Aside from this desire, the trees themselves—the great, noble, splendid trees—appealed to them, and made the study of them an ever-increasing delight.
They had located, marked and listed great sturdy oaks towering seventy, eighty feet toward the sky, and one old giant measured one hundred and twenty feet in height. The Scouts felt very small as they looked up with awe at the towering branches of this monster tree.
Then there were beech trees, with their smooth, ashy gray bark, about the same height as the oaks, but not to be compared with them in usefulness, although as firewood they are perfect, as are the hickory trees. They (the hickory) and the chestnut trees need no description. What boy does not claim a close acquaintance with them?
Here rose a colony of butternut trees, not so tall, but with large, beautiful leaves measuring from fifteen to thirty inches in length, and the air was redolent with the fragrance of pine and balsam and hemlock.
From group to group of trees the Scouts went, examining, studying, listing, so happily and thoroughly interested in this delightful work that everyone started at a sudden cry of alarm in Tom’s voice.
All turned, and at that moment saw the little fellow run out from a clump of low bushes and fairly flying toward them, call out bravely—not “Help me!” but “Run, boys, run, run! There is a bear coming!” and from the bushes lumbered a bear, really of medium size, but looking to the startled boys at that moment as big as an elephant, and loped along only a few rods behind Tom.
“The nearest tree and up it!” was their first instinct, and Bob Hart and Harry French, who were nearest to Tom, seized him by an arm on either side and pushed and pulled him up with them into the tree. The whole thing had been so sudden and the scare so great that there had been no time for sober thought, but only the blind instinct to seek the first place of refuge. But just as they were settling themselves in the spreading branches, a thought occurred to Jack that made his face whiten and his heart beat faster.
“Say, Dick,” he said, “we all forgot that a bear could climb. We’ve done just exactly what he wanted us to do!”
All the boys were seized with panic. Sure enough, they were trapped. They were only boys, after all, and face to face with a peril that might well have struck terror to grown men; it is no wonder that for a moment they were smitten with panic.
The bear himself soon dispelled any doubt as to his intentions and, swinging along heavily to the foot of the tree, reared on his hind paws and began to climb. There were no weapons in the party, unless you could apply that term to the small, light hatchets that they carried in their belts. Even these were only toys against such an enemy. One or two of the boys snatched at them frantically and threw, but the branches of the tree interfered with their aim and it was only Dick’s hatchet that struck with its blunt end the nose of the bear. Beyond a slight shake of the head, he gave no sign of it hurting him, and steadily kept on climbing.