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LITTLE MOUNTAINEERS 



By J. CARTER BEARD 



II 

 Some Mountain Hares and a Pocket Rat 



NE of the strangest 

 little animals we 

 came across were the 

 pikas. 



One day, when we 

 were out just above 

 timber line, we had 

 occasion to make a 

 temporary camp 

 among the rocks of 

 a talus, at the foot of 

 a perpendicular cliff. 

 A bed of broken stones and hard, 

 sharp gravel does not make the most 

 comfortable resting-place in the world, 

 but on looking about me I found 

 to my no small astonishment under 

 loose fragments of rock, considerable 

 quantities of dried grass, nicely cured 

 hay, in fact. Nothing could be more 

 opportune, and I soon gathered suffi- 

 cient to furnish the Doctor and myself 

 a very comfortable couch apiece. I 

 asked the Doctor if he could tell me how 

 such collections of hay came to be 

 stored under loose rocks in a stony 

 field where no grass grew. He looked 

 puzzled, and said that he did not know 

 that he knew. 



Doctor Frank Lawrence has as ex- 

 tensive and as varied a stock of ready- 



made information always on tap for 

 the benefit of his friends as any man 

 I have ever met outside of books for 

 good boys through which some insuf- 

 ferable Uncle Philip or Mr. Barlow 

 stalks superior,., and never by any chance 

 forgets the Latin name of a plant or 

 of an animal, nor the date of any im- 

 portant occurrence. I was glad that it 

 puzzled him to answer my question ; it 

 brought him nearer to the level of ordi- 

 nary humanity. I waxed insolent in my 

 triumph, and overshot the mark. "I 

 have another question to ask you Doc," 

 I said, "trying to take a much needed 

 siesta awhile ago, I was considerably 

 disturbed by a constant succession of 

 subterranean squealings, squeakings, or 

 whistlings that seemed to come out of 

 the earth directly beneath me. Do you 

 know that you know what caused 

 them?" 



"Squeaking? whistlings? under- 

 ground? Why. of course/' said the 

 Doctor, "they were pikas." 



"Oh! they were pikas?" I repeated. 

 I was not much enlightened, but held 

 my peace. 



And — yes — it must have been — it 

 was the pikas that collected all that hay 

 you asked me about." 



It was not long after this that he 



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