CHAPTER XIX
THE PINTO PONY
FUZZY-WUZZ, like all bears, old or young, was fond of trout, and these autumn days it was his great delight to fish the creek.
Earlier in the year the stream had been so high that he could not have done this, but now it came no more than neck high along the banks, as he stood with barbed paw outspread, ready to spear the first fingerling that came along.
He was there fishing the day that Bucky, the young burro, got his first swimming lesson. Where the bridge crossed the creek it was deeper. It was where the children came to swim. This time Bucky protested as he had before when they came to the bridge. Then he got the surprise of his life. The Ranger simply picked the littlegray beast up in his arms and flung him overboard into the pool.
You never in all your life saw such a surprised animal as young Bucky. But did he drown? Not a bit of it. Every animal—except the human—can swim if it has to, and Bucky simply struck out for shore with all fours.
Always thereafter he crossed the bridge willingly enough.
(How it did make Fuzzy’s little black eyes twinkle. For he had not forgotten when Bucky bucked him off.)
Another thing interested him, too. (For there is nothing in all the woods so curious as a bear cub). That was when the Ranger taught the pinto pony to walk a log.
Away off there in the high Sierras, it is often necessary for a man’s horse to make his way up and down steep slopes, over fallen tree trunks and over streams where there is no bridge. Sometimes a horse can swim, but where there is a log across a stream, those mountain-bred ponies are taught to cross the log.
First the Ranger found a log that hadfallen on a bit of level ground,—a big log that would have been wide enough for two ponies to walk abreast upon. Over this he led Pinto,—as he had named the pony from the large white patches on his brown coat. That log did not seem alarming.
Next the Ranger laid a log across a shallow arm of the creek where, if Pinto had fallen off, he would not have wetted more than his ankles. That was all right, too, thought Pinto.
As the final stage in his training, the Ranger led him along a log that crossed one end of the old swimming hole, where it was really deep. But Pinto had by this time learned to trust both his master and the logs, and he crossed unafraid.
Now Fuzzy-Wuzz had followed the creek up-stream till he was so high up the mountain side that the stony creek bed was all dry except for a mere trickle, and an occasional pool. He now proceeded to explore down-stream.
Here the rocks were all hollowed out in smooth, round bowls, some of them as big as wash tubs, some only the size of fingerbowls, and a few as large around as a dining-table.
When the snows melted in the spring, bringing with them a flood of rushing water and grinding stones, the stones had been swirled around and around till they had ground out these rock basins. The swimming hole was just a huge rock basin.
As Fuzzy came to deeper water, he met every here and there a make-believe waterfall. Sometimes he plunged over it head foremost, and sometimes his feet slipped out from under him before he was ready, and over the falls he went, landing in the pool beneath, and being swirled around in the rushing waters till he was half drowned.
But even a small cub is a good swimmer, and most of the time he really enjoyed the excitement.
These autumn days, however, he was to learn a new way of swimming. Now that the worst danger of forest fires was over and the Ranger had more leisure, he took two weeks off and the whole family went on a camping trip to a grove of Big Trees, and Fuzzy-Wuzz went with them.
Dapple was left to browse with the cattle, and Clickety-Clack was given the freedom of the barn; while the Ranger, his wife and boy rode horseback, and the little girl behind her father. The brown bear cub was placed on top of the pack Bucky’s mother carried. Young Bucky followed after.