Though had he not been too sleepy to reason it out, he might have known
that anything so delicious as maple sugar would never be left like that.
Not if the bees could get at it! And then how was it that his mother had
never taken a chance on anything so tempting?
LVI
AT THE SUGAR CAMP
Twinkly sniffed and sniffed.
From the tumble-down shack on the mountain-side came the most wonderful
odor! It fairly made his mouth water.
But still his natural cunning bade him sniff all about the place before
he ventured within. Though there were hobnailed footprints everywhere,
the man-scent had long since disappeared.
That twisting thunder-storm last July was doubtless to blame for the
charred and crumbling appearance of the side the door was on. There was
nothing to keep him from walking straight inside.
There were a number of iron kettles in the shack, and into each of these
Twinkly sniffed with interest. But they were clean and empty. Where,
then, did that sugary odor come from? Ah, over in one corner, where it
had fallen, lay a wooden cask. This, Twinkly’s wriggling nose told him,
was the place. Inside this cask was the delicious something that made
his mouth water so. Successive wettings, as rain and wind had pummeled
through the side of the shack, had wet the contents till they were
oozing liquidly through the cracks.
Twinkly Eyes put out his tongue and licked the sides, then set joyously
to work with his curved claws to tear an opening into the thing.
So suddenly that it struck him square in the face, the half of one stave
came off. Then he broke off another, and after that a third. The keg had
not been full, and the part he had torn an opening into was the empty
part. But Twinkly didn’t care. He simply thrust his head in and licked,
and licked, and licked at the sugary cake.
He could just reach it with the red tip of that greedy tongue. There was
nothing he could reach with his jaws. And presently he began to twist
and wiggle in the effort to get more.
By dint of much shoving he finally got his head clear inside the cask.
Then he was happy. My, how that bear enjoyed the next half-hour! By
stretching his neck farther and farther through the narrow opening he
could just scrape the delicious contents with his teeth.
His jaws dripped with the combined delights of an-tic-i-pa-tion and
real-i-za-tion. That the feast would continue till the last crumb was
gone he had no doubt whatever. Not Twinkly Eyes!
By and by, however, stretch as he might, he could thrust his head no
farther, and he could reach no more. Then what a time there was, as the
little Bear tried to pull himself out of the barrel.
And as he jerked and banged about in growing alarm, his heels sent
everything in the cabin spinning about his shanks.
When finally his head came free quite suddenly, he sat down with such
violence that he went sliding across the floor with the huge iron kettle
over-turned on top of him. And, of course, being unable to see what it
was that had imprisoned him, he struck out still more viciously.
LVII
A FEAST AND A FAST
Twinkly Eyes was a most un-com-fort-able bear.
True, he had freed his head from the sugar cask. But in his blind fury
at the thing that held his head imprisoned he had thrashed about till
all the furniture in the camp had been sent spinning about his heels.
Then at last the huge iron kettle had landed squarely on top of him!
He finally backed out of the thing and hastened from the cabin, sitting
up on his haunches to nurse his bruised head. All the same, this maple
sugar was mighty good stuff! Was he going to leave it? Not Twinkly Eyes!
Not the little Black Bear who had once robbed the bee tree in spite of
the worst its owners could do with their stings! He would go straight
back there, give that kettle a good, vigorous cuff for its impudence,
and then knock the sugar cask to bits.
So they thought they could frighten him away, did they? Cautiously he
tiptoed back into the shack. This time he felt sure he had caught the
keg at a dis-ad-van-tage, for with one powerful blow of his great, furry
fist, he sent it whirling into the corner. Then grappling it with his
long steel claws, he wrenched at the syrup-soaked wood.
For once it did not grab at his head. For he had torn such a hole in the
side that there was room and to spare. Next moment the fat cub had
settled himself at that giant lump of maple sugar with the cask held
tight between his black knees.
If Twinkly Eyes had been a small boy, he wouldn’t have wanted anything
more to eat for a week. And it is more than likely that he would hate
the smell of maple sugar for the rest of his life.
But bears are not built that way. And Twinkly Eyes, with that same greed
with which he had gobbled the honey comb, now put that maple sugar
inside till there wasn’t so much as a crumb of it left.
After that he slept awhile with his little black tummy rounded out till
he could hardly move. For that is what makes a bear feel happiest, when
he is eating his last meal for five months.
Next day he once more started on his lumbering tramp over the slopes of
Mount Olaf to find his winter’s resting place.
Winter would set in early this year, the wild ducks had shouted as they
honked their way southward that fall.
And already the last leaves were falling in yellow swirls that crackled
under-foot. In the pine forest it was still. But everywhere else the
winds swept around the mountain in a way to chill through even Twinkly
Eyes’ thick coat.
Then one morning he awoke to find a world of white! And still he had
found no cave to shelter him.
[Illustration: [Bear]]
LVIII
THE FIRST SNOW
Yes, sir, Twinkly Eyes awoke to find it snowing!
A more surprised young bear you never saw in all your life, for as yet
he had found no cave in which to pass his winter’s sleep. And the winds
that tore around Mount Olaf made goose-flesh underneath his furs.
He stared about him dazedly. Great soft flakes as big as feathers were
falling, falling, falling through the naked tree-tops. He had never
heard the world so still. And off across the valley the air looked thick
and gray like a blanket.
And indeed, it was a blanket—was this whirling white stuff that kept
covering over the dead leaves that carpeted the forest floor. It filled
in all the niches, and shut out all the wind.
It was a blanket for next year’s flowers, and for little young trees and
shrubs too tender yet to meet the winter’s cold.
It was a blanket for the field mice and the white-footed wood mice, in
their homes under-ground or inside old hollow stumps. It would be a
sheltering blanket for Fatty Chuck in his cave under the barn-yard
fence, down at the Valley Farm. For it would sift down into his entrance
hole and over the earth above until frost could not reach him curled up
in a ball there sound asleep.
But all this did not help Twinkly Eyes, staring at the falling flakes
while he longed with his whole soul for sleep. If in all his rambles
over the mountainside he had not found even a crevice in the rocks in
which he might den up for the winter, was it likely that further search
would reveal one? He yawned, for he was oh, so dreadfully sleepy! He
longed to curl up right where he was—but he knew if he did, he’d never
wake. He’d just freeze solid, and that would be the end of him!
His last meal of dried bark and pine needles,—the meal that was to keep
his stomach from feeling empty until spring, just because it wouldn’t
digest,—sat heavy within him now, and he longed to begin his
hi-ber-na-tion.
Animals that hibernate, you know, sleep away the cold months when food
is hard to find. And when they wake up in the spring, they look very
different from the fat creatures they were in the fall. They are then as
thin as they were plump before.
But of course, with the season of plenty, they soon make up all they
have lost. Meantime, they have kept safe and warm all through the bitter
winter. For they first close up the entrance to their dens with leaves
and mosses, and then curl up into warm furry balls, with their toes and
their noses inside. Then the snow falls so deep that it keeps the high
winds from finding their way to the sleepers, and there is nothing to
disturb their dreams.
Fatty Chuck hibernates, too. But Fatty had gone into winter quarters
long before, and was now snoozing away as snug and comfy as anything you
can imagine.
If only the winter had been as easy a problem for Twinkly Eyes! What was
he to do?
LIX
TWINKLY EYES GOES TO BED
What should he do, asked Twinkly Eyes as he stared about at the falling
snow-flakes?
He had been driven from the den in which he had slept away his first
winter in the Great North Woods, because his mother’s littlest cubs now
took up all the room.
His father had a cave, too, somewhere, he supposed. But Twinkly Eyes
would not have dared to enter that, much less to lie himself down to
sleep beside that great, growling monster. Like most cubs, Twinkly was
wholesomely afraid of his father.
As he stood swaying sleepily, winking the snow-flakes from his heavy
eyelids, Twinkly Eyes had a sudden bright idea. He would simply curl up
under a stump!
There was an old overturned pine stump not far away, and to its roots
had clung such a mass of earth that he could easily cuddle beneath it.
In fact, the dried leaves with which he would have made his bed, had he
found a cave to stow them in, were already drifted high there. And all
he had to do was to crawl in and wait for the snow to cover his shelter
completely over.
That was it! The snow would drift over leaves and stump and all,
shutting out the winds and the frost, and hiding him while he slept.
An hour later, any one passing that way would have seen a huge round
ball of black fur just showing beneath a blanket of leaves under the
stump. And by nightfall they would have found nothing but a deep white
bank with a root sticking out at the top.
Just enough air would filter through the snow to keep his lungs
supplied, and that was all he needed now for a long time to come.
Twinkly Eyes, cuddled up snug in his strange feather bed, gave one last
blissful sigh, and was off into a dreamland where honey filled every
hollow tree trunk and blueberries grew everywhere as thick as grass.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
182 have dared to enter that, much have dared to enter that, much
less to lie him less to lie himself
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.