Douglas, the squirrel, whose fur just matched the red-brown tree trunks, was as saucy as his eastern cousins, the red squirrels. He had been named after a famous explorer, just as Chinook was named for the Indians who lived in that part of Oregon. It used to seem to the little bear as if the squirrel took delight in teasing him, while so surely as Chinook tried to slip away and hide from his mother, Douglas was sure to spy out his hiding place from some branch overhead, and chatter and scream about it for all the woods to hear. Then with a Then Douglas would seat himself away out on some slender branch where Chinook could not have reached him, had he tried, and taking a pine cone up in his handlike paws, he would nibble it around and around, and eat the delicious kernels, while the little bear’s mouth watered for a taste, then throw the empty cone down on his head. The day after their fishing trip, Mother Brown Bear decided that if Cougar was anywhere about, they had better stay at home, where in an emergency she could order the cubs into the den and stand guard over them. Chinook, having nothing better to do, therefore decided to catch Douglas if it were possible for him to do so. Away up in the yellow pine above the den was a great mass of sticks and moss and dried pine needles that looked as if it might be Douglas’ nest. In fact, he had often seen the squirrel run into that very tree. He did not know that Douglas and his family had just built a larger nest in a taller tree, for a bear’s little eyes are not so good as his nose for telling what is going on about him. Today, sure enough, Douglas ran up the trunk of the yellow pine with his cheeks stuffed full of mushroom that he meant to put away for a rainy day. Chinook scrambled after him. But Douglas, instead of going to the nest, only leapt to the limb of the neighboring spruce, and from it to a tree beyond. Chinook determined, so long as he was up there, to have a look at the nest. Now it happened that Mrs. Rufus Tree Mouse had moved into the nest that Douglas had abandoned. The little red mouse peered with frightened eyes at the advancing cub, then with a soft
She was thinking, what a shame to have to move, just as they had lined walls and floor so daintily. The squirrel family had laid a good, firm foundation of sticks too large for a mouse to handle, and the roof was as tight and dry as new by the time they had plastered it. From their post away up among the high interlacing branches, they could run from one tree to the next and need never go down to the ground at all if they didn’t want to, for they could find all the pine twig bark and—on the tree next door, all the nice, green spruce needles that they could eat. Father Tree Mouse had been sleeping in a little shack of his own, out on the end of the branch, ever since the babies had come, from there he could see all that went on around them, and put his mate on her guard by sounding a signal squeak. Chinook stirred in his sleep, and the little mother trembled. Would Father Tree Mouse be able to do as he had planned when that monstrous cub awoke? |