to see him.”

“Say!” Djuna said. “I bet the police are looking for you. I was on my way home on the train when Champ there started to chase a cat. I chased
him
and my train left and I lost my wallet, so I had to hitch-hike. I went to the police station to tell ’em about my wallet and while I was there somebody telephoned in and told the police to keep their eyes open for a red-headed kid. I bet it was you.”

“I bet it was, too,” Buddy said, and this time when he grinned the sun struck his face and the freckles on it made it look like a sunset. He reached in his hip pocket and pulled out a wallet and added, “
There’s
your wallet. I picked it up on the platform at Thompsonville. I didn’t dare take it to the police because I knew the camp would notify them. And I didn’t dare buy a railway ticket for the same reason. I decided to hitch-hike home because I knew if I had to I could stay here overnight. No one has lived here since my grandmother died.”