Part 5

Twinkly, after all, had had but one experience with bees, and it is not surprising that these insects should have fooled him.

True, he had not expected to find the honey out at the end of the branch inside a round gray ball. The time he had had that feast, the honey had been in a great mass of comb inside the hollow trunk.

But then, one never could tell. His ears told him that there were bees, and he always trusted more to his ears than his eyes.

But then, he trusted more to his nose than either of them,—at least generally.

At any other time he would have listened to the warning of his nose. This time he wondered why he could not smell the honey as he had before. But perhaps he didn’t want to be warned. He hoped so dreadfully that there was honey that he tried to persuade himself it was there, even if he couldn’t smell it.

So on he went, straight to the end of the swaying limb! Then he sat down to think it over.

It was certainly very peculiar, that huge gray ball into which the “bees” were pouring. For while a few tried to sting the intruder and only got as far as his fur, so quiet had been his approach that most of them were going inside as if he had not been there. There is no animal in all the Deep Woods that can move as noiselessly as a little Black Bear when he wants to.

Finally, when every “bee” had gone into the gray ball through a little round hole, he cautiously put out one paw and tried to reach after them. But it was too small for him; he only succeeded in closing it so the “bees” couldn’t get out. An angry buzz answered this move on his part.

Unk Wunk, the yearling porcupine, who had been watching from the tree across the way, gave a grunt of amusement.

“Those aren’t bees,” he jeered. “Those are wasps. So you won’t find any honey. I’d hate to be in your place when you take your paw off that hole!”

“Hello, there,” grinned Twinkly Eyes. “I’m not afraid!”

He really thought Unk Wunk was trying to drive him away from his find in order to enjoy it himself. He didn’t believe for an instant that it was really a nest full of angry wasps he had imprisoned.

XXXIV A GOOD SPORT

“No, sir, I’m not afraid,” said Twinkly Eyes, the Little Black Bear.

He suspicioned that Unk Wunk the porcupine had been trying to drive him away from his find, as he had from Lone Lake, in order to enjoy it himself. For Twinkly Eyes really believed that he was in a bee tree.

What else could these buzzing insects be, he asked? And where bees were, there was honey. His mouth watered at the thought.

The only peculiar thing about it was that the bees should have gone into this huge gray ball that hung from the end of the limb. Twinkly held his paw over the opening, keeping his “bees” prisoners, while he thought it over.

If it should prove to be wasps—whatever THEY were—how Unk Wunk would jeer at him! He wished the little porcupine would go away instead of sitting there watching with that spiteful gleam in his little black eyes.

But Unk Wunk had no intention of going away. While he did not care to go to the trouble of taking the impudent scamp down a peg, he told himself he would just as soon the wasps did it for him. So he settled himself comfortably on his limb to watch what would happen when Twinkly took his paw off the hole in the wasp’s nest.

“I suppose that pin-cushiony fellow is just aching to see me get hurt,” Twinkly told himself. “But I shan’t let him know, if I do.

“So far as I can figure it out, there are about six chances to half a dozen that this is wild honey, and I’m going to take one of the six on it!”

With an extra screw to his courage and a great show of enjoyment for Unk Wunk’s benefit, the little Black Bear tore open the wasps’ nest.

Out poured the angry insects by the hundreds!

But Twinkly took his medicine without a yelp to betray to Unk Wunk that he minded.

XXXV BOBBY LYNX LEARNS A LESSON

Now Bob Kitten, Madam Lynx’s young hopeful, was due to have an experience that he would not forget in a hurry.

Never yet had he so much as crossed the trail of any creature he could not get the best of with tooth and nail, if he did not paralyze it with his terrifying howl. He therefore assumed that there was no one anywhere that he need fear.

But one night when the moon rose round and yellow from behind the firs, Bob Kitten heard that curious gnawing again, and this time it came from right above his head, in a birch tree. Not only that, but he got a whiff of the most tantalizing scent! It simply made his mouth water!

He peered into the tree-top, his round eyes gleaming through the shadow in which he stood. There was a dark ball swaying far out on a slender bough, and it did not look the least bit for-mid-able.

Bob let out his blood-curdling yowl, hoping that the thing might be so scared it would drop right down at his feet, and save him the trouble of climbing; but the dark ball never moved a muscle. It simply hung there gnawing the bark as if it hadn’t a care in the world.

This angered Bob, and he was up in that birch tree, and out on the swaying branch, without even stopping to think. One blow of his heavy paw, and the creature would be felled to earth!

But still the round ball did not even glance up from its gnawing. The impudence of it, thought Bob! Didn’t the creature even know enough to be afraid? He crept nearer. Now he could see the rather mild-looking face and the fat, hairy body ending in a stubby, pointed tail. Its hair was certainly coarse looking, gleaming lighter on the ends in the moonlight. He had never seen fur like that before.

Suddenly there was rattle as of so many dry twigs clacking together, and the round ball suddenly fluffed itself out to twice its size, confronting Bob with every quill erect. For it was a young porcupine Bob had trapped in this awkward position, and he simply tucked his face down between his paws till he was all bristles, and waited.

And Twinkly Eyes, the yearling cub, also waited, in the shelter of a neighboring ironwood tree. For this was Unk Wunk, his old enemy of the swimming hole.

This would have been an excellent time for Bob to have revised his plan of action. But ignorance was bliss,—and with a yell of defiance, he struck out at his adversary.

The next instant he gave voice to a howl of pain, for his sensitive paw struck a handful of quills,—and it was exactly like slapping at the points of so many needles. Nay, worse, as Bob was to find,—for each punishing quill was barbed at the end.

Bob’s reaction came with the swiftness of unreasoning instinct. With one lunge he was down on the branch below, and traveling earthward as fast as three sets of powerful claws would let him.

[Illustration:

“He gave voice to a howl of pain”

—Page 106 ]

Bob certainly felt as if he had been shot, as he scuttled back to earth with paw smarting from the slap he had given the little brown ball in the tree-top. And for days to come, he was to nurse a foot that was so sore he went on three legs, and picked out the soft spots.

He needed no further teaching to keep his distance, when he saw a harmless black ball gnawing a supper of birch bark, or lying all humped up like a mammoth chestnut burr. No, decidedly, Unk Wunk had nothing further to fear from Bob.

It was from quite another quarter that he had to be on guard.

[Illustration: [Lynx]]

XXXVI TWINKLY WATCHES AGAIN

The little Black Bear was non-plussed. Surely it would be rash to try to punish Unk Wunk. But young Frisky Fox was like many another youngster. He wanted to find out for himself. Therefore, one night when Mother Red Fox had taken the pups all out for a hunt, Frisky had caught a whiff of that tan-ta-liz-ing smell that had made Bob’s mouth water.

“Hurry! There’s our supper now!” he had yipped joyously.

“Sh!—Do you want to scare everything within earshot?” Mother Red Fox had whispered, as she nipped his ear. “Besides, that’s nothing we can eat at this time of year.”

“Why not?” insisted Frisky, though under his breath, for his mother was still within nipping distance. “It smells perfectly great!”

“It tastes great, too! But we can’t catch porcupines at this time of year, I tell you; it takes deep snow to catch them.”

This satisfied him for the moment. But as they came nearer and nearer to the tempting odor, he sniffed and sniffed till he could hardly stand it. Then suddenly he saw where it came from, just a little dark lump on the ground—that’s all it was! It didn’t look in the least like a creature that could run away.

“Why, I could catch that fellow myself, just as easily as not!” he told himself. “I wonder why on earth mother thought I couldn’t? I’d just like to show her, anyway!” And he felt strongly tempted to slip on ahead and try it.

He did, in fact, tiptoe along behind a fallen log, till he came to a little clump of bushes right beside the porcupine. And there he stood watching and listening, and wondering for all he was worth why he couldn’t leap right on the creature and set his teeth in his throat. And the little Bear watched too!

But Unk Wunk was also listening, and no sooner had he detected the faint snap of a tiny twig down the hillside than he tucked his head under his paws and doubled up under his prickles, and there wasn’t so much as an inch of him that anyone could get at.

Frisky stared and stared at the strange creature. Here was that delicious-smelling supper right at his very feet, but—could Mother Red Fox have been right after all?

[Illustration: [Fox & porcupine]]

XXXVII FOXY COUNSEL

“He who fights and runs away Lives to fight another day.”

But young Frisky Fox didn’t even fight. He just ran away!

Yes, sir, there was something about that prickly ball, about the way the quills rattled as he curled up tighter, that sounded ominous.

It was just this habit of looking the situation over before he leaped that was to make Frisky so much wiser than some of his neighbors.

“ALWAYS LEAVE PORCUPINES STRICTLY ALONE,” his mother scolded, as he went trotting back after her, crestfallen and shamefaced.

“At the first touch, that fellow would have snapped his tail in your face, and you’d have got a handful of quills in your mouth or some place where it would have been a mighty serious matter.

“Yes, sir-ee! It would have been a mighty serious matter!

“You couldn’t have rubbed them out, for every move you made would only have driven them deeper, what with their barbed tips, till you’d be lucky if they didn’t finish you once and for all.”

“My!” gasped the Red Fox pup.

“Next time,” Mother Red Fox continued, rather rubbing it in, “you’d do well to take your mother’s word for a thing.

“There, now!—Listen to that!”

Frisky pricked up his ears. From back up the slope of Mount Olaf, where he had come so near making a fatal mistake, there sounded a rattling as of dry twigs. It was Unk Wunk shaking his quills.

“Unk Wunk! Unk Wunk! Unk Wunk!” he was muttering over and over to himself. “I just guess people had better leave me alone, if they know what’s good for them!”

And through the moonlit woods, still in their April nakedness, the Fox family could plainly see a dark, round form slowly and deliberately climbing into a birch tree, where it resumed its gnawing.

“Whew! He’s not afraid of anything! Guess I’ll keep away from his part of the woods!” breathed Frisky Fox a bit unsteadily. For he could not help imagining how it would be to have his face full of quills. “But who’d ever think to look at him he could be so dangerous?”

“He’s dangerous only when you attack him,” explained Mother Red Fox, seating herself with the youngsters in a half circle before her.

“He wouldn’t touch you if you didn’t come too near. He never goes out of his way an inch to make trouble. He’s far too fat and lazy. He just simply goes his way in peace unless someone tries to molest him.

“Even then he just waits, all curled up like a burr, knowing there isn’t the least bit of danger so far as he himself is concerned. That is, except when there is deep snow on the ground, and a fellow can sneak up underneath him, and grab where there are no quills.

“Otherwise he knows there isn’t a creature in all these woods but would get the worst of it—with the exception, possibly, of Twinkly Eyes, the bear.”

XXXVIII A JOLLY WORLD

Now there wasn’t a creature in all the Deep Woods that wouldn’t have had the worst of it in an encounter with Unk Wunk, the porcupine—unless possibly Twinkly Eyes.

And even Twinkly would be hurt as badly as anyone, were he to get a handful of quills slapped into his face with Unk Wunk’s punishing tail. But Twinkly Eyes had a way of managing an encounter that was all his own.

In the first place, he had always found the world such a jolly place to live in that his little black eyes twinkled at whatever they looked at. It was such fun to climb trees and see what was going on round about him, as he nibbled buds or shook down beech nuts.

He never had one bit of trouble getting down, because when he was ready he just let go and slid, landing like a rubber ball. That was the way he took life generally!

Then there were other delightful things to do. For one thing, there was fishing in Pollywog Pond. It was full of frogs at this time of year, while as for fish!—Um! There was nothing to beat them. Not even the delicious sour ants that he sometimes found beneath loose bark.

The Deep Woods were simply full of enticing things to do, and Twinkly Eyes had the happiest kind of time all day long. Nor was he all appetite. There was much that interested him that had nothing whatever to do with getting a square meal. In fact, he had a lively bump of curiosity, had Twinkly Eyes.

But while curiosity is a great thing to have, if you want to learn what is going on around you, it is also rather dangerous at times, as we shall see. On this particular evening, no sooner had the great red sun began to disappear behind the fir trees than Twinkly sauntered forth to take the air and see what the prospects were for supper. Sleeping nearly all day as he did, up there in his den on Mount Olaf, he seldom came out much before dusk, and it was even later that Twinkly suddenly stopped in his tracks to sniff.

There was certainly a tantalizing odor in the air,—for those that have noses as sharp as have the Forest Folk.

What could it be?

He climbed a log and sniffed again. It seemed to come from the top of that old beech tree! He stood on his hind legs and peered through the budding branches.

Then suddenly he heard a low, monotonous grunting. “Unk, Wunk! Unk Wunk!” that came from a dark hump as round and fat and care-free as if winter had never been,—for the porcupine does not sleep in winter, but climbs the trees as the snow mounts higher, and eats his fill of their bark.

Peering far up into the beech tree, Twinkly Eyes could see a surly-looking fellow that rattled his quills as he moved, with a sound like dry twigs crackling one against another.

The fellow was the same who had laughed when the little Bear got into the wasps’ nest. He was the same young porcupine, what is more, who had driven Twinkly Eyes from the Lone Lake swimming hole the summer before, when Unk Wunk had had his mother to help him!

XXXIX WHO WILL BE SORRIEST

“Never trouble trouble Till trouble troubles you.”

At least that is a mighty good plan where porcupines are concerned.

And Twinkly Eyes knew that as well as he knew how to climb. But that odor was so terribly inviting, and Twinkly had such a score to settle that he could hardly resist poking his nose in where he knew he had no business.

Sometimes young folks will do that way. They just can’t help it; and they always come out of the experience wiser than they were before,—provided, of course, that they come out of it at all.

“He’s certainly fat enough, if it IS the spring of the year!” thought Twinkly Eyes, hungrily, as he watched Unk Wunk away up in the beech tree, chiseling off the rough outer bark to nibble the juicy inner layer. “He can make a meal off of anything.”

“I wonder—” and Twinkly’s eyes began to dance more mischievously than ever, “I just wonder, now, if I could shake that saucy fellow off! It certainly would be a peck of fun to see him come tumbling down like a chestnut burr right on his own quills!”

And the little Black Bear fairly rolled off the log in his excitement. Picking himself up as softly as he could and tiptoeing over till he stood just beneath the gnawing one, huddled up there in the moonlight with a glint on the tip of every quill, Twinkly Eyes began, oh, ever so cautiously, to climb the beech tree.

He would climb just as high as he possibly could without getting in reach of Unk Wunk’s terrible barbed tail, and then he would shake the tree, and perhaps the prickly one would lose his hold and go pelting to the ground—like a great chestnut burr!

Now, as always when one’s nerves are at a tension, Twinkly Eyes was conscious of all the little sounds and odors about him. It certainly was a jolly world to be taking such a risk in. From away down the mountainside in Pollywog Pond, his sharp ears could just make out the croak-croak, croak-croak of the frogs as they called to one another or gossiped back and forth through the April night. And from farther still—from the Valley Farm, perhaps, came the faint fragrance of wood smoke where the pasture lot had been burned over a bit recklessly.

“Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk!” said the dark form above him, but without really being aware of any one but himself. So confident was the little porcupine that no one in all that wilderness could harm him, no matter how they tried, that he didn’t even take the trouble to look beneath him.

Twinkly Eyes drew a long breath and began to shake the tree. Unk Wunk went on gnawing, quite as if it had been no more than a passing breeze that had swayed him. Twinkly drew another breath and shook the harder, then dodged back to the opposite side of the trunk from Unk Wunk, prepared to watch the fall.

But still nothing happened. The self-confident one simply kept on clinging with his long nails that had held him safe through many a wind-storm, even, sometimes, when their owner slept.

Suddenly he turned his head. His narrow little eyes looked Twinkly over coolly, even indifferently. There was a bit of tender-looking bark just below him, and he began slowly descending.

Twinkly’s heart beat faster. What should he do?

[Illustration: [Bear & porcupine]]

XL TWINKLY EYES PLAYS SAFE

Twinkly Eyes was certainly put to it to know what to do.

He had planned simply to shake the beech tree till Unk Wunk should fall off. Then one of two things would happen. Either he would crack like a chestnut burr, and supper would be an easy matter, or else it would be a fight on level ground, where Twinkly knew a trick or two.

But to have Unk Wunk turning on him in this fashion! It was not at all the situation that he had counted on. For Unk Wunk wouldn’t for an instant stop going wherever he wanted to go. Certainly not for a little black bear whose face he could slap with a tailful of barbed quills if said bear got too fresh.

Up to this moment Twinkly Eyes had never dreamed that a porcupine would actually turn on any one that hadn’t even touched him yet.

As an actual fact, the prickly one had no intention of striking Twinkly Eyes. He had simply been un-a-ware of his presence up to that very moment, and unless the little Bear made a hostile move, he certainly wouldn’t be the first one to attack.

Should Twinkly make a sudden move in his direction, though, he’d turn his back like lightning and slap, slap his armored tail, driving whatever might be in its way full of quills. One slap would be more than enough.

However that may be, Twinkly made a sudden resolution, and it didn’t take him as long to carry it out as it does to read about it. He just let go and came down! Yes, sir, Twinkly just let go and slid! No careful searching for a foot hold, not even hand-over-hand work—nothing but ker-biff! And the little Black Bear had bounced down on his own fat self like a rubber ball, and out from under that beech tree, as fast as if Unk Wunk were going to try to drop on him—Yes, sir, he was somewhere else before you could have said Jack Robinson! Something deep inside him had suddenly decided there was more fun in playing safe.

Twinkly always came down that way, falling perfectly limp, like a fat butter ball, and it never hurt him any more than it would to roll off a log.

And it wasn’t till he was half way down the mountain-side that he remembered he was hungry.

“Hoo-wuff!” he sighed as he slowed down for breath, once more catching the croak-croak from Pollywog Pond. “That was a most amazing fellow! I’m not surprised that people keep their distance. I’d rather starve than try that again, anyway,—at least I think I would.

“I wonder, though—how I wonder what he would do if I were to find him some day just plodding along the ground, and I were to flip a clod of earth at him? I really am curious to see what would happen, the old slow-poke! By ginger, I’ve half a mind to try it!”

XLI TWINKLY EYES GETS A GREAT SURPRISE

Twinkly Eyes was certainly as full of curiosity as a pond is of frogs. And though he went on and caught himself a nice dinner in Pollywog Pond, he wondered all the way why Unk Wunk was such a curious fellow, and what he would do if he were provoked.