THE WAVY TAILED WARRIOR

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                        Told at Twilight Stories
                             By JOHN BRECK

                     MOSTLY ABOUT NIBBLE THE BUNNY
                    NIBBLE RABBIT MAKES MORE FRIENDS
                     THE SINS OF SILVERTIP THE FOX
                           TAD COON’S TRICKS
                        THE WAVY TAILED WARRIOR
                       TAD COON’S GREAT ADVENTURE
                          THE BAD LITTLE OWLS
                       THE JAY BIRD WHO WENT TAME

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[Illustration: The hive had sent out a cloud of fighting bees to stand
guard]

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                        Told at Twilight Stories

                        THE WAVY TAILED WARRIOR

                                   by
                               John Breck

                                 Book V

                             Illustrated by
                           William T. Andrews

                        Garden City    New York
                       Doubleday, Page & Company
                                  1923

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                          COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
                 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
                  TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
                       INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
             COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS
                      PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
                                   AT
               THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
                             First Edition

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CONTENTS

  I. Stripes Turns a Trick on Tad Coon
  II. The Sweetness of Harmony and Honey
  III. Tommy Would A-Fishing Go
  IV. A Compact Between Fishermen
  V. Of the Tick in Tommy’s Pocket Which Wasn’t a Bug After All
  VI. The Battle of the Potato Bugs
  VII. The Birds Enlist in the War
  VIII. The Battle of the Crook Tailed Snake
  IX. The Secret of the Snake Guard
  X. The Field Mice Protest
  XI. War to the Tooth
  XII. The Mice Defeat Themselves
  XIII. Where, Oh Where, Is Tad Coon?

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ILLUSTRATIONS

  The hive had sent out a cloud of fighting bees to stand guard
  Tommy fished and fished, but at first he did not get a single bite
  Stripes battles with a big fish
  Tommy takes off his “skin” to dry
  Tad Coon finds a new kind of bug
  When the moon came up there wasn’t a single tail stirring
  Nibble takes the lady mouse to Doctor Muskrat
  Tad Coon chased a couple of mice into a corn crib

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                        The Wavy Tailed Warrior




                               CHAPTER I
                   STRIPES TURNS A TRICK ON TAD COON

“Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch,” went a noise in the woods not very
far away from the pond where Doctor Muskrat was telling a story to
Nibble Rabbit and Stripes Skunk. Nibble’s ears flew up; the doctor got
ready to dive; Stripes hunched himself up and peered anxiously over his
shoulder because the sound came from the only direction where he knew of
a hole to hide in. The willows, where he first lived, were over on the
far side of the pond—and Stripes simply hates to swim. His tail gets all
soggy, so it’s just as if you tried swimming with all your clothes on.

Scritch—r-r-rip! went the noise. Patter, patter, patter, came footsteps
of somebody running. Then Nibble laughed. “Ho! It’s only old Tad Coon,”
he said. “He’s in kind of a hurry.”

But when Tad Coon came out into the grassy space between the trees and
the sand he was just strolling along as dignified as a duck in a puddle.
“Morning, Doctor Muskrat,” he said politely. “Hello, Nibble. Who’s the
visitor?” He knew all the time, but he was just pretending, to see what
Stripes would do.

“This is Stripes Skunk,” said Nibble. “He wants to stay here and clean
up the potato-bugs for Tommy Peele.”

“He does, does he?” Tad straddled his hind legs wide apart and sat back
to stare at him in a most insulting way.

“Well, I hope you’ve warned all the birds. He’s the fellow who can keep
their nests cleaned up for them.”

That made Stripes pretty angry. He turned half-way round and stamped his
feet. “You’re mighty worried about them all of a sudden,” he snarled.
“But I notice when the folks found those little dead chicks, they knew
who to lay it to.”

“And I notice you were the one who killed them,” growled Tad with a
crooked smile that showed all his teeth. He was getting ready to fight
about it.

But wise old Doctor Muskrat just drawled in a sleepy, soothing voice,
“As the grubby carp-fish said to the snapping-turtle, ‘My, but your nose
is muddy!’”

That set Nibble Rabbit to giggling. “Hadn’t I better call the little
owls?” he asked. “Then you can all throw mud at each other.”

“It’s mighty funny for you,” protested Tad Coon, “but as long as he
stays here, that Skunk will be getting me into trouble.”

“No, I won’t. I did it in the first place because I was jealous. You
could stay here and I couldn’t. But if I can stay, too, I won’t have
anything to be jealous about, will I?” One thing about Stripes—he always
tells the truth, you know.

“That’s so,” agreed Tad. “I’ll think about it.” Then he smiled the smile
he has when he thinks about a joke. “Say, Stripes, do you like honey? I
know where there is some.”

“Like honey?” You ought to have seen Stripes’ little pink tongue hang
out at the very idea.

“Doctor Muskrat,” whispered Nibble when Tad and Stripes marched off,
tail to tail, as companionable as though they’d never thought of
fighting, “I’ve guessed Tad’s joke. He’s got those bees all angry—that
was why he was running before he saw us. Now he’s going to set them on
Stripes Skunk and have them chase him away, just as he set the striped
buzzers with hot tails (paper-wasps he meant) on Trailer the Hound.
Hadn’t I better warn him?”

“Now don’t you get to meddling, Nibble,” the doctor answered. “Those two
will have to settle their own troubles. If Watch the Dog isn’t
executioner of these woods and fields, neither are you their hen, to
brood over them. You’re getting as bad as Jenny Wren in nesting season.”
He said that because Jenny Wren is the fussiest thing in feathers, and
she’s always scolding other people for not doing what she thinks is the
proper way to do things. She nearly drives the meadowlarks wild by
saying, “I told you so” every time someone finds their eggs that they
hide in the long grass, just because she can’t make them take to nesting
in her little squinchy dark knotholes.

“Just the same,” Nibble insisted, “I’m going to see what they’re doing,”
And off he hopped.

But he didn’t hop so very far. For the bees had hung up their shelves
upon shelves of little wax honey-bottles in the upper limb of the oak
that was blown down in the Terrible Storm. Tad Coon had clawed off all
the bark around their hole trying to reach his handy-paw into it. But he
wasn’t going near it now—oh, no! He’d had one taste of their stings. And
now the hive had sent out a swarm of fighting bees to stand guard. They
were hanging in a noisy black cloud just above it.

Up went Stripes Skunk, balancing on the wide branch as nicely as you
please, and he walked right into the middle of them. And then you should
have heard them. They were fairly shrieking their sting song:

    Sting, sting!
    Buzz a valiant wing.
    With fatal thrust
    Defend our trust;
    Let our foe’s ears ring
    With the wing song—
    The sting song.
    Die singing as you sting!

And bees always use it to work themselves up when they have a fight on
so they’ll forget that as soon as they use their stings they’ll die.

“Oh!” cried Nibble. “He must be blinded. See what you’ve done with your
jokes, you careless coon! This is worse than the one you played on
Trailer.”

Even Tad Coon was shocked. He called, “Stripes, Stripes! come this way!
Follow me! If you run through the brush they’ll leave you.”

But of course the bees were making such a noise Stripes Skunk couldn’t
hear what he was saying. So he just called back, “I can’t reach in
here—my paw’s too fat—but I have another idea.” Down he came. They could
see him batting at the bees with his paddy paws until he popped into the
big hollow in the oak’s trunk.




                               CHAPTER II
                   THE SWEETNESS OF HARMONY AND HONEY

Tad Coon burst into tears when he saw the white tip-end of Stripes’ long
wavy tail go into the hole. For a great big cloud of angry bees was
pouring in after him. “He’s gone crazy. He’s gone crazy,” sobbed Tad.
“This is the awfulest joke I ever played. Now he’ll be stung to death in
that smelly black hole. It’s all my fault—why did I ever think of
sending him up to meddle with their nest? Honest, I never meant to hurt
him.”

Tad did truly feel so sorry for what he’d done that Nibble didn’t have
the heart to scold him. “It isn’t entirely your fault,” he consoled.
“Skunks do go crazy like quails and chickadees. Only he didn’t know what
you did to Trailer the Hound, and I did. I ought to have warned him.”

“I—I just tho—thought it would be f—funny to see him run,” said poor
Tad, gulping and choking.

But Tad Coon and Nibble Rabbit were wasting a lot of sympathy. For
Stripes Skunk was perfectly happy. He just tucked his little pointy ears
flat down against the sides of his head and took good care of his little
black nose, and no bee could possibly hurt him. When Tad and Nibble saw
him batting at the bees with his paws, as though he were trying to drive
them away, he was only catching them. For Stripes knows more about the
folks who wear two pairs of wings (that’s woods talk for most any kind
of an insect) than any furry thing except the bats. Grab! He’d have a
bee in his paddy paw that has a skin so thick her sting won’t go through
it. Nip! and he’d munch the little bag of honey right out of her body.
But the big luscious lumps of honeycomb were what he was really after.

And he knew right how he’d find them. You remember he was sleeping in
that very hole in the bottom of the oak when he first met the little
owls. But he hadn’t done any exploring. Now he said to himself, “If that
limb is hollow way up to the hole where the bees come out I’ll go up
inside and get the honey.” The tree was leaning because it had been
blown down and was just raised a little on its branches, so he didn’t
really have to climb—it was only walking up hill. Well——

The first thing Tad Coon knew, out walked Stripes Skunk, proud and
pleased, with a great big comb of honey. And the bees were so busy
inside, eating the drops he’d spilled, that they had forgotten all about
him. Stripes dropped it down in front of Tad Coon. “Eat that,” he said.
“There’s plenty more where it came from.”

Maybe you think Tad Coon didn’t? He just gorged on it and licked his
whiskers.

All of a sudden Nibble thought of something. “Tad,” he chuckled, “this
joke’s on you, too. Stripes asked you to be friends. Now he’s given you
a present and you’ve eaten it. You’ve made a compact.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t make a compact with a nice smart beast like
Stripes Skunk?” demanded Tad. “Of course we’re friends.”

“Tastes like more, doesn’t it?” grinned Stripes, watching him lick the
last drops off his handy-paw. So he went in after another chunk of
sweet, dripping honeycomb. And by this time their furry skins were
feeling pretty tight. “There’s this about honey,” Stripes drawled, “you
never know when you’ve had enough until you’ve had too much. Seems like
we’d better stop off awhile.”

“Uh-huh,” mumbled Tad Coon, just a little bit doubtfully, because he’d
never had enough to find out. The most he ever dares to do is to snoop
out a mouthful and run. But he followed Stripes down to Doctor Muskrat’s
pond, and they took a good drink and cleaned up their paws and their
whiskers. Stripes sponged off his shiny black fur with his tongue, just
as your cat does, but Tad splashed and splattered like a duck in a
puddle.

First thing they knew, up popped Doctor Muskrat himself. “What do you
think you’re doing?” he asked. Then he sniffed and tasted the water that
was running off his nose. “What’s that funny smell?” he wanted to know.
That’s how much honey was washing off Tad Coon.

“It’s honey,” Stripes explained. “Tad Coon showed me where it was and I
got it for him, so now we’re friends. Wouldn’t you like some, too?”

“Me!” exclaimed the doctor. “Great Whiskered Catfish! Whatever would I
do with it? Wash myself, like Tad Coon? Or give the mussels a treat so
they’d keep their shelly mouths open? I wouldn’t eat it, you know;
plants and fish are enough for me.”

“But this is plants,” Tad explained eagerly. He wanted an excuse to send
Stripes Skunk back for some more. “The flowers make it and the bees suck
it out of them and store it away to eat in the wintertime. Flowers are
plants, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” grinned the doctor. “Every one of those big white
waterlily flowers tells me that she has a perfectly delicious root down
in the bottom of the pond. But I’ve never found any honey in them.”

Stripes looked over and saw the bees buzzing among the lilypads. “That’s
just because you never looked,” he protested. “It’s down beneath their
fuzzy yellow collars.” He meant their stamens, you know.

Plop went the old muskrat. Back he came, making the pool dance in the
ripples behind his busy paddle-paws, and towing a waterlily. “Where’s
the honey in that, Tad Coon?” he demanded. “You’re too much of a joker
for me to believe any of your fairy tales.” And sure enough, there
wasn’t a single drop.

Maybe you think Stripes and Tad weren’t puzzled! They’d always heard
that the bees got their honey out of flowers.

“You needn’t think you can fool me like that, you smarty coon,” chuckled
the wise old muskrat.

“But I’ve always believed it,” pleaded Tad. He thought it was because he
was always playing jokes that when he tried to tell the truth no one
would listen.

“Ho, ho! You did, did you?” teased the doctor. “Some bee must have been
buzzing around your ears, then. They’ll tell you most any kind of a tale
to keep you from learning the truth about their secret. They’re so
afraid someone will listen that they never sing the words of their honey
song. They only hum it. And half of the hives don’t even know them. They
come to my waterlily patch for the same thing the wasps do. A wasp once
told me that the yellow dust you got on your nose when you went to smell
for the honey was the best food in the world for growing youngsters.”

“That’s so,” agreed Stripes Skunk with his funny little three-cornered
ears pricked right straight up. “I find it on their legs most every time
I catch them. Just the same, I do taste honey in most every bee I eat.”

“Eat bees!” sniffed Doctor Muskrat, turning up his whiskery nose. “Eat
bees? You’re as poor a story teller as Tad Coon.”

Of course Stripes had to scramble around and catch one. Tad ate one,
too, and he solemnly insisted he could taste the honey as plain as
plain.

“What does that prove?” argued the doctor. “If it proves anything it
goes to show that honey is a sort of milk from a well-fed bee.”

“That’s so!” agreed Tad. “It’s certainly much more sensible than that
old fairy tale about the flowers. I believe we’ve guessed their secret.
Let’s get some more, Stripes, and make sure.”

So off they went. And back they came. Stripes had such a mouthful of
honeycomb he couldn’t run, and Tad’s piece was so luscious and crumbly
he had to carry it in both of his handy-paws and walk on his hind feet
like a little bear. They laid it down on Doctor Muskrat’s flat stone,
and just as they were about to gorge on it again, along came Nibble
Rabbit, lippity-lippity, all out of breath.

“Hello, Nibble. You’re just in time to eat,” said Tad Coon.

“No, thanks,” gasped Nibble, shaking his floppy ears. “I guess I’ll take
mine straight out of the clover blossoms, the way I always do.”

“From clover blossoms?” squealed Tad. “Do they have honey? Waterlillies
don’t. We looked to see.”

“Well, that’s the first flower ever I heard of that didn’t,” said
Nibble, looking quite surprised, because he thought that was something
everybody knew.

“Bees’ milk!” whooped Doctor Muskrat. And he let go that laugh he’d been
holding in for so long. “Tad Coon believed honey was milk from a bee! O
Tad Coon!”




                              CHAPTER III
                        TOMMY WOULD A-FISHING GO

I tell you what, Nibble Rabbit and Doctor Muskrat had a lot of fun
teasing Tad Coon because he didn’t really know where honey came from.

All the woods and fields knew perfectly well that the little furry bat
is the only thing in the world with both milk and wings. But Tad didn’t
stop to think. He wouldn’t even stop to eat, he was so busy chasing
Doctor Muskrat into the pond. And Doctor Muskrat laughed so hard he got
water into his throat and had to climb out on his last winter’s house to
cough. And when he couldn’t talk he kept splashing water at them with
his scaly tail.

Well, they made so much noise that they didn’t hear who was coming. And
Nibble Rabbit was so taken up with the joke on Tad Coon that he forgot
to tell them. The first thing they knew, “Woof!” went a voice, and there
was Watch the Dog and Tommy Peele.

You remember Tad Coon tried to get the bees after Stripes Skunk because
he wanted to see him run? Well, Stripes certainly did run then. He’d
been licking up little crumbs of tasty honeycomb and little trickles of
honey from Doctor Muskrat’s flat stone, just getting ready for the time
when he’d plunge his nose, sqush! right into the delicious middle of his
piece. But he didn’t wait for that. He left it for Tommy Peele to find.

And Tommy found it. He found the crummy, broken piece that Tad Coon
carried hugged against his furry body with his little handy-paws until
it was all hairs, and he found the nice neat lump that belonged to
Stripes Skunk lying right beside it. Of course that was the one he’d
choose—Tommy liked honey quite as well as any one else. So he ate
it—before Watch even thought to take a sniff.

Out of the bushes tiptoed Stripes Skunk, sort of timid, but hopeful.

The minute Watch saw him he knew something was wrong. “Yah! Get away,
you, or I’ll chase you away!” he growled. You know he’d never made
friends with Stripes and he didn’t intend to, either.

“But that Man took my honey,” said Stripes in his scary, whiney voice.
“And Tad says that’s the way he makes friends.”

“Wah! What if he did? He didn’t know that.” Watch was snarling, snapping
angry. “Do you ’spose for a minute I’d have let him if I’d known it was
yours? We thought it was Tad Coon’s.”

[Illustration: Tommy fished and fished, but at first he did not get a
single bite]

Poor Stripes was shaking to the very end of his long wavy tail. He
looked hopefully at Tommy Peele, but Tommy hadn’t even looked up. He was
too busy digging for something. So there was nothing for Stripes to do
but slink back into his bushes again and cock his eye through a little
opening in the leaves to see what he was doing. And Watch didn’t try to
follow because he had to dig, too.

Tommy was so interested in his digging, that all the beasts started to
help him. Tommy grubbed a bit with his fingers and then he took a stick
to get on faster. That’s because his hands aren’t any better for
burrowing than Tad Coon’s handy-paws. Watch was making fine scratchy
holes every here and there and snorting into them, trying to see what
Tommy wanted to find.

Doctor Muskrat dug up a sweet flag root, and Nibble Rabbit unearthed a
butterfly weed, but those weren’t what Tommy wanted. Tad Coon found a
fine fat grub, but Tommy didn’t want that either, so Tad ate it himself.
Then Tommy shook the earth off of a long, squirmy worm.

“Oh, oh,” laughed Nibble Rabbit. “Everybody’s here to help except the
one we need. We must have Tommy make friends with Bobby Robin. He eats
those all the time.”

But Tommy didn’t eat it. He put it on something on the end of a string
and threw it into Doctor Muskrat’s pond. He was going to go fishing. He
didn’t bother about a fishpole because he’d rather perch on the trunk of
a tree that was leaning over the water and watch the fish come up to
nibble. And the tree was right on the edge of the very bushes which were
hiding Stripes Skunk.

Tommy fished and fished, but at first he didn’t get a single bite. By
and by who should guess what he was trying to do but that smarty coon?
“Watch,” he said to the dog, “he’s trying to snare something, isn’t he?
Is it shellbacks or flicker-tails?” That’s woods slang for turtles or
fish.

“Oh, yes,” squealed Nibble Rabbit, thumping his feet with excitement.
“He’s going to catch them on that wire, like he caught me—like Bob White
Quail.”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” commented Doctor Muskrat. “Which does he
want to catch, then?”

“I don’t know,” answered Watch. “Does it make any difference?”

“Difference?” exclaimed Doctor Muskrat, who’s an expert at any kind of
fishing. “It makes all the difference in the world. The shellbacks don’t
care who’s above them so long as there’s water enough to swim in, but
the finny folks won’t come where there’s a moving shadow until they know
the meaning of it. Tell Tommy to move farther out so that branch reaches
over him.”

This seemed so sensible that Watch nudged Tommy a little farther along
on the tree trunk. And it wasn’t more than a minute before the fish came
nosing around, peering up to be sure he had left them. First a school of
little shiny minnows came nibbling. Suddenly they scattered. A big
pickery back-fin had jogged by in the eel grass and it wasn’t quite
hidden.

“Hssh!” breathed Doctor Muskrat, craning his neck. “It’s that big bass.
Nibble Rabbit, if you dare to thump again, I’ll—I’ll——”




                               CHAPTER IV
                      A COMPACT BETWEEN FISHERMEN

Everyone was fairly holding his breath. Tad Coon and Doctor Muskrat, who
both fish for themselves, were mighty interested to see how Tommy was
going to catch that bass. Doctor Muskrat was in the shadow of a cattail
where he could see it. Tad was sitting up on his hind legs like Chatter
Squirrel, trying to see without letting the fish see him. Watch didn’t
even wag his tail and Nibble was trying to remember not to thump his
feet or let his ears fly up, the way he always does when he’s excited.
My, but his tickly nose was twitching! Even Stripes Skunk, hidden in the
bushes, had his ears pricked, listening for what was going to happen.

“What’s he doing now?” breathed Nibble. “What’s he doing?”

“Hssh! He’s looking,” said Doctor Muskrat, putting up a paddle-paw to
keep Nibble quiet. “The least little wiggle will scare him. He’s
turning; he’s coming; he’s bit—Ow-w-w! Wonderful! Hold on! Hold on!” For
that big bass nearly yanked Tommy Peele out of the tree when he found
Tommy had caught him.

And then the noise did burst out. Everybody was bouncing and thumping
and barking and squealing, getting into everybody’s way, trying to keep
out of Tommy’s. And Tommy was trying to hold on to that fish line while
he scrambled back to the ground where he could do some strong hauling.
And the great big bass was jerking and jabbing and pulling and fighting,
trying to get away from him.

And not a single one of them succeeded. Tad Coon got under Watch’s dancy
paws; and Watch tripped Tommy Peele; and Tommy Peele went splash right
into the pond; and that great big bass jumped, splash, right out of it.
But he didn’t get away! Not with all those fellows after him!

For just as Tommy fell he threw up his hand to keep his fish line from
being tangled. And that was just when the fish was jumping. You’d better
believe he made a great big jump that time. He jumped in a great big
half-circle right up into the bushes where Stripes Skunk was hiding. And
then he began flouncing and bouncing to get back into the water again.
And of course Stripes Skunk, who fishes a bit his own self, went to stop
him.

Then there was a battle! The big bass snapped and flapped and put up all
his pickery spines on his back fin. And Stripes Skunk slawed him and
pawed him, trying to spear his toenails into those slippery, slidy
scales to hold him. And Doctor Muskrat slapped his tail and fairly
barked with excitement. “Bite him behind the eyes, Stripes! Bite him
behind the eyes!” And at last Stripes got his teeth on the big roach of
neck that begins just behind a fish’s eyes and bit. The bass gave one
tremendous flap that sent the dust and sand and dead grass flying, and
lay still.

But you ought to have seen Tommy Peele. He didn’t know what to do about
it. Here was a strange beast he didn’t know at all, a small black beast
that looked something like a pussy cat, only it had the most beautiful
long, dark fur, with a wide white stripe parted behind its ears and
running all the way down to the round white tip of its wonderful plumy
tail. “Better let go that fish,” Tommy advised. “You certainly are a
good fighter, but if you try to eat it you’ll get a fishhook in your own
mouth, and there certainly will be trouble.”

[Illustration: Stripes battles with a big fish]

Now of course Stripes didn’t know what Tommy meant. But he knew it was
Tommy’s fish in the first place, and besides, Watch the Dog was just
trembling on the tips of his toes because he wanted to snatch it back
for Tommy. Only he didn’t have to. For Stripes was glad enough to put it
down and stretch his tired neck and get the cramp out of his jaws that
were stiff from gripping it. And when he yawned Tommy could see his pink
throat and his pointy tongue—and some little hurty, bleedy spots where
that pickery back-fin had stuck into him.

And there was Doctor Muskrat waddling up beside him to sniff the bass
and say: “Well bitten, Stripes—very well bitten, indeed!” and Tad Coon
was sort of chuckling in his throat: “By Tadpoles, Stripes, I’m glad you
never tried to fight with me,” and Nibble was fairly purring, “I’m proud
of you, Stripes. This is one more joke on Tad Coon. He said you didn’t
know what teeth were for.” Even Watch wasn’t quite sure that he oughtn’t
to be ashamed of himself for growling. He looked to see what Tommy Peele
was going to do.

Tommy pulled in his line and took the hook out of the fish’s mouth—and
then maybe you think they weren’t curious about it! “Aha!” said the wise
old muskrat. “I thought it wasn’t just like the wire that caught you,
Nibble. A fish is so slippy I couldn’t see how that would hold him. This
is cold and smelly, like the cold jaws that caught me. Better not get
too close to it.” And that’s just about what Tommy said when Tad Coon
wanted to take the shiny thing in his handy-paws to look at it. And when
Stripes Skunk saw that none of the others was afraid, he came closer,
too, and crinkled up his nose at it.

That made Tommy laugh. “He’s friends,” shouted Nibble. “A man always
makes friends when he laughs at you.” And Watch knew that, because it’s
how the first dog made friends with the man and his wife and his baby in
the First-Off Beginning.

Tommy looked at the bass and then he looked at Stripes Skunk again. He
tossed it right beneath Stripes’ crinkly nose and said: “I believe you
want this. Well, you can have it. There are lots more fish in Doctor
Muskrat’s pond, and I just love fishing.” So Stripes knew Nibble Rabbit
was right.

I guess you’d have liked to go fishing that sunny afternoon down by
Doctor Muskrat’s pond your own self—I just believe you would! Tommy
perched on the trunk of the tree again and did the fishing. Doctor
Muskrat was cuddled down under the bulrushes most interested to see how
Tommy did it. Nibble was nipping the tops of clovers, with an ear cocked
so he wouldn’t miss any of the excitement when Tommy caught one—not that
he cared for fish, but some other fellows did.

Tad and Stripes had eaten the great big bass, and now Tad was dozing,
flat on his back in the sun, with his handy-paws folded over his fat
tummy, and Stripes was curled up as tight as his fullness would let him,
with his wavy tail over his shiny black nose, to keep the flies off it.

Even Watch was contented. He was napping, too. Sometimes he squirmed and
growled to himself because he didn’t approve one little bit of having
Tommy make friends with a bad Thing-from-Under-the-Earth like Stripes
Skunk. It was plenty bad enough to have him make friends with
mischievous Tad Coon! But Watch was happy all the same.

Pretty soon Stripes opened his shiny black eyes; he stretched himself
and yawned. A leaf blew past and he pounced on it like a kitten. Then a
grasshopper clicked up and he chased it. Next he took to playing with
some leaves that were dancing in the wind, and then he took after his
own plumy tail, whirling round and round in a mad little dance of his
own, humming a little tune that was a happy, not a whiny, one.

Watch pricked up his ears because he was so surprised to think Stripes
could sing—Bad Ones can’t, you know. And his own tail began to beat in
time to Stripes’ patty little feet. So Stripes slyly pounced on it.
Well, you know what happened then! Watch began to chase him. Only he
couldn’t chase very fast because Stripes does look so funny when he’s
running. His fur fluffs up and his hind feet are pigeon-toed, and his
draggy, wavy tail goes flourishing in and out between them.

First Stripes got scared, but pretty soon he saw even Watch was
laughing. And Watch tipped him right over on his back and snooted him in
the ribs like he does the kittens. “You silly old thing,” he chuckled.
“I won’t make any better compact with you than I did with Tad Coon, but
I won’t hurt you while you behave yourself.”

“I’ll show you how I’ll behave,” said Stripes, and he deliberately boxed
Watch’s big ear, just to show that he wasn’t afraid of him. And Tommy
Peele ’most fell into the pond all over again, he was laughing so hard
at them. They all made so much noise that the spotty blue kingfisher
came over to cock his crest and see what they were doing. He and Doctor
Muskrat gave Tommy a lot of good advice, only of course he didn’t
understand it. But he did know they were very friendly, and that was the
main thing.




                               CHAPTER V
       OF THE TICK IN TOMMY’S POCKET WHICH WASN’T A BUG AFTER ALL

Somebody’s always falling into Doctor Muskrat’s pond. Nibble Rabbit did
it the very first time he saw Doctor Muskrat. So did Tommy Peele, as I
have just told you—but Tommy didn’t care a bit. Only he didn’t want to
go home with his clothes all drippy, because his mother would make him
drink some yarrow tea, to keep him from catching cold, you know. And
it’s every bit as bad as the dose the old doctor gave Nibble. It doesn’t
“taste like more”; it tastes like “never again!” So he took off his
wettest things and hung them out in the sun to dry.

[Illustration: Tommy takes off his “skin” to dry]

You ought to have seen Nibble Rabbit and Stripes Skunk and Tad Coon all
stare at him. Even Doctor Muskrat was s’prised. “Here, Watch,” he said
to Tommy’s dog, “don’t let him skin himself—he’ll die!”

“Ho, that isn’t his skin,” laughed Watch; “that’s just his fur. He does
it every night. I know, because I sleep in his room—that’s a kind of a
cage he sleeps in—so I see him.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Doctor Muskrat. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” put in Nibble Rabbit. “Chatter Squirrel said he’d seen men this
way. He told me about them the night we were all in my little cornstalk
tent, hiding from the terrible storm. He said they had skin like a frog,
only tan, like my throat, or pink, like the inside of my mouth. Tommy’s
a little of both.”

So he was. He was getting a fine spotty sunburn. But he wasn’t nearly as
pink as he would have been if he’d gone swimming, like the boys Chatter
Squirrel had seen. Only you can’t swim and catch fish at the same time.
You scare them.

And Tommy was having such fun fishing, he wasn’t thinking about swimming
or anything else. He even forgot all about the big shiny watch he had in
his pants pocket. You know the kind—a big, cheap, noisy thing that took
much more than a ducking to stop it. And it was fastened to them with a
jingly chain.

Well, it was Nibble Rabbit’s long stick-up ears that heard it. My, but
that was a funny sound! It was Tad Coon’s handy-paw that went after it.
My, but that was a queer shaped, slippery-feeling thing! And it was
Stripes Skunk who guessed what it really was.

“It’s a bug,” said Stripes after he’d sniffed his pointy nose against it
and tried his teeth on it. “I never saw one just like it, but a bug it
is. Lots of them make that sort of a ticky noise when they’re ready to
bite open their hard cases and shake out their wings. This one must be
just about ready by the noise he’s making.” And he scrooched down his
ear to listen.

“I never heard them do that,” said Nibble Rabbit.

“Course not. They’re buried in the ground when they do it,” said Tad.
“We dig ’em up and eat ’em.”

“Maybe Watch will remember where Tommy found it,” Nibble suggested.

“He wouldn’t pay any ’tention if he couldn’t eat it or chase it,”
sniffed Tad. He was afraid Watch would take that shiny, noisy watch away
from them and he wanted it to play with. “Tell you what, Stripes. Let’s
bury it, and then when it comes out it’ll go right to laying its eggs,
and we’ll have lots more just like it.”

“Sure,” agreed Stripes, and he went to digging. Nibble helped a little,
too. He’d seen Tommy put a clam in his pocket—the one Tad Coon had given
him, you know—so he didn’t think this was at all out of the way.
Besides, if it was a bug and it did come out of its case in Tommy’s
pocket it might bite him. And believe me, that watch was big enough to
hold a mighty big bug.

They dug a nice hole and they buried Tommy Peele’s watch down in it and
patted the earth smooth. Then Tad Coon lay down right on top of it so
he’d be there when the thing that was making a noise inside of it came
out.

By and by the fish stopped biting and the mosquitoes began. Tommy could
hear Louie Thomson over in his own field calling his cows.

Well, Tommy thought he’d better look at his watch and see if it was time
to go home. He’d left it in his pants pocket, tied to them with a jingly
chain. His pants were on the ground beside Tad Coon, and Tad was
asleep—he never opened his eyes, he just squinched them tighter shut
than ever. When Tommy went to pick them up they wouldn’t come; because
they were tied to his watch with that jingly chain. And the watch wasn’t
in his pocket; it was buried right underneath Tad Coon.

When Tad saw Tommy was bound to have it he got up and looked around, as
s’prised as could be. “’Scuse me,” said he; “was I in your way? Are you
looking for something?” And when Tommy began to dig up the watch, Tad
dug, too, quite politely, as though he were glad to help him find it.

But he didn’t fool Tommy’s dog. Watch said: “Tad Coon, what have you
been doing?”

“I was just burying that bug. You can hear it making a noise inside the
hard case Tommy’s dug up again,” owned Tad. “It would come out if he’d
let me take care of it.”

By this time the dog could see the shiny, noisy watch ticking away on
the end of its jingly chain. “You silly thing!” he barked. And he made
so much noise that Louis Thomson let his cows go up to the barn alone
and came to the fence to see what was happening. He didn’t come over it
because Tommy Peele wouldn’t let him. But he climbed up on top of it,
and saw Tad Coon grabbing at Tommy’s shiny watch.

“There is a bug inside,” Tad was saying. “Stripes says so, too, don’t
you, Stripes?”

“It sounds like one,” answered Stripes, cocking his ears, and Nibble and
Doctor Muskrat both agreed that it didn’t seem like anything else they
had ever heard.

But Tommy’s dog just jeered. “Bug! It was doing that when the deep snow
was all over the ground and there wasn’t a bug stirring.”

Tad Coon wouldn’t believe him. He turned it over in his handy-paws and
sniffed and listened again. “It is, too, a bug,” he insisted. “And it’ll
come out very soon. I can see the crack it’s making.” He meant the place
where the back comes open.

By this time Tommy Peele could see what he wanted; so he opened his
watch and showed Tad the little wheels that made all the ticking. And
then wasn’t Tad Coon more puzzled than before. It certainly wasn’t a
bug—but what was it?

Even Tommy’s very own dog didn’t know that. “It talks all the time,” he
explained. “I can’t ever hear it say anything different, but it seems to
tell Tommy to go and do something.”

Sure enough, Tommy Peele looked at his watch and whistled. “Hey,” said
he, “I didn’t know it was so late. We ought to go up and do our
milking.”

He was just slipping it back into his pocket when Louie Thomson called
out, “Please, Tommy, let me come over and see your animals. Honest, I
won’t hurt ’em.”

Splash went Doctor Muskrat into his pond. Flick went Nibble into the
Pickery Things. Scratchy-scramble went Tad Coon up into a tree. Te-flap,
te-flap went Stripes Skunk for his hollow oak, his pigeon-toed feet just
slapping the ground and his long draggly tail trailing between them.
Nobody stayed but Tommy’s dog, and he was bristling and growling.

“Aw, gee!” said the bad boy. “I only wanted a look at that cute one who
was clawin’ at you. How’d you make ’em come to you?”

[Illustration: Tad Coon finds a new kind of bug]

“I don’t,” said Tommy. “Maybe it’s because I feed them.” You see he
didn’t know he’d made any compacts with them. Nobody could explain them
to him. But it didn’t matter, because he really meant to keep them.

“What do you feed them?” said Louie. “I wish they’d be like that with
me.”

“Gr-r-r!” growled Tommy’s dog. “It’s all sticks and no bones wherever
you are. You’d have a better chance of making friends if you’d say,
‘Wisht I’d be like that with them.’” But even Tommy didn’t understand
him.




                               CHAPTER VI
                     THE BATTLE OF THE POTATO BUGS

You never saw any one so puzzled as Stripes Skunk and Tad Coon after
Tommy had gone running back to the barn to milk his cows with that shiny
watch ticking away in his pocket. “I didn’t hear it tell Tommy to do
anything,” said Tad. “It was just saying the same thing over and over
again all the time.” Because it made a noise Tad thought of course the
watch was talking. He never knew the black marks on its face meant
anything more to Tommy than Tommy would have known the black spots on a
nice little orange-coloured ladybug meant anything to Tad Coon.

Stripes Skunk was squinting thoughtfully at one with his head on one
side, and he knew what those spots meant; they meant that you mustn’t
eat it. By and by he said, “It told me something. It told me that I must
keep on the lookout for Tommy Peele’s potato bugs. They make just that
kind of a noise when you squeeze ’em. And I’ll have to be mighty careful
not to let ’em lay any eggs. They’re horrid things. I couldn’t eat very
many of ’em.” So off he pattered to look at them.

Now a potato bug is a second cousin to the nice spotty ladybug—you know
her all right enough. You sing that song, “Ladybug, ladybug, fly away
home; your house is on fire and your children will burn.” And sure
enough, she’ll lift her stiff black and orange skirts and shake out the
wings she keeps tucked up under them so they won’t get draggled when
she’s walking, and go off in a hurry.

But the potato bug isn’t pretty and he isn’t nice. He’s mustard-yellow,
with three stripes, which mean that some folks can eat him, and a pair
of dots which mean that most folks can’t. Just before the first frost in
the fall he burrows down under the Earth-that-is common-to-all and makes
himself a little house, snugly waterproofed with varnish against the
rains. There he learns all sorts of tricks from the Bad Ones who are
always making Mother Nature so much trouble.

When it comes time to creep out in the spring he knows she has guards
out watching for him. Because his wife lays eggs that look like little
clusters of yellow bananas and taste so good that she has to be mighty
careful about hiding them. But there’s no end of trouble if they hatch,
for nobody can eat his dirty little six-legged caterpillar children.

So he sends out spies to be sure the coast is clear and, when no one is
looking, out marches a whole yellow-uniformed army that swarms all over
the potato plant’s neat green leaves. And the army gnaws and nibbles and
fights and scrambles to do all the harm and lay all the eggs it possibly
can before Mother Nature’s fighters can come to rescue the poor potato
plants.

Stripes had hunted a long time before he found a single spy just a few
days before; now he was surrounded by a whole potato bug army. Tommy
Peele’s potato patch was besieged! And there was no one to stop the
enemy but a couple of meadowlarks. Even they gave up in despair when
they saw Stripes march in, for the skunks are old foes of the
meadowlarks. He was alone!

And he felt mighty discouraged, I can tell you. But he’d promised to
fight them, so he set to work all alone, eating them as fast as ever he
could lay a paw on them. That’s about the only way Mother Nature teaches
her creatures to destroy such things.

My—they tasted strong! He felt sicker and sicker with every one. It grew
dark and they hid so he could hardly find them—still he kept on eating.
But at last they began to burn like fire inside him. He had just enough
strength to stagger down to Doctor Muskrat’s pond—and the next thing he
knew the sun was shining!

Stripes lay there in a sort of a daze, trying to think just what had
happened to him. There was a queer, far-away sound in his poor little
loppy, sick ears—but when he opened his eyes there was Bob White Quail
standing right beside him. “What’s the matter, Stripes?” he was asking.

Suddenly Stripes could remember everything—those horrible hundreds and
hundreds of potato bugs gnawing and squirming and swarming all around
him. “I’m sick,” he moaned. “I promised to keep the bugs off Tommy
Peele’s potatoes—but they’re too many for me. I’m beaten. Now I’ll have
to go away and never come back here again.” And the tears began to
trickle down his pointy nose and drip on his paddy-paws.

“You won’t, either,” snapped Bob White. “You saved me from dying in that
wire snare. I haven’t forgotten that. Besides, those potato bugs are
some of my own business. Get Doctor Muskrat to give you some medicine
and then come and see what we quail-folk are doing.” He raised the
covey-call, “Prr-whit! Prr-whit!” and off he flew to the Quail’s
Thicket.

It didn’t take Bob White long to lay down the law to the quail-folk. In
about the time it takes to swallow a seed they were whirring off in
every direction. Bob White himself went to find those fly-away
meadowlarks. “What do you mean by deserting like that in the face of the
potato bug army?” he demanded. My, but his voice sounded pecky!

“We flew away because that terrible skunk came to help them,” fluttered
the larks. “There was no use trying to fight him!”

“You didn’t have to fight him,” raged Bob White. “You only had to fight
with him. You foolish, cowardly tip-tails! He’d come to help you!”

“To help us?” squawked the meadowlarks. “That beast! That beast who
smashes our eggs and kills our mates and eats our young? We’d as soon
expect help of Glider the Blacksnake.”

“You would, would you?” Bob White’s beak clicked dangerously.

“Well, it’s time you learned that skunk is a special one. He saved my
life, and all the quail trust him. You get every meadowlark in all the
woods and fields and the marsh beyond and go back to your fighting. Hear
me?” And he looked so ruffly they didn’t even dare to answer him.




                              CHAPTER VII
                      THE BIRDS ENLIST IN THE WAR

The next one to find poor sick after Bob White Quail had flown away, was
Nibble Rabbit. “Hey, Stripes,” he said, “whatever is the matter?”

“I tried to eat all the potato bugs to keep my promise to help Tommy
Peele—’deed and I did, Nibble. But I got too many inside of me all at
once. They squirm and sting!”

Well, it didn’t take Nibble long to call Doctor Muskrat. And it didn’t
take Doctor Muskrat long to stop the “squirming and stinging” Stripes
thought was going on inside him. “You certainly prove that fighting
those click-wings isn’t your regular job,” he said. “You can’t gorge on
them. You must never eat more than three at a time without eating
something else in between. Any meadowlark could tell you that.”

“They could, but they wouldn’t,” Stripes sniffed. He was feeling much
better. “They flew away when they saw me coming.”

“They did?” cried Nibble. “Well, they’ve all come back again. You just
ought to hear them. They’re——”

“Che-e-ep!” interrupted Bobby Robin, swooping down for a drink. “Ugh!
I’m glad that’s over with!”

“What’s over with?” Doctor Muskrat was surprised to see how much he was
drinking.

“Eating a potato bug!” chirped Bobby Robin. “I told that quail none of
us thrushes could eat ’em, but he wouldn’t listen. He’s ruffling about
like a kingbird, and he says he’ll peck the eyes out of any bird who
refuses to try one. You just ought to see what’s going on and who he’s
got to help him! But I must be flitting.”

“Where to?” asked Stripes. By now he was taking an interest in things.

“To send over everything I can find that has feathers in its wings,”
said Bobby Robin. “Bob White needs ’em.”

And before he’d flown past Tad Coon’s tree, along came Miau the Catbird
and told them exactly the same tale. And that cheered Stripes so much
that he got up on his wobbly legs and staggered over to see what was
going on.

He saw—oh, I can’t tell you everything he saw. For there were orange
orioles and dark-red orioles and scarlet-red tanagers and blue-and-red
bluebirds, and fawn-coloured cedarbirds, and black-and-white-and-tan
bobolinks all eating and shouting, with the meadowlarks flying around as
thick as gnats on a summer night, calling, “Catch ’em and e-e-eat ’em
up!”

He saw Chewee the Chickadee leading a regiment of gorgeous black and
white and blue and yellow and orange and green warblers in and out
through the dark green leaves of the potato plants, urging them to
“Pick! Peck! Pick all you see-ee-ee!” It was eggs Chewee was hunting.
Every once in a while a whole cloud of birds would go winging off to
feed in the woods and the grain-fields, and another cloud would come in
and settle down to eating the potato-bug army again.

“Those good birds!” Stripes squealed joyfully, “I’ll never eat another
egg!”

He was so grateful he just had to tell the first bird he met. That was
Chaik the Bluejay, who was perched on a wild-apple tree in the fencerow.
“Those nice, good birds,” he said. “I’m going right over to thank them.”

“Don’t you do it,” warned Chaik. “Don’t you say a word till they’re all
finished, or they’ll fly away and never come back at all. They aren’t
doing this for you; they’re doing it for Bob White Quail. If they
thought for a minute it was because Bob White wanted you to stay here
they’d say he was crazy.”

“I guess you’re right,” Stripes agreed sadly. “The meadowlarks flew away
yesterday the very first minute they saw me. All the same I just wish
they knew I hadn’t touched an egg since I came here—’cepting only Bob
White’s and I paid up for those. And I never will again. What’s more, I
won’t let any one else if I know anything about it. If they’d only let
me bring my family to help I think we could even keep Slyfoot the Mink
away.”

“Don’t mention it,” exclaimed Chaik. “I know birds. You can’t reason
with them. They wouldn’t think of it. They wouldn’t even hear you.”

They’d been moving along as they talked, getting closer and closer to
where the birds were busiest and noisiest.

“I can hear them all right enough,” Stripes had to shout. “Did you ever
listen to such a racket? That little brown one is the loudest of all.”

“She’s Jenny Wren,” Chaik called back—you couldn’t talk low and hear
even yourself. Besides, he thought no one was looking at anything but
the fighting. He didn’t see the slim brown mate of Coquillicot the
Thrasher slip out of the grass beside them. “Jenny left Johnny to watch
her eggs while she got a drink—hours ago,” he went on. “She just loves
to boss things. But poor Johnny thinks the hawk has got her.”

“It’s a wonder the hawk hasn’t caught someone, isn’t it?” Stripes said.

“No, it isn’t,” squawked Chaik. “Look up in that pickery pea-tree.” (He
meant an acacia with long spiky thorns and blossoms like garden peas
strung in tassels.)

Stripes squinted—he isn’t used to looking up—and finally shaded his eye
under his paw. “What about it?” he asked in a puzzled way.

“Why, Bob White has it all filled with fighting kingbirds. They’d fly at
an enemy and peck his eyes out. And if the hawk chased them they’d hide
in the prickers where he couldn’t possibly catch them. The hawk knows—I
say, Stripes, what do you suppose that Thrasher is telling them? They’re
looking straight at us-”

But before Stripes could even think, Jenny Wren began to squawk, twice
as loudly as before, “Murder! Help! Help!”




                              CHAPTER VIII
                  THE BATTLE OF THE CROOK TAILED SNAKE

Jenny’s call gave Stripes a fine scare. Chaik had just finished warning
him not to let the other birds know he was there. And they’d just begun
to suspect that Coquillicot the Thrasher had seen them, because they’d
seen Coquillicot fly up and tell something to the Kingbird Guard. All
the kingbirds had begun peering down at them, and just then——

“Murder! Help!” went Jenny Wren.

Stripes hadn’t done a single thing to her, but there wasn’t going to be
any time for explaining and arguing. Those kingbirds were ready to peck
someone’s eyes out—there wasn’t any doubt of that! The red feathers on
their heads stood straight on end as they came swooping down, whooping
their war cry. They came like hailstones falling from a great black
cloud—hailstones with beaks and claws! It was scary!

“Hide!” gasped Chaik and took to his wings. But poor Stripes could not
fly; all he could do was to squirm a little closer under the thickest,
shadiest branches. And right close beside him a birdy voice said, “Look
out. Don’t wiggle so. You all but set your clumsy claws right on me.”

“Oh!” (Stripes was most too surprised to stay scared.) “I didn’t m-mean
to,” he stammered, and he stood there on three legs, with a hind paw
held up in the air, most awkward and ridiculous, craning his neck to see
who it was.

It was a lovely bright brown bird with rose-red eyes and a long tail,
cuddled down in her nest among the grasses. “I’m Coquillicot’s mate,”
she explained. “I heard you tell Chaik the Blue jay that you’d never eat
another egg, so of course I knew you were that friend Bob White spoke
for at the ground-birds’ meeting.”

She was as nice and sociable as you please. Then she demanded anxiously:
“Who was Jenny Wren calling the guard for?”

“Those kingbirds?” asked Stripes. “Why, I kind of thought they were
after me.”

“No, they weren’t,” said the pretty bird. “I told Coquillicot to tell
them who you were as soon as I heard you. But there’s a rumor that
Glider the Blacksnake’s hawk-bitten son—the one with the crooked
tail—has been seen here. It’s put us all in a flutter. Do find out!”

At that Stripes Skunk stood up stiff and straight. “If it’s a snake,”
said he, “I’ll promise you that he’ll never eat another bird.” And with
that he marched right out into all the pecking and scratching and
flapping and screeching that was going on in the potato patch.
Wheu-whirr-r-r! went a cloud of wings about his ears, but he just
growled, “Where is he? I’ll take care of him.”

There had been more noise than enough before, but when Stripes Skunk
marched out of the hedgerow, with his whiskers bristling and his long
hairy tail arched up behind him-! No body could even imagine the noise
of that! Wow!

Stripes marched right up to Jenny Wren, growling, “Show me that snake.
I’ll take care of him. Where is he gone?” He was so busy thinking about
what he had to do that he forgot to be scary. And not even a fighting
kingbird took a single peck at him!

No. They all stopped still, as still, to listen. Only their wings
whispered like leaves in the trees, as they wheeled and circled—and
listened! “Where is that snake?” said Stripes again.

“It isn’t a snake!” cheeped Jenny Wren. “It’s a dreadful great big
creepy crawly monster with a stinger sticking out of its tail. It’s
spitting poison! It’s—it’s—there, it’s doing it now! Che-e-ep!” She
began to flutter and wail all over again. The kingbirds squawked their
war-cry, but they didn’t go any nearer.

Stripes did, though. He crept up, his long wavy tail sticking straight
out behind him and the tip of it just trembling. He raised his
paddy-paw. Scritch! Off came the leaves where the horrid thing was
hiding. Down rolled——

A big green caterpillar! Jenny Wren screeched. The other birds fluttered
with fear. But Stripes Skunk just sat down and laughed at it. This was
too silly—to have all those foolish flyers making a fuss like that over
what was just a nice juicy mouthful! He forgot that it really was a
monster to Jenny—it was quite as big as she is and its mother, the moth,
is bigger.

It lay on its back and wiggled all its sucker-feet in a most insulting
way. It squirmed, and the eye-shaped stripes on its sides just squinted
and made faces at Stripes Skunk. It even spat a mouthful of chewed
leaves at him! A lot he cared. He swallowed it.

And all the birds watched him with their eyes just popping. Now was his
time to make friends, when they were all listening. He began very
politely: “Thank you for calling me, Mrs. Wren. Now, if——”

He was just going to add if they’d only believe he wasn’t eating eggs
and give him a chance to show them he’d——

But right then a meadowlark began to shout, “My nest! He’s robbed it!
Egg-eater! Egg-eater!” And if it hadn’t been for those fighting
kingbirds there’s no knowing what would have happened. They gathered
around and hustled Stripes back into the bushes, and kept him a
prisoner.

Bob White Quail and the quail-folk were flying about like mad trying to
make somebody listen, and Coquillicot was shouting at the top of his
lungs from the highest tree he could find, and poor Chaik the Bluejay
was shivering in a bush because he used to eat eggs himself—and the
birds have not forgotten it.

“But I didn’t do it!” Stripes protested. “Honest, I didn’t.”

“We know you didn’t,” said the captain of the Kingbird Guard. “We’ve had
a watch on you for a week and this has happened since you were talking
with the mate of Coquillicot. That’s why we’re guarding you. When it
gets dark those larks will go back home and you can run away.”

“But I don’t want to run away,” Stripes insisted. “I want to stay right
here. I want to be friends—can’t you tell them so?”

But the kingbird captain didn’t even have time to answer him, for a
cloud of screeching meadowlarks flew up and tried to get past the guard.
And for a minute it even seemed as though they might succeed—though what
they’d have done if they did we’ll never know. I have my doubts how
brave they’d have been against a skunk after they were so afraid of a
caterpillar. But that was the very moment when a cry of “Snake! Snake!”
came from the pretty brown mate of Coquillicot.

Well, no amount of meadowlarks and kingbirds, both together, could have
stopped Stripes Skunk. Coquillicot’s wife had been so friendly and kind
to him! Now he dashed past the guards and down the hedgerow where her
nest was hidden. And he got there just in time to see the crooked,
hawk-bitten tail of the very blacksnake she had said she was afraid of.
And maybe he didn’t pounce on it!

What followed was a battle. It was the battle the birds mean when you
hear them singing about it—the Battle of Stripes Skunk and the Crook
Tailed Snake! For Stripes doesn’t have the wide jaws of Silvertip the
Fox to fight with. But he had the courage of three Silvertips. Time and
again that snake got away from his teeth and coiled about his throat;
time and again Stripes clawed away its hold and got his teeth in it! He
had a dim notion that the trees were full of birds, anxiously watching,
but not a feather fluttered, not a cheep sounded.

Not a cheep sounded—but far off from the top of the pickery acacia tree
he heard the captain of the Kingbird Guard whistling like a policeman.
“Whee-oo-wheet! Whee-oo-wheet!”

And at that the snake bit viciously right at his pink mouth. Snap! he
closed his jaws, right on its ugly head. He felt his long tooth drive
through it.




                               CHAPTER IX
                     THE SECRET OF THE SNAKE GUARD

The coils that were wound about Stripes’ throat loosened. The snake
dropped and lay still. Only its crooked tail kept wriggling.

“It’s dead,” thought Stripes. “It will never hurt another bird. But it’s
bitten me. Now I’ll die, too.” And he licked his bite, wondering how
soon that would happen.

He felt terribly hurt, because you know he didn’t fight on his own
account; he was fighting for the kind little mate of Coquillicot, the
Thrasher. You wouldn’t think the birds would forget a thing like that,
would you? Well, they didn’t. Even the meadowlarks, who had been chasing
him just a few minutes before, felt terribly ashamed of themselves.
Still, nobody went to help him.

They had a reason. I told you that when the fight began the captain of
the Kingbird Guard flew up into the very top of the tallest tree and
began to whistle, “Whee-oo-wheet!” over and over again. It was a shrill,
exciting noise, like fire engines make, or patrol wagons—a sort of
clear-the-track-for-help whistle. He was calling the bird’s own Snake
Guard, and he was calling her in the biggest sort of a hurry. And of
course everyone else had to keep under cover so she’d see right off
where she was wanted.

She was called in a hurry, and that’s the way she came. The kingbird
captain saw a wee black speck, far up in the clouds, begin to drop. Down
it flew. But before ever it reached Stripes Skunk that wee black speck
was a big brown bird.

The bird was close behind him. Her wings were half closed, just wide
enough to steer by. She had fallen, like a shooting star, out of the
sky. When she spread out her wings and tail to stop herself, just as she
reached the ground, the wind roared in her feathers.

Stripes raised his head. He saw the big hooked beak, the strong curved
claws of a hawk reach down. “These birds are just bound to kill me,” he
thought. “This one is big enough. Even Bob White won’t dare to stop it.”
All the same, he wished Bob would try. He was tired of fighting all
alone.

But the hawk was only reaching for the earth. She gave the snake a
shake, cocked her eye knowingly at Stripes, and said, “Whee-ee! but that
must have been a fight!”

Stripes lifted his nose from his paws. He couldn’t help feeling proud to
be spoken to like that. “It certainly was,” he answered.

The hawk nodded. “I put that crook in his tail three years ago,” she
explained. “He was a clawful then. He’s bigger now. I ought to have been
here to help you. You’re feeling a little tired. Suppose I tear him up a
bit and you eat some. How does that sound?”

“He’s bitten me. I’m just waiting to die,” said Stripes. “I don’t feel
like eating.”

“Broken sticks and addled eggs!” exclaimed the hawk, grinning. “Didn’t
you know he wasn’t that kind of a snake? He can only choke you. Do you
mean to say that you’d fight a great big snake like that thinking it
could kill you if it bit you?”

Stripes Skunk looked more proudly than ever at the long stretch of crook
tailed snake that lay between them. “I didn’t fight it on purpose,” he
explained. “It was bothering a bird. And I was trying to be friends with
them. The bird it was bothering was the only one besides the quails
who’d trust me. So of course I tried to kill it. I’ve killed lots of
little ones, but I didn’t know how big this one was till I got hold of
it. It did the queerest things.” Stripes craned his neck about. It felt
pretty stiff where the snake had been choking him.

“Cac, cac!” chuckled the hawk. “I might have known you weren’t a regular
snake killer by the size of your claws. Mine are twice as long. And much
sharper, too. You spoil the edges of yours walking along the ground.”

“I know I do,” said Stripes. “A young bobcat showed me his once—he was
afraid to eat me. They’re ’most as nice as yours. He has little slits in
his paws where he hides them. But they’re no use for digging.”

“Who wants to dig?” teased the hawk. “You talk like a kingfisher. I
chased one once and he hid in the end of a hole he was digging. Such a
place for a bird!” Her red-brown eyes were sparkling.

“Well, I want to,” Stripes argued. “Digging is the quickest way in the
world to catch a mess of fieldmice.”

“Do you eat them, too?” she exclaimed. “So do I. But that wasn’t what
the kingfisher was after; he never touches fur.”

Stripes cocked his head, considering her. She was really very handsome.
Her brown feathers gleamed with purple in the sun. They were beautifully
marked with black and white when you saw them close by, and she had four
narrow bands across her tail. Just now her face was pert and interested,
but he knew it could look really wicked if she clicked that big curved
beak at you. “Hm!” he answered, knowingly. “I think maybe that
kingfisher was very sensible.”

This seemed to amuse her. She laughed again, in her noisy hawk way. Then
she stepped over beside him. “I’ll tell you a joke,” she whispered.
“They call me a hen hawk—and I don’t eat feathers! Very few of us
wide-winged hawks who soar do it at all. It’s those sneaky round-winged
fellows with tails too narrow for soaring who make a bad name for the
family. They’re always hiding and pouncing out on some one. But birds
are such fools, you know, lots of them never learn the difference.”

“Well, you wear such awful claws,” Stripes began.

“At your service,” said the hawk.

“Any time you need them. Just send word by a kingbird. But you don’t
need me any longer just now.” And off she flew.

All the birds had been still as death while the hawk was talking to
Stripes Skunk. Even the kingbirds and Coquillicot the Thrasher stayed
hidden. But before the hawk was twenty wing-beats away, they came
bursting from every bush and tree, calling and singing to him. And the
meadowlarks, who had just been so sure he had robbed a nest of theirs,
were so apologetic! But the voice he was listening for was that of
Coquillicot’s slim little wife. Just wasn’t she grateful!

“I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time,” said Stripes sadly. “He had eggs
in him. I felt them breaking when he choked me.”

“But they weren’t mine,” she cheeped joyfully. “Not a single one.”

“They were ours,” mourned the meadowlarks. “That’s why we’re so ashamed
of ourselves for picking at you. But we’ll pay back. We’ll help you take
care of Tommy Peele’s potato patch for ever and ever.”

Maybe that didn’t make Stripes happy! For if he could have their help to
fight the potato bug army he was sure he could stay for ever and ever in
Tommy Peele’s woods and fields.

Stripes was just going to dance a bit of the tickle out of his toes, the
way he did when Tommy Peele made him happy, when Coquillicot the
Thrasher flew out of the thorn tree. He’d been hiding away all by
himself while he composed a triumph song—and that’s the biggest
compliment any bird can pay you.

Coquillicot perched right over Stripes Skunk’s head, folded his tail
straight up and down, tucked his wings under it, and began in a low,
mysterious voice:

      Pit-pit—pirra-whit!
    What rustling form passes
    Where nests in the grasses
      The wife of Coquillicot?

      Churr-churr—who’s there?
    Form slim, head so grim,
    Glides where shadows are dim
      For eggs of Coquillicot!

(He began to act out her terror as he sang.)

      Chaik, Chaik, a snake!
    Peeping, upleaping,
    She flutters, loud cheeping
    Her fear. But an ear
    Is pricked up to hear
      What perils Coquillicot!

(Here his fluttering of fear changed to a ring of joy.)

      Quit, quit, think of it!
    He’ll quail in each scale.
    Writhe his terrified tail,
    Flee his fastest, but faster
    Can dash the snake’s master
      Defending Coquillicot!

      Queree, can you see?
    Fang to jaw, coil to claw,
    Watch him fall by the paw
    Of the brave snake-harrier.
    The wavy-tailed warrior
      Friend of Coquillicot!
    Pirra-pirra-pirra-cheree-e!

He ended on a high ringing note that set every bird cheering at the very
top of its voice. And the catbird, who can talk any bird tongue, began
translating it to some of the summer visitors who couldn’t catch it at
all. You can hear them still doing it, any time you listen to them.




                               CHAPTER X
                         THE FIELD MICE PROTEST

When Stripes Skunk heard that triumph song he was completely overcome.
You see he hadn’t known he was being brave. He just was thinking so hard
about poor Coquillicot’s wife and what that awful snake was trying to do
to her that he forgot to be afraid. He forgot to think about himself at
all—and that’s the way most people get to be heroes.

Now he felt all choked up and sniffly. So the next thing he knew Doctor
Muskrat came shuffling up and asked most sympathetically: “Poor Stripes,
does it hurt you so very much? Where were you bitten? Those fool
meadowlarks called out to me five minutes ago and then they flew right
off without letting me know where to find you.”

“Right here,” said Stripes, opening his mouth. And he was just going to
explain that it didn’t amount to anything at all—because it wasn’t that
kind of a snake that had bitten him—when in Doctor Muskrat popped one of
his perpetual root poultices. It wasn’t the kind he usually keeps on
hand, but a special one, from the root of a spotted plantain, but it
worked just the same in one way. Stripes couldn’t talk while he held it.

But he could laugh. He laughed until his sides hurt. For he wasn’t any
hero to Doctor Muskrat; he was just fat furry Stripes Skunk, to be
cuffed and coddled like any kitten. He felt like himself again. So he
rolled and giggled until he got some of the laugh out of him, and then
he bounced up and began his dancing. He chased his shadow and he chased
the leaves and he chased his tail until he had all the birds chuckling.
And when Miau the Catbird perched low down and tried to explain that
hero notion to the doctor, he tweaked Miau’s tail, too. And Miau began
to squawk and peck his ears for him.

No wonder Doctor Muskrat wasn’t impressed a bit. He just said: “Then you
don’t vote against letting him stay here?”

“Of course not!” shrieked the birds.

“That’s good,” said the wise old beast. “We ’re going to have a meeting
about it to-night, at moon-up, down by my pond. The mice have entered a
protest.”

“The mice?” squawked the birds all together. “The mice? What have they
to say about it? What can they do?”

“That remains to be seen,” said the doctor. “They’ve entered a protest,
so all who fly by night must come and put in a good word for him.”

“Yah,” called somebody. “I’m going right away now to send the little
owls with my vote.”

“No, you don’t,” said the doctor. “I’m guaranteeing that we’ll hear them
and let them go home again in safety. There are two families who aren’t
invited—the hawks and the owls.” With that he set off home, flapping his
front paws and shuffling his hind ones, with his tail making a snake
track between them, and Stripes went, too. But his tail had a sassy
little quirk at the end.

Promptly at moon-up the Woodsfolk began to gather at Doctor Muskrat’s
Pond. Stripes was there already, and Tommy Peele’s dog Watch to
represent Tommy because Tommy doesn’t talk the Woodsfolk tongue, and
Chaik the Jay, and a whole company of small birds who can fly by
moonlight, besides Bob White Quail and the whippoorwill Pretty soon
Doctor Muskrat looked all around and asked: “Where are Tad Coon and
Nibble Rabbit?”

“Nibble’s coming,” answered the whippoorwill. “I just saw him. He’s——”
Here he interrupted himself. He remembered the old bird proverb, “A long
tongue makes a ragged tail,” meaning that you’re apt to get pecked if
you talk too much about other people ’s affairs. So he just finished,
“He’s on the way.”

Both Stripes and Doctor Muskrat suddenly wondered why Nibble was away so
much of the time lately. But before they could ask any questions, up
hopped Nibble, as careless as you please, with a clover blossom sticking
out of his mouth. He’d eaten it stem first, keeping the best till the
last, just like you save the nice buttery middle of your bread for your
last bite. But the doctor knew very well that he hadn’t picked it in the
clover-patch over by the potatoes. He knew that because he’d just been
there. Besides, the whippoorwill came out of the deep woods, and he was
the only one who had seen Nibble.

“Hey, Bunny!” called the doctor. “Where’s Tad?”

“He hasn’t been with me,” Nibble called back. “I haven’t the least
idea.”

“Well, where were you, then?” the doctor wanted to know.

“Studying scents,” said Nibble. But his whiskers bristled as though he
were trying to keep from laughing. He had a secret all right.

“Well, you just study a scent or two over by Tad’s tree and see where
he’s gone. We have to have him.”

Just then who should come crawling up but Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse.
You remember him. He’s very fat and old; so fat that his tummy drags on
the earth like Miner the Mole’s; so old that his ears are all crinkled.
He makes as much fuss getting over the ground as a mud turtle and lots
more noise with his grunting and sniffling. And of course he had a
bodyguard of his family. He has a tremendous one, you know—a great big
stump simply alive with them. Watch escorted him to the flat stone where
Doctor Muskrat was sitting.

Doctor Muskrat greeted him. “We ’re all ready to listen,” he said,
“except Tad Coon. We can’t find him.”

“Uff, uff!” panted Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse. “We’ll pass over the
matter of Tad Coon, then. It’s unimportant. Then we can get down to
business.”

“Crawling Crawfishes!” thought Doctor Muskrat. “He must know something
about what’s happened to Tad.” He was puzzled.

When Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse said that he was willing to pass over
the question of Tad Coon, that meant only one thing—he didn’t think
there was any question. He must know that something had happened to Tad.
But it’s no use asking anything of a fieldmouse. So Doctor Muskrat
didn’t try.

“Mr. Fieldmouse,” he said, “we have been asked to meet and consider your
reasons for barring Stripes Skunk from Tommy Peele’s woods and fields.
Here we are, ready to listen.”

Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse’s crinkly ears began twitching. “We
fieldmice have had many grievances in times past,” he sniffled in his
high, squeaky voice. “But we have never spoken of them. As long as these
woods and fields were run in the sensible way Mother Nature started them
in the First-Off Beginning we took our chances like sensible mice. But
things are changing. Some of you have made friends with Man—a thing we
have never done. Man makes no difference to a fieldmouse, so even of
that we will not complain. But when you make friends with the sworn
enemy of the mice, a Thing-from-under-the-Earth, who has no proper place
in the sun—I refer to this skunk,” he said as he waved his wriggly tail
at Stripes—“it is high time we refused to let him remain. He must go!”
And he sat back in a fat, shaking heap.

[Illustration: When the moon came up there wasn’t a single tail
stirring]

“Ah,” said Doctor Muskrat. “Then you mice will give up gnawing roots and
spoiling plants and go back to the sensible way Mother Nature started
you in the First-Off Beginning. In that case, I expect we will have to
agree to your demand.”

“Give up eating roots? What do you mean?” gasped the fieldmouse.

“Yes, eat a nibble here and a nibble there, leaving the plants to be
again as they were before. Are you willing to change?”

“Change! A fieldmouse never changes. Let me remind you, Doctor Muskrat,
that we lived as we do to-day before any of you were made. This earth
belongs to us fieldmice.”

“Perhaps,” said Nibble Rabbit, “but let me point out to you that if you
fieldmice tried to run it there wouldn’t be a green thing left to grow
out of the earth. We’d all starve, down to the very last mouse.”

“Impossible! Idiotic!” gasped the mice. “We will never change. Never!”

“If that is your answer, I shall put the matter to a vote. Does Stripes
Skunk go or stay?” asked Doctor Muskrat.

“He stays! He stays!” shouted every one but the mice.




                               CHAPTER XI
                            WAR TO THE TOOTH

My, but the fieldmice were hopping mad—I mean it truthfully. They hopped
up and down on Doctor Muskrat’s flat stone and lashed their tails and
chattered. “That vote doesn’t mean anything,” shouted Great-Grandfather
Fieldmouse. “We’ve all voted against him and there are more fieldmice
here than all of you put together.”

“That isn’t the way we usually vote in the Woods and Fields,” said
Doctor Muskrat. “We vote by families. Here are the night birds and the
day birds (you know some of the birds can fly by moonlight and they
liked Stripes well enough to come) and Nibble Rabbit and Watch the Dog
who votes for Tommy Peele. If you want to vote by tails we’ll call a day
meeting so all the birds can come.”

Well Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse knew that wouldn’t be any use. There
are too many birds. So he said: “This is a fur vote. The birds haven’t
anything to say.”

“Very well, then, shall I call a fur vote, at noon, a week from to-day?”
asked Doctor Muskrat.

But Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse was afraid that all Stripes Skunk’s
friends would use that chance to eat all the mice they could hold and
reduce the vote. He turned to Watch. “This matter really only concerns
Tommy Peele,” said he. “Can he afford to fight the fieldmice?”

“He can afford to stand by his friends,” Watch answered.

Then Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse spoke to Stripes himself. “Will you
force us to fight?” he asked, “or will you go? Remember, Tad Coon has
already vanished. Will you risk the same fate from the fieldmice? I warn
you!”

“I will stay,” Stripes answered firmly.

“Then it is war! War to the tooth!” announced Great-Grandfather
Fieldmouse. And off he humped, followed by all his family.

“Now what do you suppose those mice did to Tad Coon?” mused Doctor
Muskrat.

[Illustration: Nibble takes the lady mouse to Doctor Muskrat]




                              CHAPTER XII
                       THE MICE DEFEAT THEMSELVES

Stripes wasn’t a bit afraid, but he didn’t want every one else to suffer
on his account. “I’ll go away willingly,” he told Doctor Muskrat, “if
you think I ought to.”

“I don’t,” snapped the old doctor. “I think we might as well fight it
out now. If we give in to them there’s no knowing what they’ll demand
next. You’d think this world belonged to the fieldmice!” he snorted.
(That’s one of the things Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse had said at the
meeting, you know.) “A pretty place this world would be if they tried to
run it. Next thing they’ll be saying they made it themselves, instead of
Mother Nature.”

“But there are a great many fieldmice,” argued Stripes. “They may do a
lot of harm.”

“They can’t do much more than they always have,” the angry old muskrat
snorted harder than ever. “If they haven’t enough sense to see that,
what more can you expect of them? The whole tail-and-whiskers of them,
taken together, hasn’t the brains of a bullfrog.”

Nibble Rabbit didn’t say much. He had friends among them so, of course,
they came to him. “I know they kill you,” he said, “but you treat the
plants just the same. You ruin everything you set a tooth into. If you
want them to know how important they are, all of you move away and let
them see how it is to get along without you.”

Now that was sensible. But they wouldn’t listen. They said: “But if you
fight us we’ll do away with you—just like we did with Tad Coon. You’ll
be sorry.”

On the third day after Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse declared war, the
mice began to fight. They felt sure they would have an easy victory. How
do you suppose they meant to do it? They were going to spoil Tommy
Peele’s potato patch!

This was really a bright idea. I don’t believe for a minute that they
thought of it themselves—they must have heard it from somebody. I don’t
mean that any one was a traitor to Stripes Skunk, but the fieldmice are
always creeping about and listening to what people say when nobody
imagines they’re near. They learned that Stripes was going to take care
of the potato patch to pay back for those chickens he’d killed. If he
didn’t, they thought of course Tommy Peele would send him away.

My, but Doctor Muskrat laughed when he heard the news! “It’s all over
now,” said he. “We won’t even have to go out and fight them.” But he
wouldn’t tell why.

So at dusk the fieldmice began to gather. If you think there were a lot
of them out the day they went down into Nibble Rabbit’s hole to steal a
mouthful of fur from the woodchuck for a charm against owls, you ought
to have seen them now. For they’d all raised families since the spring
had come. The grasses fairly shook with them; the earth was covered with
them. At dark they began to scuttle into the potato patch.

“Ho, ho!” laughed the little owls. Those woodchuck charms didn’t bother
them a bit. They feasted on fieldmice. But the angry mice wouldn’t pay
any attention to them.

“Ca—caa,” chuckled the hawk.

“Just the minute the moon comes up so I can see to hunt, I’ll be with
you.”

But when the moon did come up, there wasn’t a single tail stirring!

You see, those mice didn’t know about potatoes. They never ate them
because they didn’t like the taste, but they never knew other people
did. Now potato plants don’t intend to be eaten. They hide the potatoes
that they make to feed themselves—the ones we steal from them—down under
the ground. But they fill their green parts, that the mice saw above the
ground, with a juice that makes folks mighty sorry if they try to eat
them, excepting those bugs who never eat anything else. That’s why the
bugs made Stripes sick. Any one can eat their eggs, or the bugs who hide
under the ground, like the good potatoes, but the bugs and the green
leaves above the ground—ugh! You know what Bobby Robin said about them.

Crunch, crunch, went the busy teeth of the cross little mice. Ow! In
just seven whisks of a tail they turned and ran as fast as their scurry
skippy feet could carry them. My, but they were sorry they’d tried to be
so naughty!




                              CHAPTER XIII
                     WHERE, OH WHERE, IS TAD COON?

You couldn’t very well blame Stripes for being delighted when he found
out what they had done. They’d made themselves most awfully sick and
sorry. And Stripes was one of the Things-from-under-the-Earth in the
first place, you know; he couldn’t get so good and kind clear through to
the bottom of him that he’d forgive the mean little things—not all of a
sudden. The only reason he didn’t try to kill any of them right then was
because he was afraid they’d disagree with him.

But Nibble Rabbit was sorry, so sorry. The mice had been kind to
him—except old Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse who was pretty rude the day
they marched into Nibble’s hole after woodchuck fur for a charm against
owls. He couldn’t bear to hear them squeal and moan. He was just wishing
with all his heart that his ears weren’t so very long when one of them
called out from the shadow of a wide burdock-leaf: “Rabbit, oh, Rabbit!
Bend down this leaf so I can get just a drop of dew on my tongue. I’m
dying.”

Of course he hopped to help her. Yes, it was a lady mouse who had
called. And wasn’t she s’prised to find he was the very same little
bunny she had guided through the scary dark tunnels under the haystack!
That was the time Ouphe the Rat was chasing him. And wasn’t he still
more s’prised to find she was the same mouse. He’d been wanting to pay
her back all that time. Now he had a chance.

“Drink?” said Nibble. “I’ll give you a drink. Hold up your toes and
don’t wiggle.” With that he picked her up very gently by the loose fur
on her collar and carried her down to Doctor Muskrat’s Pond. And maybe
you think he didn’t thump and pound with his furry feet until the sleepy
old doctor came out to prescribe for her.

“Water is right,” said the doctor. “Then she must eat all the sour
wood-sorrel she can hold. There’s lots of it all about the Woods and
Fields but I don’t suppose half of these silly mice know enough to use
it.”

You know how kind Doctor Muskrat really is; he only pretends to be
grumpy. Well, instead of crawling back into his nice warm bed he went
flouncing around in the moonlight calling: “Water and wood-sorrel, you
foolish mice, water and wood-sorrel!”

And this time you better believe they listened to him. It was wonderful
how soon the squealing stopped after the crunching began—the crunching
of mouse-teeth on wood-sorrel. And before very long they were scuttling
back to their homes, whisking their tails behind them. But not a one
except the lady mouse, who was Nibble Rabbit’s friend, ever thought to
say “Thank you.” That’s mouse manners for you!

Doctor Muskrat didn’t give the twitch of a whisker about that. He just
said: “Come on, Nibble. Now we’ll make them tell us what happened to Tad
Coon.”

Thump-thump! went Doctor Muskrat’s paddle-paw on the hollow stump where
Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse lives with all his children and his
grandchildren and his great-grandchildren, and their children as well,
until the stump is fairly swarming with them all.

Blam-blam! went Nibble Rabbit’s furry feet.

At least seven mouse mothers popped their heads out and hissed, “Hssh!
You’ll wake the babies.” One of them added importantly, as though it
were news, “There’s sickness in the house.”

Nibble Rabbit snickered. But Doctor Muskrat just growled: “I must speak
with Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse!” And in another minute his crinkly
old mousy ears showed in the doorway.

“Who’s there? What do you want?” he quavered. He was still feeling
pretty shaky, I can tell you.

“It’s me,” said Doctor Muskrat. “I want to know what happened to Tad
Coon.”

“I—I don’t know,” said Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse, and he coughed
uncomfortably because he did know. So he was telling a lie when he said
he didn’t—and he knew that, too.

So did Doctor Muskrat. “Hmp!” he snorted, “that isn’t what you said at
the moonlight meeting. You asked Stripes Skunk if he dared to risk the
same fate at your paws as happened to Tad Coon. What was it?”

“I won’t tell,” sniffed the old mouse. “A fieldmouse never changes. I
said I wouldn’t tell you and I won’t. So there!”

“Dried Stalks and Wormy Acorns!” exploded the doctor. “You won’t, won’t
you? Well, you’re a long way from being popular with all the mice who’ve
been sick to-night over this foolish way you made war on Stripes Skunk.
How will they fancy having the Woods and Fields make war on the mice?
Eh? And we’ll do it, too!” Doctor Muskrat showed his long teeth, but he
wasn’t smiling.

[Illustration: Tad Coon chased a couple of mice into a corn-crib]

“Don’t do that,” whimpered the stubborn old fellow. “It won’t do any
good. Tad Coon chased a couple of mice into a corn-crib. While he was
scuffing around to catch one a man ran out and closed the door on him.
The other mouse got away and told us about it the night of the meeting.
That’s truly all I know.”

“When? Where? What corn-crib?” asked the doctor. “Where’s that mouse?”

“I know you won’t believe me,” sniffled old Grandfather Fieldmouse,
bursting into tears, “but he really and truly was eaten up by the little
owls.”

At this awful news Nibble Rabbit’s face grew ’most as long as his loppy
long ears. And Doctor Muskrat’s whiskers drooped. Poor, poor Tad. His
tricks had got him into trouble once too often. But they’d forgotten
about Tad Coon’s luck. That’s never much farther behind him than the end
of his bushy tail. So don’t you lose any sleep over what happened to Tad
till I get the story of all his adventures, in prison and out again,
into a book fat enough to hold them.

                                THE END