"No, he won't. Abe Selover is watching for him. That woodchuck is in the stone-heap at the corner of old Hamburger's pasture-lot."
Quib must have understood what Mart Penniman said, for he did not halt for one second till he reached the bars that led into that very field. It was more than a quarter of a mile from the potato-patch, but Quib had barked all the way—probably out of respect for the size and importance of the coming woodchuck.
Mart Penniman and Abe Selover had started their great "game" on the way home from driving their cows. They had raced him across the pasture and along the fence, into the stone-heap, and then Abe had staid to keep watch while Mart went after Julius Davis's dog. That meant also, of course, as large a crowd of boys as he could pick up in going and coming.
It was a sad thing for Julius that his mother had set him at the potato-patch, and that Quib had broken his contract with the bone.
Quib was not usually so treacherous, but he happened to be on friendly terms with every boy of that hunting-party.
They had all helped him chase woodchucks at one time or another, and he had great confidence in them, but that was nothing at all to their confidence in him.
The pasture bars did not stop a single one of the woodchuck-hunters. All the boys went over while Quib was wriggling under, through a hole he knew, and there, almost right before them was the stone-heap. It was quite a large one, and it was thickly overgrown with wild raspberry vines.
"Abe—is he there?"
"He didn't get away, did he?"
"Are you sure he is in there?"