The forest surrounding the eminence on which Uncle Eb’s camp was situated consisted mostly of pines, with here and there the brilliant autumn foliage of a maple or birch showing amid the evergreens.  The trees down the sides of the hill were not densely crowded, but grew in irregular clumps instead of an unbroken mass.  This, of course, afforded a better opportunity for the pursuers to catch glimpses of the fugitive animal.

On finding that it was again chased, the raccoon at first took shelter in a dense thicket of scrub oak, which formed in places a tangled undergrowth.  Tiger quickly followed up its trail, and it was driven thence.

Then Cyrus and the boys caught sight of it spinning over and over like a ball, towards a maple-tree with widely projecting limbs and thick foliage; for it knew well that in speed it was no match for the dog, and therefore resorted to a neat little stratagem.  The next minute, being hotly pressed, it scrambled up the friendly trunk.

“He’s treed again, yonkers!  Come on!” shouted the guide, indifferent to the creature’s probable gender.

Tiger sat on his haunches at the foot of the maple, setting up a slow, steady bark.

“Keep where you are, fellows!  Watch the other side of the tree!” whispered Cyrus, his face twitching with excitement.

In his character of naturalist he had managed to find out more about the coon’s various dodges than even the old guide had done.

In breathless wonder the Farrars presently beheld that ingenious raccoon steal along to the end of the most projecting limb on a different side of the tree from the one it had climbed, so that a screen of boughs and the trunk were between it and its adversary.

Then it noiselessly dropped from the tip of the branch to the ground, alighting, like a skilled acrobat, on its shoulders, doubled its pointed black nose under its stomach, and again rolled over and over for a considerable distance, when it got on its short legs and scurried away, while Tiger still bayed at the foot of the maple-tree, thinking the vanished prey was above.

“That’s what I called the coon’s dodge of ‘barking a tree,’” said Cyrus.  “Don’t you see, when hard pressed, he runs up the trunk, leaving his scent on the bark; then he creeps to the other side under cover of the foliage, and drops quietly to the ground.  So he breaks the scent and cheats the dog.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Neal with an expressive whistle.

“Perhaps it’s because of his long gray hairs that he has so much wisdom,” Dol suggested.

“A bright idea, Chick!” chuckled the student, tapping the boy’s shoulder.

“We keep on speaking of him as ‘he’ when you said the thing was probably a female,” put in Neal.

“That doesn’t matter.  I’m not certain.  Look at old Tiger!  He’s having fits now that he has discovered how he’s been tricked.”

The dog was circling out from the tree, with wild, uncertain movements, nosing everywhere.  Presently he struck the scent again, and darted off like a streak.