"I see some berries!" cried Katie, and began to pick them.
"We'll go in farther," said Martin. "The bushes near the road have been
almost stripped. Come on, keep on the path and watch out for snakes."
There was a well-defined, narrow trail through the timbered land.
Though the weeds had been trodden down along each side of it there were
dense portions where snakes might have found an ideal home. After a
long walk the little party was in the heart of the woods and blackberry
bushes, dark with clusters, waited for their hands. Berries soon
rattled in the tin pails, though at first many a handful was eaten and
lips were stained red by the sweet juice. They wandered from bush to
bush, picking busily, with many exclamations--"Oh, look what a big
bunch!" "My pail's almost full!" Little Katie and Charlie soon grew
tired of the picking and wandered around the path in search of
treasures. They found them--three pretty blue feathers, dropped, no
doubt, by some screaming blue jay, a handful of green acorns in their
little cups, a few pebbles that appealed to them, one lone, belated
anemone, blooming months after its season.
The pails were almost filled and the party was moving up the woods to
another patch of berries when little Mary turned to Amanda and said,
"Ach, Amanda, tell us that story about the Bear Charm Song."
"Yes, do!" seconded Charlie. "The one you told us once in school last
winter."
Amanda smiled, and as the little party walked along close together
through the woods, she began: "Once the Indians lived where we are living now---"
"Oh, did they?" interrupted Charlie. "Real Indians, with bows and
arrows and all?"
"Yes, real Indians, bows and arrows and all! They owned all the land
before the white man came and drove them off. But now the Indians are
far away from here and they are different from the ones we read about
in the history books. The Indians now are more like the poor birds
people put in cages---" Her eyes gleamed and her face grew eloquent
with expression as she thought of the gross injustice meted out to some
of the red men in this land of the free.
"Go on, Manda, go on with the story," cried the children. Only Martin
had seen the look in her eyes, that mother-look of compassion.
"Very well, I'll go on."
"And, Charlie," said Mary, "you keep quiet now and don't break in when
Manda talks."
"Well," the story-teller resumed, "the Indians who lived out in the
woods, far from towns or cities, had to find all their own food. They
caught fish, shot animals and birds, planted corn and gathered berries.
Some of them they ate at once, but many of them they dried and stored
away for winter use. While the older Indians did harder work, the
little Indian children ran off to the woods and gathered the berries.
But one thing they had to look out for--bears! Great big bears lived in
the woods and they are very fond of sweet things. The bears would amble
along, peel great handfuls of ripe berries from the bushes with their
big clawed paws and eat them. So all good Indian mothers taught their
children a Bear Charm Song to sing as they gathered berries. Whenever
the bears heard the Bear Charm Song they went to some other part of the
woods and left the children to pick their berries unharmed. But once
there was a little Indian boy who wouldn't mind his mother. He went to
the woods one day to gather berries, but he wouldn't sing the Bear
Charm Song, not he! So he picked berries and picked berries, and all of
a sudden a great big bear stood by him. Then the little Indian boy, who
wouldn't mind his mother, began to sing the Bear Charm Song. But it was
too late. The great big bear put his big paws around the little boy and
squeezed him, squeezed him, tighter and tighter and tighter--till the
little boy who wouldn't mind his mother was changed into a tiny black
bat. Then he flew back to his mother, but she didn't know him, and so
she chased him and said, 'Go away! Little black bird of the night, go
away!' And that is where the bats first came from."