My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George Read Free Book Online Page A

to mean food to her. So I would whistle, show her the meat, and after many false flaps she would finally fly to my hand. I would pet her and feed her. She could fly fairly well, so now I made sure that she never ate unless she flew to my fist.
    One day at breakfast I whistled for Frightful. I had no food, she wasn’t even hungry, but she came to me anyway. I was thrilled. She had learned a whistle meant “come.”
    I looked into her steely eyes that morning and thought I saw a gentle recognition. She puffed up her feathers as she sat on my hand. I call this a “feather word.” It means she is content.
    Now each day I stepped farther and farther away from Frightful to make her fly greater and greater distances. One day she flew a good fifty feet, and we packed up and went gathering seeds, bark, and tubers to celebrate.
    I used my oldest sweater for gathering things. It was not very convenient, and each time I filled it I mentally designed bigger and better pockets on my deer-hide suit-to-be.
    The summer was wonderful. There was food in abundance and I gathered it most of the morning, and stored it away in the afternoon. I could now see that my niches were not going to be big enough for the amount of food I would need for the winter, so I began burning out another tree. When the hickory nuts, walnuts, and acorns appeared, I was going to need a bin. You’d be surprised what a pile of nuts it takes to make one turtle shell full of nut meats—and not a snapping-turtle shell either, just a box-turtle shell!
    With the easy living of the summer also came a threat. Hikers and vacationers were in the woods, and more than once I pulled inside my tree, closed my deer-flap door, and hid while bouncing noisy people crossed the meadow on their way to the gorge. Apparently the gorge was a sight for those who wanted a four-mile hike up the mountain.
    One morning I heard a group arriving. I whistled for Frightful. She came promptly. We dove into the tree. It was dark inside the tree with the flap closed, and I realized that I needed a candle. I planned a lamp of a turtle shell with a deer-hide wick, and as I was cutting off a piece of hide, I heard a shrill scream.
    The voices of the hikers became louder. I wondered if one of them had fallen into the gorge. Then I said to Frightful, “That was no cry of a human, pretty bird. I’ll bet you a rabbit for dinner that our deer trap worked. And here we are stored in a tree like a nut and unable to claim our prize.”
    We waited and waited until I couldn’t be patient any more, and I was about to put my head out the door when a man’s voice said, “Look at these trees!”
    A woman spoke. “Harold, they’re huge. How old do you think they are?”
    “Three hundred years old, maybe four hundred,” said Harold.
    They tramped around, actually sat on The Baron’s boulder, and were apparently going to have lunch, when things began to happen out there and I almost gave myself away with hysterics.
    “Harold, what’s the matter with that weasel? It’s running all over this rock.” A scream! A scuttering and scraping of boots on the rocks.
    “He’s mad!” That was the woman.
    “Watch it, Grace, he’s coming at your feet.” They ran.
    By this time I had my hand over my mouth to keep back the laughter. I snorted and choked, but they never heard me. They were in the meadow—run right out of the forest by that fiery Baron Weasel.
    I still laugh when I think of it.
    It was not until dark that Frightful and I got to the deer, and a beauty it was.
    The rest of June was spent smoking it, tanning it, and finally, starting on my deerskin suit. I made a bone needle, cut out the pants by ripping up one pair of old city pants for a pattern. I saved my city pants and burned them bit by bit to make charred cloth for the flint and steel.
    “Frightful,” I said while sewing one afternoon. She was preening her now silver-gray, black, and white feathers. “There is no end to this. We need another