Part 3

As Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, heard that buzzing from the wild rose bushes, he forgot his troubles with the Jay.

Indeed, he fairly danced for joy. For had he not been waiting greedily all spring for the sound of a honey bee?

Now he would find the bee tree, and feast on honey to his heart’s content! For of all the good things in the great green woods—mice and berries and grubs, and fish and frogs, and sour-tasting little red ants, to say nothing of juicy roots, and the nuts of autumn—he loved nothing half so well as honey.

He had had a taste just once, but he had never forgotten!

While wrestling with his brother one day the spring before, when they were three months cubs, their mother had suddenly called them to follow and trailing straight after a bee her sharp ears had discovered, she led them to a hollow tree where the yellow comb lay in great fragrant chunks.

Twinkly Eyes licked his chops at the memory. Then Mother Black Bear had shown them how to hide their noses and shut their eyes when the bees came too near these unprotected places. Otherwise the angry insects could try as hard as they would, and they could not reach through the glossy fur.

Twinkly Eyes had escaped without a sting and he had decided in his infant mind that Mother was altogether too cautious for any use.

This year Mother Black Bear had a new set of cubs to teach and train, and Twinkly and his brother were living in bachelor quarters.

A moment Twinkly watched, and then the bee had all the honey she could carry. Buzzing happily, she started back through the woods toward an open glade on the other side of Pollywog Pond.

Twinkly followed, his sharp ears guiding him where his little near-sighted eyes could not, till his eager sniffings brought to his nostrils the first faint fragrance of the bee tree.

Now other bees began to join the first one, till there was quite a little swarm headed for a hollow pine—a great, gaunt tree that had been hollowed out by lightning and now stood, scarred and blackened, on the top of a hillock.

“It’s a pretty good world, after all,” Twinkly Eyes decided, as he ambled up the slope.

[Illustration: [Bees]]

XVII TWINKLY EYES AND TROUBLE

“Yes, sir, it’s a pretty good world after all,” mused Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, as he neared the bee tree.

Certainly everything about him promised a blissful day.

Warblers sung happily from every treetop, swallowtail butterflies danced above the wild rose bushes, and puffy white clouds shadowed the blue of the sky. There was just enough breeze to feel good as it ruffled his glossy fur. Then too, blueberries were nearly ripe, and the fragrance of wild grape vines promised delights to come.

But best of all was that heavy hum of a thousand bees carrying their golden honey into the hollow pine tree.

It was a tall old pine that had once been struck by lightning. One side was scored and blackened; near the top was a small dark hole, into which the returning bees poured steadily, while others poured steadily out again.

And oh! The wonderful odor that came from that hole! How it made his mouth water! There was nothing whatever to indicate that trouble might be near.

Now Twinkly Eyes had been in his mother’s charge the first time he had climbed a bee tree, and thanks to her warnings he had escaped unstung. It seemed to him now, as he thought of that wonderful day, that his mother had been altogether more cautious than there was any need of being.

But, no sooner had his claws begun to rattle upon the trunk of the hollow pine than the buzzing grew louder, and it seemed to Twinkly Eyes that there was a new note in it, quite different from the contented hum he had heard before. In fact, he began to wonder if there might be trouble after all. Still, he was not one to give up at this point! The sweet comb would be worth a lot of trouble! He scrambled faster, till one paw clutched the edge of the hole.

Instantly the bees had settled thick upon his coat, trying their best to ram their red-hot stings into his glossy fur, but it was too thick for them, and Twinkly minded not at all.

Suddenly a red-hot needle struck him on the lip.

“Hoof—woof!” he protested, licking the burnt place. It hurt dreadfully.

Another needle pricked him, this time on the tip of his protruding tongue. This time Twinkly slapped so angrily that he flattened the bee, but it didn’t help his tongue, and his lip began to swell.

But there was no time to think about that. As he reached for a better hold, his paw tore a strip of the rotten bark away, and he had to shut his eyes and cover his nose with his paw while the angry swarm darted about his head in a buzzing fury.

XVIII TWINKLY SHOWS HIS METTLE

No, indeed, Twinkly Eyes was not the Bear to give up just when he had one paw in the honey!

For the same paw that covered his nose from the angry insects, as he clung to the old pine, also brought to his tongue the most wonderful flavor he had ever known.

All the smarting and burning in tongue and lip could not spoil that flavor. He must have more of it, and that at once! For what had he watched and waited these long weeks if not for this very chance? Was he to be driven from the feast by a little brown insect with a barb in the end of its tail?

No indeed! No mere honey bee could make him turn back now.

Struggling still nearer that dark round hole from which the fragrance issued he drew a long breath and plunged in.

[Illustration:

“My how his little black eyes danced with the delight of it!”

—Page 55 ]

Another needle point, red hot, stung him, this time on the lid of his right eye; and if the sting on his lip had tortured him, this was something far, far worse. He whimpered unhappily, and rubbed the sore place gently against his upraised foreleg.

My! how those bees did buzz and threaten him! But they couldn’t reach him through his fur, so long as he kept his face protected. He clung to his hole just the same, and by and by he dug his free paw deep into the honeycomb within and brought a great luscious chunk to his mouth.

Now that their little store was really disappearing, despite all they could do the bees at once began setting to work to rescue some of their treasure. Still there were enough left on guard to give Twinkly cause for watchfulness.

He grabbed another mouthful, and gulped it down, with the bees that still clung to it. My, how his little black eyes danced with the delight of it!

If only that eyelid would not smart so dreadfully! It was swelling, too, and he could hardly see out of that eye at all.

His tongue was swollen, too, on the tip end where the bee had stung him, till it began to feel so big he feared he wouldn’t be able to close his jaws in another minute.

But he would not give up! Not Twinkly Eyes! Not till every last smell of that honey was gone! Now that he had risked it thus far, he reasoned, he might as well have something to sweeten his pain.

The little Black Bear was nothing if not persistent, and persistence is a virtue that stands one in good stead in the wilderness.

Then suddenly a most surprising thing happened.

[Illustration: [Bear]]

XIX DOWN BUT NOT DOWNED

A great many things can happen to a bear cub that he doesn’t expect to happen.

It was so with Twinkly Eyes. No sooner had he made up his mind to enjoy his feast in the bee tree in spite of his stings when—zipp! Off came a great long strip of the rotten bark! And while it disclosed even more of the yellow comb, it also happened to be the very strip of bark to which the little bear was clinging with his left forepaw.

Now his right paw was deep in the honey at the time, and a bear cannot cling in the top of a pine tree with his hind legs alone. The result was that there was a wild scrambling, then the sound of claws rattling noisily over the bark that they could not get a grip in, and finally the snapping of a hazel bush that stood just beneath.

Twinkly Eyes had come down like a bag of meal!

He gave one big grunt, then a series of whimpers. For even if you are a yearling cub and your bones are padded with great heavy muscles and thick fur, it isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world to fall crashing out of the top of a bee tree.

Fortunately for Twinkly Eyes, he had hugged the trunk just enough, as he descended, to break the fall. Then, too, he landed on the hazel bush, which sprang under him in a way still further to soften his landing. But even at that, things whirled about him for a few minutes there.

Then he arose, a bit groaningly, it is true—what with his swollen eyelid and his burning lip and tongue. And what do you suppose he did next?

Most anyone would have felt that he had had enough adventure to last him for some time. But not so Twinkly Eyes! That was not the kind of mettle he was made of!

Though his little near-sighted eyes could not see the crack that now reached for nearly his own length down the hollow trunk, his keen brown nose told him that the scent of honey was even stronger than before. And, though his black sides already stuck out, his mouth still watered for more.

He sniffed longingly, then tried to soothe his swelling eyelid with his paw. He certainly felt bunged up, to say nothing of the jolting he had just received. He couldn’t see out of his right eye at all now, and there was a lump the size of a walnut on his lip.

But, oh, the delicious fragrance! The honey he had waited a year to find! In his long winter’s sleep he had dreamed of it more than once, and licked his paws in vain. Throughout the lean spring, as he grubbed for roots, he had listened in vain for the very buzzing that now filled the air all about him.

It was too much! He would try again!

XX TWINKLY APPLIES FIRST AID

There was no resisting that odor of wild honey dripping from the comb—not to one who loved wild honey like Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear!

He must have more! His eye swollen shut, his tongue stinging like fury with the hot flame of the bee’s sting, he pulled himself together and started up the tree again.

The bees were working like mad to carry away at least a part of their store before he should devour it; but they were not too busy to try once more to drive him off. A fourth bee gave up his life to thrust his barbed and poisonous sting into his nose. But Twinkly Eyes only became the more stubborn in his desire to clean out the tree.

Bracing himself in the crotch of a branch just beneath the opening, he thrust one paw in deeply and brought it back dripping with yellow liquid and dotted with black bees. Bees and all went into his eager mouth, and he crunched joyously handful after handful. Once a bee tried to come too near, and with one sticky sweep of his honeyed paw he imprisoned the insect, whose wings stuck so fast he could only buzz helplessly, traveling back and forth from the place where the bees wanted the honey to the place where Twinkly Eyes wanted to have it.

Thus, in time, the treasure of the pine tree disappeared,—and my, you should have seen how that little bear’s sides stuck out! It was a lucky thing for him that the honey was all gone, I tell you!

And what a sight he presented, as he slid down the trunk and ambled off to Pollywog Pond! His face by this time was smeared with honey from ear to ear. Flying leaves and little chips of bark clung to it as if they had been pasted there. Add to that his swollen eyelid, which by now had raised a great black welt, and his nose and his mouth all lumpy from the poisonous stings, and one would certainly have said he had been in a fight.

But he felt so perfectly blissful with his sides rounded out with honey the way they were that he wasn’t the least bit sorry. Not Twinkly Eyes! He would have done the same thing over again the next day had he had the chance.

He knew just what to do with his wounds, and he did it. Searching along the banks until he found some particularly sticky clay, he plastered it freely all over his tortured face until he looked, if possible, worse than before.

But he felt a whole lot better, let me tell you. The wet clay soon began to draw the poison, and besides, bears get over things like that quicker than human beings would. So by the time he had had a nice long snooze and a drink and a stretch, and the round yellow moon began to rise from behind the firs, Twinkly Eyes was ready for almost anything.

XXI MAMMY COTTONTAIL’S SECRET

Now Twinkly Eyes had a lively bump of curiosity on that furry black head of his. He was much interested in other people’s affairs. And he used to lie hidden by the hour, just to find out what other wood-folk were up to. But of all the dwellers in that wilderness, none interested him so much as the Cottontail family. That is, none except his old enemy the porcupine!

One day, lying under a clump of high-bush blue-berry bushes, in the early spring sunshine, he learned a secret.

“We have a secret at our house! Truly, truly, truly,” sang Betty Bluebird, sitting on a fencepost with her red blouse turned to the warming glow of the early morning sunshine.

“We have too, we have too, we have too!” trilled Robin Red-breast, running along the roadway with a weather eye for worms.

And down in the marsh behind the barn, Conqueree, the Red Winged Blackbird, was shrilling at the Crows like a little soldier in red epaulettes: “Clear out! Or I’ll put you out! I’m Conqueree! Conqueree! Conqueree!”

“You cawn’t, cawn’t, cawn’t!” the crows retorted, trying to drown out his threats with a hoarse chorus of denial, as they swirled around and around him, keeping just barely out of reach of his swift beak. “We have secrets we won’t tell! Such secrets!—Round, gray green secrets, four to a nest, hidden away up in the tops of the tallest pine trees! And you cawn’t, cawn’t, cawn’t guess what they are!—you cawn’t.”

“Trust a crow to tell all he knows!” chuckled Daddy and Mammy Cottontail, crouched on guard before a small round hole scooped out of the turf and lined with bits of fur from Mammy Cottontail’s breast. “We could tell a pretty cunning secret ourselves, only we have better sense than to shout our affairs to the four winds,” and their slim ears waggled wisely.

Sure enough, packed snugly back under a blanket of dried grass, six of the softest, roundest little wriggly-nosed babies that ever made a bunny feel like kicking his heels in the moonlight slept with their long ears folded close along their backs and their long hind legs doubled up under their fuzzy brown bodies.

“Do you suppose they’ve all got the same kind of secrets?” whispered Mammy Cottontail delightedly.

“Nothing to compare with ours,” sniffed Daddy, then stopped suddenly, as the little Bear snapped a twig in his effort to creep nearer.

[Illustration: [Rabbits]]

XXII ONE OF TWINKLY’S NEIGHBORS

Twinkly Eyes had roamed to quite another part of the woods when the twilight stillness was pierced by a sudden screech from up on Mount Olaf.

Mammy Cottontail’s timid heart quailed within her. Mother Red Squirrel could scarce be blamed for all but dropping from her limb; and even Father Red Fox looked anxious at the thought of the red-brown pups in the rocky den on the hill-top.

Far down at the Valley Farm, “Lynx!” whispered the Boy, wide-eyed, “Hope he isn’t coming down to make trouble for our wood folks. He’s mighty fond of baby bunnies.”

Away up almost at the top of Mount Olaf a great cat, three times as heavy as barnyard Tamas, was creeping, creeping, creeping along through the underbrush, on great furry feet that made no sound.

His broad ears bore little tufts at their tips, his jowls were squared off with the most ferocious-looking whiskers, and his thick tail was no more than a stub.

“Children,” quavered Mammy Cottontail, “That was a lynx! Now, I want to tell you something, and I want you to listen with all your ears, because it is very, very serious!

“Old man Lynx and his family live up on that mountain top, and while they don’t come down this far once in a coon’s age, we’ve got to be prepared! Because it would be a terrible thing if they did! Terrible for us, and terrible for everyone we know!

“I’ll tell you why he screeched that way! It was to scare timid folks like us, so that we’d jump and betray our whereabouts. Yes’m, that’s exactly what he screeched for! To make us jump!

“Because, you see, when Mother Nature invented little brown bunnies and grouse hens and muskrats and all the rest of us forest folk, she knew exactly what she was about. And she gave us our brown coats so that we’d match the ground, and couldn’t be seen by the big prowling creatures that are always trying to have rabbit and grouse for dinner. And just so long as we keep as still as field mice, we stand a fighting chance of not being seen.

“But Old Man Lynx knows this as well as we do. He knows that when he goes hunting o’nights, none but the foolish will be stirring a hair’s breadth from their own warm beds. And if there are no foolish ones that he can sneak up on, with his great padded paws that tip-toe so silently through the underbrush, he screams in the hope that it will startle some of us so dreadfully that we will forget to keep still, and jump.”

“It’s enough to make any one jump out of his skin,” said Daddy.

“But that’s exactly what the Old Man figures on. And if you can’t control your nerves any better than to jump when he screeches, he can see exactly where you are! If he’s anywhere near, that is! Well, you children had better go to sleep now. But just you remember this: Lie still when you hear him scream, and ten to one he’ll never know where you are.”

“Yes, Mammy,” whispered six timid little voices.

XXIII INTRODUCING BOBBY LYNX

It was not often that Old Man Lynx gave voice to the pangs of hunger. For he knew that for every grouse or hare or baby fox he startled into betraying its whereabouts, he scared a dozen so far away that it made hunting harder next time.

But tonight he was teaching some one else the trick.

At the very time that Father Red Fox was viewing his own red-brown pups with such mingled pride and amusement, and Mother Douglas was driving Father Douglas out of the old oak tree, lest he should step on one of the squirrel babies, and Mammy and Daddy Cottontail were taking turn and turn about guarding the six brown bunnies on the edge of the cornfield, Madam Lynx—away up on the top of Mt. Olaf—was just as proud as any one of two great, scraggly kittens, as heavy-pawed and bob-tailed and fierce-looking as anything that could be imagined.

At first even these ferocious creatures were as blind and helpless and appealing as any tame kittens could have been, though without their grace. And as soon as they learned the use of their legs, they rolled and tumbled, and growled and spat, and boxed one another about, fully as mischievously as had Fluff, the maltese kitten at the farm, when she and her little brothers lived in the basket behind the kitchen stove.

But Old Man Lynx was kept mighty busy, let me tell you, as soon as they were weaned and could eat meat; for the two youngsters were such ravenous creatures and they grew so fast, and the mountain air was so stimulating, that it just seemed as if he couldn’t bring in enough to keep his share of the larder filled.

So it was by way of teaching young Bob Kitten and his brother how to hunt that old Man Lynx had screamed in such a blood-curdling manner.

Decidedly Wriggly Nose and Shadow Tail, and even fat young Frisky Fox, were going to have a very much harder time of it making their way in the world, now that there was a new young lynx on the top of Mount Olaf.

Twinkly Eyes was later to share a couple of interesting adventures with young Bobby Lynx.

[Illustration: [Lynx]]

XXIV A BUNNY BALL

Mammy Cottontail, the little brown hare, had been living in the Old Apple Orchard for several weeks now and the bunnies were half-grown.

One moonlight night toward the end of June—the self-same night that Twinkly Eyes had found the bee tree, Mammy said:

“Children, we are going on a frolic tonight. So come along, Flap Ears and Furtive Feet, and Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws, and Fuzzy Wuzz and Hippity Skip! Daddy’s there waiting for us now!”

Through the moonlight woods she led them in one long line along a little briar-grown rabbit path, the youngsters kicking their heels high in their excitement.

Now they crept under a patch of huckleberry bushes, and now they hugged the shadow of a grapevine. Straight across the blueberry burn, they galloped,—under the fruit-laden bushes, then across a corner of wild meadow where the daisies gleamed high above their heads, and all about them was the aroma of sweet fern.

Their path ran zig-zag, this way and that, here circling back upon itself, there darting off at right angles, till anyone trying to follow it would have had an interesting time, to say the least.

But after various turnings and twistings through the woods, and doublings around the rocky hilltop behind Pollywog Pond, they found themselves away back on the border of a little glade, an opening in the trees where the grass was short and fine like that in a fairy ring. And the moon streamed down, making it all as light as day.

Here on every side were outposts, and the mere crunching of a dead leaf by any creature larger than a rabbit would be the signal for the warning tap-tap of the long hind feet of those on guard.

Within the circle of the moonlit glade a dozen hares were already assembled, and more were coming in from every side.