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.
