It is quite a common thing for Bears to spank their cubs when they need
it, and if Grumpy had disciplined Johnny this way, it would have saved
them both a deal of worry. Perhaps not a day passed, that summer,
without Grumpy getting into trouble on Johnny's account. But of all
these numerous occasions the most ignominious was shortly after the
affair with the Grizzly.
I first heard the story from three bronzed mountaineers. As they were
very sensitive about having their word doubted, and very good shots
with the revolver, I believed every word they told me, especially when
afterward fully endorsed by the Park authorities.
It seemed that of all the tinned goods on the pile the nearest to
Johnny's taste were marked with a large purple plum. This conclusion he
had arrived at only after most exhaustive study. The very odour of those
plums in Johnny's nostrils was the equivalent of ecstasy. So when it
came about one day that the cook of the Hotel baked a huge batch of
plum-tarts, the tell-tale wind took the story afar into the woods, where
it was wafted by way of Johnny's nostrils to his very soul.
{Illustration}
Of course Johnny was whimpering at the time. His mother was busy
"washing his face and combing his hair," so he had double cause for
whimpering. But the smell of the tarts thrilled him; he jumped up, and
when his mother tried to hold him he squalled, and I am afraid--he
bit her. She should have cuffed him, but she did not. She only gave a
disapproving growl, and followed to see that he came to no harm.
{Illustration}
With his little black nose in the wind, Johnny led straight for the
kitchen. He took the precaution, however, of climbing from time to time
to the very top of a pine-tree look-out to take an observation, while
Grumpy stayed below.
Thus they came close to the kitchen, and there, in the last tree,
Johnny's courage as a leader gave out, so he remained aloft and
expressed his hankering for tarts in a woebegone wail.
It is not likely that Grumpy knew exactly what her son was crying for.
But it is sure that as soon as she showed an inclination to go back into
the pines, Johnny protested in such an outrageous and heart-rending
screeching that his mother simply could not leave him, and he showed no
sign of coming down to be led away.
Grumpy herself was fond of plum-jam. The odour was now, of course, very
strong and proportionately alluring; so Grumpy followed it somewhat
cautiously up to the kitchen door.
There was nothing surprising about this. The rule of "live and let live"
is so strictly enforced in the Park that the Bears often come to the
kitchen door for pickings, and on getting something, they go quietly
back to the woods. Doubtless Johnny and Grumpy would each have gotten
their tart but that a new factor appeared in the case.
{Illustration}
That week the Hotel people had brought a new cat from the East. She was
not much more than a kitten, but still had a litter of her own, and at
the moment that Grumpy reached the door, the Cat and her family were
sunning themselves on the top step. Pussy opened her eyes to see this
huge, shaggy monster towering above her.
The Cat had never before seen a Bear--she had not been there long
enough; she did not know even what a Bear was. She knew what a Dog was,
and here was a bigger, more awful bob-tailed black dog than ever she had
dreamed of coming right at her. Her first thought was to fly for her
life. But her next was for the kittens. She must take care of them. She
must at least cover their retreat. So like a brave little mother, she
braced herself on that door-step, and spreading her back, her claws, her
tail, and everything she had to spread, she screamed out at that Bear an
unmistakable order to