CHAPTER XI
TREED BY A BEAR
I AM writing what happened to Skinny as if we found out all about it at once, which we didn't. He told us some of it the first time, with Bill sitting up and listening and Mr. Norton asking questions whenever Skinny began to run down. But every time we saw him after that for several days he would think of something more to tell, or something a little different, so that it took a long time before we felt sure that we knew all about it.
For instance, he didn't say much at first about Mary Richmond, the Holyoke girl, except the rescue part. He was afraid that the boys would make fun of him for walking down the mountain with a girl—but I haven't told about that yet. I am going to put everything in just when it happened, so that you can understand it better.
There didn't much happen, anyhow, while he was going up to Savoy. The road was steep and winding, and climbing it kept Skinny busy and made him wish more than once that he had gone in some other direction.
What Mr. Richmond had said about bears made him nervous. Every time he saw a stump of a tree, he was sure it was a bear, and every time he came to a part of the woods where the trees stood very close together and it looked dark inside, he had to whistle and sing louder than Mary did when she was afraid of the cow.
Whenever he felt real scared he would caw like a crow, and that made him feel almost brave again, for sometimes when you just pretend you are brave and act as if you are, all of a sudden you get brave. I don't know why it is but I have noticed it.
He kept a sharp eye out for deer, for he wanted to bring us one, but he didn't see a thing all the way up that looked like a wild animal except a calf, which ran when he threw a stick at it, and the birds, which don't count.