him through his fur, so long as he kept his face protected. He clung to
his hole just the same, and by and by he dug his free paw deep into the
honeycomb within and brought a great luscious chunk to his mouth.
Now that their little store was really disappearing, despite all they
could do the bees at once began setting to work to rescue some of their
treasure. Still there were enough left on guard to give Twinkly cause
for watchfulness.
He grabbed another mouthful, and gulped it down, with the bees that
still clung to it. My, how his little black eyes danced with the delight
of it!
If only that eyelid would not smart so dreadfully! It was swelling, too,
and he could hardly see out of that eye at all.
His tongue was swollen, too, on the tip end where the bee had stung him,
till it began to feel so big he feared he wouldn’t be able to close his
jaws in another minute.
But he would not give up! Not Twinkly Eyes! Not till every last smell of
that honey was gone! Now that he had risked it thus far, he reasoned, he
might as well have something to sweeten his pain.
The little Black Bear was nothing if not persistent, and persistence is
a virtue that stands one in good stead in the wilderness.
Then suddenly a most surprising thing happened.
[Illustration: [Bear]]
XIX
DOWN BUT NOT DOWNED
A great many things can happen to a bear cub that he doesn’t expect to
happen.
It was so with Twinkly Eyes. No sooner had he made up his mind to enjoy
his feast in the bee tree in spite of his stings when—zipp! Off came a
great long strip of the rotten bark! And while it disclosed even more of
the yellow comb, it also happened to be the very strip of bark to which
the little bear was clinging with his left forepaw.
Now his right paw was deep in the honey at the time, and a bear cannot
cling in the top of a pine tree with his hind legs alone. The result was
that there was a wild scrambling, then the sound of claws rattling
noisily over the bark that they could not get a grip in, and finally the
snapping of a hazel bush that stood just beneath.
Twinkly Eyes had come down like a bag of meal!
He gave one big grunt, then a series of whimpers. For even if you are a
yearling cub and your bones are padded with great heavy muscles and
thick fur, it isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world to fall
crashing out of the top of a bee tree.
Fortunately for Twinkly Eyes, he had hugged the trunk just enough, as he
descended, to break the fall. Then, too, he landed on the hazel bush,
which sprang under him in a way still further to soften his landing. But
even at that, things whirled about him for a few minutes there.
Then he arose, a bit groaningly, it is true—what with his swollen eyelid
and his burning lip and tongue. And what do you suppose he did next?
Most anyone would have felt that he had had enough adventure to last him
for some time. But not so Twinkly Eyes! That was not the kind of mettle
he was made of!
Though his little near-sighted eyes could not see the crack that now
reached for nearly his own length down the hollow trunk, his keen brown
nose told him that the scent of honey was even stronger than before.
And, though his black sides already stuck out, his mouth still watered
for more.
He sniffed longingly, then tried to soothe his swelling eyelid with his
paw. He certainly felt bunged up, to say nothing of the jolting he had
just received. He couldn’t see out of his right eye at all now, and
there was a lump the size of a walnut on his lip.
But, oh, the delicious fragrance! The honey he had waited a year to
find! In his long winter’s sleep he had dreamed of it more than once,
and licked his paws in vain. Throughout the lean spring, as he grubbed
for roots, he had listened in vain for the very buzzing that now filled
the air all about him.
It was too much! He would try again!
XX
TWINKLY APPLIES FIRST AID
There was no resisting that odor of wild honey dripping from the
comb—not to one who loved wild honey like Twinkly Eyes, the little Black
Bear!
He must have more! His eye swollen shut, his tongue stinging like fury
with the hot flame of the bee’s sting, he pulled himself together and
started up the tree again.
The bees were working like mad to carry away at least a part of their
store before he should devour it; but they were not too busy to try once
more to drive him off. A fourth bee gave up his life to thrust his
barbed and poisonous sting into his nose. But Twinkly Eyes only became
the more stubborn in his desire to clean out the tree.
Bracing himself in the crotch of a branch just beneath the opening, he
thrust one paw in deeply and brought it back dripping with yellow liquid
and dotted with black bees. Bees and all went into his eager mouth, and
he crunched joyously handful after handful. Once a bee tried to come too
near, and with one sticky sweep of his honeyed paw he imprisoned the
insect, whose wings stuck so fast he could only buzz helplessly,
traveling back and forth from the place where the bees wanted the honey
to the place where Twinkly Eyes wanted to have it.
Thus, in time, the treasure of the pine tree disappeared,—and my, you
should have seen how that little bear’s sides stuck out! It was a lucky
thing for him that the honey was all gone, I tell you!
And what a sight he presented, as he slid down the trunk and ambled off
to Pollywog Pond! His face by this time was smeared with honey from ear
to ear. Flying leaves and little chips of bark clung to it as if they
had been pasted there. Add to that his swollen eyelid, which by now had
raised a great black welt, and his nose and his mouth all lumpy from the
poisonous stings, and one would certainly have said he had been in a
fight.
But he felt so perfectly blissful with his sides rounded out with honey
the way they were that he wasn’t the least bit sorry. Not Twinkly Eyes!
He would have done the same thing over again the next day had he had the
chance.
He knew just what to do with his wounds, and he did it. Searching along
the banks until he found some particularly sticky clay, he plastered it
freely all over his tortured face until he looked, if possible, worse
than before.
But he felt a whole lot better, let me tell you. The wet clay soon began
to draw the poison, and besides, bears get over things like that quicker
than human beings would. So by the time he had had a nice long snooze
and a drink and a stretch, and the round yellow moon began to rise from
behind the firs, Twinkly Eyes was ready for almost anything.
XXI
MAMMY COTTONTAIL’S SECRET
Now Twinkly Eyes had a lively bump of curiosity on that furry black head
of his. He was much interested in other people’s affairs. And he used to
lie hidden by the hour, just to find out what other wood-folk were up
to. But of all the dwellers in that wilderness, none interested him so
much as the Cottontail family. That is, none except his old enemy the
porcupine!
One day, lying under a clump of high-bush blue-berry bushes, in the
early spring sunshine, he learned a secret.
“We have a secret at our house! Truly, truly, truly,” sang Betty
Bluebird, sitting on a fencepost with her red blouse turned to the
warming glow of the early morning sunshine.
“We have too, we have too, we have too!” trilled Robin Red-breast,
running along the roadway with a weather eye for worms.
And down in the marsh behind the barn, Conqueree, the Red Winged
Blackbird, was shrilling at the Crows like a little soldier in red
epaulettes: “Clear out! Or I’ll put you out! I’m Conqueree! Conqueree!
Conqueree!”
“You cawn’t, cawn’t, cawn’t!” the crows retorted, trying to drown out
his threats with a hoarse chorus of denial, as they swirled around and
around him, keeping just barely out of reach of his swift beak. “We have
secrets we won’t tell! Such secrets!—Round, gray green secrets, four to
a nest, hidden away up in the tops of the tallest pine trees! And you
cawn’t, cawn’t, cawn’t guess what they are!—you cawn’t.”
“Trust a crow to tell all he knows!” chuckled Daddy and Mammy
Cottontail, crouched on guard before a small round hole scooped out of
the turf and lined with bits of fur from Mammy Cottontail’s breast. “We
could tell a pretty cunning secret ourselves, only we have better sense
than to shout our affairs to the four winds,” and their slim ears
waggled wisely.
Sure enough, packed snugly back under a blanket of dried grass, six of
the softest, roundest little wriggly-nosed babies that ever made a bunny
feel like kicking his heels in the moonlight slept with their long ears
folded close along their backs and their long hind legs doubled up under
their fuzzy brown bodies.
“Do you suppose they’ve all got the same kind of secrets?” whispered
Mammy Cottontail delightedly.
“Nothing to compare with ours,” sniffed Daddy, then stopped suddenly, as
the little Bear snapped a twig in his effort to creep nearer.
[Illustration: [Rabbits]]
XXII
ONE OF TWINKLY’S NEIGHBORS
Twinkly Eyes had roamed to quite another part of the woods when the
twilight stillness was pierced by a sudden screech from up on Mount
Olaf.
Mammy Cottontail’s timid heart quailed within her. Mother Red Squirrel
could scarce be blamed for all but dropping from her limb; and even
Father Red Fox looked anxious at the thought of the red-brown pups in
the rocky den on the hill-top.
Far down at the Valley Farm, “Lynx!” whispered the Boy, wide-eyed, “Hope
he isn’t coming down to make trouble for our wood folks. He’s mighty
fond of baby bunnies.”
Away up almost at the top of Mount Olaf a great cat, three times as
heavy as barnyard Tamas, was creeping, creeping, creeping along through
the underbrush, on great furry feet that made no sound.
His broad ears bore little tufts at their tips, his jowls were squared
off with the most ferocious-looking whiskers, and his thick tail was no
more than a stub.
“Children,” quavered Mammy Cottontail, “That was a lynx! Now, I want to
tell you something, and I want you to listen with all your ears, because
it is very, very serious!
“Old man Lynx and his family live up on that mountain top, and while
they don’t come down this far once in a coon’s age, we’ve got to be
prepared! Because it would be a terrible thing if they did! Terrible for
us, and terrible for everyone we know!
“I’ll tell you why he screeched that way! It was to scare timid folks
like us, so that we’d jump and betray our whereabouts. Yes’m, that’s
exactly what he screeched for! To make us jump!
“Because, you see, when Mother Nature invented little brown bunnies and
grouse hens and muskrats and all the rest of us forest folk, she knew
exactly what she was about. And she gave us our brown coats so that we’d
match the ground, and couldn’t be seen by the big prowling creatures
that are always trying to have rabbit and grouse for dinner. And just so
long as we keep as still as field mice, we stand a fighting chance of
not being seen.
“But Old Man Lynx knows this as well as we do. He knows that when he
goes hunting o’nights, none but the foolish will be stirring a hair’s
breadth from their own warm beds. And if there are no foolish ones that
he can sneak up on, with his great padded paws that tip-toe so silently
through the underbrush, he screams in the hope that it will startle some
of us so dreadfully that we will forget to keep still, and jump.”
“It’s enough to make any one jump out of his skin,” said Daddy.
“But that’s exactly what the Old Man figures on. And if you can’t
control your nerves any better than to jump when he screeches, he can
see exactly where you are! If he’s anywhere near, that is! Well, you
children had better go to sleep now. But just you remember this: Lie
still when you hear him scream, and ten to one he’ll never know where
you are.”
“Yes, Mammy,” whispered six timid little voices.
XXIII
INTRODUCING BOBBY LYNX
It was not often that Old Man Lynx gave voice to the pangs of hunger.
For he knew that for every grouse or hare or baby fox he startled into
betraying its whereabouts, he scared a dozen so far away that it made
hunting harder next time.
But tonight he was teaching some one else the trick.
At the very time that Father Red Fox was viewing his own red-brown pups
with such mingled pride and amusement, and Mother Douglas was driving
Father Douglas out of the old oak tree, lest he should step on one of
the squirrel babies, and Mammy and Daddy Cottontail were taking turn and
turn about guarding the six brown bunnies on the edge of the cornfield,
Madam Lynx—away up on the top of Mt. Olaf—was just as proud as any one
of two great, scraggly kittens, as heavy-pawed and bob-tailed and
fierce-looking as anything that could be imagined.
At first even these ferocious creatures were as blind and helpless and
appealing as any tame kittens could have been, though without their
grace. And as soon as they learned the use of their legs, they rolled
and tumbled, and growled and spat, and boxed one another about, fully as
mischievously as had Fluff, the maltese kitten at the farm, when she and
her little brothers lived in the basket behind the kitchen stove.
But Old Man Lynx was kept mighty busy, let me tell you, as soon as they
were weaned and could eat meat; for the two youngsters were such
ravenous creatures and they grew so fast, and the mountain air was so
stimulating, that it just seemed as if he couldn’t bring in enough to
keep his share of the larder filled.
So it was by way of teaching young Bob Kitten and his brother how to
hunt that old Man Lynx had screamed in such a blood-curdling manner.
Decidedly Wriggly Nose and Shadow Tail, and even fat young Frisky Fox,
were going to have a very much harder time of it making their way in the
world, now that there was a new young lynx on the top of Mount Olaf.
Twinkly Eyes was later to share a couple of interesting adventures with
young Bobby Lynx.
[Illustration: [Lynx]]
XXIV
A BUNNY BALL
Mammy Cottontail, the little brown hare, had been living in the Old
Apple Orchard for several weeks now and the bunnies were half-grown.
One moonlight night toward the end of June—the self-same night that
Twinkly Eyes had found the bee tree, Mammy said:
“Children, we are going on a frolic tonight. So come along, Flap Ears
and Furtive Feet, and Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws, and Fuzzy Wuzz and
Hippity Skip! Daddy’s there waiting for us now!”
Through the moonlight woods she led them in one long line along a little
briar-grown rabbit path, the youngsters kicking their heels high in
their excitement.
Now they crept under a patch of huckleberry bushes, and now they hugged
the shadow of a grapevine. Straight across the blueberry burn, they
galloped,—under the fruit-laden bushes, then across a corner of wild
meadow where the daisies gleamed high above their heads, and all about
them was the aroma of sweet fern.
Their path ran zig-zag, this way and that, here circling back upon
itself, there darting off at right angles, till anyone trying to follow
it would have had an interesting time, to say the least.
But after various turnings and twistings through the woods, and
doublings around the rocky hilltop behind Pollywog Pond, they found
themselves away back on the border of a little glade, an opening in the
trees where the grass was short and fine like that in a fairy ring. And
the moon streamed down, making it all as light as day.
Here on every side were outposts, and the mere crunching of a dead leaf
by any creature larger than a rabbit would be the signal for the warning
tap-tap of the long hind feet of those on guard.
Within the circle of the moonlit glade a dozen hares were already
assembled, and more were coming in from every side.
Mammy Cottontail drew up in the shadow of a tree trunk, that the
youngsters might get their courage up before joining those in the open.
Soon there were half a hundred bunnies, young and old, together,
scampering about and having a glorious good time. They pranced and they
danced and they raced one another. They leapt back and forth across a
log and they leap-frogged over one another, kicking their heels to the
moon. There was never a sound to break the stillness save the chirping
of crickets away back in the meadow they had left.
Then, so suddenly that Mammy’s heart gave an extra beat, there came the
warning thump! thump! thump! just behind them!
[Illustration: [Rabbit]]
XXV
TWINKLY EYES ATTENDS THE FROLIC
Now Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, had no idea when he awoke of
all that was going on so near him.
But ambling down to Pollywog Pond for a drink after his feast of honey,
the sound of his crunching over a dead twig was enough to warn the sharp
ears that ringed about the rabbit frolic; and from first one outpost and
then another came the thump, thump, thump, of a half hundred padded feet
on the forest floor.
In an instant every one of the bunnies which a moment before had been
capering madly in the moonlight had sought cover.
Mammy Cottontail and her little brood, watching from the shadow of their
tree trunk, were already hidden, hearts beating bumpety-bump in their
anxiety.
For perhaps ten minutes they listened, their hearts sounding like trip
hammers in the breathing stillness of the forest night, in which no
creature larger than an insect moved, save the silent-winged bats and
owls.
At least, that was what the listening bunnies thought! But Twinkly Eyes,
the sly one!—had heard the thump, thump of the outposts; and he knew
just what it meant. Although his little sides were already rounded from
his feast of honey, a bear is always hungry. And Twinkly Eyes decided to
attend the frolic.
If Mammy Cottontail, anxious little mother that she was, had known all
that was being plotted in the head of the little Bear, she would have
started her brood for home on the fastest gallop.
But Twinkly Eyes, for all his weight, had paws padded so softly that he
can, when he wants to, steal through the underbrush without a sound to
warn his quarry of his coming.
Yes, sir, that little rascal can slip through the woods as still as a
mouse, and you could sit straining your ears but you would never hear so
much as the crunching of a leaf beneath his foot. When he really wants
to, he can move like a shadow.
Now he had decided to attend the frolic, but not to join in the play!
Mammy Cottontail, never dreaming of the sleek black form that crept so
silently to the edge of the clearing, led her six out among the
merry-makers. Soon Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws, and Flap Ears and
Furtive Feet, and Fuzzy Wuzz and Hippity Skip were leaping and dancing
as gaily as the best of them.
The full moon, shining down on the little glade, showed their furry
forms so plainly that even Twinkly with his near-sighted little eyes,
could see them kick their heels in air.
Crouched in the shadow of the very log where a little while before Mammy
and her six had hidden, he watched and waited.
[Illustration: [Rabbits]]
XXVI
A JOKE ON THE LITTLE BLACK BEAR
Twinkly Eyes had his mind all made up, as he hid there in the shadow of
the tree trunk, to add a rabbit to his feast of honey.
He therefore crouched with his great steel paw ready to give the one
crushing blow that would be necessary the moment the first brown bunny
was so foolish as to pass within his reach.
He watched gleefully as he saw their sleek brown forms dancing so
care-free in the moonlight. “Hippity skip and away we go!” their soft
feet seemed to sing, as they galloped back and forth across a fallen
log.
Saucy fellows, he told himself, as they flapped their long brown ears or
leaped high in the air.
[Illustration:
“Leaping high in the moonlight”
—Page 79
]
Oddly enough, so silently had the little Bear approached that not one of
the outposts was aware of his presence. The wind was blowing directly
toward him, so that they did not even get his scent.
Only Mammy Cottontail, prancing gaily around to the right, thought for
just an instant that she had caught an alien odor. Leaping high in the
moonlight, she struck her long hind feet three times upon the ground, to
see if she could startle whatever it was into betraying its whereabouts.
At her danger signal, every bunny in the glade stopped stone still to
stare and listen; but Twinkly Eyes was not to be thus betrayed. He was
too big to be startled by her stamping, and too wise to come out into
the open, where every rabbit, once warned, could easily outrun him.
Not he! Twinkly Eyes just bided his time, huddled down as still as any
frightened field mouse. He sat so long in one position that his legs got
cramped and he began to feel distinctly drowsy. Why on earth didn’t one
of those fat bunnies come just a wee bit closer? How weird they looked,
now chasing one another, now pausing to nibble a few grasses, but always
well within the open glade where the moon would have shown them the
first instant an intruder thrust a paw within the charm-ed circle.
After a while, though, the wind died down, and with the bear scent that
now suddenly came to the merrymakers, there was a series of frightened
squeaks, and in less time than the twinkle of a moonbeam, every last
bunny of them had darted under the ferns or into the deep shadows, and
the little glade was as empty as if they had never been there.
Then Wriggly Nose, more daring than the others, crept very, very
silently toward that dreadful odor. He peered amazed at what he saw.
Twinkly Eyes had fallen fast asleep.
[Illustration: [Bear & rabbit]]
XXVII
SCHOOL FOR BUNNIES
Yes, sir, there was Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, fast asleep!
How Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws and the rest did wiggle their long brown
ears at the sight!
“So he had been spying on our frolic!” whispered Flap Ears with a
giggle.
“Yes, he thought he’d have hare for supper. Why do you suppose he didn’t
catch one of us, when he came so near?” asked Wriggly Nose, his eyes
a-twinkle.
“Huh, he knew we could run the faster,” and Paddy Paws threw his chest
out.
“He was waiting to knock you down the instant you came near enough,”
said Mammy Cottontail, suddenly appearing in the midst of her little
brood. “Don’t go too near! He might wake up at any minute!”
“Aw, come on,” urged Flap Ears to the younger bunnies. “I’ll bet you
can’t jump as high as I can,” and he vaulted fully five feet into the
air.
“Bravo,” said Mammy Cottontail. “That is as good as I could do myself!”
“I can leap farther,” boasted Wriggly Nose, and shooting like a coiled
spring from the ground, he landed a good ten feet away.
“They’ll soon be able to take care of themselves,” chuckled Daddy
Cottontail, hopping over beside Mammy at this moment. “We must have more
of these drills.”
“Yes,” whispered Mammy, “but don’t let ’em know it’s a part of their
schooling. Let ’em think it’s only play, or they won’t take any pleasure
in it.”
“Right!” agreed Daddy Cottontail. “The great secret of training the
young is to make it play for them. Now when I was a youngster—”
He stopped to prick up his ears.
“What is it?” whispered Mammy, with an anxious eye on the little
bunnies, who were now playing leap-frog with the hares from the other
side of Pollywog Pond.
“Didn’t you get a sniff of something, just then, when the wind changed?”
asked Daddy. “I could have sworn—there! A fox! A fox!” he signaled with
that tap—tap—tap of his long hind legs that sounded so much like
drumming on a hollow log.
Instantly every bunny in the glade had dashed to cover, and gone
scuttling for home along the crookedest little rabbit road it could
find.
For a Fox has sharper eyes than a bear, a keener nose and better ears,
and on top of everything else, he can run as fast as the fastest hare
that ever grew. At least, a large fox could, and even young Frisky Fox
had grown into a foe worth keeping at a distance.
For the taint on the wind was that of Frisky Fox, out on a little spree
of his own.
[Illustration: [Fox]]
XXVIII
A BOY AND A BEAR
Human ears are never so sharp as those of the wood folk who have to live
by their wits. So when the Boy from the Valley Farm heard nothing, and
saw nothing, he concluded there was nothing there.
But Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, was following him none the
less, half fearful and half curious to see what this two-legged creature
might be up to in his woods.
It was a pleasant afternoon, with just enough of a haze to subdue the
sunlight. The rain had left the earth fresh and green in the open
patches, and the air was sweet with the perfume of Steeple Bush and Joe
Pye Weed and pink Sweet Clover. From away down by the meadow back of the
Farm came the tinkle of a cowbell, the only sound to break the
stillness, save the faint lapping of the river against a boulder.