Public-domain ebook
Chinook, the Cinnamon Cub
Language: en377 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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In: Children & Young Adult Reading·Adventure·Novels
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #61888.
The opening · free to read
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.
“Whoof! Who is it?” asked Mother Brown Bear under her breath. “_Whoof!_” echoed her small son aggressively, and “Whoof!” said Snookie in a wee, small voice.
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.”
For a while after the Boy had passed out of sight, the cubs were allowed to practise walking on the fallen logs. When they fell off, they were so fat and so round, and the moist ground so soft, that it did not hurt them. Besides, the moment they felt themselves slipping, they could put out their claws and cling to the rough bark. By and by the Boy returned along the way he had come, but by this time Mother Brown Bear had led the cubs far up the gulch to where a spot of sunshine invited a cat nap. Even as she dozed, she kept one eye half open, and one ear cocked for the slightest sound beyond the calling of nestling birds and the barking and scrambling of noisy Douglas and his family, and the tinkling of the wee cascades that led to the river. The cubs rolled and tumbled over her, or coasted off her huge back, boxed and wrestled and played hide and seek, or came up to pat her huge, furry face with little love pats.
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.
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