THE JAY BIRD WHO WENT TAME




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




[Illustration: Louie Thomson and his tame Jay Bird.]




Told at Twilight Stories

THE JAY BIRD WHO WENT TAME

by

John Breck

Book VIII

Illustrated by

William T. Andrews

Garden City    New York

Doubleday, Page & Company

1923




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




CONTENTS

     I. Chaik and Tad Make Themselves at Home
    II. An Evening Party at the Thomson’s House
   III. Chaik Makes Discoveries About the Holes Men Live In
    IV. Dr. Muskrat’s Adventures in the Barn
     V. Further Doings of the Woodsfolk at the Barn
    VI. A Hungry Villain Fills Himself--But Only with Fright
   VII. Killer the Weasel in a Weary Round of Troubles
  VIII. Killer Finally Reaches Mouse-Heaven
    IX. Mrs. Tabitha Puss-cat’s Secret
     X. Many Things Thrashed Out

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  - Louie Thomson and his tame Jay Bird
  - Tad catches the rat that was killing the chickens
  - Chaik begins to find out that living with house-folks is really
      great fun
  - Doctor Muskrat examines the White Cow’s drinking pond
  - Doctor Muskrat makes friends with the ducks
  - Killer wasn’t enjoying his visit to the Woods and Fields a bit
  - Killer climbs the big hickory tree after Chatter Squirrel
  - The Woodsfolk began bursting out of the straw pile, in and out and
      up and down




The Jay Bird Who Went Tame




CHAPTER I--CHAIK AND TAD MAKE THEMSELVES AT HOME


Prob’ly you’re all wondering what happened to Chaik Jay and Tad Coon
when the big rain began to fall. Chaik had hurt his wing. He’d have had
a bad time with it if he’d tried to stay in the pickery thorn bush, in
the Quail’s Thicket, down by Dr. Muskrat’s Pond. Tad Coon knew a thing
or two when he advised the bird to let Louie Thomson catch him. Well,
when Louie burst into his mother’s kitchen with Chaik holding on tight
to his fat, warm finger he was ’most bursting with pride. You know just
how you’d feel if you were Louie. Chaik felt just a little fluttery, but
he knew he was safe so long as the little boy held him. He waved his
well wing and put up his crest, but he never let go his hold on the
funniest perch he’d ever sat on.

Of course, Louie’s mother forgot all about the supper she was cooking.
“Oh, wherever did you catch him?” she asked. “Isn’t he a pretty thing? I
never knew they had purple on their necks--just like grapes hanging in
the sun. How do you s’pose he keeps all that white in his wings so
clean?”

“He takes a bath every morning,” said Louie. “I’ve seen him.”

Tad was out in the woodshed, by the pussycat’s dish, snubbing his shiny
black nose against the screen. He was sniffing the hot Johnnycake he
could smell baking in the oven. You know Louie promised him some--with
syrup on it, too. Pretty soon Chaik had his beak pointed at the stove;
he knew what Johnny cake was, because he’d had a taste of the piece
Louie brought to the pond. He was ’most as interested as Tad Coon.

Then Louie’s mother smelled it. “Heavens!” she exclaimed. “I clean
forgot my oven!” She opened the door and took the Johnnycake out, hot
and steaming. Louie took a nice crusty corner, right away quick. Of
course Chaik thought that this was the signal for him, so he picked up a
crumb--and his eyes fairly popped because he wasn’t used to eating hot
things. Then didn’t she laugh! “The smart thing!” said she. “He’s just
like folks. But your pa’ll be here in a minute and he won’t think this
kitchen’s any place for birds--not if I know him. Quick, Louie! Put him
down cellar in the cage so the cats can’t get at him. Here’s enough for
him and the coon.”

Down cellar they went, but Louie was careful to leave the door open so
Tad could run down and see him. And Chaik didn’t mind the cage so very
much.

In fact, he was as comfortable as though he’d been at home. More
comfortable, maybe, because it was pretty scary sleeping in the woods
with Killer the Weasel sniffing about to find his hiding holes. Anyway,
he was too full and too sleepy to think about it.

But Tad Coon wasn’t sleepy a bit.

He licked the last crumb of Johnnycake, and the last drop of syrup
Louie had put on it, out of his whiskers, and was just cleaning the
stickiness off his little handy paws when he heard something that
pricked his ears straight up. “Huh! That’s a funny noise in the
henhouse,” he said to himself. “It isn’t Louie, and it isn’t his
father--I believe I’ll take a look.” So off he marched, stepping most
carefully in the hard middle of the path where the men walk so he
wouldn’t make his tracks plain for any one to follow.

He thought about it because the evening was so dark he couldn’t see very
far ahead of him, but he could smell plain as plain. It was so fresh and
cool all his own fur wanted to puff out, but he wouldn’t let it; he
didn’t want anybody to get a smell of him. Snf, snf, snf! “What’s that
in the woodpile?” Over he jumped, so softly he didn’t make even the
scritch of a claw, then----

“Hey! If this happened to our quail folk out by the pond there would be
a fine goings on!” For it was the remains of a chicken. He craned his
neck to see who had put it there, but he couldn’t notice anything but
the feather smell. “That bird wasn’t killed to-night,” thought he. “That
was last night’s work. It wasn’t any owl. It wasn’t a cat--they’re
horrid, spitty creatures, but they don’t steal. Hist! I’ll know who it
was in about two whisks of a mouse’s tail--he’s doing it again!”

Pit, pit, pit, he tiptoed over to the henhouse. All the birds were
shrieking and cackling. “Help! Murder-r! Thieves!” The ones on the
far-up back perches were squawking. “Spur him! Peck him!” But the ones
who were down in front were only fluttering hard to keep high off the
floor on their clumsy wings.

Tad squinted through a crack. He could just make out a limp white heap
of feathers being dragged. He couldn’t see who was doing the dragging,
but--sniff! He went galloping around and around the house whining: “Where
did he get in; oh, wherever DID he get in?”

[Illustration: Tad catches the rat that was killing the chickens.]

For that thief was the biggest, oldest, grayest rat he’d ever seen, and
the wisest, too; he’d hunted right under the noses of Louie’s cats for
so long he had a whole lot more tricks than Tad had hairs in his
whiskers. But Tad played a brand-new one on him. Suddenly he stopped
right still. “What a cub I am!” he snickered to himself. “Old Sharptooth
will take that bird right back to the woodpile where he ate the other
one. That’s the place for me to wait for him.” In about three jumps he
was on top of it with his ears cocked, listening for the rat to come.

He was listening so hard he didn’t pay any attention when the kitchen
door slammed. Louie’s father was going to take a last look at his barns
to make sure the big rain that was coming wouldn’t do any harm to them,
and Louie was with him to carry the lantern. He swung it as he walked
and the light set all the shadows dancing. Tad Coon didn’t pay any
attention to that, either; he’d learned all about it down by Doctor
Muskrat’s Pond. But the rat did.

Pit-pat, pit-pat, swish. Tad could hear him coming, dragging his
chicken. In one lantern swing his eyes lit up like the headlights of a
little automobile, and he saw Tad’s ears, pointed right toward him. He
dropped his bird and jumped at the very same breath as Tad Coon. In the
next swing Louie Thomson’s father saw the white feathers lying on the
ground--and he saw the fluffy tail and frilly fur pantaloons of Tad Coon
diving down a big crown crock for a drain he was just going to dig.

“Here!” he roared. “That’s who’s been----” He was going to finish
“killing our chickens,” and he was going to lay it to Tad Coon, but he
didn’t have time. The crocks were laid out across the yard, ready to put
in. The first three were so close together even a rat couldn’t squeeze
out between them. Louie’s father caught up a shovel and slapped it over
the open end of the third one.

“We-e-ak, we-e-ak, snarl, snap, scuffle, scratch, wee-e-ee----!” What a
thumping and bumping was inside that crock! Then it was quiet. He moved
his shovel to peek in. He looked into the smiley face of Tad Coon, but
Tad’s smile had rat hanging down from either side.

“Well, I swan!” exclaimed Louie Thomson’s father. He said some more
things like that; the words didn’t make much sense, because he didn’t
know exactly what he did mean. But you ought to have heard Louie
Thomson! “Hooray!” he squealed. “Hooray for my coon! That’s the rat we
saw stealing an egg out from under the hen who set in the grain room
last spring. It’s the very same one. You said he was too smart for the
cats and they’d never catch him. But my coon got him! He sure did!”

“That’s some coon!” said his father at last. “Some coon! But how do you
know he doesn’t kill chickens, too?”

“Because he’s friends with all the birds down by the pond,” Louie
insisted. “I’ve never seen him eat a single one. Not even my jay with
the hurt wing--I’m pretty sure he could have caught him just as easy as I
did.”

“Your jay!” said his father. “Where do you keep him?” He thought he knew
everything there was on the farm.

“Down cellar,” said Louie. He was just a little scared that maybe his
father would be angry if Chaik made a noise, because he had got so angry
when Tad Coon did. “He’ll be quiet--I know he will--but I couldn’t bear
to leave him out in the rain. The minute it stops I’ll let him go
again--truly I will.”

“Hm! First thing I know I’ll have a menagerie instead of a farm,” was
all the man answered to that. “Give me the lantern. I’ll tend to locking
up the barns so the doors won’t blow off their hinges. You take a couple
of blocks from that woodpile and fix the cellar door so your coon isn’t
locked out. I guess it won’t rain in. And put some corn down there. The
mice are very bad again. He’s a mighty good beast to have around--that
is, if I don’t catch him after my chickens----”

But Louie was gone to fix a fine place for Tad to hide from the storm.




CHAPTER II--AN EVENING PARTY AT THE THOMSONS’ HOUSE


Bang! Smash! Crash! Splash! The thunder roared and the lightning went
scuttling and dodging across the sky as though it wanted a place of its
own to hide and couldn’t find one. Chaik Jay woke up in the black dark
and looked around. For a minute he couldn’t think where he was. He could
hear the wind howling, but the stick he perched on didn’t move in it and
his feathers didn’t ruffle. He could hear the rain pounding and not a
single drop fell on him. He was perfectly comfortable, only he felt just
a little scared and lonely, though he was still too sleepy to think why.

Pretty soon he heard a whistle. Then he knew just where he was. That was
Louie whistling to let Tad Coon know he had left some corn by the cellar
door for him.

I tell you Chaik was glad to know Louie was right there, almost beside
him. He began to call and flutter his wings. “There, there, jay bird,”
said the little boy in his very nicest voice, “I won’t forget you. Are
you ready to eat again?” He rattled some seeds on the floor of Chaik’s
cage. But Chaik went on fluttering. It wasn’t food he wanted, it was
company. If he couldn’t have Tad Coon (Tad was still eating the rat)
then Louie’s nice warm finger was the next best thing. Louie didn’t
particularly like staying down there in the dark; it was nicer in the
bright, warm kitchen. Besides, now he’d told his father about Chaik Jay
he thought maybe he’d like to see the handsome bird. Maybe he’d make
friends like he did with Tad Coon.

In about one minute Chaik was blinking in the light of the kitchen lamp.
It was really very much like the lantern Louie had for his feast down by
Doctor Muskrat’s pond, only there weren’t nearly so many beetles flying
around it. That was because the screen kept them out, but Chaik didn’t
know about screens. He had to leave Louie’s finger to catch that first
beetle.

“I guess you couldn’t see to eat down there in the dark,” apologized the
thoughtful boy, so he sprinkled some food on the table.

“Land o’ love, what’s that bird doing now?” Chaik looked up, but it was
just Louie’s mother talking, and he didn’t mind her a bit. He went right
on doing it. He wasn’t swallowing his corn whole. He was neatly turning
back its shiny jacket and picking the little sweet heart out of each
kernel. I tell you he was making a fine mess of that table--but who
cared? Not Louie or his mother; they thought he was too smart for
anything.

[Illustration: Chaik begins to find out that living with house-folks
is really great fun.]

Pick, peck, pick! Every once in a while he would give a shake of his
head and scatter his little pile of grain so he could see the ones he
hadn’t picked over yet. Louie and his mother were just giggling over his
antics; but he didn’t care.

Puff! The kitchen door opened and let in a great gust of wind. It caught
Chaik from behind; it spread out his tail like a turkey-feather fan and
sent him skating and sliding because the table was covered with slippery
oilcloth, and his claws wouldn’t catch. But the door closed right away
and the wind was shut out again. Louie’s father had just come in.

Chaik wasn’t scared--he was cross, he thought they’d played a joke on
him. He balanced himself on his feet and then he gave a big shake to
settle his feathers. He looked around very severely, as much as to say,
“Don’t you dare do that again. I won’t stand it!” Then he marched into a
little shady corner on the window sill, behind the curtain, and sulked.

He sulked! That’s exactly what he was doing. But nobody paid any
attention to him at all--which is the right way to treat any one who does
such a foolish thing. Louie’s father sat down and opened up the evening
paper. It made a fine crackling. Louie’s mother stirred up some yeast
(it smelled like mushrooms) into the bread she was going to bake next
morning. Then she began flouring the raisins she was going to put in it.
Chaik began to get so interested in what was going on he forgot he was
sulking.

First he peeked out from behind the curtain. Then he clawed his way
sidewise across to the plate where the raisins were. Pretty soon he made
a dive with his sharp beak; he did it so quickly she didn’t see what he
was up to. Fine! Chaik liked that raisin. But he didn’t like it quite so
dusty. He picked up another one, but he didn’t gulp it in such a hurry.
He bounced it on the table to shake the flour off it again.

Louie started to laugh. “Shh!” whispered his mother. “Let’s see what
he’s going to do next.” And what do you think that was? He began storing
them away in his nice dark corner so he’d have some left for breakfast
in the morning. He tucked a whole row of them into the crack of the
window so neatly you could hardly see them. He began to find out that
living with house-folks is really great fun.

All the time Chaik was hiding the raisins Louie and his mother were
’most bursting their buttons laughing at him. Louie’s father had picked
up the paper while Chaik was sulking. And he dozed off in his chair with
the paper in front of him all the time Chaik was stealing.

When his wife thought Chaik had enough for two birds, she whisked the
plate away. He couldn’t think where it had gone to, because she did it
when his tail feathers were turned. So he had to look for something
else; he began trying experiments with the newspaper, pick, peck,
picking, to see if he couldn’t get a taste of those little black specks.
He didn’t know it was printing, of course; he thought those nice even
lines were cracks and the little black specks were very neatly tucked
in--so neatly it would be great fun to pick them out again. Pretty soon
he got excited and used his claws. The paper began tearing; that woke up
Mr. Thomson.

Slam went the paper on the table; that sent Chaik fluttering, but in a
minute he was back at it again busier than ever. And when the big man
saw him he burst out laughing--and he didn’t laugh very often. He laughed
so hard Chaik scuttled back into his corner with his crest tucked down.

But as soon as Mr. Thomson picked up his paper again Chaik began to cock
his head. “Eh?” he thought. “He’s hiding, too. He’s hiding from me!”
Wasn’t he just conceited? Out he sneaked. Pick, peck, pick--he tore off
the whole corner that time. Then he got his claws in it and danced
around like a cat on a sheet of flypaper. That man reached out his
finger, carefully as he could, and held it down so Chaik could untangle
his feet.

Chaik misunderstood. “You needn’t be afraid,” said he in his politest
bird talk. “I won’t peck you.”

Mr. Thomson misunderstood, too. He said: “The nerve of that bird! He
isn’t a bit afraid of me.” So of course from that very minute they began
to be friends--the first friend Louie’s father ever had among the
Woodsfolk.

I don’t s’pose you could guess who had the most fun that evening. It
wasn’t Chaik--but he’d have insisted it was if any one had asked him.
Didn’t he just have a lovely time? He found all sorts of interesting
things. He rather wanted to hide some of them away so he could play with
them again, but there weren’t so many good places to hide them. Take
that little shiny cup for instance. It reminded him very much of an
acorn with the top gone. You know what that was--it was a thimble. “Too
bad it’s empty,” he sighed. “Now I wonder where house-folk keep their
acorns--they must have a hole for them.” No jay could go housekeeping
without one. But of course he couldn’t find it.

He thought of burying his treasure in the earth beneath one of the
geraniums in a row of pots on the window sill. Just then he discovered
the coffee pot; Louie’s mother was measuring the coffee into it for the
morning, so its lid was open. Chaik was so pleased. He dropped his shiny
acorn right in. Snap! shut the top. It wouldn’t come out again.

Didn’t he just make an awful fuss? He hopped all around it. He sat on
the handle and he tried to sit on the little round button on the lid,
but his feet kept slipping off. He tried to peek down the spout or to
reach his beak in. Finally he got so cross he gave the stubborn old
thing a peck. It made such a tinny sound he jumped away and perked up
his crest at it. He’d just about decided that was a lost acorn when
somebody got it out for him.

Whoever do you think it was? It wasn’t Louie, and it wasn’t his mother
--it was Mr. Thomson! And it wasn’t just because he and Chaik had made
friends; it was because everything that foolish bird tried to do set the
big man laughing. And then Chaik would stop and look very hard at him as
though he thought Louie’s father were trying to talk to him, so of
course he had to pay attention. That’s manners in a boy or a bird.

He let Chaik peck a lead pencil into splinters to see what he could
find, because that ignorant bird thought the lead was a worm-hole. He
let him peck the button out of a chair cushion, just because it was fun
to pull at. And when Chaik came tumbling off the table to pull at the
shiny tag on the end of his shoe lace--you’d have thought he really
believed he was being helped by that impudent bird. He grumbled a lot
more than Louie when Louie’s mother wound up the clock and made them all
go to bed.




CHAPTER III--CHAIK MAKES DISCOVERIES ABOUT THE HOLES MEN LIVE IN


I just tell you Chaik and Tad didn’t mind that rain. Tad Coon had a big,
dry cellar to hunt in and a fine supply of mice who came to nibble his
corn. Chaik Jay slept in his corner of the window sill in the kitchen
behind the curtain. It wasn’t quite so convenient as perching, for his
long claws got in his way, but he found the varnished back of a chair
too slippery; besides, he wanted to keep an eye on his raisins. Those
thieving mice once tried to steal them. He gave one of them a good peck;
it ran off squealing with one leg up, and after that they knew better
than to bother him.

When Louie’s father came padding in and began putting on his shoes that
he had left under the stove to dry the night before he danced and
flapped good morning. And wasn’t the man just flattered to death to have
a wild bird out of the woods as friendly as that?

When Chaik flapped he got more excited than ever. “My wing is well
again!” he squawked. “Yah! My wing is well again!” Then didn’t he have
some fun? He could fly over the stove and perch on the handle of the
teakettle while Mr. Thomson laid the fire for breakfast.

But all the man said was, “You think you own this house, don’t you?
Well, I dunno but you’re about right, you sassy thing!”

Chaik just answered, “Hey?” That’s all he said when Mr. Thomson opened
the door to go out and Chaik’s well wing brushed against his ear as he
slipped out beside him. “Now look what I’ve done,” said the man who
didn’t like Woodsfolk. “I s’pose that’s the last we’ll see of you.” And
he felt so lonesome as he watched Chaik go flitting off through the rain
that he remembered about bringing back something from the barn for Tad
Coon’s breakfast. He wanted Tad to stay.

But he needn’t have worried about never seeing Chaik Jay again. Chaik
knew when he was well off. He just wanted to take a good flippity-flap
with his well wing to be sure it worked right, and he was ’most afraid
to try it in the house for fear he’d hit something with it. My, but it
was fun to fly up high and come sliding down the air again; it was fun
even if it was still raining.

But he didn’t stay out in the rain long enough to get very wet. He went
over to the barn and poked around. He was a little scary at first about
going in the dark doorway, but after he’d been in there a little while
he just had to hunt up Tad Coon. Tad was so full of mice he was dozing
off to sleep in the cellar; he came out when he heard Chaik calling.

“Oh, Tad!” Chaik exclaimed, bobbing his head and flirting his tail
because he was too excited to keep still even while he was talking.
“This is a wonderful place. That big barn where the cows live is
perfectly safe for birds. Those swallows have left their nests all over
it, and they’re such scary fellows they wouldn’t stay a minute if
anything happened to one of them. I found a robin’s nest, too, a mud
one, but it’s round, not flat on one side like a swallow’s, and it’s too
big for a phoebe bird--I sat in it to see. (Tad Coon grinned at that.)
Besides, it hasn’t any cocoons or moss in it.”

“I thought you’d like the barn,” Tad nodded. “But where were you last
night? I couldn’t find you anywhere. And your supper is still in your
cage. Did you get anything to eat?”

“Did I get anything to eat? Why, these house-folks have more things
stored away to eat than all the Jays in the Deep Woods put together.
That trap where they keep the corn doesn’t catch me. I can walk in and
out any time I want to. (He meant the corn crib; the slats wouldn’t hold
him any more than they would a mouse.) And I found a knothole into the
biggest pile of wheat you ever dreamed about. (That was the grain room,
of course.) And there’s dusty stuff the cows are eating (meal and bran),
and some little wrinkly sweet wild grapes I hid in a special place. I’ll
give you a taste.” (He meant his raisins in the kitchen window.)

“I guess you had plenty to eat, all right enough,” remarked Tad, “but
you never told me where you slept.”

“Hey?” chuckled Chaik with his most mischievous air, “I wouldn’t dare;
you wouldn’t believe me. I’ll just have to show you. Come along.” And he
flapped right up to the kitchen window. Then wasn’t he the puzzled bird?
He could see Louie’s mother moving around inside, getting the breakfast.
He could see the raisins poked into the crack. But he couldn’t get in
there to get them. He walked all the way up the screen, fluttering and
scratching. Pretty soon he perched on the sill and began to think it
over.

“That’s the second time this has happened,” he said. “I hid a little
shiny hollow acorn last night, and then I couldn’t get it again. I knew
right where it was, too. Now I can see those little wrinkly grapes,
right where I put them, but I can’t get them either. It’s very queer.”

“You mean you were in the house?” gasped Tad. “Right up inside it, with
the traps shut?” (He meant with the doors closed; he hadn’t learned all
the proper house names for things yet.) “But that wasn’t safe. What if
that big man wanted to hit you like he did me and Louie?” Tad didn’t
quite trust him yet.

“He didn’t,” said Chaik. “He’s not a bit peckish, even if he does make
more noise than Watch the Dog when he barks.” (That was what Chaik
thought of Mr. Thomson’s laughing.) “Yeah! Hey!” he called suddenly
because he saw Louie.

Louie looked up. He was feeling quite scared because he didn’t see
anything of his bird--not even a little pile of feathers to show that the
cats had caught him. “Why, however did you get there?” he asked, and he
ran to open the window and shove up the screen.

In hopped Chaik. All his nice raisins had dropped out of the crack when
Louie opened the window for him, but he didn’t care. He just ate a few
himself and shoved a taste of them down to Tad. “That happened, too,” he
said thoughtfully as he gulped a raisin. “The minute I stopped worrying
about my acorn, one of the house-folks gave it to me. A house isn’t fixed
for birds. But it’s very interesting--and full of smells.” He turned his
beak toward the stove where Louie’s mother was frying bacon.

“Mmn! Mmn! Lovely ones,” sniffed Tad, twitching his nose around until he
made such funny faces Louie began to giggle at him. He could smell that
bacon right through the window.

Louie’s father came back from the barn carrying the milk pails all full
and frothing. He had more milk than usual that morning--he remembered
about that a long time afterward. He didn’t know it yet, but his luck
began to turn on that farm the very day he made friends with the
Woodsfolk. You’ll see.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” asked Louie in a very surprised voice. The
little boy could sleep right through all the racket of the alarm clock,
even if Chaik Jay couldn’t. His father almost always called him to help
with the milking.

“Oh, I just guessed you might as well sleep,” said his father. “You can
feed the calf if you’ve a mind to.” He knew Louie liked to do that. It
isn’t nearly as hard work either. “I kind of wish I had, though,” the
big man went on. “I let your bird out. He was over in the barn this
morning. Maybe we could catch him again, but I don’t know. He was flying
pretty strong.”

“Hey?” asked Chaik, before Louie could even answer. He half guessed they
would be talking about him--conceited thing!

“That was all right,” said the little boy. “I let him in again. He came
back, just like my coon.”

Louie’s father stared at Chaik, sitting on the window sill with the
window open behind him so he could go out and in. Then he peeked out and
saw Tad Coon down below with his nose all wiggling because he smelled
the bacon Louie’s mother was cooking. “Hm! Looks like we had company to
breakfast,” was all he said.

But it wasn’t all he did. He gave Chaik some nice crisp bacon crumbs--he
insisted it was just to see if the bird really would eat them. And
Louie’s mother caught him right in the act of slipping a good slice out
to Tad Coon. “Here,” she laughed, “there’s no need for you to feed that
fellow. I’m frying up some cracklings for him and the cats.” She made a
delicious mixture of odds and ends of bacon and bread and such things.
But when Louie went to carry it out, the poor cats climbed up on the
shelf in the shed and spat and whined because they hadn’t made any
compact with any coon. So they said. Really it was because they were
afraid of him.

Tad didn’t care. He wasn’t hungry, anyway. Only he liked the taste of
new things. He ate his share on the cellar steps. And the mice, who had
run away to hide because he was hunting them, all crept to the mouth of
the holes and sat there sniffing until their whiskers trembled.

“I say,” thought Louie Thomson to himself as he started off to school,
“I just must talk with Tommy Peele. He knows about the wild things.”
Only Louie wasn’t thinking about a wild thing, but about his father who
used to be crosser than Tad Coon in a cage.




CHAPTER IV--DOCTOR MUSKRAT’S ADVENTURES IN THE BARN


You needn’t think, just because you’ve been hearing about Chaik Jay’s
foolishness, that he and Tad Coon had all the fun there was. Not a bit
of it. Things were happening round Tommy Peele’s barn at the very same
time.

Of course Tommy Peele knew about most of them. And maybe you think he
wasn’t puzzled! The very first morning, while it was still raining, he
came sloshing down to the barn with his tall rubber boots on--because it
was so wet he needed them. And splash! went somebody into the trough
where the cattle drink. Of course it was Doctor Muskrat. He was just
examining it because it was the queerest kind of a pond he’d ever seen,
and he was a little bit scary because he didn’t feel at home yet.

He swam all the way down it in about two paw-strokes, hunting for a lily
leaf to hide under while he peeked out to see who was coming. Of course
there wasn’t any lily leaf. There was no mud for one to grow in--because
Tommy kept the trough too clean. And there weren’t any snails, or water
beetles, or anything but just water, as fresh as the water out in the
cool, deep middle of his own pond. It was a great deal warmer, and it
had a queer, woody taste that came from the rain water dripping in from
the shingles of the barn. No wonder the wise old fellow was puzzled.

The doctor climbed up on the edge of the trough and settled his fur for
a comfortable visit with his little boy friend. But he didn’t stay
there, for Tommy had already unlocked the gate and the cows came rushing
in, shouldering each other to get the first drink. The wise old muskrat
slipped between the trough and the barn to wait until they were gone
again.

That was really sensible, because he’d done something to make the cows
angry with him--though he didn’t mean to. They began snorting and
puffing. “Ugh! What an awful smell!” mooed one of them. “Somebody’s been
bathing in our drink. I’d like to get my horn on whoever it was! I’d
teach him not to do a trick like that again!”

“Mff-ff-ff!” sniffed the Red Cow--she was a big, happy-looking one by
now, not a bit like the wild, scary thing who ran away from Tommy in the
spring. “I like that smell. It reminds me of the kindest beast I ever
knew, excepting dear little Nibble Rabbit. It reminds me of wise old
Doctor Muskrat, who owns the pond at the end of the woods and fields.”
And she took a sentimental sip of it.

[Illustration: Doctor Muskrat examines the White Cow’s drinking pond.]

Doctor Muskrat was fearfully ruffled because the cows made all that fuss
over his dip into their drinking trough. He thought they were just
putting on airs. He put up his head between the trough and the barn,
where he knew they couldn’t hurt him. “Hoot-toot!” said he severely.
“What’s all this about a dive that didn’t wet my fur? Many’s the time
you’ve stepped into my pond. Did I ever snap a word at you?”

“Yes, indeed!” put in the Red Cow. “Step in! I’ve seen you stamping
flies in it till you had it so muddy you couldn’t see your own hooves.
I’ll teach you to sniff at my friends!” She laid her horn into the cow
who did the first complaining with a shove that sent her staggering.
There might have been some lively argument if the wise White Cow hadn’t
stopped them.

“Here, here!” she interrupted. “We didn’t know who we were sniffing at.
A sensible beast like Doctor Muskrat will understand there was no
offense meant.” She lowered her head respectfully and spoke in her
flutiest voice. “You’ll pardon me for explaining, sir, that this isn’t a
pond. The water doesn’t run through it. The wind doesn’t blow over it;
it goes stale as fast as a mud puddle.”

“You don’t say!” exclaimed the doctor. “Forgive my mistake, madam. If
I’d seen the least trace of green scum, which is the usual sign of still
water, I wouldn’t have put my paw in it, I do assure you.”

“Nor we our noses,” mooed the cow, still very politely.

“To be sure! To be sure!” nodded Doctor Muskrat sagely. “A sour drink
makes sorry fur. But what’s to be done? And what will Tommy Peele think
of me?” He was more embarrassed than ever when the little boy came
squeezing in between the cows, as though he wanted a drink, too.

But Tommy had just noticed the cows weren’t drinking. It didn’t take him
long to guess why, but he never thought of blaming his wild friend.
“Why, Doctor Muskrat!” he exclaimed, as glad as Bobby Robin when he sees
a worm, “whatever are you doing here?” And he knocked out the plug in
the bottom of the trough and let the spoiled water go whirling and
gurgling out through a hole. Doctor Muskrat’s eyes popped at that, I can
tell you, but when Tommy turned on the tap and let fresh water come
splashing in, the old fellow couldn’t understand it at all. He climbed
up to examine it; he tried the pipe with his chisel teeth, and he licked
the drops that splashed on his whiskers.

“Well!” he gasped. “I’ve seen maple sap drip from a twig in the spring,
but this is no twig, and it’s no sap that’s dripping from it. What is
it?”

But if Doctor Muskrat was excited about seeing the water run, you ought
to have seen him when Tommy turned it off again. He bit it and he licked
it and he squeezed it and he squinted up the hole, first with one eye,
and then with the other. At last he sat down to watch it, like Tad Coon
watches a mouse hole. He watched it till he got a crick in his neck, but
still he wouldn’t take his eye off it. He was going to know about it the
next time it began. He had an idea the rain was doing it--somehow or
other. He couldn’t imagine a puddle that wasn’t made by the rain.

The stale water Tommy had let run out on the ground made a fine big
puddle for the raindrops to patter in. But by and by the pattering grew
into a splashing, and the splashing into a quacking. He just had to look
away to see what that noise was. Three big white ducks were playing in
it. “Quack!” one shouted. “I got a drowned earth worm!”

“Quawk!” called back another. “I’ve got a grain of corn and a
daddy-longlegs!”

The third was silent for a moment over his beakful. Then he spit it out
and said quite cheerfully: “I had a nice round pebble, but I guess it’s
too big to swallow. Flapper wins this time.”

“Hooray!” shouted Flapper, standing up on his toes and beating the air
with his wings as though he were going to fly. But he didn’t. He just
settled down on his feet again, gave a shake of his tail and would have
waddled right off if he hadn’t caught sight of Doctor Muskrat’s shiny
black eyes staring at him. “Who’s that?” he asked in duck talk. And they
all stared at the brown, furry beast.

“It’s Doctor Muskrat. Who are you, and whatever were you doing?”

Didn’t those ducks just blink their yellow eyes when that brown, furry
beast answered them back in their own language? He’d learned it from the
mallards who visit his pond.

“We’re the jolly old waddle ducks,” quacked the one they called Flapper.
“We’re playing a game of fish the puddle. Since you can talk duck talk
so well, you might as well come along and learn it. It’s lots of fun.
Come on!”

“Come along,” teased another. “We’ll show you all the ponds--lots of
them are deep enough to swim in now. We’ll show you where the apples
have dropped in the orchard, and where the garden snails have hidden,
and the leak in the corn crib where the grains fall through----”

“Quawk! There isn’t much about this place we don’t get a beak into. We
even pick over the pigs’ pail before they ever see it. Just now we got a
drink of the warm milk they feed the calf. Ho! but this is a fine place
to live!” laughed the third, his fat body shaking and the little curly
feathers sticking up so cheerfully in his tail.

“Do you live here always?” asked Doctor Muskrat in surprise. “Don’t you
ever fly away?” All the ducks he knew flew south for the winter.

“We’re not wild ducks,” Flapper explained. “We’re tame. We hear great
tales from the wild ones. Some of them stop in and have a feed with us
most every season. Great tales! That must be a gay life. But we’re so
fat we can’t keep up with them.” He sighed, but he blinked so
mischievously Doctor Muskrat could see he wasn’t breaking his heart
about it.

“You’re just as well off,” said Doctor Muskrat. “White birds are so easy
to see somebody always catches them.”

“Are you wild yourself?” they asked curiously. “Tell us what it’s like.”

So Doctor Muskrat strolled along with them, and fine friends they were,
I can tell you, always happy and good-natured. They made the old doctor
feel almost as much at home as he did in his own pond.

[Illustration: Doctor Muskrat makes friends with the ducks.]




CHAPTER V--FURTHER DOINGS OF THE WOODSFOLK AT THE BARN


If Tommy Peele wondered what Doctor Muskrat was doing up at the watering
trough just outside his barn door, he did a lot more wondering when he
stepped inside. For there, on top of the feed bin, with her fur all
puffed out and her tail as prickly as a caterpillar, perched the House
Cat. And beneath her, thumping very severely, with a fine wad of
pussycat fur in each of his hind toenails, sat Nibble Rabbit.

The cat was whining: “Aw, please let me go! I didn’t mean to. Honest I
thought it was a rat!”

Nibble gave his ears a big flop. “No, ma’am!” he was stating decidedly.
“You can’t fool me. A bunny doesn’t smell the least bit in the world
like any rat. You were trying to hunt my children. But you won’t mean to
next time. I know that. I only rolled you over, this time, just to show
you that a rabbit can fight. Next time----”

“Next time,” squawked Chirp Sparrow, who had his first nest robbed by
that very same Tabby Tiptoes; “next time he’ll set you spinning three
ways at once until your brains are as addled as a frosted egg.”

“Me-waur-r!” begged the poor pussy. “Please, Tommy Peele, let me out and
I’ll run back to the house. Truly I will.”

“I hope these wild things will teach you some manners,” said Tommy
Peele. “Whatever Nibble did to you is nothing to what you’ll get if you
try your tricks on Doctor Muskrat.” He carried her away down past the
gate so she wouldn’t meet him.

“Good Clover-leaves!” whispered Nibble in surprise, when he saw how
gently Tommy treated his enemy. “Do you s’pose he’ll be cross with me
for what I’ve done?”

“Don’t flutter yourself,” Chirp assured him. “Tommy never takes sides
between his friends. Though why he’s friends with that cat, when he
knows the things she does, is more than I can tell you. You’ll have to
ask Watch the Dog about it.”

Sure enough, when Tommy came back to the barn, he put out a handful of
feed for his rabbit, just as though there hadn’t been the least bit of
trouble. And his eyes didn’t open so very wide when Silk-ears and all
her bunnies began to pop out from under the mangers and inside the hay
and beneath the box he used for a milking-stool. And he didn’t have to
look at the dust on their whiskers to know they’d been dipping into the
cows’ breakfast. Some of the cows were telling him so.

But it doesn’t take much to start some folks sniffing and moaning. A
nice clean bunny-paw never spoiled the Red Cow’s appetite. And the White
Cow gave Tommy a nudge while he was milking her that said plain as
words: “Isn’t it fun to have Nibble with us again?”

Now Doctor Muskrat and Nibble Rabbit weren’t having any livelier time
than Stripes Skunk and his kittens were in the bottom of the haystack,
hunting the rats they found there.

A rat is pretty dangerous for a skunk kitten to hunt--as dangerous as
though a small boy went hunting bobcats--but it’s the skunk kitten’s
business to take chances, and it isn’t the small boy’s.

There aren’t very many rats in the woods; sometimes one goes sneaking
down the high grass beside a fence or snoops into a twiggy bush after
baby birds in nesting time; sometimes one picks up tadpoles when the
muddy ponds they hatched in begin to dry up; but mostly rats live very
close to men. (Why they do is a special secret I’ll tell you some winter
night.) So you see Stripes Skunk’s kittens hadn’t much chance to deal
with such big game. They were awfully proud and excited about it.

It didn’t take the rats in the haystack very long to find it was a very
poor place to be. They can eat hay--if they have to--but they can’t live
on it like a fieldmouse can. They got hungry. But every time one
ventured its whiskers out of a hole, Stripes Skunk’s kittens would
pounce on it. It didn’t matter how creepy-crawly quiet they were--a
kitten was sure to hear them. At last the wisest of them thought of a
plan.

“Greywhisker,” said he, “you take one hole, Brokentooth the next,
Scarfoot the next, and Eggeater the last. Each of you will scrabble
about inside his burrow as though he meant to run, the minute he is
quiet the one to the windy side of him must take his turn. That will
keep those striped beasts running round and round the stack. Every third
turn, run to the centre and all squeak as though you were fighting. That
will keep them interested. They won’t hear me make a brand-new hole, and
then we’ll plan how we can sneak out while they aren’t looking.”

Now do you know what that rat (his name was Snatch) meant to do? He
meant to keep them all busy while he dug that new hole for himself
and then sneak out without telling them. That’s rat for you! They
cheat each other just as much as they do anybody else! But the others
couldn’t think of any better plan, so they trusted him.

Only they made one mistake. The skunks weren’t running round and round
that haystack. They were sitting perfectly still, each one with his nose
at a hole. But one after another pricked up his ears as the rat
pretended to come out, and dropped them when he scuttled back again.
Wise old Papa Stripes was tiptoeing around finding all their trails so
if one did get by a kitten he’d know where it was likely to go. “Hm!” he
sniffed. “They’re playing a game, are they? We’ll just see who’s IT.”

Scrabble! Scratch! Squeak! went Brokentooth, Scarfoot, and Eggeater,
each in turn. Each time the kitten stationed outside his hole pricked up
its ears, and its wavy tail would tremble to the tip, and its claws
would catch for a leap. Dig and gnaw, gnaw and dig, went the selfish
Snatch, the cleverest rat of them all, making himself a new hole to
sneak out through. They were helping him, but he wasn’t going to help
them--not he.

Papa Stripes laid his head on one side and considered the case. Then a
sly smile raised his whiskers. Pit-pat, pit-pat, he marched round the
stack, whispering to each of his kittens in turn. “You see the slit in
the old elm tree?” he asked one. The kitten nodded. “Did you notice the
rat path under the chicken coop?” he asked the next. “Looks to me like a
rat hole under that corn crib, eh?” he asked the third. He didn’t give
any orders like “You do this,” or “You do that,” because he wanted the
kittens to think for themselves. But he did show them what to think
about.

Nip, slip, came Snatch, creeping out of the new hole he’d just made for
himself. Pounce! Stripes closed it up behind him. “Now, rat,” he
chuckled, “let’s see you run! And let’s see who catches you!”

“Wee-e-e-ak!” Snatch made for the slit in the elm. A kitten was there
before him. The chicken-coop, then? No! The corn crib! Was Tommy’s
barnyard all full of hunting skunks? A hole! A hole! He’d find one in
the barn--under the grain bin! He raced for the door, the kittens after
him, gaining at every bound, with their father ’most scared to death he
wouldn’t be on time to lend a tooth if they needed it.

That’s how Snatch came to dive right between Tommy’s tall rubber boots
as he stepped out the barn door with a milkpail in his hand. That’s how
the skunk kittens came to flash past before the milk he slopped over
could fall on them. “My land!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
As though he couldn’t see for himself.

They were all three scrimmaging with Snatch the Rat at the very mouth of
the rat hole. They never knew which of them killed him.

“Ee-e-e-yow!” squealed Stripes, prancing in his pride. “Isn’t that some
hunting!” Then back they all romped to catch those poor hungry fellows
in the haystack who thought Snatch was taking a mighty long time to make
their new hole for them.




CHAPTER VI--A HUNGRY VILLAIN FILLS HIMSELF--BUT ONLY WITH FRIGHT


The most puzzled little boy you ever saw tramping off to school on a
rainy morning was certainly Tommy Peele. Unless it was Louie Thomson.
“Hey, Tommy,” he called, when he heard Tommy’s tall rubber boots
splashing along behind him, “I want to ask you something.”

“Hey, yourself,” Tommy called back, “I want to ask you something, too.
What have you done to make my muskrat run away from his pond? And all my
skunks? And the rabbits? Huh? They’re all up at my barn!”

Louie’s eyes grew big and round. “I didn’t do a thing. Cross my heart
didn’t--’cepting to feed them, like you showed me. The coon and the jay
bird are living up at mine.”

“They are!” exclaimed Tommy. “Then I guess you didn’t do anything to
them.”

“Do you s’pose they wanted to see what it was like to be tame--just like
I tried being wild?” Louie wondered.

“N-n-no,” drawled Tommy thoughtfully. “My rabbit’s tried it before. But
he always goes wild again. I guess he likes it best.”

“Now that fox is back by Doctor Muskrat’s pond--I’ll bet you anything!”

The two boys wouldn’t have been so puzzled if they had known how the Bad
Little Owls had invited Killer the Weasel to Tommy’s Woods and Fields.
It was to avoid him that all the Woodsfolk had come to stay with the
boys for a while; indeed, they had even warned the obstinate mice to
leave, so that Killer and the Bad Little Owls would have to go hungry.

Killer and the Bad Little Owls were hungry--Killer especially. He wasn’t
enjoying his visit to the Woods and Fields one bit. For it rained and it
rained, and it rained and it kept on raining. And nobody with fur can
hunt in the rain because the water washes away all the trails; you can’t
see where they come from or where they’re going to; you can’t even smell
them.

It was way along in the afternoon before he poked out his wicked nose
and found the sun was out, too, and the leaves were dancing. But he
didn’t want to dance; his poor skin was doing it for him and he didn’t
like it a bit; he was shivering because he was empty as a drum and the
wind was thumping him. He crept down and tiptoed over to Doctor
Muskrat’s pond. He walked all around it, but he didn’t see a single
footprint. He didn’t even see a frog. By this time he was hungry enough
to eat one, but they were all buried down in the warm mud. The only
fellow he found was the Hop-toad.

The Hop-toad was very happy. Most every leaf that blew down in the wind
had under it a fine fat angleworm who had come up to nibble a pleasant
change from the grass-blades they eat all summer. Besides, they were
simply loaded with bug cradles of every sort.

As a result, the Hop-toad was so full he could hardly squeeze his fat
yellow vest into his own front door beneath his own big stone; so he
just sat and blinked his ruby eyes at Killer and grinned. Who else in
all the Woods and Fields would have dared to do that?

“Hail, Sharptooth!” began the hop-toad in his deep scary croak that
rumbled like thunder in the back of his stony cave. “Have you come to
hear your fortune? You have come in time. There were signs and omens
brewing in the battle between the frost and the rain this morning.”

Now the weasel didn’t know what an omen was--it’s a sort of bad news,
like the dark clouds that foretold the Big Rain and the Terrible Storm.
He doesn’t sit by the week like the Hop-toad does, just thinking and
remembering things. He hasn’t any more education than a pollywog, in
spite of all his experiences. All the same the weasel knew more than to
own up that he wanted to eat the Hop-toad. So he thought, “I’ll pretend
that’s just what I came for, to hear my fortune, and he’ll never guess.”

“No one can follow a wet trail on a cloudy night so truly as the
Hop-toad,” Killer said. The Hop-toad never follows a trail at all. That
was only the silly weasel’s way of pretending he thought the Hop-toad
was smarter than he.

Of course the Hop-toad knew Killer was just making it up. “Two can play
at that game,” he blinked to himself. “I’ll scare him away and then my
good friends will come back again.” Then he said out loud: “Oh, me, that
sounds just like my wise friend Silvertip the Fox. He used to say, ‘The
bones of yesterday lie where even the blind ants can find them, but the
bones of tomorrow--only the Hop-toad knows whose skins they run in.’ He
knew I could foretell what was coming. But he listened to the owls
instead of listening to me--see what happened to him!”

“What did happen?” demanded Killer. You remember the Owl’s Wife lied to
him. She said Silvertip was hunting in the Big Marsh, the other side of
the Deep Woods!

[Illustration: Killer wasn’t enjoying his visit to the Woods and Fields
a bit.]

“He went where no ant ever gnawed his bones,” answered the wise hop-toad.
“That’s why no tooth hunts by Doctor Muskrat’s pond.”

When the Hop-toad croaked these words in the dark cave under the big
stone, every little crack seemed to have a scary little echo hidden in
it to whisper them after him. Killer the Weasel shook to the tip ends of
his fur.

“Is he dead?” asked the wicked thing in a husky voice.

“Who knows?” said the Hop-toad. He knew, himself, but he didn’t want to
say so. “If he is, neither fur, scale, nor feather did the killing.”
That’s true. You know it was Grandpop Snappingturtle, and he isn’t a
beast or a fish or a bird.

The weasel thought a minute. Then he remembered that Louie Thomson had
been living by the pond and those same lying little owls, who told him
Silvertip was still alive, said he couldn’t hurt any one. “Ho,” he said,
“I know! It was a man?”

“Certainly not!” snapped the hop-toad as though he were cross over such a
foolish question. “How could those toothless, clawless man-tadpoles hurt
any one?”

“Oh-h-h!” exclaimed Killer in a long shivery breath. “I know what you
mean. He’s a ghost Owl. Eh?” But the Hop-toad never answered a word.

The beautiful Duck had told Nibble Rabbit, the day before the Terrible
Storm, that everything was afraid of something. Killer the Weasel was
afraid of two things--Silvertip the Fox and the Ghost Owl.

Now the Ghost Owl is a real bird. It is a big white Owl who comes down
from far-away north where the storms grow. At night it hunts Killer, and
the minks and the bad skunks, and all the wicked folk who prowl around
trying to catch Mother Nature’s own children while they’re asleep. In
the daytime it goes off to some river and catches fish. Nobody knows
when or where it sleeps.

Whenever a weasel disappears you can be pretty sure the fox or the owl
has caught him. So the weasel-folk got the two so mixed up in their
minds at last they decided they were the same. They thought the Ghost
Owl was a fox who turned into an owl because it was better hunting. If a
fox died and they saw his bones they knew that was the end of him. If he
just disappeared--well, they couldn’t be sure he did turn into an owl,
but they couldn’t be sure he didn’t.

So Killer the Weasel thought if Silvertip just disappeared and the ants
didn’t gnaw his bones, as the Hop-toad said, Tommy Peele’s Woods and
Fields were no place for him.

“Hop-toad,” he whined, “I know what you mean. You mean that Silvertip
isn’t dead at all. He’s hunting these Woods and Fields in a Ghost Owl’s
skin.”

“What an idea!” croaked the hidden Hop-toad. “Who ever told you that?”

“Aha! You needn’t pretend to me!” sniffed Killer. “We weasels know a lot
of things. We know that no real owl can stand the sunlight. The Ghost
Owl can. Many a mink has seen it diving for fish like a kingfisher in
the daytime. Many a weasel has felt its claws in his ribs in the dead of
night. Yet whose tooth has ever found its magic throat? Can you name me
one who has ever picked its bones? No! Nor will there ever be such a
one. For the Ghost Owl has no mate, it builds no nest, it hatches no
young. It is born in a fox’s skin until the magic shedding when feathers
instead of fur prick through its hide. It never dies. It lives on us
who are strongest, swiftest, cleverest of hunters--we Folk from
under-the-Earth whom Mother Nature herself cannot govern.”

You just ought to have seen Croaker Hop-toad’s side shake at the idea.
He didn’t know a thing about the Ghost Owl, except that there was one,
but he knew more than to believe what Killer was telling him. It’s what
we call a “tall story” and the Woodsfolk a “tail-ruffler.” Only an
ignorant creature like the weasel could pretend it was true. He hadn’t
told Killer what really did kill Silvertip because he knew Killer would
be a lot more frightened at what he didn’t know than at what really did
happen. But he hadn’t dreamed of scaring him as hard as all this. It was
great fun. He wanted Killer to go on talking about it. So he said, “It’s
very good of you to explain all these things to me. I wouldn’t see them
for myself, living as I do under my stone. But if the Ghost Owl never
dies, what becomes of it?”

“Ah,” said Killer. “Nobody knows but the crazy loon. But sometimes, when
there’s a fearful storm, you hear it squawking and its feathers come
fluttering down. They aren’t real feathers, you know; they’re only
frozen. That’s why it only comes in ice-time. So we think--Ssh! Who’s
coming?”




CHAPTER VII--KILLER THE WEASEL IN A WEARY ROUND OF TROUBLES


But Killer never finished. He’d scared himself ’most to death telling
about the Ghost Owl; so when he did hear a sound he made a frantic
scratching to squeeze into the crack in the Hop-toad’s stone, where he’d
been talking, and then he bounced off at full speed for his own safe
crack between the two stones on the bank of Doctor Muskrat’s pond.
“Ah-h-h!” he breathed. “Safe at last! Even the Ghost Owl’s claw cannot
find me here. Tooth cannot bite, and paw cannot dig to disturb me. If
only I weren’t so desperate, starvation hungry. I do wish I’d caught the
Hop-toad. I do wish I’d eaten those owls--but I’ll do it next summer when
it’s safe to hunt here. To-night I’ll go back to the Deep Woods and
stay--if I have to live on acorns.”

As soon as the Hop-toad was perfectly sure Killer had gone, he hopped to
the narrow crack that was the door of his cave and squeezed out again.
He cocked his deaf ears and felt with his little gloved paws on the
ground. Then he began to laugh himself right out of his skin. “Ho, ho!
It’s only those harmless man-tadpoles.” That’s what Croaker Toad calls
Tommy Peele and Louie Thomson.

Croaker could feel them tramping along the lane. Killer had heard them
whistling. They were calling Watch to help them find out who it was that
had chased Nibble Rabbit and Tad Coon and Stripes Skunk and Doctor
Muskrat, and all the rest of them out of Tommy’s Woods and Fields. Watch
was busy about something else, way far off, when he heard them. Mighty
busy, too.

But they didn’t need him. Killer had gone padding up and down the banks
of Doctor Muskrat’s pond looking for tracks of someone he could eat, and
he’d left his own. He’d left a clear trail from the Hop-toad’s home to
his own. “Lessee who’s here!” said Tommy Peele. He tried to lift one of
Killer’s big stones.

“Try this,” said Louie Thomson. He picked up a big stick and poked it
into the crack between them. Then both little boys began to shove on the
stick. Slowly it pried the crack apart. One of the big stones reared up
on end and fell over backward. And there sat snaky-slim, bristly
whiskered, snarly toothed Killer, with his wicked eyes rage-red and his
wicked claws set to spring at them!

Why didn’t he do it? Well, it was the same reason Stripes Skunk
explained to Nibble Rabbit and Nibble tried on the cat. They weren’t
afraid of him.

Indeed they weren’t even angry, for they didn’t know all the harm he’d
been doing and there wasn’t anybody in all the Woods and Fields who
could tell them. Tommy said: “What’s that?” and Louie answered, “First
time I ever saw him,” and they just stood still and stared at him.

Killer certainly was afraid of them. His wits were as muddled as a
pollywog’s puddle when a duck goes fishing in it. First place, what had
happened to his nice safe home? Tooth nor toenail couldn’t dig into it.
Then why did that great big stone flop right over on its back and leave
him without a place to hide in? He didn’t know it was because the little
boys used a stick to pry it with just like the First Man used a stick to
pry the stone that shut up the pass to his little island against the
wolves in the First-off Beginning of Things.

Killer was as bad as any wolf, but the little boys didn’t know that.
They didn’t know enough to be afraid of the wicked little beast who
scrouched down at their very feet, snarling and swearing at them. All
they thought of was the funny faces he was making. They were snarlier
and funnier than any Stripes Skunk could ever make, or even Tad Coon.

“Te-hee,” giggled Louie. “My, but he thinks he’s big!”

“Ho-ho!” laughed Tommy, thinking of the fight between Nibble Rabbit and
the cat that morning, “I’d like to see what our old Tabby would say to
him.”

That was too much for Killer. He did jump. But he didn’t jump at them.
He went leaping off into the Woods, spitting like a firecracker and
looking for a new place to hide from them. And he found--the Big Oak that
was blown down in the Terrible Storm where the Bad Little Owls were
hidden! Wow! But wasn’t Killer mad when he bounced into the hole of the
Big Oak!

He hadn’t more than poked his whiskers inside the hollow tree than he
smelled owl. He smelled other things, too, but he was too mad to think
about them.

“Yah!” he snarled, sniffing viciously. “So that’s where you are, you
lying little flap-wings. Just you wait until I get my breath and I’ll
teach you a few things. You told me it was good hunting here, you did!
Well, there isn’t so much as a mouse-tail swishing, or a feather flying,
or even a frog hopping by your fine pond. Not a trail has been made
since the big rain that almost washed me out of my snug stones.

“And, next, did you think I wouldn’t hear what happened to Silvertip the
Fox? He isn’t dead. He’s turned into the worst enemy we weasels have;
he’s a Ghost Owl and he’s haunting these very Woods and Fields. That’s
why all the other creatures have gone.”

“He isn’t! Truly he isn’t,” wailed Screecher’s wife. “Grandpop
Snappingturtle ate him.”

“Hm. So that’s the story you’re telling now, is it?” snapped Killer. “I
thought you said he was hunting duck in the Big Marsh over on the other
side of the Deep Woods. Didn’t you?”

“Ye-es,” sniffed the owl. (She did, you know.) “But----”

Now if Killer had let her say another word she would have told him why
she lied and she’d have explained that Grandpop Snappingturtle was
gone, and things might have been very different whether he believed her
or not. But he didn’t. He began crouching, creeping toward the very
darkest end of the long log where he could hear the scared little birds
squirming in terror. His eyes gleamed red in the blackness, with green
flashes, as he peered for them.

But you surely haven’t forgotten that this was the very tree where
Stripes Skunk found the honey that helped him make friends with Tad Coon
and Tommy Peele.

The bees were fast asleep. They woke up all right enough when those
scared little owls began scratching scared little claws into their nice
neat home. “Brzz?” they began to call. “What’s happening? Call out the
guard. Shake a wing, there! See who’s attacking us!”

Did the little Screecher Owls pay any attention? They did not. Killer
the Weasel was gnashing his teeth at them and glaring his eyes in the
black dark. “Whe-e-e!” moaned the owl’s wife as she climbed up the soft
comb until she bumped her head against the top of the log, right by
the little hole. “Who-o-o,” shivered her mate, scrambling after her.
“Ur-r-rk!” she squawked as the first of the bee guards got his sting
between her feathers.

She gave a flounce--and the honeycomb broke away. She could see the sky
through the hole! Scuttle, scramble, scratch, and flutter--my, but it was
a tight fit! All the same she did just manage to squeeze through, and
her mate grabbed hold of her tight new tailfeathers and dragged through
behind her. But Killer didn’t!

Killer couldn’t even see to try. He was a regular ball of angry bees,
and he hadn’t bee-proof fur like Stripes Skunk, even if he did claim to
be Stripes’ cousin. He went bouncing down that long hollow trunk,
bumping into every jagged splinter on the whole inside of it. He went
racing for Doctor Muskrat’s pond, just like any other Wild Thing, and
plunged in. Because he knew no bee would dare plunge in after him. Only
the very few whose stings were tangled in his fur wet their wings.

But he hadn’t more than got his head under water than he was in just as
much of a hurry to get out again. What if the owl had told the truth for
once? What if Silvertip the Fox was eaten by Grandpop Snappingturtle?

When he came out his nose was beginning to swell, but it wasn’t so
swelled that he couldn’t smell Tommy and Louie, hunting for him. His
eyes were beginning to close, but they weren’t shut so tight he
couldn’t see them. He turned his head to look and ran right spang into
Tad Coon’s tree. Up it he climbed and out across the limb where Chatter
Squirrel comes over from his hickory when he wants a drink from the
pond. Up that he climbed--high up. He wanted to squint across the bare
limbs to see where the squirrel roads ran so he could follow them
through the tree-tops.

[Illustration: Killer climbs the big hickory tree after Chatter
Squirrel.]

But high up in that hickory is where Chatter Squirrel made his winter
nest of leaves, all woven together and neatly tucked in around the
edges. It’s the best place in the world to hide because it looks like an
old crow’s nest that the leaves have blown into.

Chatter wasn’t asleep. The Bad Little Owls had wakened him and Killer
splashing in the pond had kept him awake.

“Here,” thought Chatter, who’s the most curious somebody on toepads,
“something’s going on. I guess I’ll stretch my legs. It isn’t so very
cold. I’d kind of like to know how long I’ve been asleep--it must be
more’n a week.” So out popped his head.

Scritchy, scritchy came claws up his very own tree. Chatter pricked his
ears. Then he squirmed far enough out of his front door so he could look
down on--the big bulging whiskers of Killer the Weasel. Hm! You ought to
have heard Chatter Squirrel. The little owls weren’t in it at all when
he began screeching!




CHAPTER VIII--KILLER FINALLY REACHES MOUSE-HEAVEN


Chatter Squirrel scrambled up to the very tippest twig of his tree and
there he hung while he told Killer all about himself. “Slit-throat!” and
“Furred-snake!” and “Mud-belly!” were about the only things I dare to
repeat. And all the time he kept rocking that springy treetop until
Killer was fairly seasick.

Did Tommy Peele and Louie Thomson hear him? You know they did. The
Hop-toad didn’t try to tell them about Killer because they didn’t talk
his language. Chatter didn’t try either. He was just speaking out his
mind and he didn’t care who happened to be listening. All the same,
those two little boys didn’t have to know squirrel talk to understand.

But it wasn’t a safe thing for Chatter to do. He made Killer so terribly
angry that he forgot to be scared and he forgot to be hungry and he
forgot to be seasick--all he wanted was to hush up that squirrel. Up he
came, foot over paw.

Up he came--and Chatter hadn’t any higher place to climb! He’d lost his
temper, too. But as soon as he saw what a pickle he was in he found it
again, and his wits with it. He rocked until his perch had a good long
swing and then he let himself go. Out he leaped, all paws spread,
sailing like a bird, then down--down----

Down went Chatter Squirrel. He kept right side up for he had his tail to
help him. There was a big branch right beyond him. One good flick of his
rudder, like a swimming fish, and his toes caught it. He swung right
around it, like a trapeze man in a circus, scratched his nose on a twig,
and then clamped his poor kicking hind feet against the bark. There he
stuck with his poor little sides panting.

Down went Killer the Weasel. His measly little scrump of a tail was
mighty little use to him. He went toes over ears. He never so much as
got a claw on any twig because he couldn’t see to catch them; but he
knew where every one of them was. They whipped him and switched him from
behind and before as he whirled through them. He got a terrible spank
when he found his branch, for he found it wrong side first and went
bouncing off again, bing, into Nibble Rabbit’s Pickery Things. “Yip!
Yeaur-r-r!” Rip! Tear! Blam! he hit the earth at last.

There he lay. For a minute he thought he was dead--right then. Then he
began to breathe; before he really knew what to do next he found his
legs were running, running, just like Nibble Rabbit runs when Killer is
after him. And he let them go. Past the Brushpile he ran, across the
Clover-patch, through the Corn. Suddenly right before him he saw the
stone-pile. Down a crack he dove and pulled his tail in after him.

He found a little bed of dry grass no wind had ever blown in there, but
he didn’t stop to think about it then. He was so weak and tired and
bumped about he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He hardly hit the bottom
before he was sound asleep.

Now some of the fieldmice who ran away from Doctor Muskrat’s pond before
the Big Rain had chosen that stone-pile to live in--those who didn’t go
all the way up to the barn. If Killer hadn’t been more hurt than he was
hungry and more tired than he was hurt, he wouldn’t have had to smell
very far to find out it was a mouse’s own bed he’d fallen asleep on.

The mice knew soon enough, and then of all the wailing and weeping and
sniffing and squeaking you ever heard tell of--well! Of course, they
called a meeting. They held it outside, in the cold wind that was
whistling through the stones. But not all of the mice would come.

One mad old mother mouse decided to stay and run the risk of being eaten
rather than go to new dangers; and one greedy weepy mouse refused to
leave his second set of winter stores.

Poor old Great-grandfather Fieldmouse, who’s so old his ears are all
crinkled, sat all hunched up with his whiskers drooping and his tail as
straight as a sick pig’s. But he was very wise for a fieldmouse. “Mice,”
said he, lifting a shaky paw, “we must not think; we must run. And

  ‘Down wind to flee from danger.
  Up wind to meet a stranger.’

So here is our road.” He turned his old back to the breeze and began to
hump himself along, though even a mouse wouldn’t have called it running.
He was lucky, too, for the wind blew him right into the straw-stack
where all the rest of the mice had settled the night they ran away from
Doctor Muskrat’s pond. They thought they had found mouse-heaven because
the stack wasn’t thrashed yet. But the mice who tried to do something
different, right out of their foolish heads--you can guess what happened
to them!

It was in the middle of the night when Killer the Weasel woke up. The
stone-pile was a whole lot quieter than it had been that evening when he
flopped into it, and for a minute he thought he was back in his own snug
home between two stones on the bank of Doctor Muskrat’s pond.

Just then one of the little mice, who belonged to the fat old mamma
mouse who was too stubborn to leave, began to squall. “Eh? What’s that?”
Killer pricked up his ears. “Where am I, anyhow?” He began to look
himself over. He was bumps and lumps from head to foot, his fur was
torn--and when he moved he snubbed his nose on all sorts of rolly little
stones.

“This isn’t my home,” said he.

But he did find that foolish mother mouse and fished her children out of
their nest with his slinky paw. And he did find that greedy mouse, who
wouldn’t leave his stores. He was sticking in a crack too small for his
fat middle, with his feet kicking in the air. Killer felt quite full and
rested after he’d eaten them all. “Mice are very nice,” he said to
himself as he picked the last of their bones. “Very nice and juicy!
Hunting these Woodsfolk has got me into a clawful of trouble. I believe
I’ll live on mice for a while.”

Out he climbed and went sniffing all the trails until he found the big
clear wide one where the mice ran away from him. “So-ho,” said he. “Now
I wonder where these fellows went to.” Sniff, sniff, he went gliding off
into the darkness, down the wind, hiding in every grass-clump to be sure
nobody was after him, until he crawled into the very bottom of the
straw-stack where the mice were living. How rich and mousy it smelled!
If the fat grains seemed like heaven to the mice, the fat mice all
around him seemed like heaven to him.




CHAPTER IX--MRS. TABITHA PUSS-CAT’S SECRET


In the meantime, while Watch the Dog was busy in the barn, Stripes
Skunk’s kittens came dashing up calling, “Come! Quick, quick! Come!” And
what do you suppose they’d found? An oil-can that fell off the mowing
machine and got raked up in the hay. Its spout was broken off so it
didn’t hold any more oil, but it wasn’t empty. Great Grass-seeds, no!

It held a mouse. And she was squealing away inside, making the funniest,
tinniest sound, like talking into a teapot. “I’m Nibble Rabbit’s friend!
I’ve got something dreadfully important to tell him. Call Nibble
Rabbit!”

They did call Nibble. He came a-hopping. He squeezed in as close as ever
he could get to that oil-can. “Well!” he exclaimed, “if it isn’t the
lady mouse who saved my life when Ouphe the Rat was after me! You
needn’t worry, Ma’am. My hunting friends won’t hurt you.”

“They can’t,” chuckled the mouse. “Even Ouphe’s wicked grandsons
couldn’t. They gnawed my front door till their teeth ached but they
couldn’t make it any bigger, and even their grabby paws wouldn’t reach
to the bottom of it. But I’ve sat here listening and listening and
squirming in my skin because they were listening, too, so I couldn’t get
out to warn you. This is what I heard:

“All the mice from the Woods and Fields are living in the stack of grain
Tommy Peele’s father grew to feed the cows in the winter time. Not just
a few of us, like other years, but hundreds and hundreds all nibbling
and destroying it. Before long there won’t be anything left. Then, the
rats say, the cows will go wild and the men will starve, and the mice
will have all these houses and barns and everything else that’s in them.
But the rats will rule over them. You know what that means. I’d rather
have men.”

Nibble Rabbit’s face was as long as his ears when he backed out of the
haystack. And he repeated every word the lady mouse had just been
telling him.

“Hm!” remarked Stripes Skunk who had been listening with his head on one
side. “Looks to me as if it was time for us Woodsfolk to do something.
Let’s call a meeting. Doctor Muskrat, Chaik Jay, and Tad Coon are still
to be heard from. Here, sons,” he waved a paw, “go bring them.” And off
scuttled his three kittens.

Well, to make a long story short, a meeting they had. But little good
did it do them. The mice were in the stack; they didn’t have to leave it
for any reason, and unless they did, none of the Woodsfolk could catch
them.

“Urr-wrr!” growled Watch uneasily after the fiftieth time they’d been
over the question. “We might do something if we could make the cat talk
with us.”

You ought to have seen the Woodsfolk prick up their ears when Watch the
Dog spoke of the cat. Nobody else knew a single thing about her, but
instead of listening to what Watch had to say they all began to talk at
once--isn’t that always the way?

“What good can that cat do? She’s a sneak and a liar,” said Nibble
Rabbit.

“A cat has no friends--she always hunts alone,” put in Stripes Skunk.

“She’s a lazy, greedy, ill-mannered brute,” said Tad.

“Dear me,” grinned Watch, “what an awful creature she must be, to hear
you tell about her. Let’s have Doctor Muskrat’s opinion.”

“I don’t know anything,” answered the wise old beast, “but I suspect
she’s like these white ducks I’ve been hunting with the last few days.
They’d be dreadful fools to a wild duck’s way of thinking, but they’ve
taught me a lot. Maybe that cat would teach us a lot more. Eh, Watch?
What about her?”

“You’re all of you right,” sniffed Watch, thoughtfully cocking one ear.
“For the first three months I spent on this farm I don’t think I was
ever without one of her claw-marks on me. So I used to hate her. And
you’re all of you wrong, too.” He cocked the other ear. “Once she taught
me to chase my own rats and gnaw my own bones I learned there isn’t a
creature in fur honester or with better manners. She’s friends with
nobody, yet I feel mighty friendly toward her. Man-ways or beast-ways,
she knows more than all of us put together. She could teach us a lot,
but she won’t. Yet if she chose to advise us, without giving a single
reason, I’d do exactly what she said and trust her for the rest. She’s
clever!”

“Well, Watch,” came a purring voice from nowhere in particular (it was
pretty dark by now), “if that’s the way you feel, I’ll tell you this. Be
on foot here tomorrow night and you’ll see the last mouse blow to the
woods on the sunset wind.” The voice stopped. It certainly was Mrs.
Tabitha Puss-cat who had been talking, but crane their necks as they
would, nobody could see a sign of her.

Nibble sat down and scratched his collar with his hind foot, he was that
puzzled about it. “Well,” he gasped, “what do you s’pose she meant?”

“I don’t know,” Watch answered, “but she must have had a reason of her
own.”

“I did,” said the puss-cat voice, and there Mrs. Tabitha stood right
beside him, purring. “Until we get these mice cleaned off this farm I
want to make a compact with your friends. If they won’t hunt me I won’t
hunt them.” She looked specially at Tad Coon.

“By the curl in the bull-frog’s tail.” Tad exclaimed admiringly. “You
are a clever one. Oh, mice, what a lot of claws you’ll find a-waiting
for you.” Of course the Woodsfolk were willing to be friends.

But the cat hadn’t told all her reason. She knew Killer the Weasel had
just crawled into that mouse’s straw-stack. She didn’t want to be the one
to fight him when he came out again. And she knew just when and why he
was coming. That was a secret, too.

How did Mrs. Tabitha Puss-Cat know the mice were going to leave their
straw-stack at sundown the very next evening? Because she knew there
wouldn’t be any stack left for them to stay in, or any grain left to
eat. Up at the house Tommy Peele’s father had just been saying: “Better
go to bed early, young fellow, if you’re going to stay home from school
tomorrow to help me with the thrashing.”

You know what thrashing is. A great big engine comes puffing into the
barnyard with a great big machine that shakes all the fat little grains
out of their thin little chaff overcoats. Tommy Peele’s father thrashed
at the very last, latest end of the season, because he knew those fat
little grains would keep on getting fatter even after their stems were
cut off, if he just piled them up into a nice stack and let them go
quietly off to sleep for the winter. They hide a lot of good food in
their hollow stems; the furry folk aren’t the only ones who get ready
for the hungry season.

“Toot-toot!” whistled the engine. “Fsssh!” it sent up a cloud of steam.
“Clank, clank, squeak, squeak, cough!” went the thrashing machine. Then
“Wurr-wurr-wurr,” its tongue began to lick up the bundles of straw with
the grains all wrapped up on the ends of their stalks. It licked so fast
that the men who were feeding it could hardly keep up with its appetite.
“Whish,” came the straw tumbling out of a long hollow arm with a crook
on the end of it that spread the straw into a new pile.

And you ought to have seen the little overcoats go sailing off in the
wind. But the sleepy little grains didn’t know anything about it. They
came pouring out of the side of that machine, all nice and warm, and
snuggled together in a comfortable sack, ready to be stored away--where
the mice couldn’t get them--for Tommy’s own hungry season.

Watch wanted to shake himself by the scruff of his own furry neck for
not thinking about it. Now he knew what that cat meant. The new
strawpile grew bigger and bigger; the old stack, where the mice were
hidden, grew smaller and smaller. Those foolish mice soon wouldn’t have
any stack left to hide in. Pretty soon they’d have to begin coming
out--but he didn’t know who else was coming! The cat didn’t tell him.




CHAPTER X--MANY THINGS THRASHED OUT


Tommy Peele was mighty busy the day of the thrashing. He had to run for
oil, and monkey wrenches, and drinks for the men, and I don’t know what
else, all day long. So were the men. So was that noisy, hungry old
thrashing machine that kept eat, eat, eating up the mouse’s stack,
shaking out the grain for Tommy’s winter food, and the pigs’ and cows’
and the chickens’. But none of them was any busier than Watch.

The mouse’s stack grew smaller and smaller. Every time a man lifted off
any straw, the mice beneath it dived deep down into the little low heap
there was left, until it really held more mice than grain. And something
else. For Killer was hiding down in the very deepest bottom of it.

He couldn’t think what was going on. The noise outside frightened him.
When he put out his nose to see what was happening, there was a man
standing right in front of him; so he pulled back in a great hurry. The
next time he tried it, he found the big green eyes of the cat staring
right at him. They made shivers run up his spine and took away his
appetite. How he wished he’d never come away from home! But all he could
do now was to sit still and listen.

Awful things began to happen. Whole families of baby mice, too little to
run, went into the maw of that machine, and nobody knew what became of
them. Mice began bursting out of the crowded stack. Some of them ran any
which way. Some of them saw the new strawpile and scuttled over there.
Then----

“Squeak--wee-ee-ak!” That was the end of them. For it hid Tad Coon and
Stripes Skunk and his three kittens. That’s what Watch had been doing.
He’d been sneaking them in there when nobody was looking. And Doctor
Muskrat was there, too, with those three jolly white ducks who’ll gobble
a mouse gladly if any one will kill it for them. And Nibble Rabbit and
the whole bunny family were on guard to make sure nobody got past the
fighters while they were busy.

Mrs. Tabitha Puss-Cat knew that’s what would happen when the thrashing
machine ate up the straw from over the very heads of the mice. But she
was the only one who was clever enough to think about it.

Yet she wasn’t proud. She was worried. She’d seen Killer the Weasel run
into that stack. Where was he if he wasn’t hiding in the little bit of
it that was left? And if he was--well, she didn’t want the Woodsfolk to
spend their time catching mice and leave her to fight him. She wanted
them to do it. That’s why she took the trouble to make friends with
them. So she kept walking about on top of it saying “Mewaur-r-r.
Mewaur-r-r,” in a troubled voice.

“What’s up now?” asked Watch, bouncing over to hear what the old cat was
saying. But she felt so sneaky about what she’d been hiding from them
all that now she didn’t care to explain. She just danced about like
someone was biting her toes on the bottom and yowled. So of course he
began sniffing and digging.

“There’s something else here,” said Tommy’s father. “Let’s see.” He took
up his fork and made the straw fly. The other men came to help him. They
kept the old cat jumping.

[Illustration: The Woodsfolk began bursting out of the straw pile, in and
out and up and down.]

“Yaur-r!” she squalled. Her tail swelled up with fright and her eyes
began to gleam. A dark streak had shot out of the straw--the very thing
she had been looking for--Killer the Weasel! My, but he was going!

And nobody seemed to have any wits about him. Nobody you’d expect to
have them. Nobody but little Tommy Peele and Stripes Skunk’s children.
They thought Killer was a rat, and they just had to hunt him. They
weren’t afraid of men; the only men they knew were Tommy Peele and Louie
Thomson, and they were good friends. Wow! but just didn’t they take
after him!

The Woodsfolk began bursting out of that strawpile.

Paws were surely flying. Under the stack they went, over the engine,
through the thrashing machine, in and out and up and down. But Killer
was smaller and faster than any one. And how he could climb! Better than
any one but the cat, and she was afraid of him. It he could have reached
the elm tree or a rat hole--but the skunks hadn’t practised on rats for
nothing.

There was one more thing to climb--the long arm of the thrashing machine,
reaching almost to the roof of the barn. Up he went. He was way out in
the far-out end when Tad Coon bounced, four-footed, on the bottom of it.
Upsy-daisy, it flicked the weasel off like Chatter Squirrel’s hickory
tree had done. Killer went rolling and tumbling down the slippery side
of the new strawpile.

For a moment nobody moved, hide nor hair nor skin--nor overalls. Killer
the Weasel rolled and slid and clawed and grabbed at the loose straw.
Didn’t he send it flying! And wasn’t he cursing and snarling! The men
held their breath. The Woodsfolk gulped hard for theirs because they’d
lost it all chasing him.

Suddenly Tommy’s dog Watch began to bark: “He’ll dig in! He’ll dig in!
There’s nobody guarding the bottom of it! If he digs in we’ll lose him!”

He forgot about old Doctor Muskrat! The wise old fellow doesn’t like to
fight. He can’t run fast enough. But if fighting comes his way----

Well, he’d been sitting all this time in the bottom of the straw just
nibbling his whiskers because he wasn’t any help to the rest of them.
Killer came tumbling right down on top of him. And Killer was surely
fighting!

Snap! Doctor Muskrat can snap fast enough to catch minnows with their
flicky tails. I guess he could snap fast enough to catch Killer, no
matter how swiftly he was passing. They rolled out into the barnyard,
slashing and biting. And the cat arched her back and squalled, “Kill
him! Kill him!”

A lot of help she was! Neither of the fighters knew where he had a hold
of the other fellow, though they each knew mighty well where the other
fellow had a hold of him.

Flop! came Tad Coon with his teeth all ready. But the three skunk
kittens were before him. Their bright little eyes were blazing, their
jaws were snapping. They wiped what was left of the wicked beast all
over the barnyard, snarling: “You killed our mammy, you did! You killed
her!” They hadn’t forgotten. But Killer’s killing days were done.

He hadn’t even killed Doctor Muskrat; he had just slashed a horrid hole
in the old fellow’s skin. But the old muskrat sat up, as soon as he’d
caught his breath again, pawed the straw and dirt off his ears, and
flopped over to the cows’ drinking trough for a dip in cold water to
stop the bleeding. Then he was all right.

And those men. They clean forgot all about going home. They stood and
talked over what a grand fight it had been. And you ought to have heard
Tommy Peele’s father arguing with Louie Thomson’s about which was the
best ratter to have about the barn, a skunk or a coon.

Mrs. Puss-Cat was so jealous she mi-aued right out loud--but nobody would
pay any attention to her at all. Nobody but Watch, and he hid his grin,
but he shook to the tip ends of his fur, laughing at her. So she held
her tongue and put her crafty wits to work planning just how she could
get the Woodsfolk all back to their pond--without quarrelling. You’d
better believe after what she’d seen of their fighting she didn’t want
any. She did it, too. But just how--that’s another story.


THE END