My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George Page B

went around me. He looked real good, and I was overjoyed to see him.
    “How did you find me?” I asked eagerly.
    “I went to Mrs. Fielder, and she told me which mountain. At the stream I found your raft and ice-fishing holes. Then I looked for trails and footsteps. When I thought I was getting warm, I hollered.”
    “Am I that easy to find?”
    “You didn’t have to answer, and I’d probably have frozen in the snow.” He was pleased and not angry at me at all. He said again, “I just didn’t think you’d do it. I was sure you’d be back the next day. When you weren’t, I bet on the next week; then the next month. How’s it going?”
    “Oh, it’s a wonderful life, Dad!”
    When we walked into the tree, Bando was putting the final touches on the venison steak.
    “Dad, this is my friend, Professor Bando; he’s a teacher. He got lost one day last summer and stumbled onto my camp. He liked it so well that he came back for Christmas. Bando, meet my father.”
    Bando turned the steak on the spit, rose, and shook my father’s hand.
    “I am pleased to meet the man who sired this boy,” he said grandly. I could see that they liked each other and that it was going to be a splendid Christmas. Dad stretched out on the bed and looked around.
    “I thought maybe you’d pick a cave,” he said. “The papers reported that they were looking for you in old sheds and houses, but I knew better than that. However, I never would have thought of the inside of a tree. What a beauty! Very clever, son, very, very clever. This is a comfortable bed.”
    He noticed my food caches, stood and peered into them. “Got enough to last until spring?”
    “I think so,” I said. “If I don’t keep getting hungry visitors all the time.” I winked at him.
    “Well, I would wear out my welcome by a year if I could, but I have to get back to work soon after Christmas.”
    “How’s Mom and all the rest?” I asked as I took down the turtle-shell plates and set them on the floor.
    “She’s marvelous. How she manages to feed and clothe those eight youngsters on what I bring her, I don’t know; but she does it. She sends her love, and says that she hopes you are eating well-balanced meals.”
    The onion soup was simmering and ready. I gave Dad his.
    “First course,” I said.
    He breathed deeply of the odor and downed it boiling hot.
    “Son, this is better onion soup than the chef at the Waldorf can make.”
    Bando sipped his, and I put mine in the snow to cool.
    “Your mother will stop worrying about your diet when she hears of this.”
    Bando rinsed Dad’s soup bowl in the snow, and with great ceremony and elegance—he could really be elegant when the occasion arose—poured him a turtle shell of sassafras tea. Quoting a passage from one of Dickens’s food-eating scenes, he carved the blackened steak. It was pink and juicy inside. Cooked to perfection. We were all proud of it. Dad had to finish his tea before he could eat. I was short on bowls. Then I filled his shell. A mound of sort of fluffy mashed cattail tubers, mushrooms, and dogtooth violet bulbs, smothered in gravy thickened with acorn powder. Each plate had a pile of soaked and stewed honey locust beans—mixed with hickory nuts. The beans are so hard it took three days to soak them.
    It was a glorious feast. Everyone was impressed, including me. When we were done, Bando went down to the stream and cut some old dried and hollow reeds. He came back and carefully made us each a flute with the tip of his penknife. He said the willow whistles were too old for such an occasion. We all played Christmas carols until dark. Bando wanted to try some complicated jazz tunes, but the late hour, the small fire dancing and throwing heat, and the snow insulating us from the winds made us all so sleepy that we were not capable of more than a last slow rendition of taps before we put ourselves on and under skins and blew put the light.
    Before anyone was awake the next morning, I heard