Well then, the finger just about touches the twenty-seventh hazelnut, when a holy dadblamed goshalmighty roar came kabooming through the Bottom like a freight druv by the Devil himself, or at least his next hottest hollerer.
Oh, what a roar! Oh oh oh! Not just loud, and long, but high and low and chilling and fiery all to once. The haint hair and the spider webs all froze stiff – it was that chilling! -- whilst the springs boiled dry and the crabapples burned black from the hellheat of it. Even way up in Tricker's tall, tall tree the cottonwood leaves turned brown and looked ready to fall still weeks before their time. Moreover, that roar had startled Tricker out of his snooze so sudden that he stuck startled halfway between ceiling and floor. And hung there, petrified, spraddle-eagled spellbound stiff in midair, with eyes big as biscuits and every hair stabbing straight out from him like quills on a puffed-up porcupine.
"What in the name of sixty cyclones was that?" he asks himself in a quakering voice. "A dream gone nightmare?"
He pinches his nose to check. The spellbind busts and Tricker drops hard to the floor: bump!
"Hmm," he puzzles, rubbing his nose and his knees, "it is like a dream with a little nightmare noise thrown in – like a plain old floating and flying dream dream… except when you get real bumps it must be a real floor."
And right then it cut loose again – "ROAWRRR!" shaking the cottonwood from root to crown till a critter could hardly stand. Tricker crawls cautious across the floor on his sore knees, and very cautious sticks his sore nose out, and very very cautious cranes over to look down into the clearing below.
"Again I say ROARR!"
The sound made Tricker's ears ring and his blood curdle, and the sight he saw made him wonder if he wasn't still dreaming, bumps or no.
"I'm BIG DOUBLE from the high ridges and I'm DOUBLE BIG and DOUBLE BAD and DOUBLE DOUBLE HONGRY a-ROARRR!"
It was a bear, a grizzerly bear, so big and hairy and horrible it looked like the two biggest baddest bears in the Ozarks had teamed up to make one.
"Again I say HONGRY! And I don't mean lunchtime snacktime littletime hongry, I mean grumpy grouchy bedtime bigtime hongry. I live big and I sleep big. When I hit the hay tonight I got six months before breakfast so I need a supper the size of my sleep. I need a big bellyfull of fuel and layby of fat to fire my fulltime furnace and stoke my sixmonths snore a-ROOAAHRRRR!"
When the bear opened his mouth his teeth looked like stalactites in a cavern. When he swung his head around his eyes looked like a doublebarrel shotgun going off at you.
"I ate the high hills bare as a bone and the foothills raw as a rock, and now I'm going to eat the WHOLE! BOTTOM! and everybody in it ALL UP!"
And with that gives another awful roar and raises his paws high above his head, stretching till his toenails strain out like so many shiny sharp hayhooks, then rams down! sinking them claws clean outta sight into the ground. And with a evil snarl tears the very earth wide open like it was so much wrapping paper on his birthday present.
In the sundered earth there was Charlie Charles the Woodchuck, his bedroom split half in two, his bedstead busted beneath him and his bedspread pulled up to his quivering chin.
"Hey you," Charlie demands, in the bravest voice the little fella can muster, "this is my hole! What are you doing breaking into my home and hole?"
"I'm BIG DOUBLE from the HIGH WILD HOLLERS," the bear snarls, "and I'm loading the old larder up for one of my DOUBLE LONG WINTER NAPS."
"Well just you go larding up someplace else, you high hills hollerer," Charlie snarls back. "This aint your neck of the woods…"
"Son, when I'm hongry it's ALLLL Big Double's neck of the woods!" says the bear. "And I AM HONNNGRY. I ate the HIGH HILLS RAW and the FOOTHILLS BARE and now I'm going to EAT! YOU! UP!"
"I'll run," says the woodchuck, glaring his most glittering glare.
"I can run too-oo," says the bear, glaring back with a grin that turns poor Charlie's glitter to gloom. Charlie meets the bear's blistering stare a couple ticks more, then out from under the covers he springs and out acrost the bottom he tears, ears laid low tail hoisted high and little feet hitting the ground sixty-six steps a second… fast!
But the big old bear with his big old feet merely takes one! two! three! double-big steps, and takes Charlie over, and snags him up, and swallers him down, hair hide and all.
High up in his hole Tricker blinks his eyes in amazement. "Yep," he has to allow, "that booger truly can run."
The bear then walks down the hill to the big granite boulder by the creek where Longrellers the Rabbit lived. He listens a moment, his ear to the stone, then lifts one of those size fifty feet as high as his double-big legs can hoist it, lifted like a huge hairy piledriver, and with one stomp turns poor Longrellers's granite fortress into a sandpile all over the rabbit's breakfast table.
"You Ozark clodhopper!" Longrellers squeals, trying to dig the sand out of one of his long ears with a wild parsnip. "This is my breakfast, not yours. You got a nerve, come stomping down here into our Bottom, busting up our property and privacy, when this aint even your stomping grounds!"
"I hate to tell you, cousin, but I'm BIG DOUBLE and ALLLL the ground I stomp is mine. I ate the high hills BARE and the foothills CLEAN. I ate the woodchuck that run and now I'm going to EAT! YOU! UP!"
"I'll run," says the rabbit.
"I can run too-oo," says the bear.
"I'll jump," says the rabbit.
"I can jump too-oo," says the bear, grinning and glaring and wiggling his whiskers wickedly at the rabbit. Longrellers wiggles his whiskers back a couple of ticks, then out across the territory rips the rabbit, a cloud of sand boiling up from his heels like dust from a motorscooter scooting up a steep dirt road. But right after him comes the bear, like a loaded logtruck coming down a steeper one. Longrellers is almost to the hedge at the edge of the Topple pasture when he gathers his long ears and elbows under him and jumps for the brambles, springing up into the air quick as a covey of quail flushing… fast, and far!
But the big old bear with the big old legs springs after him like a flock of rocketships roaring, and takes the rabbit over at the peak of his jump, and snags him up, and swallers him down, ears elbows and everything.
"Good as his word the big bum can certainly jump," admits Tricker, watching bug-eyed from his high bedroom window.
Next, the bear goes down to where Whittier Crick is dribbling drowsy by. He grabs the crick by its bank and, with one wicked snap, snaps it like a bedspread. This snaps Sally Snipsister the Martin clear out of her mudburrow boudoir and her toenail polish, summersetting her into the air, then lands her hard in the emptied creekbed along with stunned mudpuppies and minnows.
"You backwoods bully!" Sally hisses. "You ridgerunning rowdy! What are you doing down out of your ridges ripping up our rivers? This aint your play puddle!"
"Why, ma'am, I'm Big Double and ANY puddle I please to play in is mine. I ate the ridges raw and the backwoods bald. I ate the woodchuck and I ate the rabbit. And now I'm going to EAT! YOU! UP!"