Little Mitchell: The Story of a Mountain Squirrel

Little Mitchell’s Lady Comes

Baby Mitchell was an August squirrel. That is, he was born in the month of August. His pretty gray mother found a nice hole, high up in the crotch of a tall chestnut tree, for her babies’ nest; and I know she lined it with soft fur plucked from her own loving little breast,—for that is the way the squirrel mothers do.

This chestnut tree grew on the side of a steep mountain,—none other than Mount Mitchell, the highest mountain peak in all the eastern half of the United States. It is in North Carolina, where there are a great many beautiful mountains, but none of them more beautiful than Mount Mitchell, with the great forest trees on its slopes.

One of these forest trees was the big chestnut where Baby Mitchell was born. In the warm and lovely summer he lay safe in his snug nest twenty feet above the ground.

How many little brothers and sisters there were, I do not know, for a very sad thing happened, and all of them died but Little Mitchell. I must tell you what this sad thing was that happened to the little squirrels.

There was a small log-cabin at the foot of the mountain, and here lived a father and mother and a very large family of very small children. There was no other house near; and the father had to go a great many miles through the woods to his work in a saw-mill that some one had set up in the mountains.

And the children had to go such a long way to school, over little rivers that they crossed on narrow foot-logs; and through deep shady woods, where the sun could scarcely send a ray down through the tops of the tall trees; and under tangled rhododendron bushes that were often like little trees they were so large, and in the summer time were covered with masses of splendid white flowers.

Yes, it was a beautiful forest, though it was very, very wild; but there were no dangerous animals to hurt the children, excepting once in a while a long rattlesnake that wiggled out of the way as fast as it could if anybody came along.

The children loved their forest home, and they could run across the foot-logs without slipping into the little rivers, for they had no shoes, and their pretty bare feet had learned to cling to whatever they touched, like the feet of the wild animals, and they, you know, never tumble down or slip on a log.

When the children had run across the foot-logs, and danced through the dark woods, and skipped along under the rhododendrons far enough, they came to the schoolhouse.

You would be surprised to see this schoolhouse, for it was only a little log-hut with one room; and the seats were just rough benches, and there were no desks and no blackboards.

The schoolhouse stood on the bank of a little river; and all the children who lived “yon side” the river, as they say there, had to come to school over a long and narrow foot-log. But this log had a railing to hold on by, and the children did not mind going over it any more than you mind walking on the sidewalk. You see, they had their bare feet to cling with.

But they did not have to cross the log to go to the schoolhouse very often, for it is almost always “vacation” in the mountains. Sometimes the children go to school three months in the year, but very often there is school for only six weeks at a time. So they have to make the most of the good times, when they all meet together, and play with each other, and learn to read a little.

It would be fun to tell you about the little girls who came from ever so far, barefooted and sunbonneted, and the little boys who came from ever so far, barefooted with ragged caps on their heads, to this queer school. And it would be fun to tell of what they did in school, and of the sport they had at recess, playing in the river that ran so close to the schoolhouse door, and in the woods, all full of wild flowers, where the rabbits scampered under the trees, showing nothing but a tuft of white down which was their tail. But up in the trees gray squirrels ran about, with tails all big and bushy, and not white at all. It would be fun to tell about these things,—but there is little Baby Mitchell waiting for us up in the top of the chestnut tree, and we must hurry and take him down.

But first we must go back to the little log-cabin at the foot of the mountain, and wait for the lady to come along; because, you see, the story all turns on the coming of the lady.

One August day, toward night, when it began to get very cool at the foot of the high mountain, the mother of the little children who lived in the log-cabin was very much astonished. The little children were very much astonished too. The dog was so astonished that he forgot to bark; and the very cabbages and cornstalks that grew in the clearing in front of the cabin no doubt were also very much astonished.

Such a thing had never happened before; for coming along the path out of the woods were two strangers,—a lady from away off, and a mountain man who was acting as her guide.

The lady, on her part, was very much astonished too. She wanted to climb to the top of Mount Mitchell; and somebody had told somebody who had told her that the shortest way up was from a house at the foot, on the east side of the mountain, and that this house was a little hotel where strangers usually went to spend the night before starting up the high mountain.

So the lady came from away off, until she got within a few miles of the foot of the high mountain. Here she spent the night in a farmhouse, and next morning took a mountain man for a guide, who said he knew the way; and they started to walk to the little hotel, which she found was no hotel at all, but only the tiny log-cabin where the father and mother and their children lived.

The lady had to walk, because that was the only way to get there. There was no road through the forest, only a narrow path that went waggling along over rocks and rivers and tangly tree-roots, and nobody but a mountaineer could have found it. The lady followed her guide miles and miles, and would have felt very tired, only the air is so refreshing up by the big mountain that you cannot feel very tired, not if you walk ever so far.

The lady wore shoes, of course, and she could not get through the woods and over the foot-logs as easily as the little barefooted children. But at last, just before dark, they crossed one more stream over a particularly small and wabbly foot-log, and there they were.

“That is the house,” said the guide, as they came out into the clearing where the cabbages and cornstalks were growing.

“Where?” said the lady.

“There,” said the guide, pointing to the cabin.