STORY SEVEN WASHER LEARNS HE IS NOT A WOLF

Washer the Raccoon had been hunting with his Wolf brothers in the woods around their cave den. This was a part of their education. Mother Wolf would take them for a walk some distance from the cave, and teach them to pick up the scent of other animals on the wind. Sometimes it would be Browny the Muskrat or Sleepy the Opossum and again that of White Tail the Deer or Puma the Mountain Lion who had wandered away from their natural haunts.

Whatever animal it was they scented, Mother Wolf would caution them to follow it carefully, sneaking through the bushes with padded feet so as not to break a twig. She herself would remain behind so that all the responsibility of the hunt would be on her children.

In the early days of these lessons, Washer was the quickest to learn, and the quickest to follow the scent. He was older than his Wolf Brothers, and this accounted for his quickness. He could run faster than any of them, although his legs were shorter, and could climb up embankments and rocks without losing his foothold.

“Well done, Little Brother,” Mother Wolf would say proudly when he had out-distanced all his brothers. “Some day you will be a mighty hunter. Who knows but you may be leader of the pack yet.”

Now Mother Wolf loved the stray little orphan so much that she was blind to many things that she should have thought of. For one thing no raccoon was ever as large as a wolf, as strong, nor as fleet of foot. It was because Washer had the start in life that he seemed bigger and quicker of mind than her own children.

As the days and weeks passed, the Wolf cubs grew amazingly. They caught up to Washer, and then surpassed him in size. Their legs grew long and slender, and one day in a race Washer was left behind in spite of all that he could do. It was the first race with the cubs he had ever lost.

“Hi! What’s the matter, Little Brother?” the cubs called to him. “You’re lazy today!”

“Yes, maybe I am,” replied Washer, but he had an uneasy feeling that it was something more than laziness. His shorter legs could go as fast as his brother’s, but they could not cover so much ground.

The next day it was the same. They had all started on a scamper for the brook, with Washer in the lead at the beginning, but long before they reached the water the raccoon was behind.

“Lazy again, Little Brother!” they laughed when he came up to them.

“No, I couldn’t run any faster,” Washer replied truthfully. “You’ve got longer legs than mine, and I can’t keep up with you.”

“So they are longer,” replied the cubs, looking at their own long legs.

“And you have stronger teeth and jaws than I have,” continued Washer. “You grow much faster. I don’t seem to grow at all any more.”

“Oh, your time will come,” they answered, not wishing to offend him.

They continued to play together as formerly, but Washer always had to be given a head start in a race. Then one day another thing surprised them. They were tearing at their food when Washer found that he could no longer hold his own in this battle. The cubs had more powerful jaws than he, and they jerked the food away from him and gobbled it up.

“I didn’t get half my share,” Washer grumbled.

“Why not? Can’t you help yourself?”

Washer was silent. The truth was beginning to dawn upon him that he was different from his brothers. They were fleeter of foot and stronger of jaws. They could also jump longer distances, taking gullies and ravines in leaps that carried them clear across. Washer had to run around or climb down and then up the ravines.

“Little Brother, you can’t keep up with us any more,” the cubs said one day more in sadness than in boastfulness. “How’ll you join the hunt with us when we become members of the pack?”

“Listen, brothers,” Washer said, “I cannot run as fast as you, nor fight as fiercely for my food, but there is one thing I can do that will surprise you. I can go where none of you can follow.”

They laughed at this challenge, and told him to show them the trick. “We’ll follow you,” they said. “You can’t lose us.”

“All right! Follow me!”

Washer had found out that his sharp little claws were perfectly adapted to tree climbing, and that his Wolf brothers could not get up a tree higher than the lowest branches which they might reach by jumping. He had tried climbing trees and found that it came as easy to him as running.

There was a big cedar tree near the brook, and after looking up it he started to climb the trunk. It was so easy for him that he went up it almost as quickly as Bobby Gray Squirrel could. His Wolf brothers sat down on their haunches in a circle around the tree and watched him in amazement.

Washer reached the first branches, and ran out on one big one. “Look out, Little Brother, or you’ll fall!” they shouted. “Be careful!”

Washer smiled and showed his teeth. “Oh, this is nothing! I’ll climb to the top!”

He ran back to the trunk, and began climbing higher. Up and up he went until his little body was lost among the foliage.

“He’s lost!” exclaimed the Wolf cubs below. “Something’s happened to him! I can’t see him!”

But Washer, having reached the top-most branch of the tree, bit off a twig and threw it down at them. “Here I am!” he cried. “Now follow me up here!”

The Wolf cubs immediately accepted the challenge. They started for the tree and began pawing at it They jumped and leaped up the trunk, and tried in every way to climb it. Their failure was so ludicrous that Washer laughed heartily, encouraging them with loud words.

But no wolf can climb a tree, and the cubs soon stopped their efforts. Once more they squatted around in a circle and looked up at Washer.

“Will you teach me to climb?” asked one after another.

Washer considered a moment, and then said: “It’s something that can’t be taught brothers. If I could I would, but no wolf can ever climb a tree.”

They were so surprised and amazed at the exploit of their Little Brother in climbing a tree that they surrounded him all the way home and pestered him with all sorts of questions. When they reached the den they demanded of Mother Wolf the reason why they could not climb a tree like Little Brother. Mother Wolf was both sad and pleased.

“I can’t tell you,” she replied, “why a wolf cannot climb a tree. But he simply can’t any more than he can fly like a bird. Little Brother is a Raccoon, you know, and—”

“What’s a Raccoon? Isn’t he a wolf?”

“No, dears, Little Brother isn’t a wolf.”

All the cubs looked in surprise at Washer. He was not like them. He wasn’t a Wolf. In the next story Washer finds one of his people treed by the cubs.