Page:Hugh Pendexter--The young timber-cruisers.djvu/143

 He smiled as he remembered his first experience with forest sounds and unhesitatingly approached the spot. What was his surprise and joy to see inside the hollow rock two little balls of fur. His bosom swelled as he pictured Bub’s envy of and Abner’s pleasure at his woodsmanship. Just what they were he was undecided. He observed the eyes, barely open, were like little blueberries, and the pointed nose caused him to suspect they were coons. For Bub in describing that animal had sketched out on birch bark his portrait. And yet they were different.

“Probably lots of kinds of coons,” he murmured. “They’re awfully cunning, anyway, and I’ll take them where they’ll be warmer.”

He had proceeded only a few rods in the direction of the camp, however, when he was startled by a snarling roar behind him. He wheeled and beheld a large, gaunt black bear making towards him with unsuspecting swiftness. For a second he was paralyzed; the next found him running for life over the prostrate tree trunks and rocks with the lumbering brute behind him growling in fury and gaining fast. He dared not look back, for fear of tripping and falling and could only gauge the distance