[Illustration: “Now swim!” commanded their mother.]
CHINOOK
THE CINNAMON CUB
BY
ALLEN CHAFFEE
Author of “SITKA, The Snow Baby,” “FUZZY WUZZ,
The Little Brown Bear,” “TWINKLY EYES,
The Little Black Bear,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY
PETER DA RU
MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Copyright, 1924
By MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
Springfield, Massachusetts
All Rights Reserved
Bradley Quality Books
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOREWORD
Here are stories of the wild life of the rich woods of
Oregon.
In following the adventures of Chinook, the cinnamon bear
and his sister Snookie (western prototypes of the jolly
black bears of New England), and of the Ranger’s Boy, the
child will learn of tree mice and burrow mice, and of the
little mountain pack-rats who build tepees, of those giant
mousers, the bobcat and the California mountain lion, to say
nothing of the bat, pika, elk, and “snowshoe rabbit,” and
the ever present Douglas squirrel.
He will wander through forests of spruce and fir to the
snow-clad peaks, and back along cascading rivers, as the two
cubs learn of the world in which they live.
The Literary Review of the New York _Evening Post_ has said
of a black bear book: “The little bear will delight all
children just because he is a ball of mischief, sagacity,
awkwardness—a real bear. Allen Chaffee’s books are unusual
for vivacity, humor, and truth to the characters of the no
longer dumb beasts.”
The Publishers.
CONTENTS
I A Boy and a Bear
II The Cubs Learn to Swim
III The California Lion
IV The Home in the Squirrel’s Nest
V Mr. and Mrs. Tree Mouse
VI Mazama the Mysterious
VII Lost in the Fog
VIII Team Work
IX Rat Town
X A Live Snowball
XI The Indian Trapper
XII In the Raven’s Nest
XIII Chinook Plays the Clown
XIV A Mouse on Wings
XV The Smuggler
XVI Douglas Squirrel Has Company
XVII Wapiti
XVIII A Cougar Goes Coasting
XIX Mountain Beaver
XX The Big ’Quake
CHINOOK THE CINNAMON CUB
CHAPTER I
A BOY AND A BEAR
The golden dawn of a June day in the Oregon woods streamed in slant bars
between the tall trunks of the yellow pines, and into the rocky gulch
where Mother Brown Bear had her den.
Dewdrops gleamed like diamonds on every flower and fern and spider web
that bordered the cascading creek. Mrs. Tree Mouse peered with bright,
beady eyes as a small, roguish face peeked from the cave mouth. Then out
into the warming sunshine burst two of the most roly-poly little brown
bears that she had ever seen. For a few minutes they wrestled like two
boys, standing up on their short hind legs to pummel one another, or
galloping about in a game of tag. Their small, flat feet made prints in
the soft earth for all the world like the prints of a human child’s
foot, and their black eyes twinkled with fun. It was Chinook and his
sister Snookie, their soft fur gleaming cinnamon-brown in the sunshine.
Then the huge form of Mother Brown Bear came lumbering through the cave
mouth, and with a soft rumble deep down in her chest she bade them
follow her. She made her way lumberingly down over the crags and fallen
logs to a stump where she might breakfast on a great cluster of yellow
mushrooms. The cubs had had their milk in the cave, but they always
wanted to sample everything their mother ate, and they went scrambling
after her as fast as their short legs and fat sides would let them.
The canyon in which they had been born that spring was a wild mass of
tumbled rocks and mossy boulders where, years before, a landslide or an
earthquake might have tossed them. Just below their cave lay a tangle of
fallen tree trunks piled crisscross, and overgrown with a jungle of the
mammoth ferns that throve in that moist soil. Just now these logs were
encrusted with the brilliant-hued mushrooms that Mother Brown Bear
loved. Later there would be blueberries and wild blackberries where now
pale blossoms shone in the sunlight. In the stream to which their
cascading streamlet led were trout, and in the great river beyond were
salmon who came from the sea to lay their eggs in the gravel. On the
mountainsides about them, where the wind-swept junipers twisted like
gnomes above the rocky ledges, lived burrow mice and wood rats who would
furnish good sport when the berries failed. It was a splendid bit of
wilderness on which Mother Brown Bear had staked out her claim, and the
cubs were eager to be taken exploring.
They had nearly reached a point where the huge fallen trunks, propped
breast high to a man on their broken branches, threw long black shadows
along the ground in which the cubs could hide in case of danger, when
Mother Brown Bear sounded a note of warning deep down in her throat.
Someone was coming along the trail. With the fur bristling along the
back of her neck, she rose to her hind legs and listened, wriggling her
nose this way and that to detect what manner of creature it could be. He
was certainly a noisy animal, for the fallen branches cracked under his
feet. That meant that he was without fear. He must be large and
ferocious. But the wind blew in the wrong direction to carry the message
to her nose.
Chinook also rose to his hind legs ready to fight, and he too peered
this way and that, sniffing and cocking his ears in his effort to see
what it was. Snookie, though she reared up in a pose that looked like
fight, preferred to take her stand behind her mother, and while Chinook
genuinely hoped there would be a good scrap, Snookie privately wished
there wouldn’t. For Snookie was the smaller cub, and in her bouts with
her brother she always seemed to get the worst of it.
“Whoof! Who is it?” asked Mother Brown Bear under her breath. “_Whoof!_”
echoed her small son aggressively, and “Whoof!” said Snookie in a wee,
small voice.
Then along the trail came someone attired in blue overalls and a wide
straw hat, who walked on his hind legs like a bear and carried a fishy
smelling rod over his shoulder. It was the Ranger’s Boy, who meant to
surprise his mother with a string of trout for breakfast.
“Grr!” warned Mother Brown Bear. “Don’t come any nearer, or I’ll do
something dreadful to you.” For she was always afraid that harm would
come to her wee, fuzzy children. The Ranger was in charge of these
woods, and he and the man cub had never harmed her, though of course,
she told herself, she was large enough to have fought off a whole family
of rangers. But with her babies it was different. They had come into the
world soft and helpless, and it would still be many moons before they
could look out for themselves. “G-r-r!” she warned the Boy again. But he
had stopped in his tracks to stare at them.
With Chinook it was far different. He felt so fine and fit that he just
itched for a fight with someone beside Snookie, and he growled a “Come
on!” deep down in his furry chest.
“Hello, there!” exclaimed the Boy softly from the far side of the
windfall, his eyes laughing as he saw the two new little bears standing
there ready for fight. He knew better than to come any nearer their
mother, but he also knew there was no need to run away, so long as he
kept his distance. “You’re a funny rascal,” he told Chinook. “A regular
scrapper, aren’t you? I wouldn’t mind making friends with you some day,”
and his voice was reassuring. Chinook understood the Boy’s tone, and his
quiet attitude, better than the words.
“I’ll fight you any time,” growled Chinook, and he struck an even
saucier pose, his little black eyes twinkling roguishly.