Read Ebook: Chinook the Cinnamon Cub by Chaffee Allen DaRu Peter Illustrator

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Ebook has 306 lines and 25264 words, and 7 pages

CHINOOK THE CINNAMON CUB

A BOY AND A BEAR

The golden dawn of a June day in the Oregon woods streamed in slant bars between the tall trunks of the yellow pines, and into the rocky gulch where Mother Brown Bear had her den.

Dewdrops gleamed like diamonds on every flower and fern and spider web that bordered the cascading creek. Mrs. Tree Mouse peered with bright, beady eyes as a small, roguish face peeked from the cave mouth. Then out into the warming sunshine burst two of the most roly-poly little brown bears that she had ever seen. For a few minutes they wrestled like two boys, standing up on their short hind legs to pummel one another, or galloping about in a game of tag. Their small, flat feet made prints in the soft earth for all the world like the prints of a human child's foot, and their black eyes twinkled with fun. It was Chinook and his sister Snookie, their soft fur gleaming cinnamon-brown in the sunshine.

Then the huge form of Mother Brown Bear came lumbering through the cave mouth, and with a soft rumble deep down in her chest she bade them follow her. She made her way lumberingly down over the crags and fallen logs to a stump where she might breakfast on a great cluster of yellow mushrooms. The cubs had had their milk in the cave, but they always wanted to sample everything their mother ate, and they went scrambling after her as fast as their short legs and fat sides would let them.

The canyon in which they had been born that spring was a wild mass of tumbled rocks and mossy boulders where, years before, a landslide or an earthquake might have tossed them. Just below their cave lay a tangle of fallen tree trunks piled crisscross, and overgrown with a jungle of the mammoth ferns that throve in that moist soil. Just now these logs were encrusted with the brilliant-hued mushrooms that Mother Brown Bear loved. Later there would be blueberries and wild blackberries where now pale blossoms shone in the sunlight. In the stream to which their cascading streamlet led were trout, and in the great river beyond were salmon who came from the sea to lay their eggs in the gravel. On the mountainsides about them, where the wind-swept junipers twisted like gnomes above the rocky ledges, lived burrow mice and wood rats who would furnish good sport when the berries failed. It was a splendid bit of wilderness on which Mother Brown Bear had staked out her claim, and the cubs were eager to be taken exploring.

They had nearly reached a point where the huge fallen trunks, propped breast high to a man on their broken branches, threw long black shadows along the ground in which the cubs could hide in case of danger, when Mother Brown Bear sounded a note of warning deep down in her throat.

Someone was coming along the trail. With the fur bristling along the back of her neck, she rose to her hind legs and listened, wriggling her nose this way and that to detect what manner of creature it could be. He was certainly a noisy animal, for the fallen branches cracked under his feet. That meant that he was without fear. He must be large and ferocious. But the wind blew in the wrong direction to carry the message to her nose.

Chinook also rose to his hind legs ready to fight, and he too peered this way and that, sniffing and cocking his ears in his effort to see what it was. Snookie, though she reared up in a pose that looked like fight, preferred to take her stand behind her mother, and while Chinook genuinely hoped there would be a good scrap, Snookie privately wished there wouldn't. For Snookie was the smaller cub, and in her bouts with her brother she always seemed to get the worst of it.

Then along the trail came someone attired in blue overalls and a wide straw hat, who walked on his hind legs like a bear and carried a fishy smelling rod over his shoulder. It was the Ranger's Boy, who meant to surprise his mother with a string of trout for breakfast.

"Grr!" warned Mother Brown Bear. "Don't come any nearer, or I'll do something dreadful to you." For she was always afraid that harm would come to her wee, fuzzy children. The Ranger was in charge of these woods, and he and the man cub had never harmed her, though of course, she told herself, she was large enough to have fought off a whole family of rangers. But with her babies it was different. They had come into the world soft and helpless, and it would still be many moons before they could look out for themselves. "G-r-r!" she warned the Boy again. But he had stopped in his tracks to stare at them.

With Chinook it was far different. He felt so fine and fit that he just itched for a fight with someone beside Snookie, and he growled a "Come on!" deep down in his furry chest.

"Hello, there!" exclaimed the Boy softly from the far side of the windfall, his eyes laughing as he saw the two new little bears standing there ready for fight. He knew better than to come any nearer their mother, but he also knew there was no need to run away, so long as he kept his distance. "You're a funny rascal," he told Chinook. "A regular scrapper, aren't you? I wouldn't mind making friends with you some day," and his voice was reassuring. Chinook understood the Boy's tone, and his quiet attitude, better than the words.

"I'll fight you any time," growled Chinook, and he struck an even saucier pose, his little black eyes twinkling roguishly.

THE CUBS LEARN TO SWIM

"G-r-r! Better go on!" warned Mother Brown Bear, and at that, the Ranger's Boy thought best to march down the trail. But some day, he promised himself, he was going to see more of that bear cub. As for Chinook, he was consumed with a great curiosity to know more of the man cub who walked on his hind legs all the way.

What an interesting world it was that lay all about him! First there had been the sour-tasting ants and buttery grubs that his mother was always finding under the fallen logs and boulders. Then there was Douglas, the red-brown squirrel he could never catch, but who was always running right across his trail till it seemed the easiest thing in the world to nab him, only that some way Douglas always managed to leap beyond reach just in the nick of time. Douglas claimed that the woods belonged to him and that the bears were trespassing on his domain, and from the safety of some limb too small for a bear cub, he would hurl jeers and insulting challenges at Chinook.

"That's because he's afraid of us," Mother Brown Bear told her son. "Douglas is bluffing. He knows that bears are fond of having squirrel for supper."

It was a warm day, and when she had had her nap and the cubs their milk, and a nap of their own, and the sun threw her shadow directly beneath her, she decided that it would be a good time to teach them to swim. For woods babies were likely any time to fall into the water, and if there were any possible way of getting into trouble, Chinook, especially, was sure to find it.

"Come!" she bade them with an affectionate soft rumble deep in her throat, and she led the way down to the little river and on to where it spread out shallowly over gravelly banks and the sun took some of the chill out of the water. Mother Brown Bear waded in slowly. Chinook tried first one fore paw, then the other, in this strange new element that was not air, though one could see straight through it to the pebbly ground beneath. Snookie backed off, whimpering. "Come on!" commanded Mother Brown Bear. "Follow me."

Chinook, less fearful than his sister, but still wary, because of the coldness and the strange wetness of it, followed for a few steps, then ran splashing back to shore, where he stood shaking first one foot, then another with a shower of sparkling drops.

"Snookie, come here!" ordered Mother Brown Bear. But Snookie only whimpered. "Chinook, show your sister that you are not afraid," she coaxed, and Chinook, with a show of bravado, waded in. But the instant the water was deep enough to start lifting him off his feet, he turned in a panic and again dashed madly back to solid ground.

"Snookie!" called Mother Brown Bear, wading back to shore, "climb on my back." This the smaller cub willingly did. She liked to ride on Mother's back, hanging on to the long fur with her handlike paws. "Come, Chinook!" and Mother Brown Bear waded back into the river with both youngsters gleefully taking a ride. As she went in deeper, Snookie looked back at the receding shore line, and clung faster to her mother's fur. Still deeper went their chariot, till at last it reached deep water. "Now swim!" commanded their mother, and with a suddenness that unseated them, she made a dive and shook them from her back, then turned and paddled to shore without once heeding Snookie's strangling squeal for help.

The cubs naturally struggled wildly to find a footing, and as they pawed and clawed about, their legs worked the same way as when they ran, which was just the way they ought to have worked. Then they discovered that by spreading their legs even wider and scooping at the water with their paws, they could do better still. Their vigorous paddling not only served to keep their noses above water, but Chinook, less frightened than his twin, turned his eyes to where his mother stood waiting on the river bank, and struck out towards her with all his might. Snookie, seeing his wee stub of a tail near her jaws, grabbed hold and let him tow her, and soon they had their feet once more on the gravelly shore. Puffing and panting, and dripping chilly drops, the cubs would have rested, but that Mother Brown Bear set off on a gallop into the woods.

"Wait for me!" squealed Snookie.

"Wait!" panted Chinook, and the cubs galloped after her, Why was Mother so unkind today?

THE CALIFORNIA LION

Mother Brown Bear had a reason for running away and making the cubs follow, for by the time she was willing to stop, their shivering bodies were all in a glow of warmth, and what with a few good shakings of her wet fur, and a little help from their mother's rough tongue, and the sunny June breeze, they were soon dry and fluffy, and ready for anything.

The next day Mother Brown Bear again took them swimming, and they found they liked it. The day after, she decided to go fishing, for the streams were full of trout, and she loved trout even better than the roots and mushrooms that she could find near home. This time she towed the cubs across the river. Chinook took her stub of a tail in his teeth to help him as he swam, and Snookie took his tail.

When they had reached the riffles where the fishing was good, Mother Brown Bear simply stood there like a floating log with one barbed paw held under water, ready to spear any fish that swam too near. With her sharp claws she could impale the slippery fellows, and toss them to shore, where the cubs sat watching. They still drank milk, but with their sharp little teeth they sampled everything their mother ate, to see what it was like. They were having great fun this afternoon. In the clear water they could see the shining bodies of the finny ones darting along, and taking Mother Brown Bear for just a big brown log. Then she would send a fish flapping to shore, and the cubs would try to catch the slippery fellow.

The three bears had started late that day, and it was getting on towards sunset. The high peaks to the westward had already cut off the ruddy globe of light and left deep shadows creeping upon them, when Mother Brown Bear, crunching her fish on the river bank, caught a strange message on the wind that swept downstream. Her nose began to wriggle.

"What is it?" questioned Chinook softly through his nose.

"Hush!" breathed Mother Brown Bear, and the fur rose along her spine, as her nerves tensed with anger. The cubs, feeling her mood, crept closer, the fur rising frightened along their tiny spines.

Away down along the river bank a moving gray-brown shadow stirred the salmon-berry bushes and made a faint lapping sound as it drank at a pool. As the night wind blew to their inquiring nostrils, it telegraphed that here was a huge foe. It told Mother Brown Bear distinctly that down there, fishing, was Cougar, the California mountain lion, most dreaded of all her enemies. She might have stood him off in single combat, had he ever been so rash as to attack a grown bear, but here were the cubs, so little and helpless! The only reason Cougar would ever have for coming near would be if he wanted bear cub for breakfast. Many moons ago, while exploring a distant mountain range, she had seen him lying in wait for rabbits, and when she located her den in the gulch, she had supposed that he still lived many miles from the spot. But here he was, as she could see by peering from behind a boulder, crouched on the shelving bank of the river with one paw dangling, barbed and ready to spear a fish. Perhaps it had been a poor rabbit year and he had moved into her territory. That would never do! From now on, she must keep close watch of the cubs. Perhaps he need never learn that she had these furry children to protect. If they went quietly now downstream, with the wind blowing from him to them, they might cross the river lower down. Then if he should cross their trail, he would lose their scent at the point where they entered the water. But once let the giant cat learn of the den by the cascades, and he would be watching it, like a cat at a mouse hole, for the first moment when she had to leave her children unprotected.

Now a bear, for all his weight, can pad along as softly as any other mouser when he wants to, and this time, at least, the little family got safely home without discovery. But when the great, tawny-brown cat had caught his supper and eaten it, he decided to see what might be farther downstream, and thus he happened upon the bear-scented footprints that the three had left behind them.

"Ah, ha!" sniffed Cougar, who was longer than a man is tall. "Juicy, tender young bear cubs! Just wait till I can catch one! What a feast it will be!" and he licked his whiskered lips in pleased anticipation.

But when he came to the point where the bears had crossed the river, he lost their trail, and though he sniffed about for a long time, he could not find what had become of them. Cats hate getting wet, and he wouldn't have swum the river except in a real emergency.

Now it happened that the Ranger was after that very mountain lion, for Cougar had been killing elk and deer, and these were Uncle Sam's woods, where deer are protected except for a little while each fall. But when Cougar had moved from his old den on the other side of the mountain, the Ranger had lost track of him.

One day, though, the Ranger's Boy, on his way over the Pass with a pack-horse to the Logging Camp where they bought flour and coffee, heard something that sounded almost like a man sawing wood. It was away off up the mountainside. The Boy listened, and if his mother hadn't expected him back by supper time, he would have climbed the slope to see who it could be. If he had done so, he wouldn't have caught so much as a glimpse of the purring lion, who would have run at the first whiff of a human being. But if the Boy had had his father's pocket telescope with him, he would have seen, stretched out flat on a shelving rock ledge, which his fur almost matched, the long, slender, pantherlike animal, as heavy as a grown man, with his small head nodding drowsily in the sunshine because he had been up all night exploring. And in his dreams Cougar licked his lips, for he was dreaming of nosing out the den where Mother Brown Bear had her cubs.

THE HOME IN THE SQUIRREL'S NEST

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.

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 "hush!" to her babies, she cuddled them up in a warm ball away inside in the innermost chamber of her new house, and waited, trembling, to see what the cub would do. Chinook, finding the nest apparently deserted, though alluring, mousy odors clung to it, decided to curl up in the crotch of a limb where he could see if Douglas came back, and so comfortably was he lodged in the hammocking crevice, and so drowsy did the stillness of the noonday warmth make him feel, that the first thing Mrs. Rufus knew, the little bear was fast asleep, right there, as it were, in her front yard.

"Dear me," she whispered to Father Tree Mouse, when he came home with a mouthful of soft lichen for the nursery walls. "Here is that bear cub, right where he can see us if we so much as peek from the door, and there is nothing to prevent his tearing the nest to pieces and eating us all alive."

"I haven't forgotten how to run," soothed Father Tree Mouse.

"That isn't what I meant," explained Father Tree Mouse, "Don't worry! The minute that monster wakes, I'll run out along that lower limb in plain sight, and he'll be so eager to catch me that he'll never look your way."

"All right, then you keep watch while I feed the babies and get them to sleep. If they keep squealing this way, they'll wake him, sure," and the little red mouse began nursing her mouselets as a cat does her kittens.

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?

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