“Oh, I always have an eye out for a possible emergency, and every time I go on a vacation ramble, I notice where there is good feeding, and then I try to make a mental map of the region. You young fellows are more agile, but you haven’t had our experience, all the same. Every summer, when it gets to a time when everything is ripe and I can live off the country, I go forest-cruising, and I don’t do it altogether for a good time, either.”
“That brown squirrel with the orange underneath, he’s a handsome fellow,” ventured the young gray squirrel.
“Douglas?” The old squirrel sniffed in disgust. “I much prefer that fellow,” nodding to where a big Oregon chipmunk sat on a stump and gave every passer-by a sociable “Chuck! Chuck!” He had only a few black stripes to adorn the brown of his coat.
“Why, he’s the plainest chipmunk I ever saw,” said the young gray squirrel. “Not half as handsome as ours.”
“All the same, I’ll wager he never has a grouch like the kind your handsome Douglas has just been exhibiting. You certainly come to know squirrel nature when a big calamity like this rubs off our surface manners!”
“You certainly do, sir,” agreed the young squirrel. “Here comes Douglas back again.”
“To jaw us, I suppose. If I weren’t so rheumatic, I’d lick him for his impudence.”
“I’ll lick him for you,” volunteered the young squirrel, and the last thing Chinook saw, Douglas was being chased ferociously through the tree tops.
CHAPTER XVII
WAPITI
That fall when Snookie and Chinook went camping, they first made their way back to Lookout Peak, for a few days of coasting and chasing pack-rats and “snowshoe rabbits,” then they took a ridge trail and journeyed clear over into a mountain valley where grazed a herd of elk.