“I’ll roost ebery night! Why didn’t I thunk ob dat afore?”
Before darkness fully closed in, he left the cavern and began a careful tour of the immediate neighborhood. It did not require long to find a refuge that seemed to be specially prepared for him. It was a broad, branching oak, whose trunk was so huge that, to his disappointment, he saw no way of climbing it. His predicament was the reverse of the ursus species, for such a big shaggy stairs would have been easy for a bear to ascend. Slowly circling the forest monarch and using his strong eyes well in the obscurity, he soon fixed upon the means of making his way into the branches. It was, in short, to use a smaller tree which grew so close to the oak that their branches interlocked.
CHAPTER XXI.
BUNK CAMPS OUT.
BUNK’S expertness in climbing served him well. With no trouble he rapidly ascended the maple, whose trunk was six inches or more in diameter and whose branches with their soft, green foliage were interlocked with the more rugged limbs of the immense oak. The lowest branch of the latter was ten inches thick, and put out horizontally at a height of ten feet or more from the ground. It would have made a tree of itself.
When the youth found himself among the foliage he was able to discern in the fast increasing darkness the main limb. It was so near that, carefully balancing himself, he swung out and let go of his own support. The feat was not difficult and he seized the rugged support, which dipped considerably, but would have sustained a far greater weight without breaking. He crept over it to the massive trunk. It was in the crotch of this that he meant to make his couch for the night. He was too high to be in danger from any roving beasts, unless of the very largest kind.
“I ’spose an elephant might git me with his trunk, but I could hear him tramping the leaves and could scoot to the top of the tree. De worstest am a gerauf; they hab such long necks dat dey can pick de ball off a church steeple, but if I disremembers right dey doan’ bite, but butt wid dere horns; dat lets me out.”
Bunk had secured his perch, but the problem of making it a reposeful bed was a different matter. At first he tried sitting astride of the limb with his back against the trunk. This answered for a time, but soon became as onerous as the seat of Harvey Hamilton did when he was fleeing from the bear. Then he lay forward on his face along the limb, which he still bestrode. That was very little improvement and he had to give it up.
“De only way fur a feller to sleep am to lay down,” he exclaimed disgustedly, “and dat’s what I’m gwine to do.”