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Title: Timmy Whoof
A story of a little pet bear
Author: Kate Innes
Release date: May 24, 2025 [eBook #76155]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Davis & Bond, 1917
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIMMY WHOOF ***
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Illustration: Title page]
TIMMY WHOOF
A STORY OF A LITTLE PET BEAR
_By_ KATE INNES
Author of "Little Joker" "Little V. W."
"Governor" etc.
DAVIS & BOND
PUBLISHERS OF GOOD BOOKS
BOSTON MASS.
Copyright, 1917,
by Davis & Bond
TIMMY WHOOF
CHAPTER I
Little Timmy Whoof was a fat bear cub. He didn't look unlike an
ordinary kitten, except that he was larger.
In color he was yellowish, with soft, thick fur, a broad baby head,
and two small brown eyes that glinted--and sometimes squinted--like
the eyes of a little farmyard piggy.
When he grew bigger he would be what people call a "cinnamon bear,"
which means that his fur coat would be a pretty light brown of the
same hue as the spicy cinnamon powder which mothers use for flavoring
the cinnamon buns that children love. And every child knows what a
cinnamon candy stick is!
Funny that there should be any connection between a rough, roaming,
wild bear of the woods and a candy stick, isn't it?
Probably Timmy Whoof would never taste a real sugar stick out of a
glass jar in a store. But sweets are to be found in the woods, too,
and when he grew older he would love honey, for the wild bees keep a
candy store for him in the hollow of some big "bee-tree," as it is
called, meaning a tall maple- or oak-tree, which they had packed full
of delicious honey.
And when Timmy Whoof went bee hunting, to steal from the wild bees'
sweet store, being a rough, ignorant bear who didn't know any better,
he would just put his paw in and take his candy, meaning the wild
honey, without paying for it.
And sometimes his broad, black nose, dull black like rubber, would be
stung so hard and often by the angry bees when he poked that greedy
nose into the deep hollow of a tree, to find out by smelling whether
there was honey there, that it would swell up to twice its size.
And sometimes his funny little piggy eyes would be stung and red and
swollen, too, almost closed.
But just now, when I am beginning to tell you about him, he was a
great deal too young to go bee hunting or honey hunting, for he was
not yet two months old.
He did not, at this time, have even a name. In fact, he never would
have been called "Timmy," or any other name in particular, other than
that of Mr. Cinnamon Bear which had belonged to his father before
him, if he hadn't had, while still quite young, some stranger
adventures than bee hunting which led to his making friends with a
man.
But before I tell you of those adventures I must say something about
his little twin brother and about the cave in which they were both
born one mild, May day.
The twin brother was so like Timmy--who, you must remember, was not
called "Timmy" yet--that the wild bees could never have told one from
the other. Only their own mother could! But the twin was just a wee
bit smaller and weaker than Timmy who had as much life and fun in him
as half a dozen kittens.
He just loved to toddle out of the cave on his four fat, furred legs
as soon as he could walk, and sprawl in the sunshine on the broad,
open plain, miles wide, with a river running through it, where the
cave was situated.
It was a vast and splendid playground for a little, yellowish bear
cub, that plain. There were round, dark holes scattered here and
there all over it where the small prairie dogs, not much larger than
brown rabbits, ran to hide. Sometimes, at early morning or when the
shadows of evening were falling, a lean gray wolf or the wolf's
smaller brother, a greedy coyote of the plains, would come up through
the bushes from the river brink and try to steal a march on the two
little bear cubs if they happened to be playing out-of-doors, before
the cave.
But old Madam Cinnamon Bear, their mother, had a broad nose that was
very fine for smelling either wolf or coyote a long way off. She
would hunch up her shaggy, cinnamon-colored back and growl! She
would squint in the direction of the bushes from which an enemy might
come, her little dark eyes turning in towards her dull-black nose
with uneasiness, lest wolf or coyote should get near enough to pick
up one of her fat cubs and run off with it.
Generally, she would hustle Timmy and his twin brother back into the
darkest corner of the cave, with a warning, growling, "Whoof! Whoof!
Booitt!" which Timmy soon learned from her, so that he could get off
a little, growly "Whoof! Whoo-oof!" himself, and that is how, by and
by, he came by his second name.
She was very good to her two fat cubs, was Madam Cinnamon Bear. She
spanked them occasionally and romped with them often, in the cave and
out of it. She watched over their safety night and day and left them
only when she had to go berrying or bee hunting or mouse hunting to
get a meal for herself.
As a rule, she was at home before dark, before the inside of the cave
grew black and cold. But one evening she happened to be very late in
coming, and when Timmy, the stronger of the bear cubs, heard at last
a crashing among some bushes outside the cave's dim mouth, which
meant that she was near, he trotted out to meet her.
Then he got a great surprise. He hardly knew whether it was his
mother or not. She didn't look natural. She was standing upright on
her hind legs, tall and straight, listening, listening, as if she
were both surprised and frightened.
"Whoof!" said Timmy a little piteously. "Whoo-oof!" and then he made
a mewing noise like a kitten--half a mew and half a baby growl--which
meant: "O mother, I'm so-o hungry! So is brother! How late you are!
Please give over shuffling round on your hind legs, and attend to us!"
"Boo-oo-ooit! Stop your crying!" growled his mother; and dropping to
all fours again, meaning to her four feet, she gave him a smart
little slap with one of those feet, or furry paws, which would have
been as soft as they were shaggy had it not been for the five brown
claws, curved like hooks, which grew on each.
They could scratch and tear dreadfully, those claws, but they didn't
scratch Timmy, although his mother seemed, somehow, put out and
crosser with him than she had ever been before.
"Boo-ooitt!" she growled again. "Don't you know enough to keep
quiet? I heard a dog bark."
With that she stood upright again for a moment, straight and still as
a brown rock, and gazed off over the plain where the night shadows
were like a dark, frowning wall, so that little Timmy Bear-cub could
not see very far.
But his mother could. While he blinked and whined at the darkness,
mewing, kitten-like, because he didn't like being even gently
spanked, she was smelling and looking and listening with her brown
ears pricked, her dull-black, rubber-like nose spread and snorting.
For what do you think she saw? Stars!
Stars overhead, plenty of them, hanging their tiny lamps in the night
sky! But they didn't bother her.
No; the stars which made her stand upright and growl, looking tall
and stretched like a child on stilts--those stars were down nearer to
the ground, meaning the dark plain.
They were quite a long way off, a mile, at least. But they were so
red and so bright that they could be seen for a long distance over
the flat plain.
There was a ring of them, a regular ring upon a hillside, surrounding
a larger, brighter red light in the center, like "a ring around the
rosy," such as little children play when they join hands and dance
around a rose-bush.
These stars, or lights on a mountainside, didn't dance. They kept
perfectly still, too still for Madam Bear's taste. She would have
understood them better if they were moving.
"Riddle me, riddle me, ree,
What can these red lights be?"
was what she was saying to herself in bear talk while she stood
growling on her hind legs with Timmy whining beside her.
But although the ring of red stars down near the flat earth was a red
puzzle, the sound which came from some spot near them was not new to
Madam Cinnamon Bear. Very faint and very far away, it still could be
recognized as a dog's bark. And she had heard dogs bark before.
She had been chased by them, too. They had led her the funniest kind
of a dance by capering round her and barking madly at her heels, just
as if they were saying to her, "Dance, Bear Woman, dance! Wouf!
Wouf!"
But O dear me! it had not been funny for her. She was a great deal
bigger and ever so much stronger than either of the two dogs which
led her this sorry dance out upon the flat plain. She could have
hugged both of them tightly in her brown arms, meaning her fore legs,
when she stood up straight, and crushed all the bark out of them
forever, if, only, she could have caught them.
But they were sheep-dogs, those saucy, barking bow-wows, which means
that they helped men to take care of a great flock of woolly sheep
which fed upon the hillsides; and by constantly running round that
baaing flock, driving them together, they had become so quick upon
their feet that no bear could catch them.
So they just played nip and tag with her all over the plain, while
she stood clumsily on her hind legs or, dropping to four feet again,
galloped wildly this way and that, trying to get her paws on them,
and couldn't.
I declare it was a case of
"Dickery, dickery, dare,
The bear flew up in the air;
The dog in brown soon brought her down,
So dickery, dickery, dare!"
You remember that old nursery rhyme, don't you, only it is about a
pig and a man, not dogs and a bear?
So it was no wonder that when, on coming home late this evening,
Mother Cinnamon Bear heard a dog bark away off on the other side of
the plain near the hill where the strange ring of lights was, she
stood on her hind legs outside the cave, growling strangely!
No wonder that she slapped Timmy and asked him in snarly bear talk
whether he didn't know enough to keep quiet if dogs, saucy dogs, were
anywhere within a mile of one!
She didn't want to be put through a hop-skip-and-jump dance by dogs
again, out on the plain, although she was, later, as you will hear.
And funnier things than that happened to her, too!
But now she kept rearing up and dropping down outside her cave home,
with Timmy making a noise like a fat, crying kitten and rubbing
himself against her.
"Boo-ooitt! Whoo-oof!" she growled softly over and over until she
seemed to be imitating a dog's voice barking at that distant hillside
where the ring of red stars was, saying,
"Booitt! Ow-ow!
I'm very scared now.
_Whoof!_ Wow-ow!
Whose dog art thou?"
CHAPTER II
There were many mornings and evenings after that when little Timmy
Bear-cub and his shaggy mother heard the sheep-dogs bark, away off
upon the hill of the stars.
Sometimes, the barking sounded nearer, then Mother Cinnamon Bear
would lead her two fat cubs back into the farthest corner of their
cave home and purr and growl to them softly while they snuggled up
against her, trying to tell them what dogs and a dog dance were in
the experience of a bear.
But generally the shrill voices of the sheep-dogs were so far off,
hardly more than an echo across the wide plain which lay between her
and them, that, by and by, she paid less attention to their barking.
And she became accustomed, too, to the far away glimmer of that ring
of hillside lights, which twinkled out like stars directly twilight
came on, and shone steadily all night through, to wink themselves out
in the morning.
They were much too far off, as I have said, to dazzle the eyes of the
little bear cubs who didn't bother about them at all, or about the
dog's voices either, when they grew old enough to leave the cave and
go on excursions with their mother.
First of all, she took them berrying. I have told you that there was
a river running through the wide plain, not far from the bear's cave.
On the bank of this river there was some swampy ground which sloped
up into a tall bluff, meaning a great mound of earth, many feet high.
All up this mound grew berry bushes,--blueberry and huckleberry. And
there Mrs. Cinnamon Bear took her two yellow cubs to train them to be
berry pickers, to pick and eat the tiny fruit.
She ate such quarts of them, herself, that it really seemed as if the
bushes would be stripped bare.
She was rather thin and hungry just now, for she had been so busy
looking after her cubs that it was long since she had gone on a bee
hunt, to find a hollow bee-tree and get wild, white honey; for a
bee-tree was the bear's candy store, you know, where they got their
sweets.
However, when Timmy and his twin brother were about two months old,
she did, on a fine day, lead them off into some woods that bordered
one side of the plain and smell out a bee-tree for them. It was a
tall maple-tree, flaming red, with a deep, deep hollow in the trunk
just packed full of quarts and quarts of the most delicious honey,
rich and sweet.
Mother Cinnamon Bear thrust her shaggy, brown paw, with the curved
claws on it, down into the hollow of that bee-tree and brought it up
all sticky and dripping with the handfuls of honey that she drew out.
Then she licked that sweet, sweet paw all over and thrust it into the
tree again. The angry bees which had made the honey just flew out in
the greatest rage, swarmed all over her and stung her.
But she was so hungry and greedy for sweets that she didn't mind that
very much, besides, a bear's skin is so thick that the bees had to
sting hard to get through it. She didn't care even if her dull-black
nose, the color of rubber, did swell up on being stung, and become
broader than it ought to be.
But it was a different matter when the wild bees began to sting her
cubs. The third time that she thrust her paw into the hollow
bee-tree and brought it out dripping deliciously she gave it to
Timmy, the biggest cub, to lick.
"Whoof! Whoof!" she grunted to him. "You just taste this! It's
honey. Wild bees' honey! Very sweetest thing in all the woods!"
"Woo-oof!" answered Timmy, and he greedily licked his mother's sticky
paw.
Oh, it tasted so good, so sweet! He thrust out his pink tongue,
licked his own smeared jaws, like a kitten who has got at the cream
pitcher, and whined impatiently for more, more, more!
But just then, a big bee buzzed up and stung him right on his tender
little nose which was all honey-smeared.
"Wz-wz-wz-z-z-z!"
Said the bee,
"Take that with the honey
You're stealing from me!"
Timmy, the fat cub who hadn't got his name yet, struck out at the
angry "buzzer" with his furry paw on which some of the honey had
dripped. But he couldn't hit the bee. Then he put down his head and
cried and rubbed his nose with that little sticky paw, whining and
whining and whining; rubbed his blinking eyes, too.
At that his mother drew her paw out of the tree, for she was fonder
of two little cubs than she was of wild honey, although she just
loved that. And she was afraid of angering the wild bees any more.
"Boo-ooitt!" she growled, rubbing her own brown nose which was all
shiny, sweet, smeared, and stung. "Boo-oo-ooitt! I guess we won't
rob the bees' store any more to-day, children. Let's get back to our
cave. To-morrow, or next day, I'll take you on a mouse hunt. That
will be real fun, for the little wood mice which scamper round so
quickly on their tiny white feet can't sting you; and, maybe, I'll
show how to catch them. Oo-oo-oo-o! Booitt! My nose doesn't feel
at all comfortable; it's all fiery hot, and as sting-y as it's sweet!"
Right there she stopped, in the act of leading her two cubs away from
the bee-tree, out of the woods, back toward their cave home on the
edge of the plain, stopped and rubbed her stung nose in some soft,
wet mud to cool it off.
Oh, but it was a funny-looking nose when she held it up high again,
for the dark swamp mud stuck thickly to the honey with which it was
already smeared; and, caked all over her brown face, she looked as if
she had a muddy mask on.
But she was to wear a white mask later, before we get through with
her story, this Madam Cinnamon Bear; for, to tell you the truth, Boys
and Girls, bears are the most curious creatures on earth, with the
exception of little children.
And by "curious" I mean being eager to find out all they can about
things in general, asking questions about everything.
If children put questions with eager little tongues, wild bears ask
them with their noses. So, often they poke their noses into things
where they had much better have kept them out. Perhaps there are
little people who do that, too.
At any rate, that is how Timmy's brown bear mother came later to wear
a white mask.
What! A bear in a "white mask," you say? Who ever heard of such a
thing?
Wait, and see!
CHAPTER III
Now, I hope you have not forgotten about the tall hill on the other
side of the wide plain, about a mile from the bear's cave, where the
ring of bright, rosy lights appeared every night, burning in a circle
around a bigger, redder light in the center, like "a ring around the
rosy."
Well, I think I have told you that there were sheep on that hill. So
there were, hundreds and hundreds of tame, woolly sheep, and little
frisking lambs, too!
They were under the care of two men called "shepherds," or "herders,"
who camped out on the lonely hillside where the sheep fed, because
there was nice, juicy grass there for the woolly flock to eat.
But these shepherds could never, by themselves, have kept all the
sheep and lambs together, so they kept two beautiful dogs, with
frills of hair around their necks, to help them. One was brown and
white, the other black and white. The first was named Glen and the
other Watch. And it was one of these strong, wise sheep-dogs which
the mother bear had heard barking on the night when she got back late
to the cave, when little fat Timmy, who, really, hadn't any name in
particular then, trotted out to meet her.
It was those two nimble sheep-dogs, too, Glen and Watch, who had led
Mother Cinnamon Bear such a sorry dance out upon the plain, capering
round her, snapping at her heels, and jumping out of the way again,
before she could get her shaggy paw on them, barking at her as much
as to say,
"Dance, Bear Woman, dance,
Dance to our barking-o!"
That was when, some time before Timmy and his twin brother were born,
she had tried to steal in through the ring of red lights on the
hillside, to pick up a little lamb and carry it off; for those rosy
lights which were kindled just as darkness came on, which twinkled in
a starry ring all night through, were really lanterns lit by the two
shepherds, who as I told you, had charge of the woolly flock.
They placed these red lanterns in a wide circle all around the grassy
bedding ground of the sheep, just as soon as the woolly mothers and
the little tombs, tired with playing all day upon the mountainside,
baaed drowsily and wanted to go to sleep.
The two wise sheep-dogs lay down by the biggest, brightest light in
the center of the ring, and from there, because all the rosy lanterns
made that part of the hillside almost as bright as if it were day,
they could see if any bear or other wild animal tried to steal inside
the ring and carry off a little lamb.
They saw Mrs. Cinnamon Bear directly she showed her nose between the
lights on that night of which I told you, and chased her off the
hillside down to the plain, and there made her dance and circle and
circle and dance--hop, skip, and jump, now on two legs, now on four,
until she never wanted to hear a dog bark again.
She did, however, as you know, on the night she came home late. And
little Timmy, her strongest cub, heard it, too, far away in the
distance, although he didn't know what it meant, and was only
surprised to see his shaggy mother sitting up on her hind legs as if
very much startled.
But there was no far-away sound of a sheep-dog's bark on the evening
when she took him and his fat little twin brother on their first
mouse hunt, to show them where the wood mice lived, where they
scampered around on their tiny white feet.
The sun had just set over the great broad plain that fine evening
when Mrs. Cinnamon Bear led her two cubs up to the very top of the
big mound of earth where the blueberry and huckleberry bushes were,
where she had before taken them berrying.
I want to make it clear to you that this big mound of earth was on
the bank of the river which ran on one side of the plain, and that
the hill of the sheep, where the lights burned all night, was on the
other side, quite a mile away. The broad plain lay between.
Now, those starry lights had just begun to twinkle out in a far-away
ring by the time that the mother bear got her two cubs to the top of
the high grassy mound near the river.
There was a swamp at the bottom of that mound and trees on top of it.
The two bear cubs and their mother got all wet and muddy, wading
through that swamp.
But when once they had climbed to the top of the mound they forgot
all their troubles, for right on top, there was a big fallen tree
lying across the ground.
A deep hollow was in its trunk, just like the dark hollow in the
bee-tree.
Madame Bear thrust her paw down into that hollow with a satisfied
growl. And out scampered--not stinging bees, if you please--but a
whole lot of tiny wood mice, with long, thread-like tails, and little
white feet that gleamed and galloped in the twilight like the tiniest
white blossoms blown here and there by the wind, as they scampered
every way to get out of the mother bear's way.
"Oo-oo-ow-w! Boo-ooitt! Catch them! Catch them, Children!" said
that mother bear to her two cubs.
And you should have seen those two cubs, Timmy and his yellow twin
brother, try to catch them--the mousie white-foots!
It was the very best game of play the cubs had had since they were
born.
They were as much excited over it as any little six-year-old child
whose mother takes it to a toy-shop where all sorts of moving toys
with springs inside them are buzzing round, and tells the delighted
boy or girl that he or she may have any running toy in sight if he or
she can only catch it.
"Whoo-oof! Wuf! What are these funny, small things that run up and
down, every way, and make a queer little singing noise like the
grasshopper that I caught in the grass, yesterday?" growled Timmy.
"Whoof! I'm going to catch one of them!"
And he dashed after a scurrying, white-footed mousie that set up a
queer, shrill little chir-r-r! as it scampered away from him.
That mousie was too quick. It blew around on its white feet like the
breeze. Timmy couldn't catch it. But, at all events, it didn't turn
and sting him on the nose, as the angry bees did, when he licked the
sweet honey off his mother's paw.
So he chased it until it disappeared. Then he ran after another, for
there was a nest of wood mice in the deep hollow of that fallen tree
into which his mother had thrust her shaggy paw.
All at once he stopped short in his mouse hunting and looked at his
bear mother in surprise. For, again, she didn't look natural!
Again, she was going through the same queer stunt that he caught her
at on the night, two weeks before, when she came home late and he
trotted out of the cave to meet her.
She was standing up, straight and tall, on her hind legs, on top of
this darkening mound, with the little wood mice scurrying this way
and that, all around her.
She was not looking at them. She was gazing away over them, down at
the wide plain where it sloped toward the river, and she was growling
low, growling awfully.
Timmy had never heard her growl so fearfully as that before, not even
when she heard a sheep-dog bark, far away near the hill of the lights.
Her shaggy, light-brown hair, the color of a cinnamon candy stick,
was standing up and out on her back. Her little brown eyes were
turning in toward her dull-black, "rubbering" nose, like those of a
startled piggy.
As she kept looking down the mound and over the swamp toward the
river bank, a red fire came into those squinting eyes of hers that
was like the last pink flame of the sunset color, now fading out of
the sky.
Timmy felt strangely excited at seeing his mother look like that,
more excited than he was a minute before, when chasing wood mice that
fled every way on their little white feet.
"Whoo-oof! Whoo-oof! What's the matter, Mother?" he whined. "What
do you see down there upon the great, wide plain, near the river?"
And he rubbed himself against his mother's shaggy, brown fur, like a
timid kitten.
"Whoo-oof! Boo-ooitt! I see--I see a man--a man on two legs!"
growled his mother, answering in wild-bear talk. "A man is a
creature that has only two legs and stands upright on them always,
whether he's still or moving, just as I do occasionally for a minute
or so. And I tell you, my cubs, that I like a two-legged man even
less than a barking dog, and that's saying a great deal!"
Now, of course, Timmy Bear-cub did not understand all this from his
mother's squinting looks and low growling as she stood up, tall, on
her hind legs atop of the mound.
But he did understand that she didn't like at all something that she
saw down on the river bank. So he peeped over the edge of the mound
and down through the bushes, to see what the thing was.
And, lo and behold! he saw that it was a tall thing which moved
nearly upright upon two blue legs as it walked slowly up the river
bank and stepped out upon the flat plain.
It was not quite upright, for across its shoulders it carried a
bulging bag. The little bear cub, peeping down through the bushes,
didn't know anything about a bag or that it was a small sack of flour
which the two-legged thing carried on its back as it started off to
walk over the wide, dim plain toward the hill of the starry lights.
But that's what it was! And, of course, the two-legged creature was
a man, as the old bear mother had seen at a glance.
He was one of the two shepherd men who took care of all the sheep and
the little lambs on that starry hillside, a mile away, from which his
two wise sheep-dogs, with the frills of hair round their necks, had
driven the mother bear when she tried to steal a lamb.
As I told you, these herders, or shepherds, camped out on the
mountainside with the sheep; and to-day, they found that they had no
more flour to make bread with, so one of them started off to walk
over the plain and cross the river in a boat and go to a house four
miles away to get some flour.
Now he was just returning to the distant hill where the ring of
lights was burning, with his full flour-sack on his back, when the
mother bear who had been catching wood mice, saw him.
He had crossed the river with his bag of flour, in a boat. Then he
drew the boat up and tied it to a tree on the bank. Taking the
bulging flour-bag across his shoulders, he started to walk over the
plain to the distant hill where the sheep were already cuddling
softly down upon their bedding ground with the ring of lanterns, and
the dogs watching over them, and where the other poor shepherd man
was waiting hungrily for his supper, until he got some flour to make
pancakes of.
Well, I tell you right here, Children, that I feel sorry for that
other hungry shepherd man. I don't believe that he's going to get
even a pinch of flour to make flapjacks (which means camp pancakes)
of, to-night, for the mother bear on top of the mound has quite
forgotten that she is on a mouse hunt with her two cubs, and is
beginning to move around angrily among the trees and bushes, as she
watches the shepherd, who had gone to get the flour, start off across
the plain.
He was a very quiet and harmless-looking shepherd man, that one with
the heavy flour-sack on his back.
He was fat and his legs were fatter than the rest of him; for, as a
rule, he didn't walk much while taking care of his sheep, and he wore
shabby blue overalls.
Still, just because he was a two-legged man, old Mother Cinnamon Bear
didn't like his looks at all.
"Whoof! Whoof!" she snorted, growling still more and beating around
among the bushes in a very surly way. "It's a man, my cubs! A man!
And I don't like a man, even with a load on his back. I'm afraid he
may mean some harm to you! Boo-oo-ooitt! I really can't quite make
up my mind whether I'll run after him, or not!"
CHAPTER IV
Now, there is one thing, Children, which often plays a sorry part in
the lives of two-legged men! Often it leads them a worse dance than
the dogs led the bear! That is fear.
And in this case fear, foolish and unreal, not only proved to be bad
for the shepherd man who was starting to cross the plain with the
full bag of flour on his back, but it made trouble for the mother
bear, too, who, snorting around among the bushes with her cubs,
watched him from the top of the mound.
If she had been alone, if she hadn't had two little baby bears with
her, she never would have thought of chasing that fat shepherd man at
all.
But, all of a sudden, as she looked down at him, a queer, false fear
took hold of her and made her hunch her back up; it was that, if she
didn't chase him, the two-legged man might do some harm to her cubs,
whom she loved so much.
But still he looked so harmless, walking slowly upon the plain, with
the flour-sack upon his back, that I really don't think she would
have done it; I think she would have let him go on his way quietly to
the hill of the sheep and the starry lights, if he hadn't looked up
and seen her.
However, this is what happened: he did see her. And although he was
a good shepherd man who prayed to God, was kind to his sheep and
lambs, and tried to reflect divine Love in his heart and life, fear
took hold of him when he looked at that great mound of earth above
the swamp and saw a big, brown animal, with a hunched-up back moving
around there among the bushes.
"A bear!" he gasped to himself and the flour-sack shook upon his
back. "A she-bear--and cubs with her! Oh! my fat legs! I c-can't
run very fast. Maybe, maybe, she'll chase me!"
Then the foolish fear shook his fat legs so much that he couldn't
just keep quietly and calmly walking on, with his bag of flour.
He began to run, himself, away from the bear--away from the mother
bear that wasn't yet chasing him! To run faster and faster on his
fat legs, just as fast as he could without dropping the bag of flour.
Of all the foolish things that he could have done, this was the most
foolish, for fear was in the mother bear's heart, too, as you know,
fear for her cubs. And when she saw that shepherd man running,
jogging along--joggetty-jog--as fast as he could over the plain, why,
then she was sure that he meant some mischief to her two cubs.
Perhaps she felt without reasoning about it, that if he had a good
conscience and didn't mean any harm to her yellow bear cubs, he
wouldn't have been running away from her, that he would just have
walked quietly on, without taking any notice at all of the bears on
the mound, which was what he ought to have done.
But now, she was so full of blind fear herself, that she didn't
hesitate another minute, she just ran after him as fast as ever she
could.
Down the mound she galloped, snorting like an angry pony, with her
back curved and her eyes glaring.
She didn't stop when she got to the soft swamp of mud and dark
stagnant water at the foot of the mound, but, sliding, rolling,
galloping, plunged right into it.
When she came out at the other side, on the plain, she was wet all
over and plastered with mud, a sorry sight! And, O my! she was to be
a sorrier sight--or a funnier sight--still, before the blind fear and
anger which were driving her forward got through with her.
Such a funny sight she was bound to be that it makes me laugh even to
think of it, before I tell you of her further doings, at all.
She did not stop chasing the man because she was wet and muddy. Not
a bit of it! She ran after him all the faster over the dim plain on
which the evening shadows were falling, while her two fat, whining
cubs, left alone among the scampering wood mice, looked down at her
from the mound.
As for the shepherd man, with the heavy bag of flour on his
shoulders, he became so frightened when he heard her growling and
galloping behind him, that his fat legs felt as thin and weak under
him as your little finger. And no wonder!
He didn't want to drop the bag of flour, which he had brought all the
way from that distant house on the other side of the river, because
he knew that, if he did, both he and the other poor shepherd man who
was waiting for him on the distant hill, with the sheep, would have
to go hungry for days.
"Oh!" he groaned to himself. "Oh, if I can only reach that hill
where the lights are and the sheep and sheep-dogs! Oh, if I can only
reach it without losing all my flour! But I haven't a gun or even a
stick with me, to fight the mother bear who is chasing me, because I
don't like fighting wild animals; I'd rather be friends with them!"
This ought to have made him braver at the beginning. But now, as he
raced on over the plain, he was becoming weaker in those fat legs of
his and more scared every instant.
His heart was jumping up and down inside him. The full flour-bag
seemed to weigh a ton upon his shoulders.
But still, you never saw a fat man run so fast. Now and again, he
tripped over a bush or a stone upon the darkening plain and rocked
from side to side under his load of flour, waddling like a goose
before he could straighten up again.
I think the two little bear cubs, Timmy and his twin brother, left
alone upon the mound of mice, must have laughed to see him.
But no matter how fast he ran, the mother bear galloped faster. In
spite of the fact that he had pretty good odds to begin with--and
every child knows what odds are in a race--his hair was just combed
with shivers until it stood up and his skin turned cold, for now he
heard the angry old mother bear's growls only a dozen feet behind him.
Another instant, and he could feel the gusts of her hot, panting
breath blowing out before her on the plain.
"Oh!--Oh! there's no help for it--the flour must go," panted the poor
shepherd man. "I just must drop my bag of flour that I've carried so
far! The other shepherd who is waiting for me on the hill with the
sheep--and I, too--will have to go hungry to bed to-night!"
So he let the full, bulging flour-bag fall from his shoulders, on to
the plain. And, as he did so, he threw back his head, gathered all
his panting breath and gave a long shrill whistle. Then another! A
whistle which sounded as if he were calling with all his might upon
some unseen friends to come and save him from the chasing bear.
Now you wonder why he whistled, don't you?--why he whistled so hard,
looking off toward the hill where were the sheep and the ring of red
lights,--the hill he was trying to reach, which was, at the moment
that he dropped the flour-bag, only about half a mile away.
Well, I'll tell you, presently, why he whistled, although, knowing
that there are sheep-dogs on that hill, you can, perhaps, guess for
yourselves. But first, I must tell you what happened to the mother
bear--shaggy Mrs. Cinnamon Bear--and the shepherd's bag of flour.
Do you remember my saying that bears are curious by nature, that is,
as eager as little children to find out all there is to know about
the things they see? that they ask questions with their noses and
keep poking those noses into everything? That is very true! And
although this mother bear was so angry by now, with the fleeing
shepherd man (just because she was filled with such a false fear
about her cubs) that she wanted to scratch him with her claws, yet
she couldn't help stopping to tear open the flour-bag first to find
out what was in it.
So she checked her heavy, lumbering gallop and sniffed at the full
bag as it lay on the ground. Then she rolled it over curiously.
Next, she struck at it with her paw which had those five sharp claws
on it that cut the canvas bag open, like a knife.
O my! Out streamed the shepherd's precious white flour and sprinkled
the plain!
But Mrs. Cinnamon Bear wasn't satisfied with tearing the flour-bag
open; she thrust her nose into it, just as she had thrust it into the
bee-tree, to sniff at the wild bees' honey.
She was as hungry as the shepherd men, for she hadn't caught many
mice for supper; and she thought that the dry flour might do for an
evening meal.
Finding that it didn't sting her as the wild bees did, she thrust her
whole shaggy head into the bag, nosing around there.
"Boo-oo-itt!" she growled. "This dry stuff is not good to eat! It
only fills my eyes and ears and my big throat, and chokes me!
Oo-oo-oo-o! Honk! Booitt!" she grunted, nosing and snorting.
But now, Children, the funniest thing of all happened, brought about
by false fear!
For now--now--there was a white bear where a brown one had been!
Do you remember my saying that I would tell you about a bear in a
white mask?
Well, if you, little Boys and Girls, had been on the wide plain that
evening, you would have seen a bear in a white mask.
For Mrs. Cinnamon Bear's shaggy light-brown fur was very thick over
her head and face, as it was over all her body, although her face was
smoother than the rest of her.
And it was wet, too, that thick, brown fur, wet and miry, for she had
plunged through a swamp.
So the dry flour just stuck in a white plaster over her face and
head, even to the tips of her ears, so that never since time began
did anybody see such a funny-looking body in the shape of a bear!
She was floured all over, even to her short tail, with the white,
dusty contents of the shepherd's bag.
I declare to you that, as she whisked around upon the plain, growling
and rolling the flour-bag over until there wasn't a pinch of flour
left in it, she looked more like a white donkey than a cinnamon bear.
It was funnier, still, when she stood upon her hind legs for a moment
and growled savagely, because she was very cross at finding that she
could not eat the raw flour, it was too dry and powdery.
Then she might have been a boy dressed up in a light-colored, furry
skin, with an animal mask on.
For that caked flour, thickly sticking to her, made a snow-white mask
over her face and head which shone in the dusk of the plain.
So there you have your bear in the white mask.
Really, her own cubs wouldn't have known her.
Why, even the scared shepherd man whom she had been chasing, when he
looked back over his shoulder, nearly fell to pieces with laughing at
her.
"O my fat legs!" he gasped. "O my fat sides! Surely, I shall split
them because I don't dare stop, not for a minute, to laugh as I want
to! Did anybody ever before see a bear like that--floured all over?
Huh! Huh! He! He! Ha! Ha!"
But the next moment he had something else to think of, besides his
fat sides. For Mother Cinnamon Bear, choking with the dry flour in
her throat and nostrils, suddenly remembered the dark, running figure
of a man on the plain ahead of her and that she had been chasing him.
"Whoo-oof! Ouk-k!" she snorted and started after him again. But
that flour-bag had saved the fleeing, frightened shepherd man.
He was nearer to the hill of the lights now and he had kept
whistling, whistling shrilly and piteously, as he ran, puffing, along.
And now, at last, he got an answer, the answer he wanted.
It wasn't the voice of the other shepherd man, coming to frighten the
bear off with a gun.
No, it was the bark of a dog! The howling bark of a sheep-dog! The
very bark which the mother bear had heard on the evening when she
came back late to the cave, when her biggest cub trotted out to meet
her.
Then another, a different bark chimed on.
Down, down from the hill of the lights, like the wind, came Glen and
Watch, the two strong, wise sheep-dogs, who had chased this very bear
away before and prevented her carrying off a little lamb.
"Uf! Uf! Ou-ouf! Wou-ouf! We're coming, Shepherd Man!" they
barked. "We're coming as fast as we can! We'll save you from the
bear! We're your own Glen and Watch, whom you trust to drive home
your sheep and to watch them all night through! ... Uf-f! Wouf-f!
We're blowing along like the wind--to--meet--you!"
Oh! how glad the poor, tired, puffing shepherd was, jogging on,
joggetty-jog, upon his fat legs, at hearing their brave, barking
answer.
But the bear wasn't. She slackened speed and began to look around
for a place to hide in, because she didn't want to be made to dance
like a white madcap all over the plain, with two saucy dogs barking
and snipping at her heels.
Glen and Watch were too quick for her, however. They were upon her
before she could hide, those two frilled sheep-dogs.
"Ow-ow-o w-w!
Dance, White Bear Woman, dance,
Dance to our music, ow-w!"
they barked at her wildly, while Glen took a nip at her heels and
sprang away before she could catch him, although she galloped this
way and that, shaking and ducking her white head in its mask of flour.
"Dance, Bear Woman, dance,
Dance to our game of tag,
Woof! What a bear are you,
To put your head in a flour-bag!"
barked Watch, with another nip.
It really seemed as if the dogs were laughing at the mother bear for
putting her head in a bag.
And so, as night came on, the game of tag which they played with her
went on all over the plain.
The tired shepherd man shook his fat sides again at seeing it.
But then, as he jogged on, joggetty jog, toward the hill of the
lights, he suddenly felt more like crying than laughing, for,
although he had been saved from the bear, he had lost all his flour
which was scattered over the plain, as much of it as wasn't powdering
that bear's thick fur.
He would have to go to bed, starving, without any pancakes for
supper; and so would the other hungry shepherd who was waiting for
him on the hill where the sheep and little lambs were already asleep
upon their bedding ground, with the rosy ring of lights burning
around them.
That was what false fear brought to him, for if he hadn't run away,
ten to one the mother bear wouldn't have chased him, at all.
And what did blind, angry fear bring to that Mother Cinnamon Bear?
Well, after an hour of playing tag and dance with her, the sheep-dogs
chased her away from the plain altogether, off into a narrow glen, or
gully, a long way from the mound of the mice where she had left her
two little cubs when she set out to chase the shepherd with his
flour-bag.
All night long little fat Timmy and his twin brother whined and cried
for her. But she didn't come.
And the truth is, although I hate to tell you, Children, that those
two fat bear cubs, left alone among the mousie white-foots, the
singing wood mice, never saw their mother again.
CHAPTER V
It was only two days after little Timmy Bear-cub lost his mother--all
through her chasing a shepherd and putting her head in a
flour-bag--that he got his name of Timmy.
The reason why his mother, Mrs. Cinnamon Bear, never came back to her
two little lonely cubs who waited and watched for her on the mound of
the wood mice, was that she got caught in a snare, or trap, set by a
bear-hunter in the glen to which the sheep-dogs drove her.
It was a very cunningly made trap of twigs. Although Mrs. Bear was
as mad as a hatter at finding herself caught in it, she wasn't hurt
very much, for the hunter wanted to catch her alive, to take her away
to a city, put her in a great cage, feed her well, and show her off
to people as a wild cinnamon bear from the woods.
But when he found her in the trap and discovered that her shaggy fur
was still all powdered with the flour which had lodged in it, that,
though her flour mask was broken, it still stuck to the inside of her
ears and over her head, he laughed and laughed so that you could hear
him a mile off.
Ah! but all this was no laughing matter to the two hungry little
cubs, waiting and watching, all alone, on the mound among the
white-footed mice.
They got so cold and famished at last that they crept into the hollow
of the tree which lay on the ground, where the nest of the mousie
white-foots had been.
They cuddled close to each other in there and whined and believed
that, although their mother was late, she would surely come,
sometime, as she had come to them so often in the cave.
However, after they had been a night and day in the hollow of the
tree, somebody else did come. And do you know who that somebody was?
Why, it was the kind-hearted shepherd man in blue overalls, with the
very fat legs, whom the mother bear had chased over the plain, so
that he was forced to drop his bag of flour.
This man's name was Timothy. I have told you that he was a good
shepherd who loved God and men and all living things. He was sorry
afterwards that he had let foolish fear get the better of him when he
looked up and saw the bears on the mound, so that he ran away,
instead of walking along quietly with his full flour-bag on his back,
in which case the mother bear, probably, wouldn't have chased him at
all.
When he heard about that mother bear being caught in a trap in the
glen to which his dogs had chased her, and that she had been carried
off, alive, to a big city, he felt awfully sorry for the two cubs she
had had with her.
"Now, I'm going off to try to hunt up those bear cubs," he told the
other shepherd man on the hill. "They must be starving and cold,
left all alone on the mound where I saw them, mouse hunting. If I
can find them I'll bring them here to our camp on the hill among the
sheep and lambs. I'll feed them, and we can have a whole lot of fun
with them, for they're more playful than kittens. I'll play a funny
candle game with them!"
So Timothy, the kind shepherd, started off to find the two little
yellow cubs, to bring them to his camp and play a candle game with
them.
But when he came to the mound of the wood mice and climbed to the top
of it, lo and behold! there wasn't a bear cub to be seen!
He searched all round everywhere among the trees and bushes and was
just going away, back to camp, when he heard a sorrowful little whine
and a growly "Whoof! Whoof!" from the deep hollow in the fallen
tree, where the nest of mice had been.
"Ha! Ha! So I've found you, at last, have I, you two poor, hungry
little cubs, left alone by your mother when she ran after me?" he
gasped.
And he put his right hand, which had on a thick glove, down, down
into the deep hollow of the fallen tree trunk and pulled out one bear
cub.
It was cold and very hungry, but it struck at him with its two furry
little paws which, in time, would wear sharp claws like its
mother's--struck and tried to scratch him.
Timothy, the shepherd man, only laughed.
"Well, upon my word, you're a strong little cub and a pretty one,
too," he said. "I'm going to take you back to camp with me, to the
hill where the ring of lights burns all night long. And I'll play a
funny candle game with you. And I'll name you after myself, Timothy
or Timmy. I'll call you 'Timmy Whoof,' because I never would have
found you in the tree hollow but for your making that funny, growly
whoof-whoof noise. Now, I wonder if you have any little brothers or
sisters hidden away in the tree, with you."
Then he put in his hand again and pulled out the second cub, Timmy's
twin brother.
But that little bear baby had become so cold and hungry that it
couldn't live, although Timothy, the shepherd, did all he could to
feed it up and warm it.
So man Timothy put little Timmy, whom he had already named after
himself (and that was how Timmy Whoof came by his name when he was
about two months old), into a bag and carried him back to camp, to
the hill where the sheep and lambs and the rosy ring of lights were.
And he told the wise sheep-dogs, Glen and Watch, who had chased
Timmy's mother, that they mustn't bark at or frighten this baby bear,
"because he's going to be a pet of mine!" said Shepherd Timothy.
"I'll bring him up tame and he'll stay tame until he grows to be a
big bear; then, perhaps, he'll want to go back and live in the woods
again. And to-night, to-night, I'm going to play a candle game with
him and have a whole lot of fun! Why, this camping out on a lonely
hill, with sheep, won't seem dull any more, now that we'll have a
bear cub to play with. He'll make more fun for us than a barrel of
monkeys, especially if we put him into a corner with a lighted
candle. Ha! Ha!"
And Shepherd Timothy laughed a jolly laugh that seemed to come up out
of his fat legs--laughed as he had done when he saw the mother bear
wearing a white plaster mask of flour. And all the rest of that day,
while he watched his sheep, he thought of the game which he was going
to play with Timmy Whoof, his namesake, when evening fell.
But I must tell you about that exciting candle game in another
chapter.
CHAPTER VI
"Little Nanny Etticoat,
In a white petticoat
And a red nose;
The longer she stands
The shorter she grows!"
Timmy Whoof, the little fat bear cub, had never heard that nursery
riddle, the answer to which is "a candle," as most children know. He
did not even know what fire was, much less a candle.
And on his first night in a camp with shepherd men he did not feel
like learning anything new, because he was so lonely without his
mother and little brother.
He just moped and whined and cried all the time. And it was as much
for that reason,--to give the lonely little fellow something to think
about besides his loneliness,--as for the amusement it would afford
the two men, that Shepherd Timothy prepared the candle game to play
with him.
"He can't miss his mother very much while he's having a boxing-match
with lighted candles," said Timothy, the shepherd; "and I'll see that
he doesn't scorch his little paws enough to really hurt him!"
So the shepherd man who had lost all his flour (he had procured some
more by this time) went to work and prepared what he called a little
"corral."
It was a small, square patch of grass upon the hillside, fenced in by
sticks and bushes woven together into a fence strong enough to
prevent a bear cub of two months old from getting through it.
Neither could that bear cub climb over it.
Into this enclosure Shepherd Timothy put the little furry,
four-legged Timmy Whoof, whom he had named after himself.
Then he warmed some sheep's milk over the camp-fire which the
shepherds had built to cook their supper and set it in a tin dish
before the cub, in the middle of that little corral or fenced-in
patch of ground.
Timmy Whoof lapped it up like a kitten and licked his jaws and little
black nose after it, just as he had licked them after the taste of
wild honey which his mother had given him out of the bee-tree.
"Whoof! That's very good!" he purred. "But I don't like the look of
those two big animals, with frills of hair round their necks, who are
staring at me and growling through the fence. The sheep and lambs I
don't mind! I know they won't hurt me."
The frilled animals with waving, curly tails, were, of course, the
two sheep-dogs, Glen and Watch, which had chased Timmy's mother. And
they didn't like Timmy any better than he liked them. But they were
very wise and very obedient, and when Shepherd Timothy explained to
them that they must behave in a friendly way toward the lonely little
cub, who was his pet now, they ceased their low barking and growling,
and went and lay down by the sheep who were cuddling down upon their
bedding ground, with their noses on each other's backs and many a
sleepy "Baa-aa-a!"
"And now for the candle game," said Shepherd Timothy, "now that we've
got the dogs out of the way!"
So while the ring of red lanterns burned brightly around the sheep's
bedding ground, with a larger lantern on a pole in the center, Man
Timothy lit some other twinkling lights.
He took four white candles and placed them at the four corners of the
little square corral or enclosure in which the bear cub was.
Then he struck a match or two and lighted all four.
And then, oh, then, the fun began!
For little Timmy Whoof directly he saw those candles on all sides of
him, sat up and blinked at them in great wonder.
They were as great a riddle or puzzle to him, as the rhyming riddle
about a candle, with which this story opens, would be to a child.
You see, he had never seen any lights down low, near the earth
before, no lights at all, save the beautiful daylight which wrapped
him all around, the moonlight and lightning in the sky.
So he didn't know what to make of the four candles in four corners,
the upright white sticks, each with a little red flame growing out of
it, twinkling like a star.
Flickering, too! But it was a still night, and, although the candles
flickered, here in the open air upon the hillside, they didn't go out.
"Whoof! Whoo-oof!" said Timmy, sitting up straight like a kitten or
a fat puppy, in the middle of the little square corral, and blinking
hard at them, at those four stars which he didn't understand.
"Whoof! Let me get at them! I'm going to kill them! Booitt! They
must be bad lights, if I don't know what they mean. Whoof! Whoof!"
This was silly, but not sillier than the thoughts of some little
children--and grown people, too--who think things aren't good because
they don't understand them.
So little Timmy Bear-cub, spitting and growling like a kitten there
in the middle of his corral set out to kill the harmless candle
flames.
He made a dash at the nearest one, his eyes glaring, the hair
standing up on his little hunched back "like a tooth-brush," and
struck at it with his fat paw.
"Oo-oo-oo! Me-oo-ow!" He cried like a hurt kitten then, for the
candle flame singed the fur on that paw and stung him hotly, as the
wild bees had done, but not so sorely as the bees.
"Oo-oo-ooo! Me-oo-ow! ... Booitt!" he growled, and sat up and licked
his furry paw, whining sadly.
But he was more than ever convinced that it was a naughty light that
flickered on under his blinking wondering eyes.
He was a brave little bear cub. He wasn't going to let himself be
beaten by a naughty star! In this he might be a lesson to some
little children who would have given up at once, because they were
hurt, or imagined they were.
Not so, Timmy Whoof! As soon as he had got through licking his
singed paw, he just danced up to the bright, starry candle again,
stood on his hind legs for an instant, as he had seen his mother do,
and struck at it with the paw that wasn't scorched.
This time he hit straight at the flame and put it out.
Though he had two singed paws now--slightly singed, you know--oh, he
felt so proud of himself then!
"Whoof! Hurrah!" he said, sitting up and growling with delight.
"Look at me! Did you ever see such a bear cub? Why! I'm almost as
strong as my mother was! I killed that light, so that it won't wink
and glare at me any more, and now I'm going to put out another!"
So he made a dash for the harmless candle in another corner and boxed
the red flame of that one, too, striking it, blow after blow, now
with one soft, furry paw, then with another, in betweenwhiles whining
and licking those little flame-stung paws, until he quenched that
candle, also.
Oh, how the two shepherds, Timothy and the other man, laughed at him!
"Bravo, Timmy Whoof! You're a little bear that will never be
beaten," cried Shepherd Timothy; "and though your paws may be a
trifle scorched and stung, yet I guess fighting candle-light has made
you forget that you are in a strange camp, without your mother and
little brother!"
Indeed, the little bear cub had forgotten everything save the feeling
that there wasn't another bear like him in the world because he had
killed two naughty stars--two harmless candle-flames!
He swelled out, growling with pride, standing upright on his hind
legs in the middle of the corral, until he looked ready to burst.
But there still remained two other candles, in two other corners,
alive, that is, burning.
And Timmy Whoof resolved that these naughty stars must be put out of
business, too!
So he charged up to them, one after the other, and boxed them, in
turns, until his two little fore paws were scorched and stinging all
over. But he wouldn't give up until, funny, as it is, he had put out
those remaining candles, also.
Then there wasn't left alive and lighted a single
"Little Nanny Etticoat,
In a white petticoat,
With a red-flame nose,"
to burn and grow short.
Timmy Whoof just crowed and hurrahed to himself in bear talk, and
felt that there wasn't a single light in the whole world, not even
the lightning in the sky, that could stand up against him.
He would put it out and bring darkness where it had been, he was such
a strong, little, growling bear, or knock down the thing it grew out
of, as he had knocked down two of the flaming candles.
Then, just as he had felt himself the biggest, proudest bear cub in
the whole country, lo and behold! a strange thing happened. All the
four naughty stars that stung his paws and singed them suddenly came
to life and glared at him again.
For Shepherd Timothy, laughing as if his fat sides would split, at
the little bear cub growling with pride in himself, had again gone
around with a match and lit all four candles in all four corners, and
picked up the two which Timmy had knocked down, that lay on the
ground like fallen soldiers.
Then the boxing candle game began all over again, Timmy Whoof
growling fierce little growls and striking out, first with one angry
little fore paw, then with another, at the burning candles which
couldn't box at all, only sting back!
Until after every sheep and little lamb upon the hillside was
asleep--and the dogs, too--the game of killing candle flames went on!
At last little Timmy Bear-cub, alone in his small corral fenced in
with twigs and bushes, got so tired that he couldn't box any more or
slay another star.
He curled down in a corner beside one fallen candle which he had
knocked over and went to sleep, having forgotten, for the last hour,
to miss his mother a bit, or his twin brother, either.
CHAPTER VII
But there were many evenings after that when little Timmy Whoof did
miss his mother a good deal and cry for her sadly. Shepherd Timothy
was very kind to him. He did not play a candle game with him every
night, for fear that his paws which had a very thick skin under their
baby fur, should be singed so often that they would get sore.
But there was no game which the small bear cub really enjoyed so much
as boxing those flame soldiers, meaning the candle flames, and
putting them out.
Unless it was a very, very still night, the wind helped him as it
played upon the hillside. Then Timmy Whoof felt that the big wind
and he were chums as, indeed, they would be when he grew older, for
the wind, always friendly to wild animals, would bring him warning of
many things that it might be well for him to avoid.
But he wasn't a big bear yet, for all that he felt himself one when
he played at killing the naughty stars, which weren't naughty at all,
only useful candle flames, which twinkled at him, sometimes, on a
still night, from the four corners of the little corral, or square
enclosure, where he lived.
Glen and Watch, the two sheep-dogs, grew quite friendly to him as
time went on. At least, they didn't growl at him any more, telling
him that they had played tag with his mother all over the wide plain
and what a funny-looking thing she was in a white, floury mask, after
she had put her head in a flour-bag and kept it there, nosing round.
All the same, little Timmy Bear-cub was lonely in his square corral,
or open-air cage.
At night, especially, he missed his mother. Then he set up such an
"Oo-oo-ooo-o! Ma-oo-ow-w! Boo-oo-ooitt! Whoof!" crying, sitting
up, kitten-like, in his corral, that he woke the sheep and lambs upon
the hillside, who "baaed" back at him, asking him if he didn't know
enough to keep still and let woolly folk sleep.
Worse, still, he woke the two shepherd men. And one of them got very
cross at being disturbed when he was lying down comfortably on the
hillside, wrapped in his blankets, sound asleep, near a warm
camp-fire.
He was the older of the two shepherds, not the Timothy man with the
fat legs who had carried the flour-bag and who had felt so sorry for
the two little lonely bear cubs that he had gone out to find them in
the hollow of the tree and brought one of them--Timmy--home and named
him after himself.
The other shepherd, the older one, who didn't like being waked at
night, was not so kind-hearted as Man Timothy. And on the second
night that the lonely little bear cub whined so sadly for his mother
that he woke everybody, sheep, dogs, and all, this shepherd got up
from where he was lying out-of-doors upon the hillside, in a great
rage.
"Now, I'm going to teach that troublesome bear cub a lesson!" he
said. "No matter how lonely he is, he's not going to make a noise
like that at night in our camp! Fee! Fo! Fum! I'm going to give
him a whipping that he'll remember!" And he went and found, by the
light of the rosy ring of lanterns on the hillside, a long, strong
whip which he cracked sometimes above the backs of the sheep, when he
was driving them together, just to frighten them.
O poor little Timmy Whoof! It would have hurt terribly, in spite of
his thick bearskin, if he had been beaten with that whip.
But his friend, Shepherd Timothy, was awake, too, and he got to the
square corral before the older shepherd with the whip in his hand.
And Timothy picked the lonely bear cub right up in his strong arms,
for they had become such good friends by this time that the cub
wouldn't think of scratching him, and he said:
"No, you mustn't whip and hurt this poor little bear, just because
he's so lonely, at night, and cries for his mother! I'll take him
over and tie him to a tree near the spot where I'm sleeping on the
ground, so that he'll feel he has a friend by him. And I'll heat
some sheep's milk and give it to him; then, maybe, he won't cry any
more!"
And night after night Man Timothy did this, because, as I told you,
he was one who loved God, who knew that God was Love, and who tried
to reflect that divine Love in his own heart and in his life.
He and his little namesake, Timmy Whoof, the tame bear cub, became so
fond of each other that, at the end of two weeks, when Shepherd
Timothy had to go a long journey on foot to a city on some business
about the sheep, he determined to take the cub with him, for fear
that little Timmy Whoof might get whipped during his absence.
"There are some little boys and girls, nephews and nieces of mine, in
the city, who would like very much to have a little bear cub for a
pet," he said. "I guess I'll give Timmy to them and they can keep
him until he grows to be a big bear; then they'll have to let him go
free, to run wild in the woods again."
So he put Timmy Whoof into a strong bag, with some air-holes in it,
for that was the easiest way of carrying him, and set out to walk a
distance of sixteen miles.
Quite a long distance for a man whose legs had grown very fat from
lying on a hillside, watching sheep, as Shepherd Timothy had done;
and who, besides, carried a fat bear cub in a bag; don't you think so?
Timothy thought it was, and he determined to break the journey by
walking eight miles one day and then sleeping out-of-doors in the
wild country for the night, finishing his journey the next morning.
Now, during the week before he had started for the city there had
been, at times, very heavy rains, so that when it came to evening
time on the first day, after walking his eight miles, he found it
hard to find any spot that was dry enough to camp out on, where he
could build a camp-fire, cook his supper, spread his blankets, and go
to sleep.
At last, he picked out a place just at the foot of a high mountain,
where the grass and bushes weren't very wet.
There, he let Timmy Whoof out of the bag and he tied the little bear
cub to a tree, so that he might not wander away during the night.
He petted him, too, a little, did Shepherd Timothy, and gave him some
sheep's milk to drink, which he had brought with him.
Oh! how glad was Timmy to get out of the bag. He sat up under the
tree, like a kitten or a puppy-dog, and blinked and looked about him
at the strange, wild country all around, and at the high mountain
that rose above him, growling a merry little "Whoof! Whoof!" as much
as to say: "This strange place suits me and I love Shepherd Timothy!"
Then he rubbed himself against Man Timothy's fat legs, while the
latter prepared his own supper.
And they two were all alone on this strange spot at the mountain's
foot, far from the hill of the sheep and the lights, without another
person in sight--or another bear, either!
"Now, Timmy Whoof! I do hope you'll be a good little bear cub, not
whine and cry and make a fuss an' keep me awake to-night, for I'm
tired after walking eight or nine miles and carrying you," said
Timothy, the shepherd, when he had eaten his supper and was getting
ready to lie down for the night upon some pine boughs, beside the
fire which he had built. "Eight miles is quite a distance for a fat
man to go on foot, when he is carrying a bear cub as fat as himself,"
laughed Timothy.
But, lo and behold! he hadn't been more than an hour asleep, lying
near his camp-fire on this damp, wild spot at the foot of a mountain,
when he was waked by hearing little Timmy Bear-cub whining as if he
were the loneliest little cub in all the wide world and had no man to
take care of him.
"O fie! Timmy; now you've got to let me get some sleep!" said the
kind shepherd, and he rolled over on his fat side upon the pine
boughs, trying to doze again.
"Whoof! Oo-oo-ooo-oo-oo!" whined Timmy, only crying more loudly and
straining--straining like mad--with all the strength in his little
fat cub's body, at the rope which tied him to a tree, as if he wanted
to run away from something.
I don't know, Children, but that the wind which had often helped him
to put out the candles in his candle game, may have been whispering
down the mountain to him now, telling him of danger on that
mountainside--danger to him and to Man Timothy, too.
It may be that, although he was only a small bear cub, his sharp
little nose of a wild bear smelt that danger, that his quick little
ears, while he lay awake, crying for his mother, caught a big,
swelling, rolling noise which tired Shepherd Timothy, fast asleep,
did not hear.
At all events, Timmy Whoof, the bear cub, kept on whining and
growling and pulling on the rope with which he was tied until Man
Timothy just had to sit up and attend to him.
The sleepy shepherd rubbed his eyes and yawned and felt that if he
had ever whipped the little bear cub for crying at night, he would
have done so now. But--what was that?
There was a noise on the mountain above him, louder than Timmy
Bear-cub's cry--a rattling and rolling, bumping and thudding! Yes,
he heard it now--now that he was wide awake! But he wouldn't have
heard it so soon, if Timmy Bear-cub hadn't waked him with his crying.
The shepherd jumped to his feet. All the mountain seemed rattling
with thunder. Oh! that terrible, rolling, crashing noise, pounding
down, what did it mean?
Why, the very ground seemed shaking where he had lain by his fire.
Then, in another moment he knew what it meant, and that Timmy had
waked him just in time.
"It's a landslide!" gasped Shepherd Timothy. "A big landslide on the
mountain! The heavy rains of the last few days have loosened a lot
of earth and stones which are rolling and sliding down the
mountainside. And I--I must get away from this, quick as lightning,
or they'll fall on me and crush me! I wouldn't have heard it in time
to get out of the way, if that bear cub hadn't aroused me by his
crying!"
Poor Shepherd Timothy! He was puffing and panting as when he ran
away over the plain from Timmy's bear mother, for he knew there
wasn't a moment to lose if he were to get away from the foot of the
mountain before all the falling earth and rocks fell on him and
buried him.
And the ground seemed shaking under his feet.
But did he forget Timmy Whoof, the little bear cub whose lonely
crying had waked him just in time to get away?
No, sir! He snatched out his camp knife and cut the rope which tied
Timmy to a tree. Then he picked the little bear cub up in his arms,
as he might have lifted a little lamb of his flock, and jumped away
from the noisy mountainside.
He ran and ran as fast as ever he could on his fat legs, while a
shower of clay and pebbles which had been torn loose from the old
mountain by the landslide, meaning the sliding rocks and earth,
struck him on the back of the neck and beat upon his broad shoulders.
"Oh! Oh!" he said to himself. "Oh! if this little bear, Timmy,
hadn't waked me just in time, by his crying, it would all have fallen
on me and buried me, and him, too!"
But, as it was, the little bear had saved him--saved his life.
And when, at last, running and stumbling along, Shepherd Timothy
reached a safe place, where the sliding, bumping rocks and earth
couldn't fall on him, he just sat down and thanked God that his life
was saved.
"There, now!" he said to himself, patting and stroking Timmy Whoof,
the frightened bear cub, "I tried to reflect divine Love in my
treatment of this little bear, by being kind, instead of whipping him
when he cried for his mother, and now--now, he has saved my
life--saved me--by waking me--from being buried under a landslide!"
And then and there, the shepherd made up his mind that he wouldn't
give Timmy Bear-cub away to any little boys and girls, but that he
would keep him right by himself until he grew to be a big bear, too
big to stay on the hill of the rosy lights with the sheep and lambs.
So Man Timothy and Bear Timmy lived happily together for a long time.
But, at long last, there came a day when Timmy Whoof, grown to be a
big, strong bear, dreamed strange day-dreams of wild woods and
bee-trees and berry hunts and wood mice, and wanted to go to find
them, to live among them again.
Then Shepherd Timothy said good-bye to him and let him go. He, Timmy
Whoof, became a wild bear once more, roaming the woods and finding
sweet honey, as his mother had done in the wild bees' candy store.
But sometimes, in after life, I think that, even in those thick
woods, he must have had other day-dreams, remembering ones, of a time
when he made friends with a Shepherd Man named Timothy, and played a
most exciting candle game of putting out candle stars which came to
life and light again, as by magic, on a hillside with baaing sheep!
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