“Now we all got to go straight till we find something, and meet here again when that streak of sunlight gets around in the teepee to that pole.”

As the sunstreak, which was their Indian clock, travelled just about one pole for two hours, this gave about four hours for adventures.

Sam and Yan had been back some minutes, and now Guy, having recovered his composure, bothered not to wipe the stolen sugar from his lips, but broke out eagerly: 

“Say, fellers, I bet I’m the bully boy.  I bet you I—­”

“Silence!” roared Woodpecker.  “You come last.”

“All right; I don’t care.  I bet I win over all of you.  I bet a million dollars I do.”

“Go ahead, Chief Woodpecker-settin’-on-the-edge.”

So Sam began: 

“I pulls on my boots” [he went barefooted half the time].  “Oh, I tell you I know when to wear my boots—­an’ I set out following my straw line straight out.  I don’t take no back track. I’m not scared of the front trail,” and he turned his little slit eyes sadly on Guy, “and I kep’ right on, and when I came to the dry bed of the creek it didn’t turn me; no, not a dozen rods; and I kept right till I came to a Wasp’s nest, and I turned and went round that coz it’s cruel to go blundering into a nest of a lot of poor innocent little Wasps—­and I kep’ on, till I heard a low growl, and I looked up and didn’t see a thing.  Then the growling got louder, and I seen it was a hungry Chipmunk roaring at me and jest getting ready to spring.  Then when I got out my bonearrer he says to me, he says, as bold as brass ‘Is your name Woodpecker?’ Now that scared me, and so I told a lie—­my very first.  I says, says I.  ‘No,’ says I.  ‘I’m Hawkeye.’  Well, you should ’a seen him.  He just turned pale; every stripe on his back faded when I said that name, and he made for a hollow log and got in.  Now I was mad, and tried to get him out, but when I’d run to one end he’d run to the other, so we ran up and down till I had a deep-worn trail alongside the log, an’ he had a deep-worn trail inside the log, an’ I was figgerin’ to have him wear it right through at the bottom so the log’d open, but all of a sudden I says, ’I know what to do for you.’  I took off my boot and stuffs the leg into one end of the log.  Then I rattles a stick at the other end and I heard him run into the boot.  Then I squeezes in the leg and ties a string around it an’ brings him home, me wearing one boot and the Chipmunk the other, and there he is in it now,” and Sam curled up his free bunch of toes in graphic comment and added:  “Humph!  I s’pose you fellers thought I didn’t know what I was about when I drawed on my long boots this morning.”

“Well, I just want to see that Chipmunk an’ maybe I’ll believe you.”

“In there hunting for a loose patch,” and Sam held up the boot.

“Let’s turn him out,” suggested the Second Chief.

So the string was cut and the Chipmunk scrambled out and away to a safer refuge.