Climber Saves the Den

Climber was the most daring of a family of three Canadian wolf-cubs. Starlight, his father, and Aurora, his mother, had left the cubs alone in the den for a short time; this story tells what hap­pened when they returned.
When Starlight came back to the rocky cliff in which his den was, he found Aurora at the foot of it waiting for him. She was greatly worried at something that had happened.
Silently, with hair on end, she led Starlight to a point from which they could see the den; and as Starlight looked down, a fierce glare came into his eyes.
All over his body his hair stood on end and if anyone had wanted to know how angry a real wild wolf can look, he should have seen Starlight at that moment.
The parent wolves glanced at each other, for there, in the centre of the cubs' playground, right in front of their den, sat the greatest bear Starlight had ever seen.
The old bear looked sleepy; perhaps he had not been long awake from his winter sleep. Certainly he did not look as if he was there to make a nuisance of himself; he did not even seem to know that he was on forbidden ground.
With many deep grunts, he was scratching him­self from end to end, bringing his huge fore- paws to work and twisting himself as if there was not a bone in his body. He seemed to find it a relief to sit somewhere away from the flies.
Presently, a small wet nose and two bright eyes appeared at the mouth of the wolves' den. It was Climber looking out, as indeed he gener­ally was when he had received orders to stay below.
He saw the bear, like a great fur-clad mountain, sitting in the centre of their play­ground. He did not know what it was and he did not care very much. It had no right to be there and he knew that Starlight, his father and Aurora, his mother, would not like it.
Climber decided to set things right. Yelping and snarling, he shot from the mouth of the den and hurled himself, fang and claw, full into the old bear's back.
If ever a bear was taken by surprise that bear was! He did not wait to find out what had done it; he did not even look. All he knew was that something was attacking him, so he uttered one grunt of terror and surprise, and fled. Nor did he want to consider the best way down.
He went clean over the edge of the playground and landed with a thump twenty feet below. Whether, in doing so, he hurt himself, or whether it was because of fear or cannot say, but he went off yelling at the top of his voice. And Starlight's family could hear him still yelling and whimpering as he crashed through the undergrowth a mile below.
At the end of the playground, looking down, sat Climber, a fluffy ball of a wolf-cub, not much larger than a hedgehog!