Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/18

Spring, in haste to make up for lost time, rushed forward glowing to meet the summer. The litter of young "snowshoes" had been, for a week or more, browsing upon the tender herbage on the skirts of the thicket, and depending daily less and less upon their mother's milk for their subsistence. Suddenly, on one of those rich days, warm yet tonic, when life runs sweetly in the veins of all the wilderness, the hitherto devoted mother looked coldly on her young and refused them her breasts. Her biggest and most favored son, unused to rebuffs, persisted obstinately. She fetched him a kick from her powerful hinder paws which sent him rolling over and over on the brown carpet of fir needles, whisked about impatiently, and went hopping off through the bushes to seek other interests and make ready to rear another family. The kicked one, recovering from his astonishment, scratched the needles from his ears with his hind paws, stared indignantly at his brothers and sisters as if he thought that they had done it, and hopped away, in the opposite direction to that which his unsympathetic mother had taken. He browsed upon the young grasses till his appetite was satisfied, then took cover beneath a thick low juniper bush and settled himself to sleep, his independent spirit refusing to be daunted by the unaccustomed loneli-