sharp eyes could just make out a big fat trout that lay headed
up-stream, lazily fanning the water with his fins, to keep himself in
position.
Now Twinkly Eyes, who had concealed himself in a clump of bushes a
little downstream, began to see the meaning of the long black pole with
the line dangling from the end of it.
First the Boy took a tin can from his pocket, a can with holes punched
in the top. Selecting a fat white angle worm, of a sort that the little
Black Bear well knew grew in the wet places, he fastened it on his hook
and dangled it before the trout. But to no avail! That canny fellow knew
perfectly that no such worms of soft fat whiteness were ever found in
his stream. The kind of worms he sometimes found when there was a
cave-in from the bank were strong, slim black ones.—He refused even to
nibble.
The Boy next tried a cricket, then a grasshopper, and finally a fat
white grub—but with the same result. Then, quite by chance, he chose a
black worm.
But before he cast it, he saw a shining green turtle about as big around
as a good-sized crab-apple floating about, just a little upstream. And
carefully laying his pole along the bank, he made a grab for the fellow.
That roiled the water, and although he didn’t get the turtle, it was one
of the luckiest things he could have done. For when he cast his worm
into the pool again, the water was so muddy that the old trout thought,
of course, the bank had caved in above there, and he made for that black
bank-worm as if he had fasted for a week.
A tweak at the line, and the boy was so excited that he swung his fish
fully two rods through the air, landing him in the very bush behind
which Twinkly Eyes was hiding!
The little Black Bear gave a start of surprise, and for just one instant
his head was exposed to the boy’s startled gaze.
[Illustration: [Fishing]]
XXIX
THE TABLES ARE TURNED
The Boy from the Valley Farm held his head high with pride.
For had he not—on the self-same day—landed a big fat trout and seen a
bear cub!
That would certainly be something to tell at home, even for a backwoods
boy! His mouth watered as he thought of the way his mother would broil
his fish.
But alas, for the best laid plans of mice and men! When he found the
place where he had landed his catch, there was no fish there. Could it
be that he had only dreamed he caught it? But no, here was its tail on
the trampled ground. Someone had stolen it. But who? That was the
question!
Why, of course, the little Black Bear whom he had startled out of the
underbrush!
“The rascal!” exclaimed the Boy, half amused, half crest-fallen. Well, I
only hope he needed it more than I did.
“Now I suppose they will never believe me at home when I tell of my big
catch.” He started whistling ruefully, as he set about mending his
broken horsehair line, which had got badly tangled in the bushes.
Then his eye fell on something that made him pause, wide-eyed. Being a
backwoods boy, he was almost as keen at reading the signs about him as
were the wood folk themselves—that is, so far as he was able! Of course
his nose and ears were very much less sharp than theirs, but he had even
better eyes than most of them.
Here was evidence his eyes could not deny, though he reached out and
felt of it to be sure. One fin of his stolen trout lay caught in the
very top of a hazel bush.
“Now, how on earth did that get there?” he asked himself. People who are
much alone are very apt to talk to themselves. “If that cub ate the fish
down here, where the ground is trampled, how did he come to drop the fin
in a bush higher than his head?”
[Illustration:
“Oh you rascal!” shouted the boy, in delight
—Page 89
]
Then a bright idea popped into his mind. “Why, of course, it must have
dropped from above. A sly fellow like that wouldn’t have stopped to eat
his fish down here. He’s carried it up in the top of some tree where he
could feast in peace. I’ll bet it was this very tree I’m standing
under—for how else could the fin have fallen on top of the bush?” He
raised his eyes to peer into the green shadows of the tree-top.
There, sure enough—so high that the Boy’s sharp eyes could barely make
him out against the tree trunk, sat Twinkly Eyes astride a limb, and
between his clever forepaws he held what must have been the last of the
trout.
“Oh, you rascal!” shouted the boy, in delight. “I’ll get you for that!”
[Illustration: [Bear]]
XXX
A CLIMBING MATCH
“You Scalawag!” the Boy kept laughing, as he stared at Twinkly Eyes, the
little Black Bear, in the top of the beech tree.
“So it was you who stole my fish?”
But Twinkly Eyes said never a word. He just sat still, like a bump on a
log, in the hope that the Boy might yet be deceived into thinking him
only a blackened limb.
But the Boy from the Valley Farm was not to be deceived. He, and his
father before him, had lived all their lives in the north woods where
footprints are very clear—and the little Bear’s footprints led straight
to the tree.
Moreover, he had long been wishing he might catch a cub for a pet.
Therefore, he started to climb the tree.
Twinkly Eyes, who did not know the kindness of the Boy’s intentions—and
who certainly would not have wanted to be caught if he had—decided it
was time to show fight.
“Whoof! Whoof!” he growled, slapping his heavy paws on the tree trunk.
“You can’t scare me!” laughed the Boy. “You’re nothing but a yearling
cub. And I’m the best wrestler at the Cross-roads School!” And on he
came regardless.
Now here was where ignorance was bliss. For while it was true that cubs
have been caught and tamed, the Boy from the Valley Farm had much to
learn about how it is done. And there was one thing he did not know.
He did not know that if it came to a wrestling match with Twinkly Eyes,
the Boy would be the one to get very much the worst of it all. The cub
was so small and cunning, so like an over-grown Newfoundland puppy, that
the Boy would not have believed, had you told him, what a scrapper he
could be.
Grown bears the Boy feared, but this little fellow didn’t look the least
bit dangerous as he clung to his tree-top. And the Boy was only
fourteen. That is to say, he held the firm belief that he could lick his
weight in wildcats—to say nothing of bear cubs.
It was well for the Boy from the Valley Farm that Twinkly Eyes had no
mind to let him try it.
Yes, sir, it was lucky for that Boy!
As it was, no sooner had he scrambled painfully half way up the trunk
than Twinkly Eyes climbed to the very topmost branch; and as the Boy
still came after him, he crept so near the tip that it swayed beneath
his weight. Here he felt sure the Boy could not follow, and his courage
returning with a bound, he turned to “Whoof!” at his pursuer.
“Ho! ho!” laughed the Boy from the Valley Farm. “I can shake you off,
you rascal, if that’s your game.” For you see his natural kindness was
forgotten in the thrill of the chase, and he was bound and determined
now to have that bear.
[Illustration: [Bear & boy]]
XXXI
THE BEAR GETS THE BEST OF IT
Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, had crept to the end of the
drooping limb with an air of—
“Now catch me if you can!”
“You funny little rascal,” laughed the Boy from the Valley Farm, as he
hitched himself astride the other end of the limb.
“I’m going to wait right here till you get tired of it. So you might as
well make up your mind to getting caught. You won’t mind in the least,
though, once you find out what it’s like to be tame. I’ll bring you all
the fish you can eat. Sweet corn, too! And every time you learn to do a
trick I’ll give you a lump of maple sugar. How’ll you like that, sir?”
And the Boy fished a lump of his favorite sweet from his overalls pocket
and held it out to the cub.
But he received no response from the other end of the limb.
Indeed, had the cub really understood what the Boy was saying, the
result would have been no different. For freedom means more to a
wilderness creature than life itself. Better a dinner of bark and his
freedom than a banquet of honey served at the end of a rope, Twinkly
Eyes could have told him.
Then an idea came to him. He began shaking the limb to which clung the
cub. He shook and shook, till he was tired—but the harder he swung the
limb, the tighter clung the little Black Bear to the swaying tip.
The lump of maple sugar dropped from the Boy’s busy fingers. The cub
gazed after it with a hungry sniff, then—as easily as a bag of meal—he
dropped to the ground, grabbed the sugar, and made off with it between
his jaws.
The Boy stared in surprise, then let himself slide down the trunk. But
fast as he came, the little bear was faster, and all he found for his
afternoon’s adventure were the boy-like tracks of the padded feet, with
their doglike claws, as they galloped away down the wet river bank.
“Well, I declare!” said the Boy. “If you haven’t got the best of me
again, you clever rascal!”
But he didn’t give up the chase. Not for an instant. The cowbell found
him deaf, and for once the supper hour was forgotten. For now he wanted
nothing on earth so much as to catch that cub.
Following the broad footprints till they turned off among the thick pine
needles, he fell to his knees to study the ground for signs of the
little bear’s trail.
[Illustration: [Boy]]
XXXII
THE LITTLE BEARS GO FISHING
Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, galloped across the pine needles as
noiselessly as a shadow.
His drop from the tree-top had taken only a second, while the Boy had
used up fully half a minute sliding down the trunk. So that, by the time
the Boy began looking for footprints, the bear was away up stream in the
top of another tree, peacefully licking up the ants from the bark.
Meantime the Boy from the Valley Farm was running into a danger of which
he little dreamed.
Being a backwoods boy, he knew that a mother bear with cubs is a person
to avoid. But he did not know that Mother Black Bear had brought her two
new cubs to the very stream along which he was searching for footprints.
True, they were on the other side of the river. And the wind was blowing
in quite the wrong direction, so that Mother Black Bear’s nose could not
warn her of his approach. Thus, if he kept on the way he was headed, he
was due to stumble upon the little family very soon, and give both them
and himself an unpleasant surprise.
For Mother Black Bear was mighty touchy where her cubs were concerned.
She was in a mood these days for clawing anyone who so much as looked at
them, so precious were the two fat babies to her.
The last red glow of the setting sun was glinting off the river between
the shadows of the trees. And Mother Black Bear was catching fish. The
two fat, roly-poly cubs, Twinkly’s baby sisters, sat on the bank and
watched gravely, while their mother waded in up to her neck, paddling so
carefully downstream that she scarcely made a ripple in the mirror that
it made. A trout might well have taken her for a log floating gently
with the current.
Her arms she held well down to her sides with claws spread. Suddenly she
felt a smooth form glide against her side! With one swift clutch of her
curved iron claws she had her fish, and was flinging it ashore to the
babies.
The next fish she carried ashore in her jaws for her own supper. Then
back she led the cubs up-stream to where the riffles glittered in the
sunset red. Here, standing perfectly still in the shallow water, she
waited till a trout came by, when with one sharp blow on the head she
finished his career.
Meantime, where was the Boy from the Valley Farm?
Deciding at length that it was getting too dark to see foot-prints, he
became aware that the cow-bell was again tinkling and remembered with a
guilty pang that his father was probably waiting for the cows that
minute.
[Illustration: [Bear]]
XXXIII
TWINKLY AGAIN MEETS THE PORCUPINE
Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, cocked first one ear and then
another.
There was certainly a buzzing somewhere that sounded mighty like the
sound that honey bees made. The memory of his feast at the bee tree made
him lick his chops in delight.
He followed the sound to the tree around which it centered, clambered up
the trunk, and was soon following the particular limb on the end of
which most of the “bees” were clustered.
Twinkly, after all, had had but one experience with bees, and it is not
surprising that these insects should have fooled him.
True, he had not expected to find the honey out at the end of the branch
inside a round gray ball. The time he had had that feast, the honey had
been in a great mass of comb inside the hollow trunk.
But then, one never could tell. His ears told him that there were bees,
and he always trusted more to his ears than his eyes.
But then, he trusted more to his nose than either of them,—at least
generally.
At any other time he would have listened to the warning of his nose.
This time he wondered why he could not smell the honey as he had before.
But perhaps he didn’t want to be warned. He hoped so dreadfully that
there was honey that he tried to persuade himself it was there, even if
he couldn’t smell it.
So on he went, straight to the end of the swaying limb! Then he sat down
to think it over.
It was certainly very peculiar, that huge gray ball into which the
“bees” were pouring. For while a few tried to sting the intruder and
only got as far as his fur, so quiet had been his approach that most of
them were going inside as if he had not been there. There is no animal
in all the Deep Woods that can move as noiselessly as a little Black
Bear when he wants to.
Finally, when every “bee” had gone into the gray ball through a little
round hole, he cautiously put out one paw and tried to reach after them.
But it was too small for him; he only succeeded in closing it so the
“bees” couldn’t get out. An angry buzz answered this move on his part.
Unk Wunk, the yearling porcupine, who had been watching from the tree
across the way, gave a grunt of amusement.
“Those aren’t bees,” he jeered. “Those are wasps. So you won’t find any
honey. I’d hate to be in your place when you take your paw off that
hole!”
“Hello, there,” grinned Twinkly Eyes. “I’m not afraid!”
He really thought Unk Wunk was trying to drive him away from his find in
order to enjoy it himself. He didn’t believe for an instant that it was
really a nest full of angry wasps he had imprisoned.
XXXIV
A GOOD SPORT
“No, sir, I’m not afraid,” said Twinkly Eyes, the Little Black Bear.
He suspicioned that Unk Wunk the porcupine had been trying to drive him
away from his find, as he had from Lone Lake, in order to enjoy it
himself. For Twinkly Eyes really believed that he was in a bee tree.
What else could these buzzing insects be, he asked? And where bees were,
there was honey. His mouth watered at the thought.
The only peculiar thing about it was that the bees should have gone into
this huge gray ball that hung from the end of the limb. Twinkly held his
paw over the opening, keeping his “bees” prisoners, while he thought it
over.
If it should prove to be wasps—whatever THEY were—how Unk Wunk would
jeer at him! He wished the little porcupine would go away instead of
sitting there watching with that spiteful gleam in his little black
eyes.
But Unk Wunk had no intention of going away. While he did not care to go
to the trouble of taking the impudent scamp down a peg, he told himself
he would just as soon the wasps did it for him. So he settled himself
comfortably on his limb to watch what would happen when Twinkly took his
paw off the hole in the wasp’s nest.
“I suppose that pin-cushiony fellow is just aching to see me get hurt,”
Twinkly told himself. “But I shan’t let him know, if I do.
“So far as I can figure it out, there are about six chances to half a
dozen that this is wild honey, and I’m going to take one of the six on
it!”
With an extra screw to his courage and a great show of enjoyment for Unk
Wunk’s benefit, the little Black Bear tore open the wasps’ nest.
Out poured the angry insects by the hundreds!
But Twinkly took his medicine without a yelp to betray to Unk Wunk that
he minded.
XXXV
BOBBY LYNX LEARNS A LESSON
Now Bob Kitten, Madam Lynx’s young hopeful, was due to have an
experience that he would not forget in a hurry.
Never yet had he so much as crossed the trail of any creature he could
not get the best of with tooth and nail, if he did not paralyze it with
his terrifying howl. He therefore assumed that there was no one anywhere
that he need fear.
But one night when the moon rose round and yellow from behind the firs,
Bob Kitten heard that curious gnawing again, and this time it came from
right above his head, in a birch tree. Not only that, but he got a whiff
of the most tantalizing scent! It simply made his mouth water!
He peered into the tree-top, his round eyes gleaming through the shadow
in which he stood. There was a dark ball swaying far out on a slender
bough, and it did not look the least bit for-mid-able.
Bob let out his blood-curdling yowl, hoping that the thing might be so
scared it would drop right down at his feet, and save him the trouble of
climbing; but the dark ball never moved a muscle. It simply hung there
gnawing the bark as if it hadn’t a care in the world.
This angered Bob, and he was up in that birch tree, and out on the
swaying branch, without even stopping to think. One blow of his heavy
paw, and the creature would be felled to earth!
But still the round ball did not even glance up from its gnawing. The
impudence of it, thought Bob! Didn’t the creature even know enough to be
afraid? He crept nearer. Now he could see the rather mild-looking face
and the fat, hairy body ending in a stubby, pointed tail. Its hair was
certainly coarse looking, gleaming lighter on the ends in the moonlight.
He had never seen fur like that before.
Suddenly there was rattle as of so many dry twigs clacking together, and
the round ball suddenly fluffed itself out to twice its size,
confronting Bob with every quill erect. For it was a young porcupine Bob
had trapped in this awkward position, and he simply tucked his face down
between his paws till he was all bristles, and waited.
And Twinkly Eyes, the yearling cub, also waited, in the shelter of a
neighboring ironwood tree. For this was Unk Wunk, his old enemy of the
swimming hole.
This would have been an excellent time for Bob to have revised his plan
of action. But ignorance was bliss,—and with a yell of defiance, he
struck out at his adversary.
The next instant he gave voice to a howl of pain, for his sensitive paw
struck a handful of quills,—and it was exactly like slapping at the
points of so many needles. Nay, worse, as Bob was to find,—for each
punishing quill was barbed at the end.
Bob’s reaction came with the swiftness of unreasoning instinct. With one
lunge he was down on the branch below, and traveling earthward as fast
as three sets of powerful claws would let him.
[Illustration:
“He gave voice to a howl of pain”
—Page 106
]
Bob certainly felt as if he had been shot, as he scuttled back to earth
with paw smarting from the slap he had given the little brown ball in
the tree-top. And for days to come, he was to nurse a foot that was so
sore he went on three legs, and picked out the soft spots.
He needed no further teaching to keep his distance, when he saw a
harmless black ball gnawing a supper of birch bark, or lying all humped
up like a mammoth chestnut burr. No, decidedly, Unk Wunk had nothing
further to fear from Bob.
It was from quite another quarter that he had to be on guard.
[Illustration: [Lynx]]
XXXVI
TWINKLY WATCHES AGAIN
The little Black Bear was non-plussed. Surely it would be rash to try to
punish Unk Wunk. But young Frisky Fox was like many another youngster.
He wanted to find out for himself. Therefore, one night when Mother Red
Fox had taken the pups all out for a hunt, Frisky had caught a whiff of
that tan-ta-liz-ing smell that had made Bob’s mouth water.
“Hurry! There’s our supper now!” he had yipped joyously.
“Sh!—Do you want to scare everything within earshot?” Mother Red Fox had
whispered, as she nipped his ear. “Besides, that’s nothing we can eat at
this time of year.”
“Why not?” insisted Frisky, though under his breath, for his mother was
still within nipping distance. “It smells perfectly great!”
“It tastes great, too! But we can’t catch porcupines at this time of
year, I tell you; it takes deep snow to catch them.”
This satisfied him for the moment. But as they came nearer and nearer to
the tempting odor, he sniffed and sniffed till he could hardly stand it.
Then suddenly he saw where it came from, just a little dark lump on the
ground—that’s all it was! It didn’t look in the least like a creature
that could run away.
“Why, I could catch that fellow myself, just as easily as not!” he told
himself. “I wonder why on earth mother thought I couldn’t? I’d just like
to show her, anyway!” And he felt strongly tempted to slip on ahead and
try it.
He did, in fact, tiptoe along behind a fallen log, till he came to a
little clump of bushes right beside the porcupine. And there he stood
watching and listening, and wondering for all he was worth why he
couldn’t leap right on the creature and set his teeth in his throat. And
the little Bear watched too!
But Unk Wunk was also listening, and no sooner had he detected the faint
snap of a tiny twig down the hillside than he tucked his head under his
paws and doubled up under his prickles, and there wasn’t so much as an
inch of him that anyone could get at.
Frisky stared and stared at the strange creature. Here was that
delicious-smelling supper right at his very feet, but—could Mother Red
Fox have been right after all?
[Illustration: [Fox & porcupine]]
XXXVII
FOXY COUNSEL
“He who fights and runs away
Lives to fight another day.”
But young Frisky Fox didn’t even fight. He just ran away!
Yes, sir, there was something about that prickly ball, about the way the
quills rattled as he curled up tighter, that sounded ominous.
It was just this habit of looking the situation over before he leaped
that was to make Frisky so much wiser than some of his neighbors.
“ALWAYS LEAVE PORCUPINES STRICTLY ALONE,” his mother scolded, as he went
trotting back after her, crestfallen and shamefaced.
“At the first touch, that fellow would have snapped his tail in your
face, and you’d have got a handful of quills in your mouth or some place
where it would have been a mighty serious matter.
“Yes, sir-ee! It would have been a mighty serious matter!
“You couldn’t have rubbed them out, for every move you made would only
have driven them deeper, what with their barbed tips, till you’d be
lucky if they didn’t finish you once and for all.”
“My!” gasped the Red Fox pup.
“Next time,” Mother Red Fox continued, rather rubbing it in, “you’d do
well to take your mother’s word for a thing.
“There, now!—Listen to that!”
Frisky pricked up his ears. From back up the slope of Mount Olaf, where
he had come so near making a fatal mistake, there sounded a rattling as
of dry twigs. It was Unk Wunk shaking his quills.
“Unk Wunk! Unk Wunk! Unk Wunk!” he was muttering over and over to
himself. “I just guess people had better leave me alone, if they know
what’s good for them!”
And through the moonlit woods, still in their April nakedness, the Fox
family could plainly see a dark, round form slowly and deliberately
climbing into a birch tree, where it resumed its gnawing.
“Whew! He’s not afraid of anything! Guess I’ll keep away from his part
of the woods!” breathed Frisky Fox a bit unsteadily. For he could not
help imagining how it would be to have his face full of quills. “But
who’d ever think to look at him he could be so dangerous?”
“He’s dangerous only when you attack him,” explained Mother Red Fox,
seating herself with the youngsters in a half circle before her.
“He wouldn’t touch you if you didn’t come too near. He never goes out of
his way an inch to make trouble. He’s far too fat and lazy. He just
simply goes his way in peace unless someone tries to molest him.
“Even then he just waits, all curled up like a burr, knowing there isn’t
the least bit of danger so far as he himself is concerned. That is,
except when there is deep snow on the ground, and a fellow can sneak up
underneath him, and grab where there are no quills.
“Otherwise he knows there isn’t a creature in all these woods but would
get the worst of it—with the exception, possibly, of Twinkly Eyes, the
bear.”
XXXVIII
A JOLLY WORLD
Now there wasn’t a creature in all the Deep Woods that wouldn’t have had
the worst of it in an encounter with Unk Wunk, the porcupine—unless
possibly Twinkly Eyes.