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Title: Fuzzy-Wuzz, a little brown bear of the Sierras

Author: Allen Chaffee

Illustrator: Peter DaRu

Release date: February 1, 2023 [eBook #69923]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Milton Bradley Company

Credits: Charlene Taylor, Krista Zaleski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FUZZY-WUZZ, A LITTLE BROWN BEAR OF THE SIERRAS ***



[Illustration: Dapple would strike at her with her forefeet.

    --_Page 29_
]




  FUZZY-WUZZ

  A Little Brown Bear of the Sierras

  _By_
  ALLEN CHAFFEE

  Author of “Unexplored,” “Lost River,” “Twinkly
  Eyes, the Little Black Bear,” “Trail
  and Tree Top,” etc.


  _Illustrated by_
  PETER DA RU


  MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
  SPRINGFIELD - - - MASSACHUSETTS




  Copyright, 1922
  BY MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
  Springfield, Massachusetts

  _All rights reserved_


  =Bradley Quality Books=

  PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




  _To_
  _M. M. Soule_




INTRODUCTION


A LITTLE brown bear, no bigger than a house cat, that the Ranger found
near drowning, is brought up with the orphaned fawn his children tamed,
a rascally young burro, a ring-tailed cat, an owl, a tame canary, and a
valiant yellow pup.

The scene is laid in the high Sierras, where trout-filled streams
cascade down fragrant cedar slopes.

The author has turned natural science into story form. With the
enterprising bear cub, we meet pine squirrels and painted chipmunks,
the pika of the snow-clad peaks and the rattler of the sun-baked
low-lands, the weasel and the wapiti, and have at least a glimpse of
the cougar and the coyote.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                 PAGE

  I      MOTHER BROWN BEAR                     1

  II     THE CINNAMON CUB                      5

  III    THE YOUNG SCREECH OWL                 8

  IV     WITH THE RANGER’S CHILDREN           12

  V      FUZZY RUNS AWAY                      16

  VI     THE COYOTES                          19

  VII    THE SPOTTED FAWN                     22

  VIII   WILD PLAYMATES                       27

  IX     THE HUNTER                           31

  X      TINY FOLK AND THEIR TROUBLES         34

  XI     CHUCK AND CHIPPER                    38

  XII    MOTHER CHIPMUNK’S ADVENTURE          43

  XIII   THE HOME UNDER THE ROCK              46

  XIV    THE CACHE                            50

  XV     THE PINE NUTS                        54

  XVI    FUZZY-WUZZ PLAYS FATE                58

  XVII   BUCKY, THE BURRO                     62

  XVIII  “AS STUBBORN AS A MULE”              66

  XIX    THE PINTO PONY                       70

  XX     THE PACK-HORSE TRIP                  75

  XXI    WHEN THE WORLD TURNED WHITE          79

  XXII   THE RING-TAILED CAT                  83

  XXIII  THE BABY CANARY                      87

  XXIV   “JEST AN ORNERY PUP”                 92

  XXV    A REGULAR DOG                        97

  XXVI   CHUMS                               101

  XXVII  PRETTY PAWS, THE PINE SQUIRREL      105

  XXVIII THE RATTLESNAKE DEN                 110

  XXIX   MOTHER BROWN BEAR AND THE BULL      115

  XXX    PIKA OF THE PEAKS                   121

  XXXI   FUZZY AND THE WEASEL                125

  XXXII  WAPITI                              129

  XXXIII DAPPLE DISAPPEARS                   133

  XXXIV  DAPPLE’S SECRET                     136

  XXXV   OLD FRIENDS                         139




FUZZY-WUZZ




CHAPTER I

MOTHER BROWN BEAR


THE stars, twinkling like diamonds on a black velvet sky, looked down
that night on a tender sight. A huge brown bear lay in the mouth of her
cave in the rocks above the falls, nuzzling her babies to sleep.

A crafty old coyote also watched, his yellow eyes gleaming murderously
at the tiny balls of fur. Soon, he told himself, the mother would have
to go in search of her own supper, leaving the cubs asleep in the den.
He licked his chops at the thought.

The littlest cub looked so tender and helpless! His cinnamon-brown fur,
that matched the red-brown soil and the red-brown trunks of the pines,
was still as fuzzy as a kitten’s.

But it just happened that the cubs were not left alone that night. As
the last red flush had faded from the peak of Red Top, their mother had
had an unexpected feast. A Forest Ranger, with his camp outfit on a
burro, had stopped at the foot of the falls to cook a string of trout
and other good things, and had then pushed on up the trail to the hot
springs, where he had work to do.

The mother bear had scarcely waited till the man was out of sight
before she had gobbled up the fish heads, the left-over flapjacks, the
bacon rind, everything,--while the burro, hobbled with a rope about his
heels, had snorted in alarm and browsed as far away as he could get.

Now she could stay at home, at least till daybreak,--for her clever
nose had caught the message that the breeze carried her, from that
sneaking little yellow wild dog, and no coyote was going to steal a
march on her! Her teeth gleamed in a snarl as she thought of the danger
to her unweaned cubs.

Had she seen more of men, she would have thought it strange that the
Ranger should leave his burro and pack behind. But this was in the high
Sierras, a steep mountainside where few men passed, and she had seen
little of the strange creatures who always walked on their hind legs
and made mysterious fires.

In one way she was different from most bears. She had three cubs
instead of only two. It was about all she could keep track of. Of
course they were obedient youngsters. Wild babies have to be, if they
are to survive.

When their mother took the trail to the river, they followed her in
single file, the biggest cub first, wee Fuzzy-Wuzz at the end of the
procession. If she heard something she did not understand, and rose to
her hind legs to listen, the three little bears stood up the same way,
pricking their ears and trying to hear what she heard. If she sniffed
at a strange scent, they sniffed; and if she turned and ran, they
turned and scrambled after her as fast as their fat legs could carry
them.

As it happened, the Ranger returned to camp before the yellow moon
had risen from behind the lacework of the pines, and, gathering an
armful of springy fir boughs, made his bed by the river, which slapped
rhythmically against the rocks in the stealthy quiet.

It was just as he was watering the burro in the chill of sun-up that
the shaggy one led her little family forth on an exploring expedition.
Plodding along with her nose to the trail, she suddenly heard the sound
of footsteps. Instantly, with a startled “Hoof!” she rose to her full
height. Instantly three wee mimics rose to their hind legs behind her,
breathing each his startled little “Hoof!”




CHAPTER II

THE CINNAMON CUB


HAD the man been nearer, mother brown bear would have fought to save
her cubs. But there was time for escape. As quick as lightning she
turned and went racing back to the den, her cubs following at her heels.

This region, so far up the glacier-polished slopes, was so smooth that
a burro could hardly walk across it without slipping. As the man turned
to stare at the unaccustomed motion in the landscape, the little family
was just disappearing behind the bowlder that camouflaged the entrance
to the den. All but Fuzzy-Wuzz! That fat, furry mite slipped on the
smooth granite slope, his short hind legs slid out from under him,
and before he could get his balance, he was rolling down, down, too
surprised even to call for help. Indeed, the breath was all knocked
out of him and he couldn’t have squealed had he tried.

The river rolled at the foot of the slope, as green as the woods that
bordered it, save where it churned in white foam over the upstanding
bowlders. The next thing Fuzzy knew, splash! He was in deep water!

He struck out with all fours, like a pup, trying to run through the
water. Of course he swam, as all young animals can when they have to.
But the water was icy from the melting snows of the surrounding peaks.
Worse, the current here above the falls was so strong that soon it
was all he could do to keep his nose above water, to say nothing of
paddling back to the bank.

Had he let out a frightened whimper now, his mother, with the two
remaining cubs to lead safely into the depths of the cave, would not
have heard him. The water whirled the wee brown mite this way and that.
Choking and spluttering, he was soon too tired to paddle.

[Illustration: Clinging to the raft so mysteriously flung to him,
Fuzzy-Wuzz was towed to shore.]

At that climactic moment, something solid went floating by his right
fore paw, and with all his feeble might he grabbed for it. It was a
branch the Ranger had thrown in after him, and the branch was tied to a
rope.

Clinging, chilled and strangled, to the raft so mysteriously flung to
him, Fuzzy-Wuzz was towed to shore. Had the little bear been caught at
any other time, he would have done effective work with his needle-sharp
little teeth. But he was so nearly drowned that he could make no
protest when the Ranger rubbed him down and fitted a leash to his neck.

A pan of warm canned milk and water won his trust, though the Ranger
had to dip his unaccustomed muzzle into the fluid before he saw that
the thing to do was to plant both fore paws firmly in the pan and suck
with a noise like a little pig.

The Ranger made him a bed on the top of the pack that the burro
carried, and tied him so that he couldn’t get down,--and there he
was shortly snoozing, while the June sun dried his fur, and the
trail climbed higher and higher. Life had taken a new turn for young
Fuzzy-Wuzz.




CHAPTER III

THE YOUNG SCREECH OWL


ALL that week the wee brown cub rode on the pack the burro carried.

Every few hours the Ranger stopped to give him a panful of warm milk,
and at night, when the mountain air turned chill, he snuggled the
little bear under the blankets, though he never took him off the leash.

Finally one day they came to a neat log cabin beside a singing creek,
where the pines and cedars made spots of shade on the forest floor. The
next thing Fuzzy knew, he was inside the cabin, and two delighted man
cubs, a boy and a girl, were dancing around him. This was so alarming
that he crept inside the Ranger’s coat, crying, “Mu-uh! Mu-uh!” in a
frightened whimper.

The man cubs were told to keep very, very still and watch. Then Fuzzy
was set on the floor before his pan of milk, and after a few minutes,
when nothing seemed to hurt him, he drank it thirstily.

After that he went on an exploring expedition. He looked exactly like
the brown plush Teddy bear, only larger, for Fuzzy was nearly as large
as the cat. The children watched with shining eyes as he poked into
every corner of the room, now climbing half way up the screen door, now
standing on his fat hind legs under a chair, with his fore paws on the
rungs.

“Muh! Muh! M-m-mu-uh!” he wailed every now and again. But no great
furry mother came, and at last he decided there was nothing in that den
to harm him, not even the children.

Soon what fun they had! The children’s mother said he could have
bread in his milk, and the children even used to give him bits of the
gingerbread that they saved in their pockets. It didn’t take long for
the fuzzy mite to learn where that gingerbread came from! He would
climb all over them, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing, till he found where
it was hidden, then claw till he had found the way into the pocket.
These days, he cared more for eating than anything else.

Had Fuzzy been the only pet at the Ranger’s cabin, all might have gone
smoothly. But he had one rival in the children’s affections,--and life
was not to be all peace and play for the newcomer.

One rainy day that spring, when the wind had blown a limb off the old
pine by the corral, leaving the screech owl’s nest exposed to gaze, a
wee, soft-feathered fledgling had fallen to the ground and lay there,
nearly lifeless from his fall.

The Ranger’s son, a curly-pate of nine, had found this downy bird, and
had taken him home to warm and feed him. Thus the owl had become a
member of the family circle. Clickety-Clack they named him, from his
habit of clicking his bill when angry.

Given full freedom of the cabin, he generally perched by day just over
the chamber door, on a pair of antlers that hung there for a hat rack.

But when the dusk began to fall Clickety-Clack would come floating
down to the mantel shelf, soundless as a shadow on his soft-feathered
gray wings. There he would claw at the toys and bits of sewing, the
pipe and match box, everything he found there. He was a solemn-looking
bird, with his great round eyes, but he liked to play, for all that.
His great delight was to be given a sheet of paper to claw into bits.

He was used to much attention, was Clickety-Clack, riding around on
the children’s shoulders and receiving the dainties offered him with a
clawed foot that solemnly conveyed the morsel to his mouth.

For a time Fuzzy-Wuzz paid little attention to Clickety-Clack, as the
owl generally slept all day and the cub all night. But one evening he
made a sad, sad mistake, did the little bear. As the owl floated down
to the hearth rug, Fuzzy made a playful pounce for him. He caught the
owl between his fore paws. But as he opened his jaws to take a nip at
the feathered back, he got an awful surprise.




CHAPTER IV

WITH THE RANGER’S CHILDREN


FUZZY-WUZZ made a big mistake when he tried to grab that owl. For no
sooner had he got a taste of the feathers than Clickety-Clack was after
him with beak and claws. When they finally called it off, the hearth
rug bore a souvenir of both fur and feathers.

After that the little bear made many a playful, puppy-like dash at his
fellow pet, but if ever he came too near, he got as good as he gave. It
was tit for tat between them.

True, there were other ways in which Fuzzy managed to have a good
time. For instance, he was always on the look-out for a romp in the
children’s bed, if he was the first one up of a morning. The children’s
mother objected, until the Ranger suggested a tubbing for the young
bear.

This surprising thing,--a tub bath,--happened when Fuzzy-Wuzz had
been a member of the Ranger’s family for about a week. No sooner did
he find himself in the washtubful of warm, soapy water than he struck
out vigorously for shore and scrambled over the edge of the tub. This
process was repeated till the Ranger took a hand.

In the end Fuzzy-Wuzz emerged as clean a cub as any one could wish, but
he stayed clean just until he was put on his leash and allowed to have
a run outside. The California dry season had begun, with its dust, and
the roly-poly rascal liked nothing better than to roll on his back.

The great trouble with the Ranger’s backyard, from Fuzzy’s point of
view, was that there were no trees to climb. The clothes pole only went
so far, and it had no bark and was dreadfully hard to get one’s claws
into; but Fuzzy used to scramble up and down that clothes pole for all
he was worth, pausing each time at the top to sit looking down at the
children.

As the weeks flew by and the little bear grew stronger, he longed more
and more for the freedom to climb and romp and race the way Mother
Nature meant him to. It got to be mighty tiresome to live on the end
of a chain or be cooped up in the cabin. He would gaze into the green
woods behind the house, and whimper and beg to be let out, but it
seemed as if no one understood.

The Ranger was afraid if he let the cub go some big animal would
get him. There were great yellow cougars (California lions) in the
mountains, and perhaps timber wolves. Besides, even a wildcat could
have made way with such a tiny cub, and no telling but that even a pair
of coyotes (slinking yellow wild dogs that they are) might harm him.
These animals were all afraid to come too near the cabin, for they were
cowardly where human beings were concerned. But once let Fuzzy-Wuzz
spend a night in the woods and no telling if he would ever see the
morning.

Sometimes they could hear the coyotes’ bark, or the lion’s cry. Then
Fuzzy’s fur would rise along his spine, and he would huddle closer to
the children on the hearth rug. But he never thought of that when the
sun shone through the forest and he longed for freedom.




CHAPTER V

FUZZY RUNS AWAY


ONE day it came,--the chance he had been longing for!

Fuzzy-Wuzz was now a four months’ cub and much larger than when the
Ranger brought him home,--a bear as big as a house cat. He made an
armful for the children. And where at first he had been frightened in a
world where no great furry mother came to his whimper, he now began to
feel as if he could look out for himself.

One day the kitchen door was left ajar. Fuzzy had longed often to go
exploring in those green woods that stretched behind the cabin and up
the mountainside. Now he simply ran, and ran, and ran, deep into the
woods, climbing to the tops of the tallest trees and exploring here and
there and everywhere. Here he nibbled at the green, growing things he
found on the moist meadows by the spring holes, and there he took tiny
cat-naps, all curled up into a warm ball of brown fur.

Not once, all that glorious afternoon, did he think of the coyotes and
timber wolves, the lions and the lynxes that might come out of their
dens when night came, and hunt squirrels and rabbits, and perhaps stray
cubs who were young enough to make tender eating.

Towards sun-down he had an adventure. He met a band of range cattle,
and when the foremost cow saw the runaway racing about like a puppy,
she took him for a dog and made for him with her horns. It was only by
sheer luck that he escaped her lunge. For in his surprise he simply
tumbled over backwards. Being near a clump of seedling pines, he rolled
right into the thick of them, and the old cow’s horns could not reach
him.

If any one had advised him what to do when chased by a cow, he could
not have given better advice than to get in the midst of a clump of
saplings.

His natural fondness for climbing prompted his next move, and again
he did the wisest thing. He made straight for the nearest tree and
scrambled out of reach. After that the cattle wandered on and left him
in peace.

But now the yellow sun no longer gilded the fir trees, and the woods
became cool and shadowy. The wind, that all day had blown up the canyon
of the creek bed, now turned the other way and blew down into the
valley, chilled from the snow-clad mountain peaks. Fuzzy shivered with
the cold. A horned owl solemnly boomed “whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo!”

By the time the first stars peeped from the blackening sky, he began to
shiver from fright as well. For down the canyon came the long-drawn cry
of the great, tawny, man-size cat that Californians call the mountain
lion.




CHAPTER VI

THE COYOTES


YES, sir! Fuzzy was a mighty frightened bear cub as the cougar’s cry
chilled the night. He waited in his tree top with straining ears. The
cry had ceased, but he dare not climb down, for what might not lurk in
the rustling darkness?

Colder and colder grew his airy perch. Fuzzy curled up tight in the
crotch of the limb. The lion was away off on the mountainside, and
after awhile, when nothing happened, the little bear fell asleep.

His dreams were broken by a weird, wailing, high-pitched howl. He
sprang awake in the instant. Peering through the gray darkness of the
starry night, he tried to see what was causing that sound.

On a rock ridge half way down the slope stood two animals that any one
might have taken for yellow dogs, or perhaps for small-sized wolves.
As an actual fact, they were cousins to both dog and wolf. They were
coyotes, in search of their supper,--and Fuzzy-Wuzz had not forgotten
the old coyote that used to howl below his mother’s den.

These coyotes, as it happened, had a family of fourteen little ones
hidden in a cave on the hillside. That meant that they had to bring
home a great many mice and rabbits for their family, which was still
too young to go hunting with them.

Had the Ranger known about them, he would have made an end to them; for
many a time they had robbed his chicken house, or harried a new-born
colt, for their meat was anything too young and helpless to escape
their jaws.

Even had Mother Brown Bear not taught her cubs to keep still and hide
when the coyote cried, Fuzzy would have been afraid, with that weird
cry in his ears. As it was, he shivered into a still tighter ball of
fur and wished he were back in the Ranger’s cabin.

The coyotes must have got his scent with their wonderful doggy noses,
as the wind blew down over his tree top to them, for they came circling
nearer, and stood howling right up at his hiding-place. But none of the
dog family can climb, and the cub was safe.

After awhile they saw a rabbit and went loping after it with all the
speed of their slender feet. Again Fuzzy fell asleep, and when he
awoke, it was a bar of silver sunlight shining in his eyes that woke
him.

The woods now looked as green and peaceful as they had the afternoon
before, and it did not seem possible that he could have been so
frightened in the night. But he was hungry.




CHAPTER VII

THE SPOTTED FAWN


BACKING down the tree trunk, the runaway began looking about him for
something to eat. It was the little bear’s first experience at fending
for himself. Had he not been taken from his mother, he would have
learned from her how to find the fat white grubs that hide under a
fallen tree trunk. He might have learned how to dig out a hiding wood
mouse, or where to look for roots and berries.

As it was, he sampled a mouthful of bark, but it was no good. He
sniffed this way and that through the pine woods, wriggling his nose in
the effort to find a breakfast. And he thought of the pan of warm milk
that always awaited him after the morning’s milking.

The children were just sitting down to their breakfast of oatmeal when
a whine and a scratching of claws sounded faintly through the kitchen
door. Now they had cried themselves to sleep the night before, thinking
their pet was gone.

“It’s Fuzzy-Wuzz!” they shouted, tumbling over one another to let him
in. My! What a hugging he got! He wriggled and squirmed to get away.
Then the Ranger brought in the foaming milk pails, and the prodigal was
soon planting both fat fore paws in his feed pan.

After that they never put him on a leash, and Fuzzy never stayed away
after dark,--at least not while he was such a tiny cub.

One morning the Ranger found that a mountain lion had been down to the
corral. From the footprints he judged that the cows had driven the
great cat away with their horns. But there was soon to be a new calf,
and he decided to spend that day in hunting the lion.

The California mountain lion is a great, tawny beast as long as a man
is tall, and it is fortunate that he is such a coward that he runs when
he sees a human being. For he can fell a deer at one stroke of his
great barbed paw.

But he kills sheep and calves every chance he gets, and Uncle Sam asks
his Forest Rangers to kill every lion they find.

The Ranger took his gun and started following the footprints the giant
cat had left in the dust of the trail as it led up the mountain side.
Soon the animal had leapt aside where only a scratch of its claws on a
rock here and there told the tale.

By and by the slim, pointed hoof prints of a doe crossed the trail. The
Ranger hurried even faster now, for he did not want another deer killed.

A gentle-eyed young doe had sought hiding that morning in a leafy clump
of deer brush,--for in the evergreen forests of the Sierras there is
little of the thick under-growth that one finds among the oaks and elms
and maples of the Eastern woodlands.

This doe had a reason for selecting a good hiding-place, for that very
morning twin fawns were born to her, and she had known they must be
hidden away where neither lions nor coyotes could find the helpless
things.

The fawns had dappled coats, with milk-white spots on their soft,
rusty-colored fur; and the doe found a place where the sunlight danced
in patches on the rusty-colored earth, and the fawns would not have
been noticed had one looked at the very spot,--unless they moved.

Such innocent, soft-eyed babies as they were, these firstlings of the
rust-red doe! Like their mother, they had long ears and white tails
with black tips. Their long, slender legs were at first too fragile for
them to stand, and they lay on the soft moss as she licked their fur,
with her wild mother love in her great eyes.

Off on the mountain peak their father, a great, handsome buck with
branching antlers, was in retreat, with half-a-dozen other deer, while
their horns were in velvet, for this velvety fur that covers the new
growth of horn is tender, and the deer brush of the lower slopes would
hurt it.

But alas for the wild mother, who would willingly die fighting for her
little ones! At the very moment that she lay nuzzling them so happily,
the giant cat was crouched along the limb of a fir tree watching, with
yellow eyes blinking hungrily. The way the wind blew, no taint of the
lion reached her nostrils, and she had no warning.

The mountain lion had been unsuccessful in his last night’s hunt; he
had wandered miles in search of prey. Suddenly gathering all fours
beneath him, he had made one powerful leap at the doe. At this moment
the Ranger, hurrying along his trail, sighted the tawny form and sent a
bullet through its heart.

But so powerful had been the great cat’s leap that it did not stop even
then, but still clutching the doe, it went sliding and rolling down the
hillside till it crashed over a ledge,--and one of the fawns with them.

It was too late to save the others, but the Ranger took the remaining
fawn in his arms and carried it home to his children. Thus Dapple, the
fawn, became a fellow member of Fuzzy’s household.

[Illustration: The giant cat was crouched along the limb of a fir
tree.]




CHAPTER VIII

WILD PLAYMATES


HAD the bear cub and the fawn been older, they would never have been
friends; but these were both such babies that the little bear much
preferred his milk to venison, and the fawn did not know to be afraid.

Their strange friendship might not last, as they grew older, but for
the time there was peace between them.

The fawn had to be brought up on a bottle, and the children loved it
first for its very helplessness.

As Dapple grew stronger, her long, slim legs developed the most amazing
ability to jump. She followed the children around like a pup, for they
were the only parents she knew. And if they became separated, she
would go leaping after them with great, graceful leaps that carried her
straight over the bushes.

They used to like to run and hide from her, just for the fun of seeing
her come bounding after them. She could overtake them in a foot race,
too. She enjoyed a game of tag as much as they did, and everywhere the
children went, the fawn would follow after.

But though Fuzzy-Wuzz understood that Dapple was under the children’s
protection, the young rascal loved to chase her. He never had the
slightest chance of overtaking her, for his short, fat legs and round,
flat feet were not built for speed. But sometimes he got her cornered
and woofed at her, as a puppy would a calf.

At such times she learned to take refuge in the corral. Leaping lightly
over the three-log fence, she would trip her way into the midst of the
cattle, who would lower their horns the instant the little bear came
near.

No matter if Dapple were lying down when Fuzzy-Wuzz grew mischievous,
she took her afternoon nap with all four feet under her, and when she
made up her mind to go, she rose like a Jack-in-the-box, and away she
leapt with a whistle, like a bit of thistle-down.

After a time Dapple found still another way to defend herself, when
Fuzzy-Wuzz grew mischievous. Her slender hoofs were sharp as knives,
and she would rear up on her hind legs and strike at him with her fore
feet. He kept his distance.

Sometimes a deer will fight a snake that way.

Now Dapple learned to follow the children everywhere they went. Through
the corral and into the woods, and even up the porch steps, would she
trip after them. Once she even came into the cabin, and she would have
every time, had the Ranger’s wife permitted.

She was like Mary’s little lamb. But there were no schools in this
wilderness. The children’s mother taught them to read and figure, and
their father told them about the trees and flowers and birds, the rocks
and clouds, and read them books about the great world outside their
Sierras. That way, lessons were mostly play. Their playmates were the
two wild children, Dapple and Fuzzy-Wuzz.




CHAPTER IX

THE HUNTER


ONE morning a party of huntsmen stopped at the Ranger’s cabin. It was
open season for deer, and they meant to make the most of those few
weeks by shooting what the law allowed them.

Fuzzy-Wuzz had to wear a red bow on his neck these days, so that the
huntsmen would not mistake him for a wild bear. For it was open season
all the year around for bears, and a hunter loves nothing better than
to kill a cub and have bear steak for breakfast. But Dapple wore no
collar, as it was against the law to kill fawns at any time of the year.

The children had been playing tag with Dapple in the woods when they
fell asleep in the sunshine of an open hillside. Dapple, too, took a
nap nearby, but instead of lying right out in the open, as they did,
her instinct told her it was safer under the dappled shade of a clump
of bushes.

One of the huntsmen, peering over the brow of the hill, saw a little
movement in Dapple’s clump of bushes, as Dapple awoke and began
cropping the leaves. Thinking it was a porcupine that had set the
bushes swaying (and not being sportsman enough to make sure), he fired.

Dapple gave a scream of pain, and went bounding away on three legs. The
children, thus awakened, stared after her, then started to follow her
dainty hoof prints. Soon they noticed drops of blood on the stones.

At the same time the huntsman, seeing the children, came on the run.
“Oh, I say!” he called, “I hope I didn’t hurt any one?”

“You’ve killed Dapple,” sobbed the little girl.

“You’ve shot Dapple!” shouted the boy. And to his sister, “I’d like to
shoot HIM in the leg, and see how HE likes it!”

“Who’s ‘Dapple’?” gasped the huntsman, alarmed.

“She’s our tame fawn!” yelled the boy angrily.

“I’m so sorry,” apologized the huntsman. “I thought it was a porcupine.”

“Oh, then you didn’t mean to do it,” forgave the little girl.

It was decided that the huntsman had better not go with the children
lest he frighten the fawn still further away.

“Dapple! Come, Dapple!” they called gently, as they traced the
staggering footprints. They came upon the little creature lying on her
side. Tenderly the boy carried her home in his arms, and the Ranger
removed the bullet and bound the wound up properly.

Such an appealing invalid as Dapple made, with her great, reproachful
eyes, that Fuzzy felt himself neglected. The day came, though, when the
wounded leg was well. That day Dapple was allowed to follow them into
the cabin, and even Fuzzy-Wuzz gave her a lick with his warm, moist
tongue.




CHAPTER X

TINY FOLK AND THEIR TROUBLES


ONE thing that always interested the little bear was the robin who used
to bring her fat fledglings, nearly as big as herself, to the Ranger’s
lawn.

She had made her big clay nest on a beam of the porch, where the young
birds would be sheltered from wind and rain. The young robins would
flop to the ground, when she urged them, then hop around after Mrs.
Red-breast as she pulled grubs and worms from the ground for them. They
soon learned to look for the crumbs the children threw them. Fuzzy
would watch, and sometimes make a playful dash at them; but at such
times they would suddenly find they could fly out of reach.

Another time a humming-bird flew in through the open window and began
sipping nectar from the bunch of wild flowers the children had brought
for the dining-table. Tiniest of birds, he made as much noise as any
airplane that size could have made. The children held as still as mice
while they watched.

One day Fuzzy was put on his leash just as some one left a bunch of
grapes on the porch rail, for the Ranger had ridden down to the valley
settlement for supplies the day before, and brought home a basket of
the luscious fruit. My, how he wanted those grapes! But he could not
reach them. There was nothing left to do but to watch the young robins
flying, for their tails had grown longer, and so they could keep their
balance better in the air.

When he looked back at the grapes again, an orange-breasted oriole was
plunging his beak thirstily into a grape. He only ate one this time,
and flew away. But soon he was back again, eating another grape. Fuzzy
watched anxiously. Again the oriole came, and the little bear watched
the grapes disappear, one by one. When the children finally let him
off his leash, there was nothing left of those grapes but the stems.

Never mind, there were lizards and field mice all about the place. This
afternoon, while the reddening sun still shone warm on the bowlders,
the tiny gray lizards with beady eyes on the alert for flies darted
hither and thither among the gray rocks. The instant they saw Fuzzy
watching, they would freeze motionless, or rise on their crooked legs
till their orange breasts showed, watch him till he came too near, then
race into a crack between two stones.

Fuzzy spent much time chasing field mice, or digging them out of their
tunnels. One night the family was just sitting down to supper when a
clawing at the door announced that Fuzzy wanted to come in. Coming
proudly straight to the little girl, Fuzzy laid his catch in her lap.
It was a fat field mouse!

The young mouse had not been hurt by Fuzzy’s jaws, and the instant he
found himself free, he leaped to the table and raced across it and
away, and not even Fuzzy could find him after that. But the next
morning he was sitting trembling in the mouse trap in the pantry, which
was one of these round wire affairs that has a hole on top that lets a
mouse get in, but won’t let him out.

How he trembled when the little girl found him. Fuzzy watched to see if
the prisoner would be given to him to dispose of. But no, the little
girl took the trap out into the woods and there opened the door and let
the mouse find a hiding-place in the woods where he belonged.




CHAPTER XI

CHUCK AND CHIPPER


THE little brown bear spent much of his first summer chasing chipmunks,
but these squirrel-like orange and black striped fellows were too quick
for Fuzzy-Wuzz.

The pretty creatures lived along the rock ledges and manzanita bushes
that surrounded the Ranger’s cabin. Chuck and Chipper were two young
chipmunks who had been born that spring. Now their mother had a second
brood and left them pretty much to themselves.

My, what fun they had playing tag and stuffing their cheeks with
everything good to eat they could find! Their cheeks were built like
pockets and extended away down the sides of their necks. All the long,
sunny days they explored the interesting world in which they found
themselves,--a world of good things to eat.

So tiny and mouselike were they that Fuzzy would have liked a taste
of them, even if there were plenty of green things to eat, but the
awkward, flat-footed, four months’ cub could not catch them.

The children, too, tried to capture a chipmunk, just for the fun of
holding it in their hands for a minute. The boy had a cracker box that
he placed upside down on the ground, then propped it open a crack with
a stick. To this stick he tied a long string. Strewing the ground under
the box with peanuts, he waited behind a tree till a chipmunk came and
began stuffing his cheeks with the nuts. Then he jerked the string, and
the box came down and made a prisoner of him. It was Chuck, who went
about all day with his cheerful “chuck, chuck, chuck!”

The boy, holding his cloth hat in readiness, lifted the box a crack and
Chuck dashed from under, but only to find himself in the hat crown. The
next thing he knew, the boy was stroking his back with one finger. Did
he bite? Not the least little bit in the world. Chuck never tries to
fight any one. His safety lies in running away when danger threatens.
He only cowered down, quaking, with fear, his warm, furry sides panting
hotly.

Until he could make a cage, the boy tethered him out on a leash, on a
string as long as the cabin kitchen, and left him with a handful of
peanuts. But the prisoner was too frightened to eat. He was even more
so when he was turned loose in the cracker box, across the open side
of which the boy had tacked a piece of screen wire. He only crept to
the darkest corner, under a lettuce leaf, and wondered if he were ever
again to go racing through the green woods in the sunshine.

The boy did not mean to keep him a prisoner, but the little captive did
not understand.

Curiously Chuck’s brother, Chipper, peered at him from the top of
a stump. “I told you not to go into that box,” he chippered in a
frightened chirp. “Now what are you going to do?” Just then he saw the
little girl coming, and he whisked away under a stone.

All would have been well, she would not even have looked his way, had
he not lost his nerve at the very moment she was passing, and begun his
frightened chippering. Quick as a flash she had thrown her sunbonnet
over rocks and all, and the next thing he knew, she had put him in the
box with Chuck.

“Well, at least there are two of us,” Chuck tried to find a bright
spot in the situation. And he felt so much better that he began to eat
and drink. Then the night grew chilly, and they wadded the paper with
which the box was carpeted into a sort of hay stack of paper wads, and
burrowed inside it, all cuddled together into a ball to keep warm.

But Chipper did not have the heart to eat. Three days later he was so
feeble from lack of food and exercise that he could hardly crawl. The
boy, seeing this, opened the cage door and let them out. After all, he
told his sister, they had not been half so much fun as when they had
been racing mischievously all over the place.




CHAPTER XII

MOTHER CHIPMUNK’S ADVENTURE


THE Ranger was leading his horse down a steep trail one day, the dust
rising yellowly in the noon-day calm, when he came to an inviting bit
of shade and took out his lunch. For a time he munched his cheese
sandwiches with his mind on his work. His horse neighed thirstily, and
he led him to the spring, which trickled from the hillside.

As he turned back, he saw a chipmunk nervously gathering up his crumbs.
Standing so still that he hardly breathed, so as not to frighten her,
he watched while she darted forward, stopped to study him with her
beady eyes, then dared a few steps farther. At last she picked up a big
cracker crumb, and taking it in her handlike fore paws, began nibbling
as if she were starved.

A slight movement on the Ranger’s part sent her instantly to her hole,
but in a few minutes she was back again, eating ravenously and stuffing
her cheeks with crumbs to take home. But the crumbs had all been
cracker. The Ranger now threw her a morsel of cheese. This she found
delicious. Never in all her life had she tasted anything so good. And
it seemed as if she never could get enough to eat these days, for she
had a family of wee baby chipmunks that she nursed as a cat does her
kittens.

Next the Ranger held a piece of cheese between his thumb and finger.
She wriggled her nose longingly, and hesitated, darting forward a few
inches, now stopping in affright at what she had done, then getting up
courage for another step.

Long minutes the Ranger waited, with that inviting bit of cheese held
out to her at arm’s-length. So timid was she that he dared not even
turn his head. Closer, closer she crept, till at last she could just
get a frightened nibble. My, how good it was! Closer still she came,
till she was eating it out of his hand. She ate until he could feel
her warm, furry nose against his finger.

Making a sudden grab, he closed his hand around her. He hadn’t meant
to, but the temptation had been too much. He wanted first to stroke her
silky fur. Then he thought there could be no harm in taking her home in
his pocket to show the children. For he had been away when they caught
Chuck and Chipper. Of course he didn’t know about her babies.

Mother Chipmunk gave one shrill squeak of despair. Then she was
buttoned fast in the Ranger’s pocket, and he was riding farther and
farther away from those wee, helpless babes of hers in the hole under
the rock.




CHAPTER XIII

THE HOME UNDER THE ROCK


BUT what of the babies left behind, when Mother Chipmunk rode away in
the Ranger’s pocket?

From an entrance hole under a rock just large enough to let her in, and
not large enough for a weasel, Mother Chipmunk had built a branching
tunnel that led for many feet under the pine needles of the forest
floor. Three feet under-ground was the nursery cave, as big around as a
dinner plate, all softly lined with dry leaves and moss.

Out of the main tunnel opened a smaller cave in which refuse was
placed. There were also three storage caves or pantries, where in
winter Mother Chipmunk kept her nuts and berries, dried grasshoppers
and other delicacies for the long months when it is white and cold out
of doors.

Just now the nursery cave was occupied by four of the most cunning baby
chipmunks that ever were,--helpless at this age, without teeth. When
Mother Chipmunk washed them, she would stand on her hind legs and take
one up on her arms so that she could smooth its fur with her tongue.

Now these helpless babies would starve to death, she told herself. She
must find a way to escape, if her life depended on it. And she must
find it quickly, or she could never travel back all those miles the
Ranger was taking her.

She struggled and struggled, there in the Ranger’s pocket. But he had
fastened it shut. On they went, jogging slowly down the rocky trail.
She couldn’t see a thing, but she felt the rhythmic jolting at each
step of the horse. At last it seemed as if she must be standing on her
head. The Ranger had leapt to the ground, and was stooping to drink at
a spring. As he bent, the pocket came unbuttoned. Out she squeezed,
straight into the icy water.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed the Ranger, as she struck out with all her
might, swimming across the pool till she could scramble to shore.
Hiding under a stone till she was sure he had gone, she started racing
back along the way she had come. She reached home to find her babies
crying for her.

Chipmunks are easy to tame, if one does not try to keep them prisoner.
Before the summer was over, the children had Chuck and Chipper so that
they came around every meal time for something good to eat, and if the
window was left open, they would come right into the cabin for it. Once
they nearly buried themselves by jumping into the cold ashes of the
fireplace.

They used to drink from the water pail when it was full enough for them
to reach the water from the rim. One day Chipper reached too far, fell
in, and had to swim for it. But when he reached the side of the granite
pail, it was too smooth for his claws and he could not get out. The
children found him near drowning.

Now Fuzzy had a real grievance, for always before, anything the
children had in their pockets to eat was for him. Now Chuck and
Chipper searched them first. Fuzzy was more eager than ever to catch
the impudent rascals.




CHAPTER XIV

THE CACHE


CHUCK and Chipper were mighty busy chipmunks, filling their cache,--to
use the Western term that rhymes with to-day, meaning a hiding-place
for food supplies.

The season was short, here in the high Sierras. Ordinarily it snowed
as late as May, and as early as October. By the last of August one
expected frost to tint the mountain sides. Day followed perfect,
sunny day, and night succeeded cool, star-strewn night without a hint
of rain; but Chuck and Chipper knew that before the moon was full
again, the snow would be silvering the pine trees,--promise of the
fifteen-foot drifts to come.

They must have enough in their cache to live on till spring.

Chipmunks do not hibernate in the way that bears do. They sleep a good
deal, but they do not go into an all-winter sleep, and when they wake,
there in their caves away under-ground where the cold cannot reach
them, they must eat.

Everywhere among the brush and fallen timber and along the rock ledges
they searched for food to store away for winter. Racing briskly forth
each morning, as soon as the sun began to slant warmingly through the
fir trees, Chuck and Chipper vied with each other to see which could
harvest the most nuts. And Fuzzy-Wuzz vied with both to see if he could
catch them.

Always they were too alert for him. Their black, beady eyes would spy
him out, no matter how softly he came padding along, and then they
would climb into the top of some bush he could not climb and scold him
and mock at him with their bird-like chirp.

Wild gooseberries were one of their favorite foods,--as they were the
little bear’s, for they could bite off the prickers, and Fuzzy didn’t
mind them.

They also collected thistle seed in their cheek pockets, to say
nothing of thimble berries, dogwood seed, and other seeds and berries.
But where Fuzzy envied them was when it came to pine nuts. Every pine
cone, from the yellow pine that grew so tall, to the dwarfed nut pine
that the Indians love, is full of seeds. But the cones are also covered
with sharp thorns, and so long as the cones were green, the nuts were
safe from the little bear. He would have to wait till they turned brown
and opened of their own accord.

But Chuck and Chipper had no such trouble. They could nibble the cone
apart and get at the sweet kernels as easily as anything. Fuzzy used
to watch them enviously. Then an idea came to him. He watched narrowly
as the chipmunks filled their cheeks and scuttled away to their
under-ground store-rooms.

Sniffing and snuffing this way and that, along the way they had gone,
his wonderful nose finally told him just where their cache was located.
Digging down about three feet, he scratched the roof off it while
Chipper chucked wrathfully and Chuck chippered in his fright.

What a find for the bear cub! Fully a peck of the delicious pine nuts
lay before him,--and how he did feast! How his little black eyes
twinkled at thought that he had outwitted the impudent things!

But for Chuck and Chipper it meant that half their harvest work was
gone for nothing, and winter now too near for them to gather more. Then
Chipper had a big idea.




CHAPTER XV

THE PINE NUTS


“IT is the queerest thing!” exclaimed the Ranger’s wife, “what can
have become of those pine nuts I was saving for Christmas. I had fully
a peck in that basket on the top shelf.” She looked doubtfully at
Fuzzy-Wuzz.

“The cub never could have done it,” the Ranger said. “If he had climbed
up there, he would have knocked down a lot of stuff.”

“No, but what can have become of the nuts? There isn’t a sign of mice,
either. And we never have a human thief, away up here in the mountains.
Besides, what a funny thing it would be for a thief just to take the
pine nuts and nothing else.”

“The thief must be some one of our furry friends, some one who is
especially fond of nuts,” suggested the Ranger.

“There is a tiny hole gnawed in the wall up there. I thought it might
be a mouse, but they always leave some sign.”

“Let’s see, now, if there aren’t some footprints to tell the story,”
and the Ranger climbed up on the window sill and began peering about
with a lighted match. “Ho, ho!” he called.

For there, faintly outlined by the dust, was a footprint like that of a
tiny squirrel,--the print of a long, hind foot, with its five delicate
toe marks. And on the edge of the hole the Ranger’s sharp eyes had
spied a hair,--a single hair of some one’s orange colored fur.

“It’s a chipmunk, and he must have sat up here on his hind legs to
sample a nut before he stuffed his cheeks. But imagine how many trips
he must have had to make to carry away all those nuts!”

“Perhaps there was more than one.”

“That’s right. But there are so many tracks running through the dust
that this is the only clear one I see. Must have been made just this
morning, for no dust has settled in it yet. Well, now, the nuts are
gone. And I don’t believe they’ll come for anything more. That frost
last night will send them into winter quarters.”

The Ranger was right about the chipmunks. But he little dreamed what
had driven them to it. Had Fuzzy-Wuzz not found and gobbled up the
nuts they had gathered for themselves, Chuck and Chipper never would
have gotten up the courage to come so often to the cabin, where
Clickety-Clack, the owl, prowled about the dark corners looking for
just such tid-bits as they would make for him.

As it was, Chuck and Chipper were going to have a well-stocked cache
that winter.

“As an actual fact,” said the Ranger that evening, when they had told
the children about it, “I don’t begrudge the little rascals what they
have taken, they are such good foresters.”

“Foresters!” exclaimed the boy, dragging his father to the arm chair by
the fire and snuggling against his knees, for he scented a story.

“You see,” his father told him, “they bury so many nuts that they often
forget where they put them, and these nuts that are planted that way
grow into trees.”

“My!” exclaimed the boy, “wouldn’t a chipmunk be surprised if he knew
he planted trees!”

“He doesn’t know it. It is just a part of Mother Nature’s wonderful
plan for keeping this old world going.”

The children’s mother suddenly laughed. “What do you think I saw
to-day?” she asked them. “Fuzzy-Wuzz curled up asleep under a tree and
looking so much like a hump of earth that a chipmunk hopped off the
trunk and landed square on his nose. I don’t know which was the more
surprised, the cub or the chipmunk.”




CHAPTER XVI

FUZZY-WUZZ PLAYS FATE


FUZZY-WUZZ lay basking in the late September sunshine. The mountains
had blossomed forth since the frost with patches of berries that
gleamed handsomely against the evergreens.

He had followed the children to a sandy place among the granite ledges
back of the cabin, where they found a colony of the giant black ants.
The children had been having a lot of fun with these ants. First they
laid a piece of leaf over the entrance to an ant hill. Promptly one of
the inmates poked his head forth to see what had so suddenly shut off
the light.

Seeing the leaf, he went back and got help, and about a dozen ants came
out and took hold of one edge of the leaf, and pulled, while the first
ant stood on the stem and directed operations. That way, they had
their entrance clear again in no time.

The next thing, the children laid a bit of bark over their front door.
This time they shoved the obstruction from underneath till they had
turned it over, out of their way.

Then the children laid a pebble over the hole. That was almost too
much for the little colony. At first they couldn’t even get out. Then
they tunneled a way past the edge of the stone, and began studying the
situation. Some clambered over the pebble while others walked around
it, measuring. Then they tried pushing, but it was too heavy for them.

They tried pulling, but with no result. They tried getting underneath
and shoving, but still they could not budge it. And at last the
children got tired of waiting for them, and went away, deciding to come
back later and take away the pebble if the ants had not succeeded in so
doing.

Meantime Fuzzy-Wuzz had gone to sleep. His dreams were cut short by
the awfullest pinching on the sensitive tip of his nose. The ants had
finally tunneled a new opening beside the pebble, though it had meant
a long afternoon’s work for them. Seeing the cub asleep so near, they
naturally decided that he must be responsible for all their trouble,
and appointed a committee to drive him away.

But because of his thick fur, they couldn’t find a spot where they
could reach him with their pincers except on the nose.

“Gee! I always get the worst of things!” rumbled the little brown bear,
as he swept them off with one swipe of his furry paw, and would have
shuffled away but for the sight that met his gaze.

Chuck, the chipmunk, stood there before him, paralyzed with fright.
Coiled in front of him swayed an enormous bull snake, with red jaws
open to swallow him.

If the snake had been stretched out full length, he would have been as
long as the Ranger was tall. Just now he looked like a coil of thick
rope, with his ugly head coming up out of the middle of the coil and
pointing his forked red tongue straight at the young chipmunk.

He was a white snake, with brownish stripes that seemed to mark his
back in squares. As is true of most snakes, he was not a kind that
would do any harm to a child, but he swallowed chipmunks whole, and
poor Chuck knew it.

It seemed to Chuck as if his legs had frozen too stiff to run away, yet
if he did not run, the snake would swallow him.

At that fateful moment, Fuzzy-Wuzz caught sight of them. One pounce and
the fat cub had the snake writhing between his jaws. Then the snake had
wriggled away and was making for his hole, the chipmunk forgotten.

“That certainly squares the matter of the pine nuts,” Chuck told his
partner when he was safe back home. For the cinnamon cub had certainly
played the rôle of Fate, though without realizing it. For him the snake
had only meant a bit of sport.




CHAPTER XVII

BUCKY, THE BURRO


FUZZY-WUZZ had learned to ride a burro away back there when the Ranger
had rescued him from drowning.

He had traveled on top of the pack as the Ranger went his rounds. After
awhile he learned to leap to the little donkey’s back whenever he
wanted to ride. The burro never minded.

She was mighty useful to the Ranger, was the donkey, for she could
carry a pack over the narrowest mountain trail. No matter how rocky
and dangerous it was, she never missed her footing. (A horse sometimes
slipped and fell over the canyon wall.) She also possessed the ability
to go without water when it was necessary. Her compact little hoofs
were just built for rocky trails, and her ancestors had lived in Egypt
and the dry mountainous regions of Mexico, where a good drink every
night after the day’s work is over, often has to suffice. That makes a
burro especially useful during the long California dry season.

Then, too, a pack burro can live, and fatten on the dry grass and
leaves she can find for herself during the months when no rain falls.
That is more than a horse can do. The Ranger kept a couple of saddle
horses, which he had to treat with especial care, but for the long
trips into the back country, or down to the settlement and back for
supplies, he relied on his burros.

Jack and Bucky, as he called them, had even carried the furniture of
the cabin twenty miles on their backs. And so obedient were they that
one day, when the Ranger wanted to send supplies home but could not
leave the settlement himself for several days yet, he simply gave the
shaggy little animals a slap and pointed their noses along the home
trail, and they went back all alone.

But they had one fault. They were as stubborn as could be. If they made
up their minds to stop, no amount of urging, nor beating, even, could
make them change their minds. If the Ranger accidentally put too heavy
a pack on their backs, or one that didn’t fit comfortably, they would
simply lie down, or else leap into the air with bowed backs and buck it
off.

Now that spring a baby burro had been born in the corral. Young Bucky,
they called the gray rascal. Such a cunning baby as he was, too, with
his long, waggling ears, and almost hairless tail with just a tassel on
the end of it.

At first he was so shy that every time Fuzzy-Wuzz came near, he would
run for all he was worth. But gradually he got used to the fat brown
cub.

The pack burros were gone on a trip to the settlement when it occurred
to Fuzzy-Wuzz that he would like to take a little ride around the
corral. Seeing no one but young Bucky, he leapt to his back.

[Illustration: The next thing Fuzzy knew, he was sailing into the air.]

The next thing Fuzzy knew, he was sailing into the air, for Bucky,
objecting to such a passenger, had simply given one big jump that sent
the little bear flying off over his head. Nor did he stop at that.
Coming with all four of his neat hoofs together, his back bowed, he
leapt again and again, shaking his head angrily and grunting with the
effort he had made.

After that, if Fuzzy came too near, he simply struck out at him with
his hind feet, and it was only luck on Fuzzy’s part that he did not get
a good kick.




CHAPTER XVIII

“AS STUBBORN AS A MULE”


“THERE is nothing like starting early,” said the Ranger one day, “when
it comes to training animals and children. I am going to break young
Bucky to the pack saddle.”

The little donkey was accordingly fitted with a pair of kyacks, almost
empty to start with. So far, so good. But Bucky would not budge.

Meekly he stood there, his long ears pointed inquiringly at the Ranger
and his eyes rolling till the whites showed. He made no protest, but
neither could he be made to move. The Ranger did not believe in beating
him. Besides, he knew from watching others that it would do no good. A
burro will die under your blows, but he will not give in.

The Ranger tried coaxing, he tried commanding, he tried pulling on the
halter rope and shoving from behind, but still that mite of a donkey
stood with hoofs braced and refused to go one step with that pack
saddle on his back.

It occurred to the Ranger that perhaps he had tried too heavy a load,
for a burro knows better than any man what he can carry. He emptied the
kyacks entirely. Sure enough, they had been too heavy,--light as they
were.--Bucky now followed him with ears wagging peacefully, back and
forth, back and forth, as is the way of burros.

He followed the Ranger, as docile as a puppy, planting his small hoofs
carefully on the rocky trail. After perhaps half an hour he stopped.
The Ranger coaxed him with a biscuit from his lunch, but the burro
would not budge; he switched his heels, but Bucky would not move. He
simply felt that it was time for a rest, and he used the one argument
at his command. When he had rested long enough, he started on again of
his own accord.

“‘He’s as stubborn as a mule,’” laughed the Ranger. “But I guess he
knows better than I do when he’s had enough. I wouldn’t urge him beyond
his strength for anything.”

Bucky certainly had a mind of his own. Fuzzy had been frog hunting
down along the creek one day when the Ranger came along on horseback,
with the big burros and young Bucky following after. He was on his way
to bring in firewood from a clearing where he had chopped up a fallen
tree, and though Bucky was not to carry more than one stick on each
side, he thought it good training for him to go along and learn to
follow a pack train.

They came to a corduroy bridge across the creek. Now burros are afraid
of water. Their ancestors were desert animals, and every last donkey of
them has to be taught to cross a bridge. It was no different with young
Bucky.

Tripping daintily along behind his mother, he stopped when he came to
the first log of that bridge, and planted his fore hoofs firmly against
it.

The Ranger was prepared to offer him an apple, but Bucky would only
stretch his neck toward the fruit and beg without being willing to come
one inch nearer for it. Then the Ranger tried to pull him by his halter
rope, but he tugged and he pulled till he was afraid he would pull the
rascal’s head off, without being able to budge him.

The Ranger set his wits to work once more. He had heard of people
actually lighting a fire under the stubborn animals, but though the
flame singed their fur, they were more afraid of the bridge.

At last, in disgust, he simply took the young burro on his back by
getting under him and drawing his fore legs over his shoulders, and
carried him across.

Fuzzy, watching, enjoyed it hugely.




CHAPTER XIX

THE PINTO PONY


FUZZY-WUZZ, like all bears, old or young, was fond of trout, and these
autumn days it was his great delight to fish the creek.

Earlier in the year the stream had been so high that he could not have
done this, but now it came no more than neck high along the banks, as
he stood with barbed paw outspread, ready to spear the first fingerling
that came along.

He was there fishing the day that Bucky, the young burro, got his first
swimming lesson. Where the bridge crossed the creek it was deeper. It
was where the children came to swim. This time Bucky protested as he
had before when they came to the bridge. Then he got the surprise of
his life. The Ranger simply picked the little gray beast up in his
arms and flung him overboard into the pool.

You never in all your life saw such a surprised animal as young Bucky.
But did he drown? Not a bit of it. Every animal--except the human--can
swim if it has to, and Bucky simply struck out for shore with all fours.

Always thereafter he crossed the bridge willingly enough.

(How it did make Fuzzy’s little black eyes twinkle. For he had not
forgotten when Bucky bucked him off.)

Another thing interested him, too. (For there is nothing in all the
woods so curious as a bear cub). That was when the Ranger taught the
pinto pony to walk a log.

Away off there in the high Sierras, it is often necessary for a man’s
horse to make his way up and down steep slopes, over fallen tree trunks
and over streams where there is no bridge. Sometimes a horse can swim,
but where there is a log across a stream, those mountain-bred ponies
are taught to cross the log.

First the Ranger found a log that had fallen on a bit of level
ground,--a big log that would have been wide enough for two ponies to
walk abreast upon. Over this he led Pinto,--as he had named the pony
from the large white patches on his brown coat. That log did not seem
alarming.

Next the Ranger laid a log across a shallow arm of the creek where, if
Pinto had fallen off, he would not have wetted more than his ankles.
That was all right, too, thought Pinto.

As the final stage in his training, the Ranger led him along a log that
crossed one end of the old swimming hole, where it was really deep. But
Pinto had by this time learned to trust both his master and the logs,
and he crossed unafraid.

Now Fuzzy-Wuzz had followed the creek up-stream till he was so high
up the mountain side that the stony creek bed was all dry except for
a mere trickle, and an occasional pool. He now proceeded to explore
down-stream.

Here the rocks were all hollowed out in smooth, round bowls, some of
them as big as wash tubs, some only the size of finger bowls, and a
few as large around as a dining-table.

When the snows melted in the spring, bringing with them a flood of
rushing water and grinding stones, the stones had been swirled around
and around till they had ground out these rock basins. The swimming
hole was just a huge rock basin.

As Fuzzy came to deeper water, he met every here and there a
make-believe waterfall. Sometimes he plunged over it head foremost, and
sometimes his feet slipped out from under him before he was ready, and
over the falls he went, landing in the pool beneath, and being swirled
around in the rushing waters till he was half drowned.

But even a small cub is a good swimmer, and most of the time he really
enjoyed the excitement.

These autumn days, however, he was to learn a new way of swimming. Now
that the worst danger of forest fires was over and the Ranger had more
leisure, he took two weeks off and the whole family went on a camping
trip to a grove of Big Trees, and Fuzzy-Wuzz went with them.

Dapple was left to browse with the cattle, and Clickety-Clack was
given the freedom of the barn; while the Ranger, his wife and boy
rode horseback, and the little girl behind her father. The brown bear
cub was placed on top of the pack Bucky’s mother carried. Young Bucky
followed after.




CHAPTER XX

THE PACK-HORSE TRIP


EVERY one enjoyed the camping trip, from the Ranger’s little girl,
whose first long trip it was on horseback, to Fuzzy-Wuzz, whose natural
love of exploring made it a real treat to ride all day atop the burro’s
pack.

The sun felt good on one’s fur in the crisp autumn weather, as they
threaded the clean aisles of pine and fir,--and my what appetites they
had! Then the starlit evenings around the bon-fire, when the little
bear was allowed to snooze on the saddle blankets!

He got himself in bad one night, though, by helping himself to a plate
of flapjacks before the family had had their share. If it hadn’t been
for that--but wait!

Bucky, the young burro, was also fond of flapjacks. In fact, he was
fond of anything that could be eaten, and he was everlastingly fond of
eating. The Ranger used to say there was no bottom to his stomach,--the
more he put into it, the more he wanted. But then, he was growing fast.

That little gray donkey would eat anything from a thistle to a piece
of paper smeared with bacon grease. As each night two or three cans of
vegetables were opened, he would eat the paper off the cans for the
flour paste with which they had been pasted on.

He chewed the Ranger’s shoe, one night, just to sample the flavor. He
loved potato parings, and raised his voice and sang for the bacon rinds.

Oh, what a voice he had! “Hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw!” he would bray
till some one came to feed him. “It’s worth while giving him something
to eat, just to keep him quiet,” declared the Ranger’s wife.

On the trail young Bucky, like his parents, expressed most of his
feelings with his ears. When all was going well, their long ears swayed
forward and backward, forward and backward, with each step they took.
If something startled them, forward would prick those great, listening
ears till their curiosity had been satisfied. But if they got stubborn,
back they would lay their ears as flat as they could plaster them.

One night every one was extra tired, and they all forgot and left
the flour bag open. It was the night they arrived at the Big Trees,
and they were too filled with awe and wonder to think of anything
practical. The next morning Fuzzy happened to wake early, and went off
on an exploring expedition of his own. That wonderful nose of his had
told him that there was a nest of field mice somewhere about there, and
he meant to dig them out.

Meantime the family arose, bathed in the river, and started breakfast
preparations. While the boy brought in wood for the fire the little
girl carried water from the spring, and the Ranger rounded up the
stock,--as they say out West when they go to drive back the horses, who
often stray in the night,--his wife made ready to bake biscuit.

She looked for the big twenty-five-pound flour sack. It was half empty,
and flour was strewn all over the ground!

The two big burros were always hobbled, like the horses, over night, so
that they could browse in the little mountain meadows without wandering
too far. Young Bucky was left free. Just now he was nowhere in sight.

“Children,” called their mother sharply, “see what that bear of yours
has done!” And Fuzzy, returning at that moment, wondered why every one
scolded.

When the Ranger came in with the pack train, young Bucky’s muzzle
was white with flour and his sides puffed out amazingly. “Here’s the
culprit,” he sang out. “Trust a burro for raiding camp every chance he
gets. Nothing but a donkey could pull through after a spree like what
he’s been on.”

“Then Fuzzy didn’t do a thing,” and the boy flung his arms around the
brown cub.

“Perhaps not this time, but if he hadn’t stolen those flapjacks, he
wouldn’t have been misjudged.”




CHAPTER XXI

WHEN THE WORLD TURNED WHITE


IT certainly was hard, thought Fuzzy-Wuzz, for a cub bear to keep out
of trouble.

Back from the camping trip, the Ranger’s children spent much time
in the great log barn, and Fuzzy with them. How he did love to turn
somersaults in the haymow! Like a furry clown, he would tumble about as
if he hadn’t a bone in his body.

Sometimes the hens did not lay in their boxes, and the children used to
be sent to hunt eggs, which they would find here and there in the hay.
Fuzzy, too, learned to hunt for eggs, though those he found were never
seen again, save for the smears of egg yolk on his jaws.

He soon found it was great sport to chase the hens and send them
squawking, feathers flying as he caught a mouthful of tail plumage.

He also delighted in coming around at milking time. At first the cows
were so uneasy with the little bear around that they would kick their
pails over and lower their horns at him. So the Ranger tried to drive
him away by milking a stream of milk at him as one would turn on the
hose.

Was Fuzzy driven away? On the contrary, he just opened his mouth wide
and drank it down. After that he used to come and beg to have them milk
into his mouth.

But Fuzzy was finally banished from the barn. The mischievous young
rascal caught a pig one day and hugged him till the pig squealed as if
he were being killed. A little more and he would have been, for a bear
has a powerful hug. It certainly was hard for a fun-loving little bear
to keep out of trouble.

At last Fuzzy disappeared. The children searched and searched, but
they could find him nowhere. They set all his favorite dainties
out on the back porch for him,--bacon, and honey, and wild
gooseberries,--everything they could think of that he especially loved.

They called him, they searched the woods for some trace of his
footprints in the soft ground left by the early rains, but nowhere
could they find hide nor hair of him.

“Do you suppose a lion’s got him?” they worried.

“No,” laughed the Ranger. “I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he
had gone to hibernating. You know a bear always sleeps the winter away.
He can’t find anything more to eat, with the snow deep on the ground,
and he can’t keep warm unless he eats, so he just creeps off into some
hole and curls up into a ball, with his toes inside, and sleeps till
spring.”

“Fuzzy didn’t need to. We would have fed him.”

“Yes, but you see, bears have had to hibernate for so many, many years
that it has become their nature to. I guess he couldn’t help himself:
he just got to feeling so sleepy that nothing else mattered.”

“But where is he hibernating? I just wish we knew where he was.”

“Oh, probably in some cave in the hillside, or under a big bowlder
where he would be sheltered from the wind; or perhaps he has just
crawled under some fallen tree, where the snow will bank around him and
make a cave, and keep the cold wind off him, and his breath will melt
an air-hole.”

Then one afternoon, when the sun had been blotted out by the big white
flakes of their first real, lasting snow, the boy was pitching hay from
the mow for the horses when something round and furry tumbled out and
into a horse stall. It was wee Fuzzy-Wuzz, who had been pried from the
warm corner he had selected for his winter’s sleep.

He blinked and yawned a few times. Then he disappeared again, and it
was not till the following spring that they found him snoozing away in
the far corner of the haymow.




CHAPTER XXII

THE RING-TAILED CAT


THE children missed Fuzzy-Wuzz these days, the more so as Dapple, the
fawn, had to spend the winter in the barn with the cows. They could not
have her indoors, of course.

The Ranger found a litter of ring-tailed kittens. The kits are
generally born in June, and this was October, so that they were half
grown. Their mother and the two larger kittens ran away as the Ranger
reached into their den in the hollow tree, but the littlest one was not
quick enough.

Now the Ranger remembered his grandfather telling of the days of
Forty-nine, when he joined the gold rush to California. He had had a
ring-tailed cat for a pet.

Building his rude log cabin somewhere about these very mountains while
he washed the precious metal out of the gravel of the creek beds, he
noticed that his supplies were being pilfered, and thinking it must be
a fox, he set a trap.

He was awakened in the middle of the night by the most curious
sound,--half the bark a small dog makes, and half yowl. Looking to
see what he had in his trap, that he could put it out of its misery,
he found an animal that he at first took to be a house cat. Then he
noticed that it was longer, and had a much longer tail, and shorter
legs. The most curious part of it was that the tail was striped black
and white, like a ’coon’s. Its face, too, was pointed like that of a
raccoon. Instead of the mischievous eyes peering from a black mask that
a ’coon seems to have, this animal had large, gentle looking eyes and
looked scared to death.

He learned later that it was a ’coon cat, or civet, more commonly
called the ring-tail cat.

“There, there, pussy,” he soothed her, as he released her from the trap
and carried her into his cabin. “You just come on in here and have some
fish, and we’ll bury the hatchet. I need a cat to keep the field mice
out of my grub,” and he straightway adopted her.

She was easy to tame. She generally slept all day and chased mice all
night,--of which an abundance were attracted by his pantry shelf. She
also showed her likeness to the raccoon by her fondness for fruit and
sugar.

The Ranger, remembering this pet his grandfather used to tell about,
decided to take the ring-tail cat home to the children. And my, how
pleased they were! At first they had to keep her in a cage, or she
would have run away. And when they placed food before her, she would
cower to the furthest corner as if terrified.

After a couple of days of this, the Ranger told his boy that if he
really meant to tame her, he would have to make her eat from his hand.
After that, though she had a pan of drinking water in her cage, she got
no food till she was willing to eat it out of his hand.

For several days she refused to touch what he offered her. Then the
tempting odor of a piece of wild goose liver held between the boy’s
fingers proved too much for her and she came up and ate it while he
held it. A few days more and they could let her out of her cage.

Ring-tail, as he named her, soon became the pet of the household,--to
Clickety-Clack’s disgust, for the owl liked attention too. She would
play like any other kitten, and she ate all kinds of table scraps, figs
and prunes being her especial fondness.

She was no end graceful, was Ring-tail, with her long, plumy tail and
her pointed face. And she responded to all the old kitten tricks, from
chasing her tail to wrestling with one’s hand, tooth and claw. She
craved affection, too, like any house cat.

There was just one trouble. They could not trust her in the same room
with the canary.

Fuzzy-Wuzz had never bothered the bird, for though he could climb, he
was too clumsy to reach into the cage as it hung there above the window
box. But with Ring-tail it was different.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE BABY CANARY


A WAY back last spring, before the Ranger found the little bear, the
canaries had started a nest of five pretty eggs, and there the mother
bird had sat, keeping them warm, while her mate sang to her.

By and by the children noticed a movement under the mother bird’s wing.
Then a tiny yellow head came poking out through her feathers. When she
got off the next day to eat, they noticed a hole no bigger than a pin
head in the shell of one of the remaining eggs, then a yellow bill was
thrust through, and withdrawn again. After that there was a pecking and
a struggling inside the shell, and the next thing they knew, out came
the funniest baby they had ever seen, with pieces of the shell still
sticking to him.

Naked he was, with eyes not yet open, and a head so large for his
slender neck that he could hardly hold it up. His legs sprawled weakly
from beneath him, and his toes were so fragile that it seemed as if
they must break if he tried to stand on them.

The bird hatched the day before was the same. The next day came
another, and the day after that, another. The fifth egg did not hatch,
and the mother bird shoved it out of the nest with her foot.

My, how busy those four fledglings did keep their parents for the next
two weeks! Opening their wide mouths till one could see right down
their throats, they would just sit there in the nest all day long
eating what their parents brought them,--chopped egg and cracker, and
baby bird seed, which the big birds first cracked for them in their
own bills. It seemed as if there was no getting those young canaries
filled. Every time one got a mouthful, he would flap his pin-feathery
wings and cry “tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet,” till one wondered how so much
voice could issue from such a tiny bird.

By the time the little ones were able to stand on the roost in a row,
there were only three, for one had lost his balance as he stood on the
edge of the nest, and all the flapping of his nearly naked wings had
not served to break his fall.

Chirping their high-pitched food call, the remaining birdlings would
flap wings that just began to show a row of teeny, pale yellow feathers
along the edges.

Then a dreadful thing happened. A great brown butcher bird lived in a
thorn bush not far away. This horrid creature lived on mice and little
birds, and like the witch of the fairy tale, hung his victims on the
thorns till he was ready to eat them.

One day the children thought the canaries would like to be out of
doors, and hung the cage in a pine tree. An hour later that butcher
bird had reached in through the bars of the cage and bitten the heads
off the whole canary family save one little one. He had been in the
nest out of reach.

The little girl cried her heart out. But they decided they would do
their best to bring that fledgling up by hand. By this time he was
just about big enough to have gone to bed in a teaspoon. His wings were
fringed with pale yellow, and he would perch on a fore finger and open
his mouth for them to feed him, chirping shrilly and flapping his wings
with all his might to keep from falling off.

The boy gave him just the tiniest bits at a time on the end of a
flattened twig. Soon he was able to eat for himself. At night he had
to be snuggled into a warm nest made of an old piece of flannel, and
every day his cage was set in the sunshine and he was given a saucer of
clean, warm water to bathe in. My, how he did love to splash.

The children wondered if he were going to be a singer, like his father.
He was three months old before he really tried very hard to show them.
Then what a golden voice had that golden yellow bird! At first he had
been pale yellow, but the larger he grew, the yellower became his
plumage. They named him Caruso.

Sometimes the children would let him out of his cage in the living
room. How he loved the freedom of it! How he explored the plants
in the south window, and the silver spoons on the table! He loved
everything bright and shiny.

As he had never known what fear was (except the time the butcher bird
came), he would ride about on the children’s shoulders and eat out of
their hands.

They taught him to come when they called him, and it was a common sight
to see the children doing their lessons around the lamp of an evening
and Caruso perching on their fingers or picking at their pencil points.

Any sudden movement startled him, but until the other pets came, a more
trustful little bird you never saw. That is why, unless Ring-tail and
Fuzzy-Wuzz and Clickety-Clack were shut out of the room, he had always
had to stay in his cage.




CHAPTER XXIV

“JEST AN ORNERY PUP”


SOMETIMES the Ranger took the children snow-shoeing through the winter
woods. Their game was to find and name as many footprints as they
could, of the many they saw criss-crossing the snow. Sometimes they
could read a story in those footprints, like the time they followed the
delicate mouse tracks till those of a fox told the end of the story.

They soon learned to know the difference between the pointed tracks of
the deer and the manlike footprints of the mice and squirrels, raccoons
and bears. Then there were the doglike prints of the foxes and coyotes,
and the catlike marks of the wild cats,--those handsome gray striped
Bay lynxes that looked so much like big house cats except for their
tasseled ears and big feet, bobbed tails and the fur that hung down
from their cheeks in points. Once they caught a glimpse of one crouched
on the limb of a tree,--a beauty of a great, fierce cat with his round
yellow eyes.

Once they even came across the giant catlike track of a mountain lion,
and their father made them go back while he followed with his gun.

He could tell whether an animal had been walking or running, whether
it had been chasing something or was being chased, or whether it was
a deer or a doe. It made these winter walks mighty interesting to the
children.

Just before Christmas the Ranger went to the settlement on his
snow-shoes to get the mail. When he came back, out of his coat pocket
tumbled a yellow ball of fur.

“A dog!” his wife exclaimed.

“‘Jest an ornery pup,’ the grocer says. But I figured he might came in
handy with our small fry,” by which he meant the children. “They’re
missing that cub so mightily.”

“I don’t believe anything will ever crowd Fuzzy-Wuzz out of their
affections,” she smiled back.

“Well, I’ll feel safer about them, anyhow, if we have a dog about the
place.”

The children welcomed him ardently. He was a friendly, wriggling
fellow, was Wiggledy,--as they promptly named him. Just a yellow puppy,
part terrier and part something else, the Ranger thought him. But a
love-hungry heart beat in that furry chest. He was soon pals with both
children.

Young animals can generally be trained to eat out of the same dish. But
Ring-tail was a half grown cat when Wiggledy arrived, and it was too
late, so far as she was concerned, to make friends between them.

Wiggledy soon came to look upon everything the children owned as under
his especial guardianship. One day when he and Ring-tail had been shut
in the barn while the children had their lessons, he barked so hard
that their mother sent them to see what the trouble was.

They opened the barn door and called him, but he would not come.
Instead, he kept running to the rain water barrel in the far corner of
the vacant horse stall, and back again. “Hush your noise!” scolded the
little girl. But he only set his teeth in her skirt and tried to pull
her after him. At last she came with him.

Dragging her to the water barrel, he stood on his hind legs, and with
fore paws against the barrel, began barking harder than ever.

She peered within. It was dusk in that corner of the barn, and at
first she could see nothing. At last her eyes made out a movement in
the water. Peering closer, she saw, just above the water line, which
was half way down the barrel, the pointed face of the ring-tail cat.
Ring-tail often drank from the barrel, reaching down while she clung
with hind feet on the barrel rim. This time she had lost her balance
and fallen in. She was swimming feebly. A moment more and she suddenly
sank out of sight.

At his sister’s cry, the boy came running, and fished out the drowning
animal. Ring-tail’s eyes were shut and her body felt stiff and cold.

Tearfully they carried her into the cabin, where their mother gave her
a swallow of something hot and laid her behind the kitchen stove in a
warm blanket. Anxiously the yellow pup watched and waited, every now
and then giving her wet face a lick, and whimpering inquiringly.

When at last she began to move her claws feebly and to open her eyes a
crack, my! how joyously he barked.

“I vow that pup deserves a medal for life-saving,” declared the Ranger,
giving Wiggledy a ham bone.

But at that moment Ring-tail, having fully revived, snatched his bone
away.--She was certainly feeling better.




CHAPTER XXV

A REGULAR DOG


WIGGLEDY loved nothing better than to go snow-shoeing with the Ranger’s
children.

Of course the fat pup was helpless in the deep snow, but he would go
plunging into their snow-shoe tracks, leaping from one to another with
the most joyous barking and wriggling and flapping of ears.

Sometimes he caught up with them. Then he would try to steal a ride on
the back of a snow-shoe, till they discovered why it was so hard to
lift that foot.

After awhile they taught him to help them bring in the firewood. Giving
him just one small stick at a time to take between his jaws, they had
him trotting ahead of them, every trip they made.

Later they made him a harness and taught him to drag their light sled
over the snow crust, though he would have to grow a lot before he could
bring in wood that way. To both the children and the pup it was all
just fun. They wouldn’t have enjoyed it a bit if they had had to do it.

“I do believe that pup’s going to pan out a regular dog,” the Ranger
decided. “I tell you what, it takes these mongrels for just plain,
ordinary brains,--not the kind that bird dogs have, nor fighting dogs,
nor any special kind, but just plain all-’round brains.”

“And heart,” added his wife softly, watching the children romping with
Wiggledy on the hearth rug. “I’ll feel now, if anything happened to the
children when they’re out snow-shoeing, he’ll come and tell me, or die
fighting for them.”

“I hadn’t noticed that he was particularly scrappy.”

“Ho, ho! You haven’t seen him chasing Clickety-Clack. I wonder how
he’ll hit it off with the little bear.”

“That we shall see when spring comes.”

Now Ring-tail had formed the habit of sleeping on the children’s bed.
When Wiggledy first came, he was so tiny and so lonesome that he, too,
was taken under cover. About this time the excitement began.

When the two animals were kept on opposite sides of the bed, there was
peace. But let Wiggledy come too near and Ring-tail promptly boxed
his ears. Then he would yelp and scuttle closer to the children. And
sometimes they were awakened by a regular cat and dog fight,--in which
the pup, being the youngest, generally got the worst of it.

If the pup were banished, he howled forlornly till they took him
back to the warmth of their beds and hearts. Finally it came to be
understood between them that Wiggledy was to sleep down at the foot,
under a fold of blanket, while Ring-tail took the head, where the
feather-bed billowed out above the children’s heads, and where she
could come and go without disturbing any one,--for she was still a
prowler of the night.

If the children overslept and Wiggledy got hungry, he would simply
pull the covers off them.

The question was what would happen when Fuzzy-Wuzz came back.




CHAPTER XXVI

CHUMS


IT was still damp on the forest floor, with here and there a patch of
melting snow, when Fuzzy-Wuzz awoke from his winter sleep in the haymow.

But down on the rocks where the lake lapped over pebbly levels, the sun
shone hot and still. Here the little bear was basking when the yellow
pup first sighted him.

“How-wow?” exclaimed Wiggledy, the force of his bark raising him clear
off his feet.

“Hoof?” asked the cub, rising on his fat hind legs inquiringly.

The children, who had been watching, arrived at that moment, and
explained to the pair that they must be friends, though this would
hardly have been necessary. The two young animals were soon romping
delightedly together. Inside a week they were chums.

Lizards basked on the warm rocks, and the new-made comrades, tired of
wrestling and playing tag, sprawled out side by side one day to watch
them. By and by they began to notice that the rocks and sandy shallows
all around them were alert with little goggle eyes that peered up at
them with an unwinking stare.

The eyes were set in round bodies mottled brown and deeper brown, just
the size of bantam’s eggs with long, fish-like tails attached. What
could they be, asked Wiggledy with a soft rumble in his throat.--Fuzz,
being near-sighted, did not see them till they moved. The eyes were set
in heavy, protruding lids.

They were bull-frog babies, and the two watchers crept down over their
bowlder, Fuzzy-Wuzz with paw outstretched ready to make a grab at them.
The fat tad-poles would wait saucily till his claws were just above
them, then with a sudden flirt of their fleshy tails, they would flip
away, just barely out of reach. Then they would turn and ogle the
little bear with their bulging eyes again. It was tantalizing.

Sometimes Fuzzy would feel a soft body slip past his paw, but before he
could clutch it, the prize would be far away, and circling teasingly
back again.

Finding a precarious footing on the tip of a rock just above one of the
thickest colonies, Fuzzy made a sudden grab,--but quick as thought,
they had slapped their way in a solid body just far enough to be out of
reach,--and there they ogled him again, maliciously.

The fat cub now moved to another rock to try the trick. This time,
splash! he slipped into the slimy water. My, how disgusted he was at
that!

With one swift bat of his good right paw, he flipped through the water.
This time he sent one flying out on shore. Clambering out himself, he
examined his prize drippingly.

Soft and round as an egg without a shell, the tad-pole displayed the
buds of feet, where later would sprout as plump a pair of frog’s legs
as ever graced a frying pan. His brown back Mother Nature had tinted
to look like the rocks to any creature hunting from above.

With cautious paw, the cub flopped him over on his back, displaying
the shining nether side that would look so like water to any fish foe
hunting from below him.

The pink gills were wide open and gasping, for he was drowning as
surely on land as a cub would have drowned under water. With a snap of
his jaws, Fuzzy finished the life story of that young frog-to-be.

The chums spent much of their time, the next few weeks, hunting
bull-frog tad-poles and field mice together.




CHAPTER XXVII

PRETTY PAWS, THE PINE SQUIRREL


ONE hot day Fuzzy-Wuzz had gone to sleep in a pine tree when he was
awakened by a little high-pitched bark, like the yap of a young fox.

He opened one eye cautiously. There on a limb higher up stood a
squirrel, scolding him for all she was worth. But she was not like the
gray squirrels he had seen. She was dark brown, and her under side,
and all four paws were a rich orange color. Her tail was bordered with
yellow.

It was Pretty Paws, the pine squirrel. She was a member of the Douglas
squirrel tribe, (named after the man who discovered them). She must
have considered the little bear an intruder, the way she scolded. Was
this her particular pine tree, he wondered?

His little black eyes twinkling, he climbed a little higher,--though he
was pretty near the top for even his small weight. At that she scolded
more angrily than ever, fairly rising into the air with the ferocity of
her barking. She was joined by her mate, who also barked at Fuzzy.

“Ha, ha!” thought the little bear, “there must be a reason for all this
noise they are making. I must find out what it is.” And he wondered if
such small creatures could really hurt a bear cub, as they were surely
threatening to do.

The wind, which had been blowing through the tree top, came to a rest,
and with that, Fuzzy caught a delightful odor. It was the odor of
mushrooms. Where could they be, away up here in the tree top, he asked
himself? He meant to find out, for of all the plants that grew in
those woods, he loved mushrooms best. He climbed a few steps higher.
The squirrels leapt to a branch below. They were now facing him, and
threatening to eat him alive.

He made a sudden rush at them, with a deep throated “Woof!” They
backed away. At that, his eyes twinkled more than ever. They were only
bluffing.

He climbed to the next limb,--the tree top swaying with his weight.
There, spread out along the limb in the sunshine, drying, he saw what
had smelled so wonderful,--a whole row of mushrooms. But how could they
have gotten away up there? For they were mushrooms that he had found on
the ground. He gobbled them greedily.

He thought he understood now why the squirrels had scolded so. These
were the mushrooms they had collected, and laid out to dry for winter
use. But they had been his mushrooms, he told himself, when they grew
on the ground beneath the tree. Never mind, he would make them his
again.

The children, attracted by the barking in the tree top, called their
father to tell them what it was. These pine squirrels, he explained,
were cousins to the red squirrels of the East.

Just now Pretty Paws and her mate were calling loudly for all their
friends and relatives to come and help them scare the cub away. But
Fuzzy munched right on, enjoying each mushroom in turn.

Almost instantly the woods resounded with the call notes of neighboring
pine squirrels, who were coming to see what the trouble was all
about,--for squirrels are mighty curious about all that is going on
about them. Some of them helped scold Fuzzy, others sang and trilled
almost like birds.

The first litters of young were out that afternoon, and some of these
orange-breasted sprites became so excited that they simply rushed up
and down their tree trunks, playing tag in joyous excitement.

“I’ll catch you, if you don’t shut up!” Fuzzy woofed at them as he
finished his feast and descended awkwardly, tail end first, till he
could drop from a lower branch like a fat little bag of flour.

But though he spent all that afternoon, and many another, chasing
Pretty Paws and her friends, as they came down to gather pine seeds and
insect larvæ, he never once succeeded in getting so much as a mouthful
of fur. Before he could grab them, they were safe on a limb, flirting
their tails saucily at him and calling him all sorts of names.

Later he saw Pretty Paws racing through the tree tops with a great
brown creature in hot pursuit. It was a pine marten, or sable,--a rare
animal for even those mountains. Fuzzy didn’t believe the squirrel had
a chance in the world.

He watched while Pretty Paws went leaping from branch to branch, and
from tree to tree, and the marten after her. As agile as herself, for
all his great size, was that marten. How it ended Fuzzy never knew, for
he could not follow fast enough. But if it wasn’t Pretty Paws herself
who barked at him next day, it was her twin sister.




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RATTLESNAKE DEN


FUZZY often wandered far down the mountain side.

One hot week in July his restless wandering carried him almost down to
the valley. He had been chasing a jack rabbit through the tall grass
when he was startled by a sound like the rustling of a dry leaf, only
ever so many times louder. He jumped out of the way till he could find
out what it would be that could make such a queer sound.

As he did so, a great snake shot from its coil to the spot where he had
been but an instant before. Its mouth was open and it displayed two
long, sharp fangs. Its scaly back was mottled with cross-wise stripes,
dark, reddish brown, with yellow edges to the lighter spots.

Fuzzy’s fur rose along the back of his neck. He had caught many
a snake and eaten it with relish, but not this kind. This one was
different. This must be what had made that ominous rattling sound. He
had nearly stepped on it.

He started to climb between two bowlders and go on his way, but no
sooner had he set foot on the spot than there came another of those
peculiar rattling sounds, then another, and another. He had stepped
into a den of rattlesnakes.

Now the rattler always plays fair. It gives warning before it strikes.
As an actual fact, it will not strike at all unless some one comes
near stepping on it or makes it fear for its life. But the unfortunate
Fuzzy-Wuzz had actually stepped into the retreat of a whole colony of
baby snakes. And the babies themselves were equipped with poison fangs.
There must have been other mothers there, too, the way they rattled.
And now the first snake was all coiled ready to spring again, her ugly
flat head rising straight up out of the middle of the coil and her tail
again rattling its buttons warningly.

The little bear leapt for his life, but he was not quite quick enough.
One of the snakes, (he never knew which one,) struck his left hind foot
a terrific blow, driving its fangs in till it had squeezed the little
poison bag that lies at the root of each fang, so that the poison ran
down a groove in the fang.

Fuzzy ran till he was safely away from that dangerous neighborhood,
then he began to feel the effects of the poison. His foot swelled, and
he felt as if he could lie right down and die.

A great many animals would have died. A man who has been struck by a
rattler can only be saved by drawing all the poison out of the wound,
and other mighty serious treatment.

It was a mighty serious matter with the little bear. But bears are
hardy specimens. They can survive a great many things that other
animals cannot. He was pretty ill for a time, but three weeks later he
came limping back to the Ranger’s cabin.

My, how glad the children were to see him! How they hugged and feasted
him! He liked it, too. He had been through a lot since last he went
exploring.

Wiggledy was just as glad to greet his chum. Every one was glad except
Clickety-Clack, the little screech owl, whom he was soon chasing as
merrily as ever, and Dapple, the yearling fawn, who had never had much
to do with him. After that for several days the pup and the bear dug
quietly for ground squirrels.

These ground squirrels were skimpy tailed and stupid, and lived in
holes that they dug for themselves and their large litters of young
along the edges of the mountain meadows. Several families of them had
home-steaded in one corner of the Ranger’s garden patch, where they ate
things as fast as they grew. The Ranger was mighty glad when he saw
Fuzzy after them.

The chums would each select a hole and see which could dig out a
squirrel the quickest, dog or bear. But Fuzzy always won, for his long
claws were much better digging implements than the pup’s.

There were mice, too, to be found under the fallen logs farther back in
the woods. These mice of the high Sierras were red-backed fellows whose
coats so matched the reddish soil that they were hard to see, even when
they sat right out in plain sight. Fuzzy depended more on his nose than
his eyes when he followed their run-ways around the stumps and rocks
that hid their homes.

Sometimes he would find a whole mossy nestful of them in some hollow
stump or under a rock. Then the young mice, if they were old enough
to run, would race in all directions, and Fuzzy-Wuzz could only turn
around and around, wondering which one to chase first, while Wiggledy
barked and hopped about in wild excitement.




CHAPTER XXIX

MOTHER BROWN BEAR AND THE BULL


FUZZY-WUZZ had grown by now to be as fine a yearling brown bear as you
will find in the Sierras.

The quaking aspens along the creek were beginning to turn scarlet when
he yielded to a restless feeling that often came, and started on a
journey that took him back over the way the Ranger had come the year
before, when Fuzzy rode on top of the burro’s pack.

When at last he came to the rapids where he had so nearly drowned,
something about the place seemed familiar. As if repeating a lesson he
had learned when he was very, very young, he turned and walked up the
glacier-smoothed granite slope to where a giant bowlder blocked the
mouth of the den. He sniffed. It was the cave in which he had been
born.

It was empty now, but from the odor of warm fur he judged that it had
not been empty more than a few minutes. With his nose to the ground, he
started following up the trail they had left,--a trail pungent of warm
fur to his understanding nose.

It led straight to a patch of wild gooseberry bushes, and from there
to a flower-dotted mountain meadow where range cattle browsed. Fuzzy
hesitated. He never saw a range cow now but he looked for the nearest
tree. There was no tree anywhere near.

Just as he was about to turn back, he caught a glimpse of a huge furry
form that he knew to be his mother.

Cautiously he approached. Would she be glad to see him, after so long,
or had she given him up for drowned, and would she chase him away as
she would a strange cub?

He came a little nearer,--then he stared. Waddling along flat-footedly
behind her were two wee cubs, brown balls of fur as tiny as he had
been when the Ranger found him.

He whimpered joyously. Just then a range bull turned, caught sight of
the wee cubs, and doubtless taking them for dogs, charged them with
lowered horns.

Mother Brown Bear rose to her great hind feet with a growl. Then seeing
that the bull still came on, she bounded to a point midway between him
and her babies, and waited. The next instant he was opposite her.

With one twist of his ugly horns he could have torn her half in two,
but she never hesitated, not where the safety of her babies was
concerned. She would have died fighting for those helpless mites if
need be.

With one sweep of her great, steel-strong fore arm she delivered a blow
on the back of his neck. It felled him flat, for his spine was broken.
Such is the strength of a full grown brown bear. Lucky he is a good
natured animal when no one molests him.

Calling gently to her cubs to follow, she now hastened back to the den.
Fuzzy stepped into view as she neared him, whining an eager greeting.
But she only growled out a warning not to come near her babies. Fuzzy
thought best to obey. Slowly he wandered back to the river, then on
home to the Ranger’s cabin.

It had certainly been pretty fine to have his freedom, but he was
always mighty glad to come back to the children and the good things
they always feasted him with.

For awhile he was content to play around with the pup. One day, towards
sun-down, the children heard an unusual commotion in the woods.
Wiggledy was barking madly, while Fuzzy-Wuzz stood on his hind legs
sniffing at something that hung from a limb.

At first it looked like a great leaf. Then the children saw that the
leaf had a mouselike body covered with red-brown fur, and the face of a
big-eared gnome. It was a bat, with great, leathery wings. She hung by
the edge of one wing, on a hooked-nail that would have been her thumb
nail, had it been her arm and outstretched fingers that formed the ribs
of her wing.

There she hung, in the full glow of the setting sun. But the oddest
thing about her was this.--Clinging to her were three baby bats, wee
things that she was nursing as they clung to her teats.

Presently she saw a moth and flew after it, snapping her teeth in it
hungrily after a short chase. And when she flew, she carried the babies
clinging to her, just as they had been before. (For she had no place to
leave them in safety.)

She hung herself up on another tree, and once more began watching for
her prey. The children tried to catch her, for a closer look at so
strange a creature, and finally succeeded in cornering her in an angle
of the barn. The boy,--who knew how to handle animals,--grabbed her by
the scruff of the neck where she could not reach out to bite him.

My, how furiously she squeaked! How she ground her teeth and struggled
to turn her head and get a nip at him! But he held her tight, careful
neither to hurt the valiant little mother nor to get hurt himself,
while they examined her funny, big-eared, almost human face. Then they
let her go, and she disappeared into the dusk.

Fuzzy was disgusted to think they had not given her to him.




CHAPTER XXX

PIKA OF THE PEAKS


ALL that summer Fuzzy wandered, wandered everywhere in search of
adventure. There was hardly a spot within miles of the Ranger’s cabin
that he had not explored. For he was looking for a range that he could
call his own. Sometimes he found an inviting bit of country, but some
other bear had already made his home on it.

One mellow day that autumn he climbed to the very tree line. Coming out
on a wind-swept height where the only trees were the twisted junipers
whose branches clung to the ledge, he was just about to drink at a
trickle of water that welled out of a crack in the rocks when he heard
the queerest sound.

It sounded like a giant cricket, “cheep, cheep, cheep,” high-pitched
and plaintive. He looked about to see where it came from, for a cricket
would make fine eating.

First the sound seemed to come from behind him, then from the side;
then it sounded for all the world as if it must be in the rocks around
on the other side. Fuzzy was mystified.

Like a gray shadow, something glided to the top of a stone not far
away. It looked like a small rabbit, except that it had big, round ears
rimmed with white. It was a pika.

The little bear had never seen a pika. He knew nothing of its ways.
That is why he made a dash for this one. Had he known, he might have
saved himself a lot of trouble. For no sooner had he moved than the
little creature had disappeared from the stone. What had become of it
he could not imagine.

Again came that long-drawn cricket sound, echoing from somewhere
underneath the rocks. Madly he started digging into the slide-rock,
near where the bunny-like creature had disappeared. He might as well
have tried to dig a hole through the mountain for all the results he
got. The pika was not there.

Pausing to get his breath and cool off, he suddenly espied, sitting
calmly watching him, the same gray shadow on the same gray stone.

This time he made an even swifter dash, but again the pika was not
there. When Fuzzy became quite worn out, and had curled up in a furry
ball to take a nap, the little dweller of the mountain peaks went
calmly to work getting in his winter food supply.

Nibbling through the stems of as many flowers and grasses as he could
carry in his mouth, he would lay the little bundle neatly on a rock in
the sunshine and spread it out to dry. After awhile, when the sun no
longer shone on those rocks, he carried his hay to one where it did.

That way, he worked steadily on, all alone on the mountain top. Soon,
he knew, would come the biting cold and the banking snow, and he would
need enough hay to keep him fat and warm in his den in the rocks.

Once a hawk spied him out as he worked, and made a swoop for him.
Yesterday it had been a lion, the day before coyotes. But Pika only
slipped in between two rocks where nothing could get at him, and waited
till the danger was gone.

When at last the sun grew cool and the little bear awoke, and
stretched, Pika was sitting watching him like a gray shadow on a gray
rock, but so still he sat, and so silently, that Fuzzy-Wuzz never even
dreamed how near he was, but went shambling off down the mountain side
in the gathering dusk, while Pika once more sang his cricket song.




CHAPTER XXXI

FUZZY AND THE WEASEL


OF all the curious furry folk that Fuzzy saw that summer, the weasel
was the most curious looking little beast.

At first glimpse he thought it was a black snake that went gliding
through the scarlet fire-weed. The long, humped body with its flat,
almost earless head and long neck ended in a tail nearly as long.
Behind the pointed nose, the blood-thirsty villain’s red eyes glowed
cruelly.

The weasel was after a mouse, when the little bear first saw him, and
so slim was he that he could follow that unhappy victim straight down
into his hole. He emerged in two minutes licking his bloody jaws, for
he had not eaten the whole mouse, but only quenched his thirst, as is
the way with weasels.

Chuck and Chipper, and indeed the whole chipmunk horde, had hidden in
their furthest dens at first glimpse of the blood-sucker. Nor was that
all: each was prepared to flee for his life through his emergency exit,
should the killer start down their front entryway.

The clumsy-looking ground squirrels developed a speed of which Fuzzy
had not supposed them capable, as the dark, snaky form went twisting
and turning through the under-growth with his nose to the patch-work
of their trails. One old fellow took refuge in a stone pile, but the
weasel squirmed his way after him, through every chink and crevice,
till Fuzzy heard his victim utter his last unhappy squeal.

But did that stop the killer? Merely tasting the warm blood, the weasel
left his catch uneaten and started after another. Now most of the wild
folk who kill at all, kill because they must eat. But the weasel is
different: he kills for the love of killing. He is the villain of the
play. No mouse or chipmunk whose trail he starts to follow ever gets
away from him.

Now there was a big rabbit that Fuzzy had chased off and on all summer,
but always the little animal flapped its ears saucily and got away. It
was not afraid of Fuzzy, and could easily outrun him. The rabbit had
been eating every green thing that came up in the Ranger’s garden, and
Fuzzy had felt it his duty to rid the place of the fellow. Besides,
though mostly a vegetarian, he had often thought that rabbit would be
good eating.

To-day the rabbit was just settling down to demolish a head of the
Ranger’s lettuce when the weasel, running along with his nose to the
ground, crossed its trail. Sniffing eagerly at the scent of warm fur,
he raced up to the flap-eared one.

Now a rabbit has perfectly good hind legs. If its courage had been
as good, no weasel could have overtaken it in a race. At first this
particular rabbit, sniffing the air for signs of an enemy, thought it
was only the little bear, and went right on eating, waggling its ears
saucily.

Then it saw the weasel. With one great bound it was leaping away
through the woods, the little weasel after it, but losing ground.

Then the foolish rabbit leapt high to see where its enemy was. The
weasel was sneaking along in such a snake-like manner that at first it
couldn’t see him, so the foolish bunny circled back to make sure.

Now the weasel was just on the point of giving up, seeing that here
was one victim he could not hope to overtake, when the rabbit suddenly
came back, saw him still pursuing, and losing heart, squatted down,
paralyzed with fear, uttering a squeal for mercy.

Instantly the weasel was on the rabbit’s back, biting the cowardly
beggar back of the ear, where it killed it instantly. But a taste of
the hot blood and the weasel was satisfied, and ran away to chase barn
rats.

“Am I in luck?” Fuzzy asked himself, licking his jaws hungrily.

The Ranger also thought himself in luck, for inside a week the weasel
had rid the barn of rats, and betaken himself away to new hunting
grounds.




CHAPTER XXXII

WAPITI


THE little bear felt more and more strongly the call to go exploring.
So many things interested him, and he was so apt to find something
new and delicious to eat. Besides, he felt it would soon be time to
hibernate again, and now that he was getting so large, he wanted a home
of his own,--some rocky den where he could be entirely by himself when
he felt like it.

During the spring and summer the mule deer, (Dapple’s tribe,) had been
the largest he had seen. But now that the larches had turned old gold,
he sometimes met a herd of wapiti, or American elk, who had summered
high in the mountains, in the stunted forests of timber line where they
could browse on the foliage of the very tree tops and the lush grass of
the high alpine meadows.

At the approach of winter they came down to seek the shelter of the
valleys.

Every herd had its patriarch, a huge old bull wapiti, whose wide
branching antlers would suddenly appear on the sky-line while he
scanned the slopes. Then he would give the signal to the herd of cow
wapiti and their calves who were under his protection, to follow to the
feeding-grounds he had selected.

Fuzzy was afraid to come too near, for he had disliked horns and
antlers ever since his experience with the range cow the year before.
But his curiosity often drew him to watch these strange creatures from
the safe shelter of some clump of brush.

After the first snow-fall, the wapiti would paw the ground bare with
their fore hoofs till they could get at the mosses underneath. At this
time the herd was joined by several others, and at night they always
slept in a circle, the bulls on the outside, the cows next, and their
calves in the very middle. Fuzzy wondered and wondered why they did it,
till one night, when he had elected to sleep away from home.

It was starlight in the open spaces, shadowy under the trees, when he
was awakened by a peculiar shiver that ran along his spine and made
the fur on the back of his neck prickle. This, he knew, meant danger,
though at first he could not see what it was that menaced him. Then,
suddenly, he noticed a slinking, almost soundless movement along the
limb of a tree between him and the wapiti on the creek bank.

Slowly, slowly the giant cat, a mere moving shadow in his tawny coat
against the shadows that didn’t move, leapt to the ground and began
edging, inch by inch, toward the sleeping herd. But was it sleeping?
Fuzzy thought he saw the gleam of several pairs of eyes against their
moveless bulk.

The cat was edging around them watching for some point where he
might approach them from behind. But on every side he was faced by
a barricade of pronged antlers that could have pierced him through.
Finally as he came too near, the bulls arose and stood waiting--just
waiting for him to come closer. But at that the lion turned and leapt
into a tree, and though Fuzzy watched till he could no longer keep his
eyes open, he saw no movement in that tree, nor was the lion in the
tree when morning came. Nor was the herd reduced by the loss of so much
as one calf.




CHAPTER XXXIII

DAPPLE DISAPPEARS


AS her second summer came to an end, Dapple was seen to be more and
more vain. Every day she licked her fur till it shone. She had even
made friends with a young cow of almost equal vanity, who did her the
service of washing her neck where she could not reach it, a service she
returned in kind.

Then one day she disappeared. The children were mystified, but Fuzzy
could have told them what had become of her.

His wanderings had often taken him into the haunts of the mule deer.
Not that he ever got very near them. Even had he trusted the antlers
of the bucks he saw summering together in the high country,--they had
prongs even before the tall branching antlers came in September,--he
could not have escaped observation, so keen were both their eyes and
their ears.

Then in the wooded valleys he had watched the blacktail does with their
dappled fawns.

Seeing in the little fellows something so like what Dapple had been the
year before, he sometimes tried to play tag with them, but no sooner
would he make a movement toward them than off they would bound in great
leaps that took them clear over the tops of the bushes, and in two
seconds they were clear out of sight, doe and fawns together.

Not even when they slept could he surprise them, for they slept with
all four feet under them, and at the slightest sound, crack would go
the brush about them, as they rose into the air, then off they would
bounce, like so many rubber balls, thud, thud, thud!

It became a game that Fuzzy played with himself, to try to catch them
unawares, but let him approach never so softly, with the wind blowing
his scent in entirely the other direction, their big ears were sure to
hear him, though they had been sound asleep.

Yes, sir, Fuzzy could have told the children what had become of
Dapple. But he didn’t, and they mourned her as lost, finally deciding
that she must have fallen victim to a mountain lion.

He had seen the bucks come down from the high country as autumn crisped
the air, their double branched antlers gleaming proudly. He had watched
them battling on the lake shore o’ moonlight nights, their antlers
clashing angrily at one another, while the does--and Dapple--watched
them from safe covert.

And before ever he began his winter’s sleep he had seen them gather
into herds, does and bucks together,--and Dapple with them,--as many as
he had toes and fingers put together, in a sheltered canyon where they
could winter.




CHAPTER XXXIV

DAPPLE’S SECRET


AS winter approached, and Fuzzy wandered farther and farther afield,
the bullfrogs wriggled deep into the mud to sleep the white months
away, the trout he had so often caught sought the deepest water they
could find, in the very bottom of the ice-covered lake, the birds
flew further south, the chipmunks retired to the depths of their
well-stocked burrows, the pine squirrels took to their hollow trees
except when the sun shone warmest, and the mice crept so deep into the
frozen ground that Fuzzy could not dig them out.

The children still had the owl and the canary, and one day they
discovered Ring-tail in the haymow with three kittens, but Wiggledy,
now a well-grown pup, was their chief comrade, for Fuzzy-Wuzz had also
disappeared.

He had not chosen the haymow this time in which to sleep the winter
away, for he had found the most delightful den in the rocks,--a regular
cave, which he had lined with armfuls of dry pine needles, till it was
as snug and warm as anything he could desire. Moreover, he could hide
away in it and no one could disturb him.

Spring came, setting the streams to frothing over their bowlder-strewn
beds. The banks of the quieter pools echoed to the song of the
re-awakened bullfrogs. Chipmunks chattered through the tree tops, birds
returned, filling the air with their love songs, and mice scuttled
through the new green grass. But no Fuzzy came scratching at the cabin
door, and no Dapple came to the children’s call.

Then one early morning the boy, now a well-grown lad of twelve, was out
milking the cows when a pale, tawny form in the edge of the woodland
attracted his eye. It was a doe, and he held his breath for a good look
at her. She did not move. For long minutes he stared at the mild-eyed
creature, fearing if he moved, she would go bounding away. Then--could
his eyes deceive him?--she came prancing straight toward him.

“Dapple!” he called joyously. “Dapple! Can it really be you?” And at
the sound of his voice, she came to his outstretched hand and licked it.

Then a sharp sound of snapping twigs in the underbrush behind her sent
her bounding back. The boy stared after her. There, frightened to death
at their close approach to human kind, and ready to leap away at the
slightest danger, stood two tiny spotted fawns, as like what Dapple
herself had been as anything that could be imagined.

A moment more they stood hesitant, then as the boy took one step
nearer, Dapple went bouncing back into the thick woods, the fawns
following.




CHAPTER XXXV

OLD FRIENDS


THE children had climbed high that day with their berry pails.

Wiggledy had gone bounding on ahead, threatening every squirrel and
chipmunk with the most ferocious barks. Suddenly he began sniffing at
the ground in a way that attracted the children’s curiosity, then went
bounding off with joyful yelps.

“What can it be?” wondered the little girl. “He never ran away and left
us like that before.”

“Let’s go along and find out,” proposed the boy.

They had to run to keep the dog in sight. Sometimes he would stop and
peer into the branches of a tree, then sniff about underneath. Then
off he would race again, nose to the ground, uttering happy yelps and
whimpers.

The way he led them zig-zagged this way and that, but always it took
them higher. At last they found themselves away up on the mountain side
almost to timber line. Then Wiggledy disappeared in a berry patch too
thorny for them to follow.

As they stood waiting and calling for him to come back, and filling
their pails from the berries within reach, the little girl began
staring at the rocks further up. When the boy glimpsed her frightened
eyes he, too, stared in the direction she was gazing.

From behind a mammoth bowlder peered a huge brown head, with a long
yellowish snout.

Slowly a huge, furry form came lumbering forth, walking awkwardly
flat-footed, wagging its head from side to side. It was headed straight
toward them.

Now it arose to its full height, sniffing the breeze and peering
apparently right at them with its near-sighted little eyes. Then down
on all fours again went the shaggy beast. It was a brown bear,--the
largest they had ever seen.

The children didn’t know which way to turn. Of course they knew, as
their father had often told them, that a brown bear will not harm human
kind, unless wounded or cornered or trying to defend its young. But
how could they be sure this bear had not been wounded, or had no cubs
somewhere hidden among the rocks and thought they were after them!

The little girl was in for running, but the boy sternly bade her stay
still and show no fear. Wiggledy was still racing around in the berry
patch with his nose to the ground. Just then the wind veered. With a
frantic yelp the dog went flying straight toward the bear.

“Wiggledy! Come back!” called the boy, frightened lest the bear would
kill him. But the dog raced on.

Then something happened that left them speechless with amazement. The
little dog and the big bear began romping together just as had the pup
and the yearling cub the year before.

“It IS Fuzzy-Wuzz!” cried the boy. “Come here, you old rascal you,”
and he fished a hunk of gingerbread from his pocket and strode up to
the bear.

The bear shambled toward him eagerly, and took the tid-bit from his
hand. It was Fuzzy-Wuzz, his old friends not forgotten, though he had
taken to the wild where he belonged.


  THE END



Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_, bold is represented thus =bold=.




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