He made a sudden rush at them, with a deep throated “Woof!” They backed away. At that, his eyes twinkled more than ever. They were only bluffing.
He climbed to the next limb,—the tree top swaying with his weight. There, spread out along the limb in the sunshine, drying, he saw what had smelled so wonderful,—a whole row of mushrooms. But how could they have gotten away up there? For they were mushrooms that he had found on the ground. He gobbled them greedily.
He thought he understood now why the squirrels had scolded so. These were the mushrooms they had collected, and laid out to dry for winter use. But they had been his mushrooms, he told himself, when they grew on the ground beneath the tree. Never mind, he would make them his again.
The children, attracted by the barking in the tree top, called their father to tell them what it was. These pine squirrels, he explained, were cousins to the red squirrels of the East.
Just now Pretty Paws and her mate were calling loudly for all their friends and relatives to come and help them scare the cub away. But Fuzzy munched right on, enjoying each mushroom in turn.
Almost instantly the woods resounded with the call notes of neighboring pine squirrels, who were coming to see what the trouble was all about,—for squirrels are mighty curious about all that is going on about them. Some of them helped scold Fuzzy, others sang and trilled almost like birds.
The first litters of young were out that afternoon, and some of these orange-breasted sprites became so excited that they simply rushed up and down their tree trunks, playing tag in joyous excitement.
“I’ll catch you, if you don’t shut up!” Fuzzy woofed at them as he finished his feast and descended awkwardly, tail end first, till he could drop from a lower branch like a fat little bag of flour.
But though he spent all that afternoon, and many another, chasing Pretty Paws and her friends, as they came down to gather pine seeds and insect larvæ, he never once succeeded in getting so much as a mouthful of fur. Before he could grab them, they were safe on a limb, flirting their tails saucily at him and calling him all sorts of names.
Later he saw Pretty Paws racing through the tree tops with a great brown creature in hot pursuit. It was a pine marten, or sable,—a rare animal for even those mountains. Fuzzy didn’t believe the squirrel had a chance in the world.