CHAPTER XIV
THE CACHE
CHUCK and Chipper were mighty busy chipmunks, filling their cache,—to use the Western term that rhymes with to-day, meaning a hiding-place for food supplies.
The season was short, here in the high Sierras. Ordinarily it snowed as late as May, and as early as October. By the last of August one expected frost to tint the mountain sides. Day followed perfect, sunny day, and night succeeded cool, star-strewn night without a hint of rain; but Chuck and Chipper knew that before the moon was full again, the snow would be silvering the pine trees,—promise of the fifteen-foot drifts to come.
They must have enough in their cache to live on till spring.
Chipmunks do not hibernate in the waythat bears do. They sleep a good deal, but they do not go into an all-winter sleep, and when they wake, there in their caves away under-ground where the cold cannot reach them, they must eat.
Everywhere among the brush and fallen timber and along the rock ledges they searched for food to store away for winter. Racing briskly forth each morning, as soon as the sun began to slant warmingly through the fir trees, Chuck and Chipper vied with each other to see which could harvest the most nuts. And Fuzzy-Wuzz vied with both to see if he could catch them.
Always they were too alert for him. Their black, beady eyes would spy him out, no matter how softly he came padding along, and then they would climb into the top of some bush he could not climb and scold him and mock at him with their bird-like chirp.
Wild gooseberries were one of their favorite foods,—as they were the little bear’s, for they could bite off the prickers, and Fuzzy didn’t mind them.
They also collected thistle seed in theircheek pockets, to say nothing of thimble berries, dogwood seed, and other seeds and berries. But where Fuzzy envied them was when it came to pine nuts. Every pine cone, from the yellow pine that grew so tall, to the dwarfed nut pine that the Indians love, is full of seeds. But the cones are also covered with sharp thorns, and so long as the cones were green, the nuts were safe from the little bear. He would have to wait till they turned brown and opened of their own accord.
But Chuck and Chipper had no such trouble. They could nibble the cone apart and get at the sweet kernels as easily as anything. Fuzzy used to watch them enviously. Then an idea came to him. He watched narrowly as the chipmunks filled their cheeks and scuttled away to their under-ground store-rooms.
Sniffing and snuffing this way and that, along the way they had gone, his wonderful nose finally told him just where their cache was located. Digging down about three feet, he scratched the roof off it while Chipperchucked wrathfully and Chuck chippered in his fright.
What a find for the bear cub! Fully a peck of the delicious pine nuts lay before him,—and how he did feast! How his little black eyes twinkled at thought that he had outwitted the impudent things!
But for Chuck and Chipper it meant that half their harvest work was gone for nothing, and winter now too near for them to gather more. Then Chipper had a big idea.