The woolly-coated little creatures were having a fine time, and reveled in
the lovely mountain summer and the abundance of good things. Their Mother
turned over each log and flat stone they came to, and the moment it was
lifted they all rushed under it like a lot of little pigs to lick up the
ants and grubs there hidden.

[Illustration: "THEY ALL RUSHED UNDER IT LIKE A LOT OF LITTLE PIGS."]

It never once occurred to them that Mammy's strength might fail sometime,
and let the great rock drop just as they got under it; nor would any one
have thought so that might have chanced to see that huge arm and that
shoulder sliding about under the great yellow robe she wore. No, no; that
arm could never fail. The little ones were quite right. So they hustled and
tumbled one another at each fresh log in their haste to be first, and
squealed little squeals, and growled little growls, as if each was a pig, a
pup, and a kitten all rolled into one.

They were well acquainted with the common little brown ants that harbor
under logs in the uplands, but now they came for the first time on one of
the hills of the great, fat, luscious Wood-ant, and they all crowded around
to lick up those that ran out. But they soon found that they were licking
up more cactus-prickles and sand than ants, till their Mother said in
Grizzly, "Let me show you how."

She knocked off the top of the hill, then laid her great paw flat on it for
a few moments, and as the angry ants swarmed on to it she licked them up
with one lick, and got a good rich mouthful to crunch without a grain of
sand or a cactus-stinger in it. The cubs soon learned. Each put up both his
little brown paws, so that there was a ring of paws all around the
ant-hill, and there they sat, like children playing "hands," and each
licked first the right and then the left paw, or one cuffed his brother's
ears for licking a paw that was not his own, till the ant-hill was cleared
out and they were ready for a change.

[Illustration: "LIKE CHILDREN PLAYING 'HANDS.'"]

Ants are sour food and made the Bears thirsty, so the old one led down to
the river. After they had drunk as much as they wanted, and dabbled their
feet, they walked down the bank to a pool, where the old one's keen eye
caught sight of a number of Buffalo-fish basking on the bottom. The water
was very low, mere pebbly rapids between these deep holes, so Mammy said to
the little ones:

"Now you all sit there on the bank and l