Roof and Meadow | Page 5

Three days later the piece of rock and the stones were piled
about the butt of the tree and covered with fresh earth, while the hole
ran in out of sight, with the woodchuck, apparently, at the bottom of it.
I had tried shutting him out, now I would try shutting him in. It was
cruel--it would have been to anything but a woodchuck; I was ashamed
of myself for doing it, and went back the following day, really hoping
to find the burrow open.
Never again would I worry over an imprisoned woodchuck; but then I
should never again try to destroy a woodchuck by walling up his hole,
any more than Br'er Fox would try to punish the rabbit by slinging him
a second time into the brier-patch.
The burrow was wide open. I had stuffed and rammed the rocks into it,
and buried deep in its mouth the body of another woodchuck that my
neighbor's dog had killed. All was cleared away. The deceased relative
was gone--where and how I know not; the stones were scattered on the
farther side of the tree, and the passage neatly swept of all loose sand

and pebbles.
Clearly the woodchuck had come to stay. I meant that he should move.
I could get him into a steel trap, for his wits are not abiding; they come
only on occasion. Woodchuck lives too much in the ground and too
constantly beside his own door to grow very wise. He can always be
trapped. So can any one's enemy. You can always murder. But no
gentleman strikes from behind. I hate the steel trap. I have set my last
one. They would be bitter peaches on that tree if they cost the
woodchuck what I have seen more than one woodchuck suffer in the
horrible jaws of such a trap.
But is it not perfectly legitimate and gentlemanly to shoot such a
woodchuck to save one's peaches? Certainly. So I got the gun and
waited--and waited--and waited. Did you ever wait with a gun until a
woodchuck came out of his hole? I never did. A woodchuck has just
sense enough to go into his hole--and stay in.
There were too many woodchucks about and my days were too
precious for me to spend any considerable part of my summer watching
with a gun for this one. Besides, I have been known to fire and miss a
woodchuck, anyway.
So I gave up the gun. It was while thinking what I could do next that I
came down the row of young peach-trees and spied the woodchuck out
in the orchard, fifty yards away from his hole. He spied me at the same
instant, and rose upon his haunches.
At last we were face to face. The time had come. It would be a fight to
the finish; and a fair fight, too, for all that I had about me in the way of
weapons was a pair of heavy, knee-high hunting-boots, that I had put
on against the dew of the early morning. All my thought and energy, all
my hope, centered immediately in those boots.
The woodchuck kept his thoughts in his head. Into his heels he put
what speed he had; and little as that was, it counted, pieced out with the
head-work.

Back in my college days I ran a two-mile race--the greatest race of the
day, the judges said--and just at the tape lost two gold medals and the
glory of a new intercollegiate record because I didn't use my head. Two
of us out of twenty finished, and we finished together, the other fellow
twisting and falling forward, breaking the string with his side, while I,
pace for pace with him--didn't think.
For a moment the woodchuck and I stood motionless, he studying the
situation. I was at the very mouth of his burrow. It was coming to sure
death for him to attempt to get in. Yet it was sure death if he did not get
in, for I should run him down.
Had you been that woodchuck, gentle reader, I wonder if you would
have taken account of the thick-strewn stones behind you, the dense
tangle of dewberry-vines off on your left, the heavy boots of your
enemy and his unthinking rage?
I was vastly mistaken in that woodchuck. A blanker, flabbier face never
looked into mine. Only the sudden appearance of death could have
brought the trace of intelligence across it that I caught as the creature
dropped on all fours and began to wabble straight away from me over
the area of rough, loose stones.
With a jump and a yell I was after him, making five yards to his one.
He tumbled along the best he could, and, to my great surprise, directly