“Course he does!”
“Maybe he’s gone to sleep for the winter, though.”
“Sh! Shut up! He won’t come out as long as you’re talkin’!”
You subsided, and with cheekbone glued to the gunstock, and eyes ferociously glaring along the barrel, at the hole beyond, you expectantly bided the first rash movement on the part of Mr. ’Chuck.
In the meantime, what of that woodchuck? Lured afield by the pleasant weather, from his predatory tour he was leisurely returning—halting now to nuzzle amidst the stubble, now to scratch—for a mid-day nap within his subterrene retreat. He waddled into a dried ditch and out again, slipped through his private wicket in a boundary hedge, and gradually working up the slope was approaching his home, on the side opposite to your rail fence, when Hen, suddenly espying him, was astounded into the yelp: “There he is! Shoot! Shoot!”
Startled into immobility, the woodchuck stared about with quivering whiskers and bulging eyes. Boys!
As in a dream, you vaguely saw a squat, furry shape, a cleft, vibrant nose and two broad, yellow teeth; and with the remembrance that your gun was pointing in the general direction of this combination, you desperately tugged at the trigger. Your sole thought was to “shoot, shoot,” the quicker the better. The report was the thing.
But no report came. The trigger would not budge.
“Darn it! You old fool, you! You ain’t got it cocked!” shrieked Hen, grabbing at your weapon.
With a whistle of decision the woodchuck bolted for sanctuary. He clawed, he slid, he sprawled, all at once. Hen frenziedly delivered both rocks. The ’chuck, at the mouth of his burrow, in a second more would have swung on the pivot of his four short, stout little legs and have whisked in like a brindled streak, when, having succeeded in cocking your piece, you blindly let go—bang!