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The only indication of deliberate plan and effort that I have ever noted in Unk Wunk was in regard to teaching two young ones the simple art of swimming, which porcupines, by the way, rarely use, and for which there seems to be no necessity.
That also is usually a vain proceeding; for before Mooween can scramble down after his game, Unk Wunk is already up another tree and sleeping, as if nothing had happened, on another branch. Other prowlers, with less strength and cunning than Mooween, fare badly when driven by famine to attack this useless creature of the woods, for whom Nature nevertheless cares so tenderly.
I'll get busy and tell him that this radio business is the biggest kind of an expert job and that you fellows are blamed doubtful about it. Then, when you get your set working and let Unk listen in, he'll pay up and we'll divide the money. See? Easy as pie. Or we might work it another way: I'll make the bet with him and you fellows let on to fall down. Or we might "
Halfway to the tent Unk Wunk stumbled across a bit of pork rind, and stopped to nose it daintily. I caught Simmo's arm and stayed the blow that would have made an end of my catch. Then, between us, Unk Wunk sat up on his haunches, took the pork in his fore paws and sucked the salt out of it, as if he had never a concern and never an enemy in the wide world.
Beside the still water, that ran in a deep eddy where the stream curved under the trees, Colonel Ashley sat fishing. Beside him on the grass a little boy, with black, curling hair, and deep, brown eyes, sat clicking a spare reel. Off to one side, in the shade, a colored man snored. "Hey, Unk Bob!" lisped the little boy. "Don't Shag make an awful funny noise?" "He certainly does, Gerry!
Once in the flesh it would work its own way, unless pulled out with a firm hand spite of pain and terrible laceration. No wonder Unk Wunk has no fear or anxiety when he rolls himself into a ball, protected at every point by such terrible weapons. The hand moved very cautiously as it went down his side, within reach of Unk Wunk's one swift weapon.
Now had he been bothered by some animal and rolled himself up where it was so steep that he lost his balance, and so tumbled unwillingly down the long hill; or, with his stomach full of sweet beechnuts, had he rolled down lazily to avoid the trouble of walking; or is Unk Wunk brighter than he looks to discover the joy of roller coasting and the fun of feeling dizzy afterwards?
"Wen Dan seed de cunjuh man wuz in a good humor en did n' 'pear ter bear no malice, Dan 'lowed mebbe de cunjuh man had n' foun' out who killt his son, en so he 'termine' fer ter let on lack he did n' know nuffin, en so sezee: "'Hoddy, Unk' Jube? dis ole cunjuh man's name wuz Jube. 'I 's p'utty well, I thank you. How is you feelin' dis mawnin'?
I pulled the two quills with sharp jerks out of my hand, pushed all the others through my coat sleeve, and turned to Unk Wunk again, sucking my wounded hand, which pained me intensely. "All your own fault," I kept telling myself, to keep from whacking him across the nose, his one vulnerable point, with my stick. Unk Wunk, on his part, seemed to have forgotten the incident.
One grip of the powerful jaws, one taste of blood in the famished throat of the prowler and that is the end of both animals. For Unk Wunk has a weapon that no prowler of the woods ever calculates upon. His broad, heavy tail is armed with hundreds of barbs, smaller but more deadly than those on his back; and he swings this weapon with the vicious sweep of a rattlesnake.
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