Part 14

She was afraid he would get a little too frisky, and jump down to the ground and get lost; but, dear me! she needn’t have worried about that. Jump down? He wouldn’t have left his lady that day among those rustling cornstalks, not for the whole world. He just climbed about for fun and exercise; but when the corn-leaves rustled, how scared he was! He scrambled as fast as he could down the lady’s arm and up into her coat-sleeve; and when she got him out, back he went as soon as a corn-blade rustled near them.

“You must be hungry,” she said, when at last she had him cuddled up in her hand. So she picked an ear of corn, and they sat down and pulled off the husk and all the long soft silk that was inside, and Little Mitchell had some of the kernels.

He took them in his little hands, one at a time, and looked up at his lady out of his bright eyes with such a wise air! He turned the kernel of corn over, and sniffed at it until he found the germ that lies in one side,—the little thing that sprouts when you plant the corn,—and he pulled this out with his sharp front teeth, and ate it very fast; but the rest of the kernel he threw away. Not a bit of it would he eat but that! You see the germ was soft and sweet, and pleased the little chap.

If all squirrels eat corn in that way, it is no wonder the farmers worry when they make a raid on the cornfields in the early autumn!

When Mitchell had eaten all the tender corn-germs he wanted, they went on; and the very next blade that rustled near them—pop!—he was over the lady’s shoulder, up under her jacket, and in the top of her sleeve. She had to stop and take off her jacket and extract him. He kept on at this trick until finally she put him in his box and fastened the cover down,—which, after all, was just what he wanted, for he was tired, and he curled right up and went fast asleep and gave her no more trouble.

Away they went, down the mountain, across the valley, up another mountain, and down into the Watauga valley, where the river is larger and where the chinkapins grow.

It is the same valley where stands the house on the strawberry slope,—only the Watauga River is not a tinkling trout-brook down here, but quite a proud stream, though it still has trout in its pools.

Of course, when they got among the chinkapins they stopped to gather some,—for these were ripe, if the strawberries were not, and there were plenty of them too.

What are chinkapins?

Why, don’t you know? All the children who live in the South know what chinkapins are,—at least, all who live where they grow know.

They are not berries! No, guess again.

Yes, nuts; little shiny brown nuts, like baby chestnuts. The mountain children often string them for beads, they are so pretty. They grow in little burrs, like tiny chestnut burrs; but there is only one nut in a burr instead of two or three, and they grow on bushes or little trees, with leaves like chestnut leaves, only smaller.

No, chinkapins are not shaped quite like chestnuts; they are not flat anywhere. Chestnuts have to be flat on at least one side, because they grow three in a burr, and are squeezed against each other, so the middle chestnut is flat on both sides, but the others are flat only on the inside and rounded on the outside. But the chinkapin is rounded on both sides, because it is alone in its burr, with nothing to flatten against. Oh no, it is not round all over like a marble,—it is like a tiny chestnut, only it is rounded instead of being flattened on its sides.

I wish I could give you a handful of shiny chinkapins, then you would know just how they look.

Children who do not live near chinkapins need to know about them because of “Uncle Remus.” When you read how “Brer Rabbit” sat on a chinkapin log, combing his hair with a chip, you ought to know what a chinkapin log is like.

Chinkapins being so small, and only one in a burr, you can imagine they are not easy to gather until Jack Frost comes along with his sharp fingers and splits open all the tiny burrs on all the little chinkapin trees. Then you have only to shake the trees or beat the bushes, and patter! patter! patter!—out will come jumping the pretty brown chinkapins, as thick as rain-drops in a summer shower, and all you have to do is to get down and pick them up.

Mitchell liked the little nuts, they are so sweet, and he could crack them for himself because the shells are soft, like chestnut shells. So he sat on the lady’s knee in the chinkapin patch, and cracked chinkapins, and when he had succeeded in getting a shell off he would give it a toss that sent it far away.

The lady ate chinkapins too, they were so sweet and good; but Little Mitchell did not quite like that,—he seemed to think she was eating his nuts, and once in a while he would reach up and snatch away her chinkapin, and scold and chatter at her. That was because he was hungry, and thought he wanted them all; but when he had had enough he let her eat what she wanted too.

Presently along came Phyllis Amaranth, Lucy Ansonia Belindy, and Mollie May. Of course they came with their pretty feet bare, and none of them were more than seven years old.

They just smiled and smiled, and clasped their hands tight together, when they saw Little Mitchell. But he kept one eye on them, and when they came too near he ran and hid in the folds of his lady’s dress. He didn’t care for little girls, and he was terribly afraid they might touch him.

So Phyllis Amaranth, Lucy Ansonia Belindy, and Mollie May ran to the chinkapin bushes and shook them, and picked up the chinkapins very fast, and gave them to Mitchell’s lady for him, so that she soon had all she could carry without the trouble of picking any up. That is the way with these mountain people; they will give you something if they possibly can.

Then they all said good-bye to each other, and Little Mitchell and the lady went on. They crossed the Watauga valley, which is easy enough, it is so narrow; then they crossed the Watauga River, which is hard enough, the bridge is so narrow, and so high up in the air, and wobbles so you are afraid of your life to go over it,—but you have to, or else stay on the wrong side of the river, which, you understand, is quite a river here, very swift and rather deep.

But they got safely over the wobbly bridge, and went on through the forest, only stopping a few minutes to look at a birch-still.

A birch-still is a place where they distil birch-oil out of birch-bark. Do you know how it is done? Well, you ought to, for you eat so much birch-oil. You don’t think you ever ate any birch-oil in your life? Oh, but I know you have eaten it. I am perfectly sure you sometimes eat wintergreen candy and other things flavored with wintergreen. That is, you call it wintergreen; but it is not that at all, it is birch. You see the flavor is the same, and it is much easier to get it out of the birch.

The way they do is to strip the bark from the young black-birch trees,—which of course kills the trees, and that is too bad; but they do it, and chop the bark into little pieces, which they put into a long wooden box with a zinc bottom.

When the box is full of bark, they put in some water, and fit on the cover, and plaster all the cracks with clay until the box is air-tight,—all but a little round hole in the cover that has a lead pipe fitted into it.

Then they build a fire in the fire-hole under the box, and soon the steam from the boiling water escapes through the pipe that is fitted in the cover. The pipe is coiled up in a barrel of water when it leaves the box, and is kept cool by a little stream of water which runs into the barrel all the time.

Of course the steam that escapes through the pipe is turned back to water when it becomes cooled, passing through the coil in the barrel, and finally runs out of the other end of the pipe into a bottle. There is birch-oil in the steam that goes over, and the oil runs into the bottle with the water, but being heavier than water it sinks to the bottom of the bottle. When the bottle is full, the water runs out at the top; but when it gets full of oil, they do not allow that to run over,—they take away the bottle of oil and put an empty bottle in its place.