The Wishing-Stone Stories

by Thornton W. Burgess

Tommy didn’t quite see through the plan, but he did as he was told. As he drew near Mrs. Chuck, she did just as Reddy said she would—sent her youngsters down underground. Then, as he drew nearer, she followed them.

Tommy kept on right up to her doorstep. The smell of those chucks was maddening. He was tempted to try to dig them out, only somehow he just felt that it would be of no use. He was still half minded to try, however, when Reddy came trotting up and flattened himself in the long grass behind the trunk of the tree.

Tommy knew then that it was time for him to do the rest of his part. He turned his back on the woodchuck home, and trotted off across the meadow. He hadn’t gone far when, looking back, he saw Mrs. Chuck sitting up very straight and still on her doorstep, watching him. Not once did she take her eyes from him. Tommy kept on, and presently began to hunt for meadow-mice. But he kept one eye on Mrs. Chuck, and presently he saw her look this way and that, as if to make sure that all was well. Then she must have told her children that they could come out to play once more, for out they came. By this time Tommy was so excited that he almost forgot that he was supposed to be hunting mice.

Presently he saw a red flash from behind the old tree. There was a frightened scurry of little chucks and old Mrs. Chuck dove into her hole. Reddy barked joyfully. Tommy hurried to join him. Reddy had been quite as successful as he had boasted he would be, and was grinning.

“Didn’t I tell you we’d have chuck for dinner?” said Reddy. “What one can’t do, two can.”

After that, Tommy and Reddy often hunted together, and Reddy taught Tommy many things. So the summer passed with plenty to eat and nothing to worry about. Not once had he known that terrible fear—the fear of being hunted—which is so large a part of the lives of Danny Meadow Mouse and Peter Rabbit, and even Chatterer the Red Squirrel.

Instead of being afraid, he was feared. He was the hunter instead of the hunted. Day and night, for he was abroad at night quite as much as by day, he went where he pleased and did as he pleased, and was happy, for there was nothing to worry him. Having plenty to eat, he kept away from the homes of men. He had been warned that there was danger there.

At last the weather grew cold. There were no more grasshoppers. There were no more foolish young rabbits or woodchucks or grouse, for those who had escaped had grown up and were wise and smart. Every day it grew harder to get enough to eat. The cold weather made him hungrier than ever, and now he had little time for sun-naps or idle play. He had to spend most of the time that he was awake hunting. He never knew where the next meal was coming from, as did thrifty Striped Chipmunk, and Happy Jack Squirrel, and Danny Meadow Mouse.

It was hunt, hunt, hunt, and a meal only when his wits were sharper than the wits of those he hunted. He knew now what real hunger was. He knew what it was most of the time. So when, late one afternoon, he surprised a fat hen who had strayed away from the flock behind the barn of a lonely farm, he thought that never had he tasted anything more delicious. Thereafter he visited chicken-houses and stole many fat pullets. To him they were no more than the wild birds he hunted, only more foolish and so easily caught.

And then one morning after a successful raid on a poultry-house, he heard for the first time the voices of dogs on his trail. He, the hunter, was being hunted. At first it didn’t bother him at all. He would run away and leave them far behind. So he ran, and when their voices were faint and far away, he lay down to rest.