Part 4

Mammy Cottontail drew up in the shadow of a tree trunk, that the youngsters might get their courage up before joining those in the open. Soon there were half a hundred bunnies, young and old, together, scampering about and having a glorious good time. They pranced and they danced and they raced one another. They leapt back and forth across a log and they leap-frogged over one another, kicking their heels to the moon. There was never a sound to break the stillness save the chirping of crickets away back in the meadow they had left.

Then, so suddenly that Mammy’s heart gave an extra beat, there came the warning thump! thump! thump! just behind them!

[Illustration: [Rabbit]]

XXV TWINKLY EYES ATTENDS THE FROLIC

Now Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, had no idea when he awoke of all that was going on so near him.

But ambling down to Pollywog Pond for a drink after his feast of honey, the sound of his crunching over a dead twig was enough to warn the sharp ears that ringed about the rabbit frolic; and from first one outpost and then another came the thump, thump, thump, of a half hundred padded feet on the forest floor.

In an instant every one of the bunnies which a moment before had been capering madly in the moonlight had sought cover.

Mammy Cottontail and her little brood, watching from the shadow of their tree trunk, were already hidden, hearts beating bumpety-bump in their anxiety.

For perhaps ten minutes they listened, their hearts sounding like trip hammers in the breathing stillness of the forest night, in which no creature larger than an insect moved, save the silent-winged bats and owls.

At least, that was what the listening bunnies thought! But Twinkly Eyes, the sly one!—had heard the thump, thump of the outposts; and he knew just what it meant. Although his little sides were already rounded from his feast of honey, a bear is always hungry. And Twinkly Eyes decided to attend the frolic.

If Mammy Cottontail, anxious little mother that she was, had known all that was being plotted in the head of the little Bear, she would have started her brood for home on the fastest gallop.

But Twinkly Eyes, for all his weight, had paws padded so softly that he can, when he wants to, steal through the underbrush without a sound to warn his quarry of his coming.

Yes, sir, that little rascal can slip through the woods as still as a mouse, and you could sit straining your ears but you would never hear so much as the crunching of a leaf beneath his foot. When he really wants to, he can move like a shadow.

Now he had decided to attend the frolic, but not to join in the play! Mammy Cottontail, never dreaming of the sleek black form that crept so silently to the edge of the clearing, led her six out among the merry-makers. Soon Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws, and Flap Ears and Furtive Feet, and Fuzzy Wuzz and Hippity Skip were leaping and dancing as gaily as the best of them.

The full moon, shining down on the little glade, showed their furry forms so plainly that even Twinkly with his near-sighted little eyes, could see them kick their heels in air.

Crouched in the shadow of the very log where a little while before Mammy and her six had hidden, he watched and waited.

[Illustration: [Rabbits]]

XXVI A JOKE ON THE LITTLE BLACK BEAR

Twinkly Eyes had his mind all made up, as he hid there in the shadow of the tree trunk, to add a rabbit to his feast of honey.

He therefore crouched with his great steel paw ready to give the one crushing blow that would be necessary the moment the first brown bunny was so foolish as to pass within his reach.

He watched gleefully as he saw their sleek brown forms dancing so care-free in the moonlight. “Hippity skip and away we go!” their soft feet seemed to sing, as they galloped back and forth across a fallen log.

Saucy fellows, he told himself, as they flapped their long brown ears or leaped high in the air.

[Illustration:

“Leaping high in the moonlight”

—Page 79 ]

Oddly enough, so silently had the little Bear approached that not one of the outposts was aware of his presence. The wind was blowing directly toward him, so that they did not even get his scent.

Only Mammy Cottontail, prancing gaily around to the right, thought for just an instant that she had caught an alien odor. Leaping high in the moonlight, she struck her long hind feet three times upon the ground, to see if she could startle whatever it was into betraying its whereabouts.

At her danger signal, every bunny in the glade stopped stone still to stare and listen; but Twinkly Eyes was not to be thus betrayed. He was too big to be startled by her stamping, and too wise to come out into the open, where every rabbit, once warned, could easily outrun him.

Not he! Twinkly Eyes just bided his time, huddled down as still as any frightened field mouse. He sat so long in one position that his legs got cramped and he began to feel distinctly drowsy. Why on earth didn’t one of those fat bunnies come just a wee bit closer? How weird they looked, now chasing one another, now pausing to nibble a few grasses, but always well within the open glade where the moon would have shown them the first instant an intruder thrust a paw within the charm-ed circle.

After a while, though, the wind died down, and with the bear scent that now suddenly came to the merrymakers, there was a series of frightened squeaks, and in less time than the twinkle of a moonbeam, every last bunny of them had darted under the ferns or into the deep shadows, and the little glade was as empty as if they had never been there.

Then Wriggly Nose, more daring than the others, crept very, very silently toward that dreadful odor. He peered amazed at what he saw.

Twinkly Eyes had fallen fast asleep.

[Illustration: [Bear & rabbit]]

XXVII SCHOOL FOR BUNNIES

Yes, sir, there was Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, fast asleep!

How Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws and the rest did wiggle their long brown ears at the sight!

“So he had been spying on our frolic!” whispered Flap Ears with a giggle.

“Yes, he thought he’d have hare for supper. Why do you suppose he didn’t catch one of us, when he came so near?” asked Wriggly Nose, his eyes a-twinkle.

“Huh, he knew we could run the faster,” and Paddy Paws threw his chest out.

“He was waiting to knock you down the instant you came near enough,” said Mammy Cottontail, suddenly appearing in the midst of her little brood. “Don’t go too near! He might wake up at any minute!”

“Aw, come on,” urged Flap Ears to the younger bunnies. “I’ll bet you can’t jump as high as I can,” and he vaulted fully five feet into the air.

“Bravo,” said Mammy Cottontail. “That is as good as I could do myself!”

“I can leap farther,” boasted Wriggly Nose, and shooting like a coiled spring from the ground, he landed a good ten feet away.

“They’ll soon be able to take care of themselves,” chuckled Daddy Cottontail, hopping over beside Mammy at this moment. “We must have more of these drills.”

“Yes,” whispered Mammy, “but don’t let ’em know it’s a part of their schooling. Let ’em think it’s only play, or they won’t take any pleasure in it.”

“Right!” agreed Daddy Cottontail. “The great secret of training the young is to make it play for them. Now when I was a youngster—”

He stopped to prick up his ears.

“What is it?” whispered Mammy, with an anxious eye on the little bunnies, who were now playing leap-frog with the hares from the other side of Pollywog Pond.

“Didn’t you get a sniff of something, just then, when the wind changed?” asked Daddy. “I could have sworn—there! A fox! A fox!” he signaled with that tap—tap—tap of his long hind legs that sounded so much like drumming on a hollow log.

Instantly every bunny in the glade had dashed to cover, and gone scuttling for home along the crookedest little rabbit road it could find.

For a Fox has sharper eyes than a bear, a keener nose and better ears, and on top of everything else, he can run as fast as the fastest hare that ever grew. At least, a large fox could, and even young Frisky Fox had grown into a foe worth keeping at a distance.

For the taint on the wind was that of Frisky Fox, out on a little spree of his own.

[Illustration: [Fox]]

XXVIII A BOY AND A BEAR

Human ears are never so sharp as those of the wood folk who have to live by their wits. So when the Boy from the Valley Farm heard nothing, and saw nothing, he concluded there was nothing there.

But Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, was following him none the less, half fearful and half curious to see what this two-legged creature might be up to in his woods.

It was a pleasant afternoon, with just enough of a haze to subdue the sunlight. The rain had left the earth fresh and green in the open patches, and the air was sweet with the perfume of Steeple Bush and Joe Pye Weed and pink Sweet Clover. From away down by the meadow back of the Farm came the tinkle of a cowbell, the only sound to break the stillness, save the faint lapping of the river against a boulder.

The Boy stopped beside a pool half-shadowed by an overhanging log. His sharp eyes could just make out a big fat trout that lay headed up-stream, lazily fanning the water with his fins, to keep himself in position.

Now Twinkly Eyes, who had concealed himself in a clump of bushes a little downstream, began to see the meaning of the long black pole with the line dangling from the end of it.

First the Boy took a tin can from his pocket, a can with holes punched in the top. Selecting a fat white angle worm, of a sort that the little Black Bear well knew grew in the wet places, he fastened it on his hook and dangled it before the trout. But to no avail! That canny fellow knew perfectly that no such worms of soft fat whiteness were ever found in his stream. The kind of worms he sometimes found when there was a cave-in from the bank were strong, slim black ones.—He refused even to nibble.

The Boy next tried a cricket, then a grasshopper, and finally a fat white grub—but with the same result. Then, quite by chance, he chose a black worm.

But before he cast it, he saw a shining green turtle about as big around as a good-sized crab-apple floating about, just a little upstream. And carefully laying his pole along the bank, he made a grab for the fellow. That roiled the water, and although he didn’t get the turtle, it was one of the luckiest things he could have done. For when he cast his worm into the pool again, the water was so muddy that the old trout thought, of course, the bank had caved in above there, and he made for that black bank-worm as if he had fasted for a week.

A tweak at the line, and the boy was so excited that he swung his fish fully two rods through the air, landing him in the very bush behind which Twinkly Eyes was hiding!

The little Black Bear gave a start of surprise, and for just one instant his head was exposed to the boy’s startled gaze.

[Illustration: [Fishing]]

XXIX THE TABLES ARE TURNED

The Boy from the Valley Farm held his head high with pride.

For had he not—on the self-same day—landed a big fat trout and seen a bear cub!

That would certainly be something to tell at home, even for a backwoods boy! His mouth watered as he thought of the way his mother would broil his fish.

But alas, for the best laid plans of mice and men! When he found the place where he had landed his catch, there was no fish there. Could it be that he had only dreamed he caught it? But no, here was its tail on the trampled ground. Someone had stolen it. But who? That was the question!

Why, of course, the little Black Bear whom he had startled out of the underbrush!

“The rascal!” exclaimed the Boy, half amused, half crest-fallen. Well, I only hope he needed it more than I did.

“Now I suppose they will never believe me at home when I tell of my big catch.” He started whistling ruefully, as he set about mending his broken horsehair line, which had got badly tangled in the bushes.

Then his eye fell on something that made him pause, wide-eyed. Being a backwoods boy, he was almost as keen at reading the signs about him as were the wood folk themselves—that is, so far as he was able! Of course his nose and ears were very much less sharp than theirs, but he had even better eyes than most of them.

Here was evidence his eyes could not deny, though he reached out and felt of it to be sure. One fin of his stolen trout lay caught in the very top of a hazel bush.

“Now, how on earth did that get there?” he asked himself. People who are much alone are very apt to talk to themselves. “If that cub ate the fish down here, where the ground is trampled, how did he come to drop the fin in a bush higher than his head?”

[Illustration:

“Oh you rascal!” shouted the boy, in delight

—Page 89 ]

Then a bright idea popped into his mind. “Why, of course, it must have dropped from above. A sly fellow like that wouldn’t have stopped to eat his fish down here. He’s carried it up in the top of some tree where he could feast in peace. I’ll bet it was this very tree I’m standing under—for how else could the fin have fallen on top of the bush?” He raised his eyes to peer into the green shadows of the tree-top.

There, sure enough—so high that the Boy’s sharp eyes could barely make him out against the tree trunk, sat Twinkly Eyes astride a limb, and between his clever forepaws he held what must have been the last of the trout.

“Oh, you rascal!” shouted the boy, in delight. “I’ll get you for that!”

[Illustration: [Bear]]

XXX A CLIMBING MATCH

“You Scalawag!” the Boy kept laughing, as he stared at Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, in the top of the beech tree.

“So it was you who stole my fish?”

But Twinkly Eyes said never a word. He just sat still, like a bump on a log, in the hope that the Boy might yet be deceived into thinking him only a blackened limb.

But the Boy from the Valley Farm was not to be deceived. He, and his father before him, had lived all their lives in the north woods where footprints are very clear—and the little Bear’s footprints led straight to the tree.

Moreover, he had long been wishing he might catch a cub for a pet. Therefore, he started to climb the tree.

Twinkly Eyes, who did not know the kindness of the Boy’s intentions—and who certainly would not have wanted to be caught if he had—decided it was time to show fight.

“Whoof! Whoof!” he growled, slapping his heavy paws on the tree trunk.

“You can’t scare me!” laughed the Boy. “You’re nothing but a yearling cub. And I’m the best wrestler at the Cross-roads School!” And on he came regardless.

Now here was where ignorance was bliss. For while it was true that cubs have been caught and tamed, the Boy from the Valley Farm had much to learn about how it is done. And there was one thing he did not know.

He did not know that if it came to a wrestling match with Twinkly Eyes, the Boy would be the one to get very much the worst of it all. The cub was so small and cunning, so like an over-grown Newfoundland puppy, that the Boy would not have believed, had you told him, what a scrapper he could be.

Grown bears the Boy feared, but this little fellow didn’t look the least bit dangerous as he clung to his tree-top. And the Boy was only fourteen. That is to say, he held the firm belief that he could lick his weight in wildcats—to say nothing of bear cubs.

It was well for the Boy from the Valley Farm that Twinkly Eyes had no mind to let him try it.

Yes, sir, it was lucky for that Boy!

As it was, no sooner had he scrambled painfully half way up the trunk than Twinkly Eyes climbed to the very topmost branch; and as the Boy still came after him, he crept so near the tip that it swayed beneath his weight. Here he felt sure the Boy could not follow, and his courage returning with a bound, he turned to “Whoof!” at his pursuer.

“Ho! ho!” laughed the Boy from the Valley Farm. “I can shake you off, you rascal, if that’s your game.” For you see his natural kindness was forgotten in the thrill of the chase, and he was bound and determined now to have that bear.

[Illustration: [Bear & boy]]

XXXI THE BEAR GETS THE BEST OF IT

Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, had crept to the end of the drooping limb with an air of—

“Now catch me if you can!”

“You funny little rascal,” laughed the Boy from the Valley Farm, as he hitched himself astride the other end of the limb.

“I’m going to wait right here till you get tired of it. So you might as well make up your mind to getting caught. You won’t mind in the least, though, once you find out what it’s like to be tame. I’ll bring you all the fish you can eat. Sweet corn, too! And every time you learn to do a trick I’ll give you a lump of maple sugar. How’ll you like that, sir?” And the Boy fished a lump of his favorite sweet from his overalls pocket and held it out to the cub.

But he received no response from the other end of the limb.

Indeed, had the cub really understood what the Boy was saying, the result would have been no different. For freedom means more to a wilderness creature than life itself. Better a dinner of bark and his freedom than a banquet of honey served at the end of a rope, Twinkly Eyes could have told him.

Then an idea came to him. He began shaking the limb to which clung the cub. He shook and shook, till he was tired—but the harder he swung the limb, the tighter clung the little Black Bear to the swaying tip.

The lump of maple sugar dropped from the Boy’s busy fingers. The cub gazed after it with a hungry sniff, then—as easily as a bag of meal—he dropped to the ground, grabbed the sugar, and made off with it between his jaws.

The Boy stared in surprise, then let himself slide down the trunk. But fast as he came, the little bear was faster, and all he found for his afternoon’s adventure were the boy-like tracks of the padded feet, with their doglike claws, as they galloped away down the wet river bank.

“Well, I declare!” said the Boy. “If you haven’t got the best of me again, you clever rascal!”

But he didn’t give up the chase. Not for an instant. The cowbell found him deaf, and for once the supper hour was forgotten. For now he wanted nothing on earth so much as to catch that cub.

Following the broad footprints till they turned off among the thick pine needles, he fell to his knees to study the ground for signs of the little bear’s trail.

[Illustration: [Boy]]

XXXII THE LITTLE BEARS GO FISHING

Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, galloped across the pine needles as noiselessly as a shadow.

His drop from the tree-top had taken only a second, while the Boy had used up fully half a minute sliding down the trunk. So that, by the time the Boy began looking for footprints, the bear was away up stream in the top of another tree, peacefully licking up the ants from the bark.

Meantime the Boy from the Valley Farm was running into a danger of which he little dreamed.

Being a backwoods boy, he knew that a mother bear with cubs is a person to avoid. But he did not know that Mother Black Bear had brought her two new cubs to the very stream along which he was searching for footprints.

True, they were on the other side of the river. And the wind was blowing in quite the wrong direction, so that Mother Black Bear’s nose could not warn her of his approach. Thus, if he kept on the way he was headed, he was due to stumble upon the little family very soon, and give both them and himself an unpleasant surprise.

For Mother Black Bear was mighty touchy where her cubs were concerned. She was in a mood these days for clawing anyone who so much as looked at them, so precious were the two fat babies to her.

The last red glow of the setting sun was glinting off the river between the shadows of the trees. And Mother Black Bear was catching fish. The two fat, roly-poly cubs, Twinkly’s baby sisters, sat on the bank and watched gravely, while their mother waded in up to her neck, paddling so carefully downstream that she scarcely made a ripple in the mirror that it made. A trout might well have taken her for a log floating gently with the current.

Her arms she held well down to her sides with claws spread. Suddenly she felt a smooth form glide against her side! With one swift clutch of her curved iron claws she had her fish, and was flinging it ashore to the babies.

The next fish she carried ashore in her jaws for her own supper. Then back she led the cubs up-stream to where the riffles glittered in the sunset red. Here, standing perfectly still in the shallow water, she waited till a trout came by, when with one sharp blow on the head she finished his career.

Meantime, where was the Boy from the Valley Farm?

Deciding at length that it was getting too dark to see foot-prints, he became aware that the cow-bell was again tinkling and remembered with a guilty pang that his father was probably waiting for the cows that minute.

[Illustration: [Bear]]

XXXIII TWINKLY AGAIN MEETS THE PORCUPINE

Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, cocked first one ear and then another.

There was certainly a buzzing somewhere that sounded mighty like the sound that honey bees made. The memory of his feast at the bee tree made him lick his chops in delight.

He followed the sound to the tree around which it centered, clambered up the trunk, and was soon following the particular limb on the end of which most of the “bees” were clustered.