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"How dare he come here!" he cried, "and calling me in that familiar way too! I'll let him know who is master in this burrow!" The second Hackee came joyously down the passage, heedless of offence. "Hallo," he cried, looking at Phil, "whom have we got here? That Nature child? To be sure. But Hackee the First interrupted him. "You have no business to come down here uninvited," he said, fiercely.
While Phil imagined they were only gathering their breath for another attack, they had both calmed down. "I've just been showing him round," said Hackee the First, twisting his tail in Phil's direction. "Seems a nice boy," said Hackee the Second, feeling Phil's nose anxiously.
"I thought he wouldn't. He doesn't keep such stores as we do. Come with me." His movements were so rapid that Phil almost lost sight of him before he gained the stump of the hollow tree which was, so to speak, his hall. Out of this hollow led several tunnels, down one of which the Hackee disappeared.
Phil's eyes were scarcely yet used to "seeing in the dark," but he saw at length that they were standing before a heap of nuts, with grain in plenty, and many acorns; the Hackee had more than provided for his wants. "We stay in these cosy burrows all through the winter snows," he said, "and only come out when the warm sunshine tells us that spring is here.
"Those young ones of mine ought to have been up and out more than an hour ago, lazy little creatures!" chuckled the Hackee. "I tell their mother that if they are not more independent before the new brood comes, she will have her hands full." Diving into another gallery, the Hackee came to a full stop.
It was the Hackee, or Chipping Squirrel, and many a time Phil had seen him running in and out among the bushes; for the Hackee lives on the ground. Now that he saw him closely, Phil noticed the beauty of the seven stripes that ran across his brownish-grey and orange fur.
But Phil preferred to crack his own nuts; his teeth, though the Beavers scorned them, were strong enough for this, he thought. They tasted like beaked hazel nuts, but where were the beaks? The Hackee laughed at his bewilderment. We bite them off tidily before we push them into our mouths with our fore-paws, as you will see if you watch us one day.
No less than five kinds of squirrels had been caught and caged. These were the grey, black, and red or fox varieties of the tree squirrel, and two species of ground squirrel one the common hackee, or chipping squirrel; while the other was a new species, which we had caught on the desert plain above, among the roots of the artemisia plant.
It always lives in large villages, and Audubon, who opened some dwellings of the hackee in the winter, found several individuals in the same apartment; they must have stored it with common efforts. The large tribe, of the marmots, which includes the three large genuses of Arctomys, Cynomys, and Spermophilus, is still more sociable and still more intelligent.
"I thought I might have bitten it off just now when you got in my way," he said to Phil with much relief, finding it was still there. "Never come between fighting creatures, boy it's a thankless task." Phil was quite sure that if he had been his usual size the Hackee would not have chucked him under the chin in that off-hand way, but he did not mind a bit.
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