“Hey, Snookie,” Chinook gave his sister a resounding slap, “Let’s try a relay race the next time we see a hare.”
“All right, but you needn’t hit so hard,” and Snookie landed him a biff that sent them tumbling downhill in a wrestling match.
Mother Brown Bear yawned and stretched. “Come, children,” she bade them, as she rose to her feet, “we have a long way to go if we are to have supper in Rat Town.”
At the word, the cubs went racing after her, and a little further on, their eyes brightened when they came to a footprint that looked almost like a squirrel’s but which smelled distinctly mousy. It was the track of a mountain pack-rat. The cubs sniffed curiously. It was a part of their schooling to learn the meaning of every odor, for next year, when they had to earn their own livings, they would have to know where to find enough to eat, and then their noses would be a bigger help than eyes and ears put together.
For a few minutes they followed the trail of the pack-rat, which smelled stronger and stronger. Of a sudden, the rat himself darted off to the right. Mother Brown Bear watched to see if the cubs would profit by what she had just been telling them. Quick as thought, Snookie was after that rat. Quick as thought, Chinook saved his breath and watched to see where the race would lead, and when the rat began circling further to the right, so that the wind was in his face, Chinook made a dash across the circle and took Snookie’s place. “Good work!” thought Mother Brown Bear, proud that her children were so quick to learn. For a couple of minutes Chinook raced with all his might, but the rat ran faster. Then Snookie came leaping downhill to take his place as the rat darted past her, and just as she lost her balance and went tumbling head over ears, her brother had taken a short cut and was ready to take her place; and the next thing that old rat knew, he was flattened out under Chinook’s paw.
“You see,” Mother Brown Bear told them, “there is nothing like team work. The reason a bear is so brainy is because he is always watching other forest folk to see what he can learn from them; and when cubs are too little to make their way alone, they want to stand by each other.”
“How Mother does love to preach,” thought Chinook, but he didn’t dare say so, and the time was coming when he was glad to remember what she had told him. But if his nose was any judge, they were nearing the Rat Town she had promised to show them.
CHAPTER IX
RAT TOWN
The village they were approaching looked like a toy Indian encampment, with its tiny tepees of sticks and trash.
The inhabitants were not much larger than burrow mice, were these mountain pack-rats, so-called, who scurried about packing great armfuls of twigs and leaves to make their homes secure. Some of the tepees were built as high as Chinook’s head, when he stood on his hind legs, and he could have crawled inside, had the doorways been large enough. How such tiny fellows could build so high, he could not imagine till he saw half a dozen rats setting one stick in place with their squirrel-like paws.