“For a while Little Chief had a hard time of it and so many narrow escapes that his heart was in his mouth most of the time.  In trying to keep out of the way of his enemies he kept climbing higher and higher up the mountain, for the higher he got the fewer enemies he found.  At last he came to a big rock-slide above where the trees grew, and where there was nothing but broken stone and big rocks.  The sun lay there very warm, and Little Chief crept out among the stones to take a sun-bath; as he squatted there it would have taken keen eyes indeed to tell him from a stone himself, though he didn’t know this.

“After he had had a good rest, and jolly Mr. Sun had moved so that Little Chief was no longer in the warm rays, Little Chief decided to look about a little.  It didn’t take him long to discover that there were wonderful little winding galleries and hiding-places down among the stones.  These led to little cracks and caves deep down in the mountain side.  Little Chief was tickled almost to death.

“‘This is the place for me!’ he cried.  ’No one ever will think to look for me up here, and if they should they couldn’t find me, for no one, not even King Bear, could pull away these stones fast enough to catch me.  All day long I can enjoy the sun, and at night I can sleep in perfect safety in one of these little caves.’

“So Little Chief made his home in the rock-slide high up on the mountain and was happy, for it was just as he thought it would be—­no one thought of looking in that bare place for him.  For food he ate the pea vines and grasses and other green things that grew just at the edge of the rock-slide and was perfectly happy.  One day he decided he would take some of his dinner into his little cave and eat it there.  So he cut a little bundle of pea vine and other green things.  He left his little bundle on a flat rock in the sun while he went to look for something else and then forgot all about it.  It didn’t enter his head again until a few days later he happened along by that flat rock and discovered that little bundle.  The pea vines and grasses were quite dry, just like the hay Farmer Brown’s boy helps his father store away in the barn every summer.

“‘I guess I don’t want to eat that,’ said Little Chief, ’but it will make me a very nice bed.’  So he carried it home and made a bed of it.  There wasn’t quite enough, so the next day he cut some more and carried it home at once.  But this, being green, soon soured and smelled so badly that he was forced to take it out and throw it away.  That set him to thinking.  Why was the first he had brought in so dry and sweet and pleasant?  Why didn’t it spoil as the other had done?  He cut some more and spread it out on the big flat rock and once again he forgot.  When he remembered and went to look at it two or three days later, he found it just like the first, dry and sweet and very pleasant to smell.  This he took home to add to his bed.  Then he took home some more that was green, and this spoiled just as the other had done.