The lumberman peered upward critically.
“Jiminy, ef that ain’t a likely-lookin’ squir’l tree!” he answered.
“Squirrel tree!” echoed the boy. “As if every tree wasn’t a squirrel tree, wherever there’s a squirrel ’round!”
“Aye, but there’s squir’ls an’ squir’ls! You’ll see!” retorted the woodsman; and, swinging his axe, he brought the back of it down upon the trunk in three or four sounding strokes.
Straightway a dark little shape, appearing in the hole beneath the branch, launched itself into the air. It looked like a leap of desperation, as there was no tree within reach of any ordinary quadruped’s leap. Yet the daring little shape was plainly that of a quadruped, not of a bird. It was followed instantly, in lightning succession, by six or seven others equally daring; and all went sailing away, in different directions, across the mysteriously shadowed air. They sailed on long downward slants, with legs spread wide apart and connected on each side by furry membrane, so that they looked like some kind of grotesque, oblong toy umbrellas broken loose in a breeze. The boy stared after them with an exclamation of wonder and delight, trying to keep his eye on them all at once; but in a moment they had disappeared, gaining the shelter of other trees, and effacing themselves from view as if by enchantment.
All but one. As the flying squirrels came aeroplaning from their rudely assaulted citadel, the woodsman had dropped his axe, snatched up a bit of stick about a foot long, and hurled it after one of the gliding figures. Your woodsman is an unerring shot with the hurled axe, the pike-pole, or the billet of wood; but up there, in the deceitful transparency of shadow and glimmer, the little aeronaut was sailing with an elusive speed. The whirling missile almost missed its mark. It just caught the outspread furry tail, which was serving as a rudder and balancer to that adventurous flight. The tail, tough and flexible, gave way and took no injury. But the tiny aeroplanist, his balance rudely destroyed, plunged headlong to the ground.
“Oh-h-h!” exclaimed the boy, with long-drawn commiseration. But, his curiosity too strong for his pity, he raced forward with the woodsman to capture and examine their prize.
There was no prize to be found. Both had seen the flier come to earth. Both had marked, with expert eyes, the exact point of his fall. But there was nothing to be seen but a softly disappearing dent in the cushion of moss.
“Well, I’ll be—jiggered!” said the woodsman, fingering his stubbled chin and scrutinizing the nearest tree-trunks with narrowed eyes.
“Serves us right!” said the boy. “I’m glad he’s got away. I thought you’d killed him, Jabe!”