He threw the sticks he had broken off, but he did not come anywhere near hitting the brown bunny.
“Oh, well, you’re safe! I won’t chase you any farther,” said Bert. “And I wouldn’t have chased you now, and scared you ’most to death, if the folks back in the shack weren’t so low on food. Maybe I can find something else.”
Bert floundered about in the snow, following his tracks back before they should be filled and so hidden from sight. He was about half way to the place where he had surprised the rabbit when he heard a chattering in a tree over his head.
“A squirrel!” exclaimed the boy. “And a grey one, too, or I miss my guess.”
He kept very still, listening. Again, above the noise of the storm was heard the sharp, squealing chatter of a squirrel, and, looking up over his head, Bert saw the animal. It was a large, grey squirrel, with a tail almost as big as its whole body.
The squirrel sat up on a limb and looked down at the boy. It may have been angry or frightened, and it seemed to be scolding Bert as it chattered at him. Grey squirrels are not such excited scolders as the little red chaps are, but this one did very well.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go back into your nest and stay there,” Bert said. “I can’t get you, and you ought to know it, for I haven’t a gun and I never could throw up a stick and knock you down. You’d be good eating if I could,” Bert went on, for he had often heard his father tell of broiled squirrels.
Bert could see a hole in the tree half way up the trunk, and he guessed that here the squirrel had his winter nest. It would be well lined with dried leaves, soft grass, and perhaps some cotton from the milkweed pods. Thus the squirrels keep warm, wrapping their big bushy tails about them.
“Well, I guess I’ll say good-bye to you,” went on Bert, as he turned aside from the squirrel in the tree and resumed his trudging through the snow. The weather was cold, and Bert was cold likewise. Also he was tired. His legs ached and his shoulders pained him, for walking through the snow is not easy work, as you who have tried it know.
However, he knew that he must keep bravely on, and so, after turning once or twice, making sure he could not see the cabin, he went along faster.