“Well,” he went on to say, “we might walk out there and tell that party we objected to his company; but the chances are he’d sniff at us, and amble away; for you see it’s only a bear!”
“A bear!” gasped Perk, turning again to fasten his eyes on the mysterious object perched high in the big beech tree.
“Yes, a black bear, and I reckon a half-grown cub at that, else he wouldn’t be so fresh as to climb a tree so near our camp,” the other continued; while Wee Willie nodded his head in affirmation, and hastened to corroborate the statement by saying:
“No doubt about it, Perk, your hobo is a four-legged tramp, all right. I c’n make him out plainly, now he’s moved a bit; though at first I began to think it might be a man sitting astride a limb.”
“But what’s a bear doing up there, I’d like to know?” Perk objected, hardly liking to give up his side of the case so easily.
“Why, from away back bears have been in the habit of climbing trees whenever they felt like it,” the tall boy told him; “and there’s nothing in the Constitution of the United States that’s going to make ’em change their habits either—that is, black bears. It’s a different thing with grizzlies out in the Rocky Mountain country, I understand; they keep to the ground.”
Perk sighed with real relief as he hurriedly remarked, and quite cheerfully at that:
“Well, I’m glad to know I was mistaken. It gave me a bad feeling to think that ugly tramp was spying on us. Yes, now the thing shifts again, and sure enough I can make him out plainly. It’s a real live bear—not a monster, but pretty hefty for all that.”
Amos darted into the cabin.
“Now what’s he after, I want to know?” Perk quickly asked.