handful of quills slapped into his face with Unk Wunk’s punishing tail.
But Twinkly Eyes had a way of managing an encounter that was all his
own.
In the first place, he had always found the world such a jolly place to
live in that his little black eyes twinkled at whatever they looked at.
It was such fun to climb trees and see what was going on round about
him, as he nibbled buds or shook down beech nuts.
He never had one bit of trouble getting down, because when he was ready
he just let go and slid, landing like a rubber ball. That was the way he
took life generally!
Then there were other delightful things to do. For one thing, there was
fishing in Pollywog Pond. It was full of frogs at this time of year,
while as for fish!—Um! There was nothing to beat them. Not even the
delicious sour ants that he sometimes found beneath loose bark.
The Deep Woods were simply full of enticing things to do, and Twinkly
Eyes had the happiest kind of time all day long. Nor was he all
appetite. There was much that interested him that had nothing whatever
to do with getting a square meal. In fact, he had a lively bump of
curiosity, had Twinkly Eyes.
But while curiosity is a great thing to have, if you want to learn what
is going on around you, it is also rather dangerous at times, as we
shall see. On this particular evening, no sooner had the great red sun
began to disappear behind the fir trees than Twinkly sauntered forth to
take the air and see what the prospects were for supper. Sleeping nearly
all day as he did, up there in his den on Mount Olaf, he seldom came out
much before dusk, and it was even later that Twinkly suddenly stopped in
his tracks to sniff.
There was certainly a tantalizing odor in the air,—for those that have
noses as sharp as have the Forest Folk.
What could it be?
He climbed a log and sniffed again. It seemed to come from the top of
that old beech tree! He stood on his hind legs and peered through the
budding branches.
Then suddenly he heard a low, monotonous grunting. “Unk, Wunk! Unk
Wunk!” that came from a dark hump as round and fat and care-free as if
winter had never been,—for the porcupine does not sleep in winter, but
climbs the trees as the snow mounts higher, and eats his fill of their
bark.
Peering far up into the beech tree, Twinkly Eyes could see a
surly-looking fellow that rattled his quills as he moved, with a sound
like dry twigs crackling one against another.
The fellow was the same who had laughed when the little Bear got into
the wasps’ nest. He was the same young porcupine, what is more, who had
driven Twinkly Eyes from the Lone Lake swimming hole the summer before,
when Unk Wunk had had his mother to help him!
XXXIX
WHO WILL BE SORRIEST
“Never trouble trouble
Till trouble troubles you.”
At least that is a mighty good plan where porcupines are concerned.
And Twinkly Eyes knew that as well as he knew how to climb. But that
odor was so terribly inviting, and Twinkly had such a score to settle
that he could hardly resist poking his nose in where he knew he had no
business.
Sometimes young folks will do that way. They just can’t help it; and
they always come out of the experience wiser than they were
before,—provided, of course, that they come out of it at all.
“He’s certainly fat enough, if it IS the spring of the year!” thought
Twinkly Eyes, hungrily, as he watched Unk Wunk away up in the beech
tree, chiseling off the rough outer bark to nibble the juicy inner
layer. “He can make a meal off of anything.”
“I wonder—” and Twinkly’s eyes began to dance more mischievously than
ever, “I just wonder, now, if I could shake that saucy fellow off! It
certainly would be a peck of fun to see him come tumbling down like a
chestnut burr right on his own quills!”
And the little Black Bear fairly rolled off the log in his excitement.
Picking himself up as softly as he could and tiptoeing over till he
stood just beneath the gnawing one, huddled up there in the moonlight
with a glint on the tip of every quill, Twinkly Eyes began, oh, ever so
cautiously, to climb the beech tree.
He would climb just as high as he possibly could without getting in
reach of Unk Wunk’s terrible barbed tail, and then he would shake the
tree, and perhaps the prickly one would lose his hold and go pelting to
the ground—like a great chestnut burr!
Now, as always when one’s nerves are at a tension, Twinkly Eyes was
conscious of all the little sounds and odors about him. It certainly was
a jolly world to be taking such a risk in. From away down the
mountainside in Pollywog Pond, his sharp ears could just make out the
croak-croak, croak-croak of the frogs as they called to one another or
gossiped back and forth through the April night. And from farther
still—from the Valley Farm, perhaps, came the faint fragrance of wood
smoke where the pasture lot had been burned over a bit recklessly.
“Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk!” said the dark form above him, but without really
being aware of any one but himself. So confident was the little
porcupine that no one in all that wilderness could harm him, no matter
how they tried, that he didn’t even take the trouble to look beneath
him.
Twinkly Eyes drew a long breath and began to shake the tree. Unk Wunk
went on gnawing, quite as if it had been no more than a passing breeze
that had swayed him. Twinkly drew another breath and shook the harder,
then dodged back to the opposite side of the trunk from Unk Wunk,
prepared to watch the fall.
But still nothing happened. The self-confident one simply kept on
clinging with his long nails that had held him safe through many a
wind-storm, even, sometimes, when their owner slept.
Suddenly he turned his head. His narrow little eyes looked Twinkly over
coolly, even indifferently. There was a bit of tender-looking bark just
below him, and he began slowly descending.
Twinkly’s heart beat faster. What should he do?
[Illustration: [Bear & porcupine]]
XL
TWINKLY EYES PLAYS SAFE
Twinkly Eyes was certainly put to it to know what to do.
He had planned simply to shake the beech tree till Unk Wunk should fall
off. Then one of two things would happen. Either he would crack like a
chestnut burr, and supper would be an easy matter, or else it would be a
fight on level ground, where Twinkly knew a trick or two.
But to have Unk Wunk turning on him in this fashion! It was not at all
the situation that he had counted on. For Unk Wunk wouldn’t for an
instant stop going wherever he wanted to go. Certainly not for a little
black bear whose face he could slap with a tailful of barbed quills if
said bear got too fresh.
Up to this moment Twinkly Eyes had never dreamed that a porcupine would
actually turn on any one that hadn’t even touched him yet.
As an actual fact, the prickly one had no intention of striking Twinkly
Eyes. He had simply been un-a-ware of his presence up to that very
moment, and unless the little Bear made a hostile move, he certainly
wouldn’t be the first one to attack.
Should Twinkly make a sudden move in his direction, though, he’d turn
his back like lightning and slap, slap his armored tail, driving
whatever might be in its way full of quills. One slap would be more than
enough.
However that may be, Twinkly made a sudden resolution, and it didn’t
take him as long to carry it out as it does to read about it. He just
let go and came down! Yes, sir, Twinkly just let go and slid! No careful
searching for a foot hold, not even hand-over-hand work—nothing but
ker-biff! And the little Black Bear had bounced down on his own fat self
like a rubber ball, and out from under that beech tree, as fast as if
Unk Wunk were going to try to drop on him—Yes, sir, he was somewhere
else before you could have said Jack Robinson! Something deep inside him
had suddenly decided there was more fun in playing safe.
Twinkly always came down that way, falling perfectly limp, like a fat
butter ball, and it never hurt him any more than it would to roll off a
log.
And it wasn’t till he was half way down the mountain-side that he
remembered he was hungry.
“Hoo-wuff!” he sighed as he slowed down for breath, once more catching
the croak-croak from Pollywog Pond. “That was a most amazing fellow! I’m
not surprised that people keep their distance. I’d rather starve than
try that again, anyway,—at least I think I would.
“I wonder, though—how I wonder what he would do if I were to find him
some day just plodding along the ground, and I were to flip a clod of
earth at him? I really am curious to see what would happen, the old
slow-poke! By ginger, I’ve half a mind to try it!”
XLI
TWINKLY EYES GETS A GREAT SURPRISE
Twinkly Eyes was certainly as full of curiosity as a pond is of frogs.
And though he went on and caught himself a nice dinner in Pollywog Pond,
he wondered all the way why Unk Wunk was such a curious fellow, and what
he would do if he were provoked.
The idea of his going on gnawing as if nothing had happened, with
Twinkly shaking the tree for all he was worth! And then to stare down at
his tormentor with that cold in-dif-fer-ence! It was too much for
Twinkly Eyes.
No sooner had he filled his tummy comfortably full than his courage all
came back to him, and he determined to go back and get a rise out of
that old grizzly grouch.
These things he turned over and over in his curious mind, as he padded
noiselessly back along the furtive trail, his eyes twinkling at a little
plan that began forming in the back of his head. It would be worth
trying, just to see what would happen.
Suddenly swish, thump, thumpety-thumpety-bump, came something straight
down the side of a ledge!
Twinkly’s first thought was that it must be a man, for certainly no
Forest Folk would make such an out-ra-geous racket. Even a bear could
pad along through the underbrush without more than cracking a twig,
while as for foxes and rabbits and owls, and even lynxes, if they made
that much noise just once, they’d deserve to have all their enemies come
on the run!
No, assuredly, it must be some creature that had no place in the
wilderness; and as it was coming altogether too near his line of march,
he decided to climb the nearest tree and wait till he saw what the
excitement was all about.
Bang, bump, thump, came the sounds again. Then something struck a clump
of high-bush blueberry bushes in a way that crushed them flat, and a
great ragged ball of dry oak leaves emerged, with a sound of scraping
and crackling that was quite unlike anything Twinkly Eyes had ever heard
before.
It went on a little farther, then brought up against a boulder. Eyes
fairly popping with curiosity, Twinkly slid down his tree-trunk,
bounding off into a covert of low bushes, from which he might peer at
the astounding mass at the foot of the boulder.
After a time it began unrolling, and gradually out of the turmoil
appeared none other than Unk Wunk, the porcupine, who proceeded to
stretch his legs and yawn, quite as if nothing had happened.
“If that is his usual method of traveling,” thought Twinkly Eyes, “I’d
rather not meet him, that’s sure. Wonder who was after him that time.
I’ll bet he never intended to do all that rolling. Or is that just one
of his queer ways?”
[Illustration: [Bear]]
XLII
TWINKLY EYES PLOTS MISCHIEF
“A rolling stone gathers no moss.”
But Unk Wunk was just the opposite. In his roll down hill he had
gathered several pecks of moss and leaves on the points of his quills.
Porcupines always do go by contraries.
And Twinkly Eyes, the Bear, was no sooner convinced that that great
jagged mass of dry leaves was his foe of the swimming hole experience
than his little black eyes began twinkling more merrily than ever. For
here was opportunity knocking at his very door.
Now Twinkly Eyes was different to this extent from most of the folk that
lived in the deep woods. He had a sense of humor.
To Mammy Cottontail and her brood, life was one perpetual effort to
escape the jaws and claws and beaks and bills of the enemies on every
side. The mere matter of finding enough to eat had its dangers.
While young Frisky Fox occasionally smiled at his own cleverness, it
took the fat little bear to find amusement in everything that happened.
In the first place, he was thus far afraid of nothing under all the wide
blue sky. He was so much stronger and better-armed than almost any other
creature in the wilderness!
True, he wasn’t as well armed as Bobby Lynx, but then, Bobby had no
desire to dine off of any one that could fight like Twinkly Eyes. So,
being unafraid, Twinkly could enjoy life. And being happily able to eat
almost anything that came his way with relish, he had time to spare for
play.
Just now, as he approached that bristling ball of oak leaves that had
come so near to rolling square upon him, his little black eyes danced
with mischief. Twinkly had a plan whereby he meant to have some fun at
the prickly one’s expense!
He waited till Unk Wunk, indifferent to his presence, had stretched his
legs and begun lazily gnawing the tree trunk that was nearest to his
nose. “Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk!” he began to sing in his two monotonous
notes. “Here I am again, right side up with care, and I don’t care the
flip of my tail who sees me, nor what they try to do with me. Because
I’m dead sure they’ll get the worst of it every time.”
“Woo-huff!” snorted Twinkly Eyes, sitting up on his haunches. “Sure and
I’m going to find that out for myself! I’ll bet I know a trick that will
take you down a peg, you old grouch, you! I saw my mother do it once
last year, and I’ve never had so much fun since.”
With this, to which the porcupine paid not the slightest attention,
Twinkly arose and began padding cautiously forward. For a few minutes he
stood directly over the gnawer, but Unk Wunk accorded him not even the
glance of an eye.
[Illustration: [Porcupine]]
XLIII
TWINKLY TEASES UNK WUNK
Little did Unk Wunk dream of the trick that was being plotted against
him, as he sat there lazily gnawing at the root of the handiest tree.
To be sure he knew that Twinkly Eyes was there. He was not that stupid.
Only he felt so thoroughly entrenched beneath his quills that he never
even dreamed that the little Black Bear would dare to attack him.
Indeed, if worst came to worst, could he not remove himself with the
same speed with which he had just rolled down hill? That had been pure
accident. Curling up at the approach of some prowler of the night,—he
had not troubled to find out who,—he had suddenly lost his balance, and
gone hurtling down the slope in the manner that had so startled Twinkly
Eyes. It just made one more trick in his bag! For his bones were fatly
padded, and he simply found himself in another place as good as the one
he had left.
So once more he began creaking contentedly in his nasal voice his never
ending chorus “Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk!”
Life certainly looked good from the porcupine standpoint, now that the
trees were full of sap, and the great round yellow moon shown softly
through the budding branches, lighting up every cranny of the forest
floor.
The hylas in the marsh below chirped as musically as distant sleigh
bells, reminding one that grass was lush and green, and there would be
no more cold and snow,—nothing but one grand feast, more months than he
could look ahead.
Beyond that, all he had to do was to keep quills out, and none could
interfere with his pleasure.
But underneath, on the side where there were no quills,—as Twinkly Eyes
suspected,—the little porcupine was as soft and vul-ner-able as any of
the forest folk,—and it was this very fact that Twinkly meant to make
the most of.
He therefore opened his offensive by flipping a clod of earth at the
armored one. That had no visible effect, so he flipped a second. The
third one struck the porcupine square on his unprotected nose, and Unk
Wunk gave a grunt of annoyance, and started to transfer his person to a
more distant tree.
Swift as thought, the little Bear thrust a cautious paw clear beneath
one of the quilled sides, and with one blow hurled Unk Wunk against the
tree trunk.
[Illustration: [Frogs]]
[Illustration:
“Hurled Unk Wunk against the tree trunk”
—Page 132
]
XLIV
TWINKLY EYES GETS HIS
If Twinkly Eyes had thought for a moment that the matter was ended, he
had reckoned without his host.
He might well have called it off with Unk Wunk’s prob-able amaze-ment.
But the little porcupine, though somewhat bruised, was still so set in
his self-esteem that he could not imagine its happening a second time.
And, feeling the need of an im-me-di-ate stim-u-lant, he once more
uncurled from the ball he had doubled himself into in mid-air, and
resumed his gnawing.
Imagine Twinkly Eyes’ astonishment, as he turned, his shoulder all but
dislocated from the force of the thrust, to find the enemy still
in-dif-fer-ent to his presence!
Hot-headed now with the thrill of battle, he padded across to Unk Wunk,
who happened quite by chance to be nearly en-trenched between his tree
and a hollow log. Then, being nothing but a yearling cub, he quite
forgot the caution with which he had once seen Mother Black Bear manage
the ma-nœuv-re. Whereupon he flipped his clod again, hoping to drive the
porcupine from behind his log, and with a neat success, for the clod
landed plop on the pacifist’s nose again!
With a squeak of righteous indignation, the quilled one thrust his
unprotected face into the hollow log, and there he waited! Even now he
felt no fear, only a desire to punish, to fight for peace.
And Twinkly Eyes—rash fellow—lumbered closer, and once more thrust his
paw beneath the porcupine. But this time he allowed himself to come too
close.
Quick as lightning, slap, slap! Unk Wunk snapped his barbed tail back
and forth, and Twinkly gave a howl of pain.
A handful of the torturing quills had im-paled the tormentor’s scalp!
But for one chance this would have been the finish of the little Black
Bear. It so happened that his head was down, and the quills struck
directly over the hard bone of the skull. Into this they could not
pen-e-trate. He was simply a bear with a mighty sore head. It was sore
for long afterward, though with his good blood and the life of the open,
it did finally heal, leaving him just a little scarred and more than a
little chastened.
Henceforth Unk Wunk would be given a wide berth by one more of his
neighbors.
[Illustration: [Bear]]
XLV
BOBBY LYNX GOES FISHING
Now Twinkly’s neighbor Bobby was a sadder but a wiser young lynx kitten
before ever Whoo Lee the owl had finished with him. For Bobby had
climbed to the nest in the pine tree, rash fellow!
It but put the finishing touches on his lesson when the bark to which he
was clinging with his one free paw gave way beneath his weight and sent
him tumbling.
Not that Bobby minded, after the first shock of falling. Like all
members of the cat family, large and small, he managed to double into a
somersault in mid-air and so came down right side up, more hurt in his
feelings than anywhere else. Indeed, he twice broke his fall by catching
at passing limbs, and he need not have come to the ground at all, save
that he preferred not to occupy the same tree as Whoo Lee.
In fact, no sooner had Bobby reached all fours in safety than he went
slinking off through the shadows, as fast as ever his heavy feet could
carry him.
After a time he sat down to wash his face and lick the places where the
owl had clawed him. Then he realized that he was very, very thirsty, and
hungry to boot, and he made his way to Pollywog Pond.
Here, unfortunately, he found Mother Red Fox and Frisky Fox and the
other four Fox youngsters just finishing a lesson in catching frogs, and
he was in no mood for meeting any one of that family.
So on and on he crept, through the ravine and on down to Rapid River.
Here his mother had once brought him to teach him to catch trout, and
here, after drinking deep of the chill waters, he crouched along a
boulder to await the dawn.
At the first faint flush of pink along the sky, the first lightening of
the shadows of the forest, and the first wee notes of awakening
warblers, Bobby stretched one paw out over the water’s edge, claws set
for a sudden swoop,—and waited silently.
For so long that Bobby all but went to sleep, his half-shut eyes could
see no gleam of speckled scales in the silver water,—not, at least,
within the reach of the waiting paw,—though that paw hung over the rim
of one of the deepest pools, where trout were likeliest. The fish had to
come pretty near the surface for him to strike successfully.
Then suddenly his mouth began to water, for a great fat beauty was
swimming straight towards him. Bob’s eyes gleamed hungrily, his whiskers
twitched with nervousness, and the green muscles tensed along his ready
forearm.
Then a quick dart of his barbed paw, a flash of silver, and Bob had
squared himself with a growl to as juicy a breakfast as anyone could
ask.
Great ravenous bites he took, growling as he crunched, to warn all
comers that a hungry lynx is not the person from whom it would be wise
to try to steal.
The next instant there was a resounding splash in the stream behind him,
and Bob in his surprise jumped full three feet in the air, landing on a
limb of the nearest tree.
XLVI
A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
It is always annoying to be disturbed in the midst of one’s
breakfast,—the more so if one has just had a painful scrimmage with a
great barred owl whose nest one was trying to rob.
It is therefore not surprising that Bobby Lynx looked murderously about
him from the limb to which he had leaped at the sound of the splash.
It must have been a large animal, he reasoned, to make so much noise;
and Bob was after all but a kitten, whose life had thus far been one
long adventure from the day he had had it out with Unk Wunk, the
porcupine, to his recent falling out with the angry owl.
Someone, he felt sure, meant to rob him of his trout, and,
unfortunately, in his surprise he had left it on the boulder beside the
River.
The trouble with Bob, and, indeed, the entire Lynx family, was that,
although they are so strong and their claws and teeth so sharp, their
eyes are little good to them. In the woods, where nearly every creature
is colored like the tree trunks, they cannot see anything unless it
moves.
Otherwise it would be too easy for a lynx to make his kill, and the
grouse and the hares and the toads and the meadow mice would have no
chance at all in the game of life.
Not only were Bobby’s eyes not good, but his nose wasn’t half as keen as
the noses of most wood-folks. He would walk right past a grouse hen
without getting a smell of her.
That is why Bobby was always so alarmed when a sudden sound came from
behind. He never knew what it might be until he saw the creature move.
This time he had not long to wait. A glossy form came ambling by, and
Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, sat down on his haunches not ten
feet away, to devour his catch. For he, too, had been fishing, and the
splash that had startled Bobby was the sound of his great paw slapping
through the water at his trout.
Bobby watched craftily from under a canopy of leaves, his gray-brown
body flattened along the limb. Then convinced that Twinkly Eyes had no
design on his person, he began to wonder if the intruder would try to
make off with his fish.
But the little Bear knew the law of the wilderness as well as any one.
He knew that to steal another’s catch would mean a fight if the owner
caught him. Though he could not see the hidden claimant of the
half-eaten trout, his nose was keen enough to tell that another’s scent
clung to the rock on which it lay, and he had no mind for calling that
other’s wrath upon his head.
He was just slouching past, pretending he did not see it, in order to
fish farther up the stream, when there was a snarl and a splutter, as
Bobby leaped, spitting and clawing back to his fish.
Twinkly stared at the strange creature, his little black eyes showing
red lights, as he squared himself for the scrap that he feared would
follow.
What had he done, anyway, to call forth such an exhibition of bad
temper, he asked crossly with a growl deep down in his throat.
Then, too, Twinkly Eyes had never seen a lynx before, and the unknown is
always to be distrusted.
XLVII
THE HIRED MAN DROPS A MATCH
What Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, could not know as he stared at
Bobby Lynx crouched beside his fish was that Bobby was quite as much
afraid as he was.
In fact, if the truth were known, Bobby Lynx was more afraid of Twinkly
Eyes than Twinkly was of Bobby.
But, of course, it never does to show one’s fear. So the two only glared
at each other, green eyes staring into black, the bear cub poised on his
hind legs ready for a wrestling match, the lynx kitten ready to spring
should the other make a hostile move.