CHAPTER III

Now, I hope you have not forgotten about the tall hill on the other side of the wide plain, about a mile from the bear's cave, where the ring of bright, rosy lights appeared every night, burning in a circle around a bigger, redder light in the center, like "a ring around the rosy."

Well, I think I have told you that there were sheep on that hill. So there were, hundreds and hundreds of tame, woolly sheep, and little frisking lambs, too!

They were under the care of two men called "shepherds," or "herders," who camped out on the lonely hillside where the sheep fed, because there was nice, juicy grass there for the woolly flock to eat.

But these shepherds could never, by themselves, have kept all the sheep and lambs together, so they kept two beautiful dogs, with frills of hair around their necks, to help them. One was brown and white, the other black and white. The first was named Glen and the other Watch. And it was one of these strong, wise sheep-dogs which the mother bear had heard barking on the night when she got back late to the cave, when little fat Timmy, who, really, hadn't any name in particular then, trotted out to meet her.

It was those two nimble sheep-dogs, too, Glen and Watch, who had led Mother Cinnamon Bear such a sorry dance out upon the plain, capering round her, snapping at her heels, and jumping out of the way again, before she could get her shaggy paw on them, barking at her as much as to say,

"Dance, Bear Woman, dance, Dance to our barking-o!"

That was when, some time before Timmy and his twin brother were born, she had tried to steal in through the ring of red lights on the hillside, to pick up a little lamb and carry it off; for those rosy lights which were kindled just as darkness came on, which twinkled in a starry ring all night through, were really lanterns lit by the two shepherds, who as I told you, had charge of the woolly flock.

They placed these red lanterns in a wide circle all around the grassy bedding ground of the sheep, just as soon as the woolly mothers and the little tombs, tired with playing all day upon the mountainside, baaed drowsily and wanted to go to sleep.

The two wise sheep-dogs lay down by the biggest, brightest light in the center of the ring, and from there, because all the rosy lanterns made that part of the hillside almost as bright as if it were day, they could see if any bear or other wild animal tried to steal inside the ring and carry off a little lamb.

They saw Mrs. Cinnamon Bear directly she showed her nose between the lights on that night of which I told you, and chased her off the hillside down to the plain, and there made her dance and circle and circle and dance--hop, skip, and jump, now on two legs, now on four, until she never wanted to hear a dog bark again.

She did, however, as you know, on the night she came home late. And little Timmy, her strongest cub, heard it, too, far away in the distance, although he didn't know what it meant, and was only surprised to see his shaggy mother sitting up on her hind legs as if very much startled.

But there was no far-away sound of a sheep-dog's bark on the evening when she took him and his fat little twin brother on their first mouse hunt, to show them where the wood mice lived, where they scampered around on their tiny white feet.

The sun had just set over the great broad plain that fine evening when Mrs. Cinnamon Bear led her two cubs up to the very top of the big mound of earth where the blueberry and huckleberry bushes were, where she had before taken them berrying.

I want to make it clear to you that this big mound of earth was on the bank of the river which ran on one side of the plain, and that the hill of the sheep, where the lights burned all night, was on the other side, quite a mile away. The broad plain lay between.

Now, those starry lights had just begun to twinkle out in a far-away ring by the time that the mother bear got her two cubs to the top of the high grassy mound near the river.

There was a swamp at the bottom of that mound and trees on top of it. The two bear cubs and their mother got all wet and muddy, wading through that swamp.

But when once they had climbed to the top of the mound they forgot all their troubles, for right on top, there was a big fallen tree lying across the ground.

A deep hollow was in its trunk, just like the dark hollow in the bee-tree.

Madame Bear thrust her paw down into that hollow with a satisfied growl. And out scampered--not stinging bees, if you please--but a whole lot of tiny wood mice, with long, thread-like tails, and little white feet that gleamed and galloped in the twilight like the tiniest white blossoms blown here and there by the wind, as they scampered every way to get out of the mother bear's way.

"Oo-oo-ow-w! Boo-ooitt! Catch them! Catch them, Children!" said that mother bear to her two cubs.

And you should have seen those two cubs, Timmy and his yellow twin brother, try to catch them--the mousie white-foots!

It was the very best game of play the cubs had had since they were born.

They were as much excited over it as any little six-year-old child whose mother takes it to a toy-shop where all sorts of moving toys with springs inside them are buzzing round, and tells the delighted boy or girl that he or she may have any running toy in sight if he or she can only catch it.

"Whoo-oof! Wuf! What are these funny, small things that run up and down, every way, and make a queer little singing noise like the grasshopper that I caught in the grass, yesterday?" growled Timmy. "Whoof! I'm going to catch one of them!"

And he dashed after a scurrying, white-footed mousie that set up a queer, shrill little chir-r-r! as it scampered away from him.

That mousie was too quick. It blew around on its white feet like the breeze. Timmy couldn't catch it. But, at all events, it didn't turn and sting him on the nose, as the angry bees did, when he licked the sweet honey off his mother's paw.

So he chased it until it disappeared. Then he ran after another, for there was a nest of wood mice in the deep hollow of that fallen tree into which his mother had thrust her shaggy paw.

All at once he stopped short in his mouse hunting and looked at his bear mother in surprise. For, again, she didn't look natural! Again, she was going through the same queer stunt that he caught her at on the night, two weeks before, when she came home late and he trotted out of the cave to meet her.

She was standing up, straight and tall, on her hind legs, on top of this darkening mound, with the little wood mice scurrying this way and that, all around her.

She was not looking at them. She was gazing away over them, down at the wide plain where it sloped toward the river, and she was growling low, growling awfully.

Timmy had never heard her growl so fearfully as that before, not even when she heard a sheep-dog bark, far away near the hill of the lights.

Her shaggy, light-brown hair, the color of a cinnamon candy stick, was standing up and out on her back. Her little brown eyes were turning in toward her dull-black, "rubbering" nose, like those of a startled piggy.

As she kept looking down the mound and over the swamp toward the river bank, a red fire came into those squinting eyes of hers that was like the last pink flame of the sunset color, now fading out of the sky.

Timmy felt strangely excited at seeing his mother look like that, more excited than he was a minute before, when chasing wood mice that fled every way on their little white feet.

"Whoo-oof! Whoo-oof! What's the matter, Mother?" he whined. "What do you see down there upon the great, wide plain, near the river?" And he rubbed himself against his mother's shaggy, brown fur, like a timid kitten.

"Whoo-oof! Boo-ooitt! I see--I see a man--a man on two legs!" growled his mother, answering in wild-bear talk. "A man is a creature that has only two legs and stands upright on them always, whether he's still or moving, just as I do occasionally for a minute or so. And I tell you, my cubs, that I like a two-legged man even less than a barking dog, and that's saying a great deal!"

Now, of course, Timmy Bear-cub did not understand all this from his mother's squinting looks and low growling as she stood up, tall, on her hind legs atop of the mound.

But he did understand that she didn't like at all something that she saw down on the river bank. So he peeped over the edge of the mound and down through the bushes, to see what the thing was.

And, lo and behold! he saw that it was a tall thing which moved nearly upright upon two blue legs as it walked slowly up the river bank and stepped out upon the flat plain.

It was not quite upright, for across its shoulders it carried a bulging bag. The little bear cub, peeping down through the bushes, didn't know anything about a bag or that it was a small sack of flour which the two-legged thing carried on its back as it started off to walk over the wide, dim plain toward the hill of the starry lights.

But that's what it was! And, of course, the two-legged creature was a man, as the old bear mother had seen at a glance.

He was one of the two shepherd men who took care of all the sheep and the little lambs on that starry hillside, a mile away, from which his two wise sheep-dogs, with the frills of hair round their necks, had driven the mother bear when she tried to steal a lamb.

As I told you, these herders, or shepherds, camped out on the mountainside with the sheep; and to-day, they found that they had no more flour to make bread with, so one of them started off to walk over the plain and cross the river in a boat and go to a house four miles away to get some flour.

Now he was just returning to the distant hill where the ring of lights was burning, with his full flour-sack on his back, when the mother bear who had been catching wood mice, saw him.

He had crossed the river with his bag of flour, in a boat. Then he drew the boat up and tied it to a tree on the bank. Taking the bulging flour-bag across his shoulders, he started to walk over the plain to the distant hill where the sheep were already cuddling softly down upon their bedding ground with the ring of lanterns, and the dogs watching over them, and where the other poor shepherd man was waiting hungrily for his supper, until he got some flour to make pancakes of.

Well, I tell you right here, Children, that I feel sorry for that other hungry shepherd man. I don't believe that he's going to get even a pinch of flour to make flapjacks (which means camp pancakes) of, to-night, for the mother bear on top of the mound has quite forgotten that she is on a mouse hunt with her two cubs, and is beginning to move around angrily among the trees and bushes, as she watches the shepherd, who had gone to get the flour, start off across the plain.

He was a very quiet and harmless-looking shepherd man, that one with the heavy flour-sack on his back.

He was fat and his legs were fatter than the rest of him; for, as a rule, he didn't walk much while taking care of his sheep, and he wore shabby blue overalls.

Still, just because he was a two-legged man, old Mother Cinnamon Bear didn't like his looks at all.

"Whoof! Whoof!" she snorted, growling still more and beating around among the bushes in a very surly way. "It's a man, my cubs! A man! And I don't like a man, even with a load on his back. I'm afraid he may mean some harm to you! Boo-oo-ooitt! I really can't quite make up my mind whether I'll run after him, or not!"