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 space 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.
“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 quickness as if he were photographing on their retina the figure of that new species of animal, the scout of the U.S.A. “I’ve heard of your kind before; you know a lot of things that nobody else knows—or wants to know either!”
The last words were to the accompaniment of the goading stick which began to move vehemently to and fro in the hole again. That neat little hole, which had been one of the humbler miracles of the woods, now gaped as an ugly, torn fissure beneath its roof of rock.
Before it was a defacing débris of torn grass and earth in which Blink scratched impatiently, whining over the delay in the chip-squirrel’s exit.
“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 the chipmunk’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—older than you are!” Leon was now a red-eyed savage.