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Title: The Bad Little Owls

Author: John Breck

Illustrator: William T. Andrews

Release date: February 2, 2021 [eBook #64452]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Roger Frank


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BAD LITTLE OWLS ***

THE BAD LITTLE OWLS

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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
  THE 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 Bad Little Owls]

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Told at Twilight Stories

THE BAD LITTLE OWLS

by John Breck

Book VII

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. The Woodsfolk Learn the Rules about Fire
      II. Chaik Jay Carries Bad News
     III. Mrs. Owl Invites Killer the Weasel to the Woods and Fields
      IV. Fur and Feathers Plan a Campaign
       V. Killer the Weasel Makes a Plan Likewise
      VI. A Plan to Foil the Enemy
     VII. The Cleverness of Chaik Jay
    VIII. Killer Finds the Pond Mighty Lonesome
      IX. Trouble Comes Home to the Bad Little Owls
       X. The Big Rain Puts an End to Evil Doings for a Time

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

    The Bad Little Owls

    She lit above Killer’s head while he was busy eating the robin

    “When a fellow can smell he can see with his nose just who has
    been there”

    The Doctor said Chaik Jay had had too much party

    “Run for your lives, everybody. Killer has come to the pond!”

    Chaik frightens the mice away, to save them from Killer the Weasel

    Chaik dropped from the tree and told Tad all about everything

    The Owl helps Killer find the stump where the mice live

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THE BAD LITTLE OWLS




CHAPTER I

THE WOODSFOLK LEARN THE RULES ABOUT FIRE


“Take to the water, quick!” shouted Doctor Muskrat. “Climb a tree!”
advised Chatter Squirrel, balancing on the tip end of a limb. And they
had the Woodsfolk so excited they didn’t know what to do. Most of them
couldn’t climb if they wanted to, and mighty few of them like to swim.
So those who were there tried to run away, and those who weren’t came
to see what was going on. Tommy Peele’s woods were just alive with
scuttling and fluttering. All because Louie Thomson had brought a
lantern to light his party with. He had brought all sorts of things to
eat, too, and he planned to sleep all night in the Woods and Fields,
in a tent made of one of his mother’s blankets.

Of course Louie couldn’t think what was the matter with the Woodsfolk.
But Tommy Peele’s big furry dog, Watch, who was with him, knew well
enough. He sat there with his tongue out, laughing at them.

When Tad Coon saw Watch laughing he got over being frightened, and
then he was curious. He waded out of the pond and came over to look at
the little sputtery flame dancing inside the lantern. Of course he
thought it was a bug. Most everything that hasn’t leaves or fur or
feathers is a bug to Tad Coon. Bugs do themselves up in very funny
packages sometimes before they’re all through hatching. He put out his
handy-paw to catch it.

“Look out!” barked Watch. “Let it alone!” But he didn’t say it before
Tad had touched the glass with his little wet claw. Before he could
jerk it back the water began sizzling and he got a bit of a burn. “Ow,
ow!” howled poor Tad, dancing around with his paw in his mouth. “It’s
a buzzer with a hot tail.” (He meant a paper wasp.) “Ow, ow!” he
sobbed. “It bit me!” So that scared all the Woodsfolk all over again.

Doctor Muskrat knew all about the fires that sometimes burn up the
marshes, but Tad didn’t, because he’s always gone to sleep for the
winter before they begin. Nibble Rabbit knew something about them,
because Watch tried to explain when he told what was happening to
Grandpop Snapping Turtle. (Tommy Peele’s mother was cooking him.) But
nobody ever dreamed Stripes Skunk would understand.

Stripes did know. He knew the rule of tents because his people were
friendly with the Indians just like cats are friendly with us
housefolk. They hunted around the campfires to catch creepy-crawley
things. He didn’t know the difference between Louie’s blanket and a
real tent, nor between Louie’s lantern and a real campfire because
he’d never seen them. So he was just as pleased as though this was a
real camp and Louie a real Indian. “Come along,” he called to his
kittens. “This is the rule of fires: When the men aren’t walking
around them you can lie down three tail lengths from the light and get
your whiskers warm.” So down they lay. And weren’t they just conceited
because all the other Woodsfolk had their eyes popped out, staring at
them.

All this time, Tad was sitting right squash on his bushy tail in the
edge of the pond, using all his other three paws to hold the poor
burned one in his mouth--because it hurt him so dreadfully--at least
he thought it did. Tad Coon’s always thinking he’s killed when he’s
hardly more than mussed his fur. (He made an awful fuss the time
Grandpop Snapping Turtle nipped his tail, and after all, Grandpop only
pulled a couple of hairs out.) “Oo-h-ow-h-ow!” whimpered Tad, licking
himself between each sniffle.

“Let’s see, let’s see!” said Doctor Muskrat. He began peering at it in
the darkness way off away from the lantern.

“Come up here by the fire,” giggled Watch. “It’s not hurting Stripes.
If you don’t get too close to its cage you’re all right. It can’t jump
out and bite you.” Now wasn’t that a sensible way to explain about a
lantern to the Woodsfolk? It surely is just a little flame of fire all
shut up safe inside of its glass, like a goldfish in a bowl.

So Tad and Doctor Muskrat crept up close, jumping just a little
whenever the flame danced, and peeked at the poor burned paw. It had
just the teeniest, weeniest little pinhead of a blister. When Tad saw
how very little it was he felt quite cheerful again, and forgot all
about it.

Indeed, he was more curious than ever about the lantern. “Where did
Louie catch it?” he wanted to know. “What does it eat? Doesn’t it ever
run wild at all?”

“Sometimes,” said Watch with a little shiver. “Then it grows very,
very fast and eats up everything it can reach. I’ve seen a little bit
of a fire like that eat up a whole haystack in about the time it takes
the sun to set. But men are very, very careful never to let it get out
if they can possibly help it. They keep it in strong black cages (he
meant stoves, of course), and feed it cold black stones. (That was
coal, you know.) Or they keep it in a cave and feed it a bit of wood.
(Watch meant an open grate.) It spits and sputters and sometimes a
little piece jumps out, but someone always catches it. And they keep a
lot in little cages like this and feed it water with a funny smell.”
(That’s lamps burning kerosene.)

But you couldn’t expect the Woodsfolk to believe such things!

Now Louie brought that lantern to the pond just to light up his feast
because there wasn’t any moonlight. But he did much better than
that--or worse, according as you look at it. For by the time the
Woodsfolk had learned a few things about it the buzzwings came to
learn about it, too, ’specially some great big shelly-winged beetles,
with great big stabbing-beaks on their ugly faces. And wasn’t it nice;
most everybody there except Nibble Rabbit’s family and Doctor Muskrat
just love to eat them!

As soon as they saw the light, a whole flock of these fellows came
over from the pond to investigate it. Some of them lit on the glass
and burned their feet a whole lot worse than Tad Coon burned his
handy-paw, because they didn’t know enough to take them off again.
They stuck right there and ran out their jabbers until they blunted
the ends of them. And all the time they kept buzzing their war cry,
calling the rest of the beetles to come and help them fight it.
Foolish things, they didn’t know that if one beetle can’t hurt a thing
even a thousand of them can’t. “Brz-brz-brz!” they roared. “Brz-brz!”
roared all the others, coming to help them.

My, there were a lot of them! But the Woodsfolk didn’t mind them a
little bit. They just thought this was an extra feast Louie had so
cleverly provided. You ought to have seen Stripes Skunk’s children
dancing around on their little hind legs, slapping them with their
paddy-paws. Tad crunched and crunched until his jaws were tired. Even
Chatter Squirrel and Chaik the Jay could see to catch them. They’d
snap a bug, and then they’d eat some more of Louie’s corn; then they’d
go back to the buzzwings again. And the more they ate the more
desperate the buzzwings grew. But they blamed it all on the lantern.

It was a long, long time before they got so blind angry they began to
fight everything they saw. They couldn’t hurt the furry folk, and they
couldn’t catch Chaik, but they did get poor Louie Thomson, who was
sitting there laughing at their goings on. Wow! But didn’t he squall!
He squalled louder than Tad Coon. He hopped around sucking his poor
hand just as Tad sucked his handy-paw, with all the Woodsfolk staring
at him. It didn’t take them long to guess what had happened. And
weren’t they just sorry as anything!

Poor Louie! It hurt lots worse than that little bitty burn of Tad
Coon’s. But he didn’t make nearly so much fuss about it. He didn’t
like even the Woodsfolk to hear him. ’Specially when they were so
sorry. And Watch just whined his sympathy, plain as words, and licked
the sore spot for him.

Even that didn’t stop it from hurting. So Louie ran down to the pond
and stuck it in the water. Then he picked a bulrush and squeezed the
nice, soft, juicy end against it. Of course that interested Doctor
Muskrat. He flopped over to see what root Louie was using.

“Hey, Watch!” he said. “That poor boy has the right idea, but he’s got
hold of the wrong root. Tell him to try this marsh marigold. It’s
fine.”

“Or dock,” suggested Nibble Rabbit. Dock is a favourite remedy in a
rabbit hole.

“No, leeks,” suggested Tad Coon. He didn’t mean to rub them on, but to
eat them. They’re little wild onions, and they taste so good to Tad he
forgets about everything else when he’s eating them. But there weren’t
any by the pond.

“I can’t talk to him,” sniffed Watch. “Anyway, the best thing is that
blue mud you put on Tad’s nose. Where do you find it?”

“Right in the bank here,” said Doctor Muskrat, giving a scratch with
his paw to show him. And Louie didn’t need any more telling. He knew
about that mud himself--his mother had put some on a bee-sting. So he
scooped out a good handful and slapped it on his bite. Then he did
feel better. He felt well enough to remember that he was so sleepy he
couldn’t keep his eyes open.

Over by his tent there were just as many beetles as ever, buzzing over
his lantern. They were still fighting it, and the little skunks were
still catching them. They couldn’t eat another one, but they thought
it was fun to jump up and bat them. But Louie could see they’d never
in the world catch them all. The only thing for him to do was to turn
out his light and then the rest of the bad buzzwings would go back to
the marsh where they belonged. “Pouff!” My, how dark everything was!

“Oh-h!” sighed Tad Coon in a sorry voice; “he killed it! What did he
do that for? It bit me, all right, but I didn’t want it killed. And
the buzzwing was the one who bit him. I saw it.” You see he thought
the flame was alive.

“It’s only gone dark,” Watch comforted him. “It does that quite often,
like the fireflies over in the marsh do when they fold their wings.
But it always shines when he wants it to unless he forgets to feed
it.” You know a lantern won’t burn if it hasn’t any oil. Watch knew
that much, but he was really most as puzzled as Tad.

Inside his blanket tent Louie was already fast asleep.




CHAPTER II

CHAIK JAY CARRIES BAD NEWS


When Louie’s lantern went out, all the Woodsfolk scurried to their
holes as fast as ever they could go. All but Watch, Tommy Peele’s dog,
who curled up just outside Louie’s blanket tent and went to sleep with
one ear open, and Chaik the Jay.

Poor Chaik was in a bad way. It was easy enough to fly over to the
feast while the lantern was lit, but now, in the black dark, he
couldn’t get home. He tried to fly. Bump! He hit a tree. “Ough! I
can’t risk that again,” he thought to himself. “Wonder where I am?
What’s more, I wonder where those Bad Little Owls are?” He began
tiptoeing around the trunk. First thing he knew his foot found a
woodpecker hole. In he popped, without stopping to think. “Ah,” he
chuckled, “this is luck! Mussy nest, though, I must tease Taps
Woodpecker about his housekeeping. Whatever is this I’m stepping on?”
He scratched round, feeling carefully with his claws. Then his
feathers fluffed out with fright. “Great acorns!” he gasped. “It isn’t
Tap’s nest at all any more. This is a mouse’s bones I’m standing on.
I’m in the hole in the dead hickory where they killed Tap’s wife last
year and stole the nest for themselves.” True enough. He had a right
to be scared; he was in the little owls’ own hole.

There was a soft flutter just outside. He held his sharp beak ready
for a fight, but he didn’t stir. He didn’t even breathe for quite a
while. Nothing happened. “It’s the queerest thing,” he thought. “I
should think this place should smell owlier than it does. Yes, and
those bones are certainly old. I wonder----”

Right then a whispering interrupted him. It certainly was those owls.
“What did you get?” said one. “I’ve got a mouse, a pretty good one,
too.”

“More fool you,” said the other. “We could have cleaned up all those
beetles who were lying around and then had a mouse apiece if you
hadn’t grabbed that one right off. He squeaked, and now that dog is on
the lookout for us.” Chaik guessed the mice had come out to pick up
what the Woodsfolk left near Louie’s blanket tent, where Watch the Dog
was asleep with one ear open, and the owls found them. “Give us a
leg,” the owl went on.

“Go get one for yourself,” said the other rudely.

“I can’t,” whined the scary one. Chaik guessed it was the he-owl. “I’m
scared of that dog. He moved when your mouse squeaked. I’d have had
one, too, if you hadn’t been so greedy.”

“Oh, here, then. I’ll get another easy enough. That dog can’t catch
me,” snapped his wife, clicking her beak. “But this thing has got to
stop. We can’t be bothered with dogs and boys and everything right
here on our hunting ground.”

“How can we help it?”

“I’m going to hunt up Killer the Weasel. That’s what the mice ought to
have done. He wouldn’t kill any more mice than Stripes Skunk and Tad
Coon do between them, and if he settled here I can just tell you
everybody else would have to move away--or get eaten. He’s the one to
bring.”

“So would we,” protested the scary owl. “You can’t nest with him
anywhere about. He can climb like Chatter Squirrel.”

“Well, what nesting did we do this year?” she snarled back. “After
those nasty jays pulled out all our feathers when they caught us in
the Brushpile we couldn’t hunt enough to lay eggs, let alone raise a
family!”

Suddenly the he-owl, who was much the scarier of the two, put up his
beak and sniffed uncomfortably. “I smell feathers,” said he. “You
haven’t been catching any birds, have you? I’m sure it’s feathers I’ve
been noticing for the longest while.”

“Just suppose you stop plaguing me about that young seagull,” snapped
his wife. “I like eating them, even if you don’t. It was a good half a
hatching ago that I caught her, and you’re still yapping about it. The
old ones never found who’d taken her.”

“Luckily they didn’t,” he said sulkily. “They’d have shouted it all
over the marsh. It’s no use having the birds picking on us, I tell
you. We have troubles enough without that. Now that I’ve got a full
set of feathers growing in I mean to keep them. This flying about
without my tail is no fun.” He was so full of his troubles he forgot
all about what he smelled. “Now you say you’re going to bring Killer
the Weasel into these Woods and Fields. That’ll make the most trouble
of all. He won’t do any more good than Silvertip the Fox nor Slyfoot
the Mink, and they were a whole lot safer for us. They didn’t climb.
Why, his very mate can’t trust him.” He said this in a very shocked
voice because he was just a little bit afraid of his own bossy wife.

“Teeth and toenails!” she squawked. “Don’t you ever think? I don’t
expect to do any of the trusting; I’ll leave it all to that
whining skunk who’s even afraid of Bob White Quail, and that sly,
slippery-clawed Tad Coon, and that honey-whiskered Nibble Rabbit.
They want to make friends, do they? I’ll show them a new friend
all right enough. Killer can eat every last tail-tip of them if
he’ll listen to me, and just so long as he keeps away from the
barns, the men won’t bother to come after him.”

Chaik Jay heard every last word. Then he heard one of the owls flit
away, but the sound was so faint he couldn’t tell whether the other
had gone, too. He began to move, very carefully. But just the least
scratch of his wings caught the ear of that scary little he-owl, who
was still sitting on the limb outside. Pit-pit-pit, he clawed over
toward the hole. Chaik could hear him sniff. Now he’d look into it and
see.

“Wauk! Waourr!” shrieked his wife from over by the pond. He stopped to
listen. She was fluttering about like a crazy bird just outside of
Louie Thomson’s tent. “Wah! Ur-r-rh, yah!” yapped Watch who had been
sleeping with one ear open. “Wuk-uk-uk!” answered the bad little bird
who had just been going to peek and see poor Chaik crouching inside,
ready for a battle in the dark, a battle which could only have one
ending, a bunch of mussed blue feathers at the foot of the tree.

But the little owl never looked. He flapped his wings noisily because
he was too excited to fly in proper owl fashion.

Off he flew to help his mate.

And that smart Chaik Jay did the cleverest thing--he flew right after
the owl. He knew that owl hole wasn’t any place to hide in, and he
knew he couldn’t find his way home. And the only way he could find
Watch was to follow the owl.

It wasn’t any good for Chaik to fly quietly; his wings were so mussed
he couldn’t, anyway. And he couldn’t dodge in and out of the twigs
because he couldn’t see them as plainly as the little owl. All he
could do was to follow the sound and be ready to dodge if the bad
little bird took it into his head to pounce at him.

But the owl wasn’t thinking about anything in the world but his mate.
He really did love her, even if they quarreled. And he really meant to
fight for her as bravely as ever he knew how. But he didn’t have to.
For she came to meet him, squawking between each flop, so crazy scared
that she flew right past him and all but collided with Chaik, who was
following close on his stubby tail.

Chaik dipped, to get out of her way, and struck his wing against a
branch. He went whirling tail over crest, not a bit like a bird, but
quite like a cluster of leaves the caterpillars bite off for an
airplane to carry them back to earth when they want to dig down and
make their homes for the winter time. He struck a bush and then went
bouncing and sliding to the ground. For a minute he lay there, almost
dazed, his poor little head in a whirl. How his poor wing did ache! He
listened.

“It’s funny I don’t hear Watch,” thought Chaik. “I certainly heard him
a minute ago.” He gave a little raspy whisper.

“Oh!” came a startled voice right above him. “I thought you were a
mouse. Is that you, Chaik?” Watch must have been holding his breath as
well as his paw, ready to pounce on him.

“Yes,” Chaik answered back. “What was all the racket over? What’s
happening?”

“Those pesky whisktails,” Watch answered. He meant the mice. “Stripes
Skunk or Tad Coon ought to have stayed to help me. They’ve been
squeaking and scuffling over those corncobs left after Louie’s party,
and the beetles Stripes’s kittens left lying round, until I couldn’t
get a wink of sleep. Finally I snapped a paw to quiet them and hit
feathers instead of fur. I guess I most squashed all the squawk right
out of that little owl before I knew who she was and let her go
again.”

“And I wish you’d killed her!” hissed Chaik. “Put down your head.
Their ears are so frightfully keen and they mustn’t hear a word.
Listen! They’re going to bring Killer the Weasel to these Woods and
Fields!”

“Great beef-bones! They can’t! They mustn’t! Oh, that’s too awful!”

“But they will,” Chaik insisted. “You’ll see. He’s going to fool us
all into making friends and--well, you know what then! Not even my
nest will be safe from him. Not even their own, but they’ll take that
risk to get even with us because we jays pulled out their feathers so
they couldn’t hunt enough this year to do any nesting. Now do you
see?”




CHAPTER III

MRS. OWL INVITES KILLER THE WEASEL TO THE WOODS AND FIELDS


Chaik Jay didn’t need to whisper. The Bad Little Owls weren’t there to
overhear him, as he’d overheard them while he was hidden in their very
own hole. When Watch pawed the lady owl, who was mouse hunting right
under his nose in the black dark, he spoiled more than her feathers;
he ruined the last of her temper. And her temper is ’most as short as
her tail at the best of times, as you know.

She beaked her wings so spitefully that she ’most took out what
feathers she had left (they get very loose long before the leaves
begin to fall), and set right off to find Killer the Weasel.

Right straight into the Deep Woods she flew, her scary little mate
flapping along behind her. Pretty soon she heard a sound; it was a
faint squawk, choked in the middle. She circled to listen. There came
another squawk, exactly like the first. Then there was an uneasy
stirring and fluttering in the secret depths of a thick, leafy tree.
Dark deeds were being done there. “What? What? Who called?” said a
scared bird voice. No answer. The silence was more terrible than any
words.

A minute passed, another. She perched softly to listen. Her mate
didn’t dare to speak, though he was ’most bursting with questions;
yes, and something more. He was still afraid. He circled and lit
beside her, with the least little scratching of a twig; she gave him a
vicious peck. Poor little fellow, he didn’t even dare to preen the
spot for fear he’d make another sound and get something worse. Then
the first bird voice said at last: “Some youngster had a bad dream.
You should always own up to it, little stubby wings, and not frighten
the rest of us.” But still no one answered.

All the same the birds began to settle down again and all was quiet.
“Ah-h!” came the very same choked cry; then a word. “Help! Kil----”
and that was all. All but a soft thump. In a moment the tree was an
uproar of fluttering and screaming.

“I knew he was there,” said the bad little lady owl triumphantly.
“Killer’s been raiding the robins’ roost.” And she was right. After
they finish nesting, all the robins fly to sleep in the same secret
hiding place, in the loneliest grove they can find. And there they
make friends with each other and talk over their fall trip and decide
where they’ll go when the snow comes to cover up the ground, and hide
the worms, and when, and which party they want to join. And Killer the
Weasel and the hooter owls try to find it, because it’s such easy
hunting.

“Don’t speak to him to-night. Please don’t!” begged her husband. “Do
take a day to sleep on it. Something awful always happens if you lose
your temper.” You see even the owls know that. But they won’t always
believe it. She wouldn’t.

“It’s terrible!” he gasped. “Killer has more birds already than he’ll
eat in a week.”

“That’s what I’m waiting for,” she answered grimly. “We’ll take care
of the extra ones.”

“Oh, don’t! Don’t you dare touch them!” he protested. “The robins will
find it out, and we’ll never hear the end of it. Just think what the
jays did to us. We haven’t been able to fly decently since they picked
on us, way last spring. And there are so many more robins. We’d never
have a day’s rest. They’ll pluck us bare. Do let’s go home!”

“Oh, do shut up!” she snapped angrily. “You can fly back and good
riddance. I’m not keeping you. I can mind my own business without you.
It doesn’t concern you.”

“It does, too,” he whimpered. “Nobody ever knows us apart. If those
robins get just a glimpse of you they’ll never believe I wasn’t eating
them, too. Won’t you please listen?”

But his wife wasn’t paying any attention to him at all. She was
leaning over, craning out her neck, cocking her ear. All she answered
was: “There he goes now.” After a second she added to herself: “My,
but he’s little. I don’t believe he can do it, ever in this world.”

[Illustration: She lit above Killer’s head while he was busy eating
the robin]

“Do what?” he wanted to know.

“Kill----” she hesitated; “kill any one bigger than Tad Coon.” She
didn’t want him to know it was Watch the Dog and Tommy Peele and Louie
Thomson she wanted to get rid of for good and all. She thought to
herself: “If only those boys were gone, and the Woodsfolk hadn’t any
one to give those nice feasts to them so they’d never get hungry,
they’d fight each other again.” She didn’t know they really liked
living together the way Mother Nature meant them to in the First-Off
Beginning. But she knew he’d be scared if she told him that. He was
simply foolish about men.

“If he can’t kill them, why are they all so afraid?” he asked.

“That’s so,” she agreed. “I don’t see how he ever fights them, but I
s’pose he knows some tricks he doesn’t tell. You wait for me right
here.” And down she flew to follow Killer the Weasel to his den.

She lit above Killer’s head while he was busy eating the robin he’d
carried home--only one out of all those he left lying dead on the
ground beneath the roost. She squirmed out to the very tip end of the
branch and watched him every moment while she was talking. “Good
morning,” she said, for the east was growing light. “I don’t need to
ask you how the hunting goes. I see you’ve had a fine night with
plenty of robins.”

He raised his flat, three-cornered, snaky-head, and his eyes gleamed
red in the shadows. “Not so bad,” he answered, and she could hear his
tongue rasp his prickly whiskers. “It’s a great game. But I make the
most of it, because when the robins nest in a flock it’s a sign
they’ll soon be gone. I try to see how many I can kill before they
wake up. I’d have broken my record to-night if a piece of bark I was
standing on hadn’t broken. Did you hear that last youngster squall
out? The whole flock began stirring; the fun is over then.”

The owl’s claws trembled so she had to clamp them tight. To kill when
he wasn’t hungry, just for fun! It was enough to make even an owl’s
blood run cold. But she kept her beak from clattering and remarked:
“Very clever. You’re quieter than I am. I couldn’t help admiring you
because I find them almost too big to manage.”

“Size is nothing,” said Killer. “It’s all just a matter of brains.”

“Do you really think so?” she asked in a flattering tone. “Because I
know a perfectly wonderful hunting ground if you can manage that awful
coon.”

“Coon!” exclaimed Killer. “I’ll show you how I can handle him. Fft!
for a coon.”

You ought to have heard the wicked little bird tell him about Nibble
Rabbit’s delicious little bunnies. M-m-m! Didn’t his mouth just water
for them? But she never said a word about Watch the Dog, or Tommy
Peele, or Louie Thomson. She knew if he made trouble for the Woodsfolk
he’d just have to fight their friends. But--she didn’t know that these
little boys had ever and ever so much more brains than a weasel!




CHAPTER IV

FUR AND FEATHERS PLAN A CAMPAIGN


Next morning the robins were in an awful flutter when they came down
to drink. And when a robin is excited he just has to tell everybody
all about it--you’ve heard them, lots of times, though you don’t
always understand them. Bobby took his bath in a great splatter and
then flew over to talk with Watch while he fixed his feathers.

He caught sight of Chaik Jay all huddled up on the bottom branch of a
bush. His poor hurt wing, that he struck when he went tail over crest
in the black dark, was drooping.

“Whew!” whistled Bobby. “Chaik looks like I feel, too mussed up to
know my beak from my back toe-claw. We didn’t sleep a wink last night,
over at the roost; terrible things were happening.”

“Quick!” snapped Watch; “what did happen?”

It seemed to him that Killer the Weasel was standing right beside him.
He had to sniff to make sure he wasn’t. He was so excited that his
back hair was as stiff as it gets when he wants to fight.

“Well, last night, when it was black, black dark,” began Bobby in a
scary whisper, “we heard a cry, as though some bird were having a bad
dream. Then everything was quiet, and we settled down to sleep again.
Pretty soon we were waked up the very same way. It happened over and
over. I had my eyes wide open a dozen times, but I couldn’t see a
single thing. And my ears are sharp, but I couldn’t even hear
anything. Yet this morning a dozen families report some bird is
missing. You don’t think a ghost bird could have taken them?” He meant
the big white owl who sometimes comes down from the far north, where
the storms grow, and snatches the sleeping folks out of their
pine-tree perches. But that only happens in the winter time.

“It was Killer the Weasel, of course,” sniffed Watch.

“No, it wasn’t,” argued Bobby. “Killer’s been there half-a-dozen
times, but he always leaves dead birds scattered around on the ground
to scare us.”

“Then it was the Bad Little Owls,” said Watch.

“They wouldn’t dare!” exclaimed Bobby, ruffling up his feathers. “What
do you take us for, a flock of sparrows?”

“A flock of foolish heads!” Watch snapped back impatiently. “It serves
you right. Why do you keep on perching there if Killer knows right
where you are?”

Bobby stared at him with round eyes. “If we did move, how would the
new birds who come in on every wind find out where we are? Eh? How
would we get together for the long flight? We robins stick to the
Robins’ Roost so long as there’s a bird left alive to perch there.”

“Um-m,” said Watch thoughtfully. “It would be inconvenient. I see that
now. But why don’t you fly along?”

“My wings!” Bobby almost hopped at the idea. “It’s easy to see you
don’t know what business this long flight is. We can’t all go
together--we wouldn’t find enough to feed all of us along the road. We
can’t afford to spend all day hunting our food as we do here. And a
fine mixup it would be if every bird left just when the whim took him.
We leave in regular turn. Mother Nature gives us our first signal when
the leaves do the butterfly dance (he meant when they turn gay colours
and fall) and our last party takes wing at the turn of the worm.”
(That’s when the worms dig down below the icy ground for their winter
sleep.)

[Illustration: “When a fellow can smell, he can see with his nose just
who has been there”]

“I see,” Watch nodded. “Well, then, we’ll just find out who it is and
nip his tail for him. Come along.”

Bobby Robin really felt quite comforted when Watch seemed ready to
help him--those hundreds and hundreds of birds who weigh down the
great elm tree before they get their signal from Mother Nature to fly
south are a terrible responsibility. But he didn’t see just exactly
what Watch could do about it. He dipped along beside the dog’s long,
easy run for a minute or so. Then he broke out again, “But I can’t
think who it could have been.”

“It was Killer the Weasel or the owls,” Watch answered. “I’ll bet you
on it.”

“What’ll you bet?” Bobby demanded with a sidewise quirk of his
head--that is the way he smiles. “I’m a pretty old bird. I’ve been
hunted by weasels and cats and hawks and foxes and big owls and little
ones ever since I first grew feathers, but never have I known the like
of this.”

“I’ll bet you a bone,” Watch began. Then he wiped out the idea with a
sweep of his tail. “Foolish me! I forgot you haven’t teeth. Well, I’ll
bet you a nice soft bread-crust I can lay me paw on. I buried it
yesterday--to keep those thieves of chickens from stealing it.”

“I’ll take you,” giggled Bobby. “And I’ll bet you a whole nest of
furry caterpillars it wasn’t either of them.”

“What’ll I do with the caterpillars?” sniffed Watch. “Wear ’em in my
whiskers?”

Bobby just had to laugh, but he got all sober and discouraged again
the next minute. “I don’t see how we’re going to decide, anyhow,” he
sighed. “It happened hours ago--long before the sun began to spread
his wings.” (Birds say the long streaks you see in the east at sunrise
are the sun’s wings flapping before he soars across the sky.) “And it
was so crow dark nobody could see anything.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Watch cheerfully. “I don’t have to see.
Seeing’s no good the minute after a thing has happened. Hearing isn’t
any better. But I can smell! M-m-m!” he sniffed softly. “And when a
fellow can smell he can see with his nose just who has been there and
what they did long after they’ve gone. Listen!” He laid his nose to the
trunk of the Roosting Elm. “Killer!” he exclaimed. “Here he climbed up.
Here he came down. Here he walked out below this limb. Here--here--owl!
Bobby. Plain as day I do smell owl!”

“Fur and feathers working together,” sobbed Bobby. “What chance have
we poor birds? What won’t they do to us to-night?”

“Well, you’re feathers and I’m fur,” argued Watch. “Can’t we do
something, too?”

And that made Bobby so happy again he just had to flap his wings over
it.

But Watch was thoughtful.

“Now listen to me, Bobby,” he said at last. “If Killer and the Bad
Little Owls are going to hunt together, we Woodsfolk are going to have
trouble, aren’t we? Trouble afoot and awing.” He licked his nose, as
though he were trying to smell out the thing to do next.

“Trouble afoot is the only thing I’m afraid of,” cheeped Bobby. “Those
owls can’t do anything alone; I thought you were going to nip Killer’s
tail for him. Wasn’t that what you said?” He sounded all discouraged
again.

“Now don’t get flutter-headed,” warned Watch. “So I am. But I have to
get my teeth on it, don’t I? And that means I have to catch the
cleverest, craftiest of all things from under-the-earth. Yes, and the
wickedest. It gives me the creeps to think about him.”

“By the Great Grub Who Gnawed the Moon!” gasped the bird, leaning over
to get a good look at the big dog. “You talk as though you were afraid
of him--a great big beast like you afraid of a slinky little thing
like him!”

And then Watch repeated exactly what Killer had told the wife of the
Bad Little Owl. “It isn’t size, it’s brains. Nobody is really safe
from him. I’m ever so much bigger than Doctor Muskrat or even Tad
Coon. But if Killer caught me while I was asleep and got his weasel
hold under my chin, even I couldn’t bite him back. He’s so small I
couldn’t reach him.”

“That’s so!” exclaimed Bobby. “You’d be no safer than a bird.”

“Oh, yes, I am,” Watch was fair enough to explain. “I’m the last beast
in all the woods he’d try it on. My ears are wide, and my nose is wet,
and my long, stiff coat feels every stir in the grass. I wake up with
a jump before I know whether I heard or smelled or felt what was
coming. But Killer is quieter than a pad-footed pussy. He can hide his
scent like a nesting quail, and he can see where he’s stepping. That’s
why he never hunts fair. He’s all bite and no fight.”

“He certainly is!” agreed the bird.

“Ah, but here’s the point,” the old dog went on. “We know who we’re
hunting, and he doesn’t know we know. We won’t let him. Then we’ve got
trouble down a mouse hole. We’ll hunt him like the pussycat hunts
them--pretend we aren’t paying any attention and be all ready to
pounce on him. A still tongue and a waving tail is the way to trail
trouble whenever you find it. Not a cheep until the time comes!”

And this time Bobby Robin didn’t answer--not with his tongue. He just
wagged his long tail up and down so very hard that his whole perch
wagged with him.




CHAPTER V

KILLER THE WEASEL MAKES A PLAN LIKEWISE


With a still tongue and a waving tail Watch galloped back from the
Robins’ Roost, Bobby Robin flitting along beside him. They were
hunting trouble, and that was the very wisest way in the world to hunt
it. Because the very trouble they were hunting was peering through a
crack between two big stones on the bank of Doctor Muskrat’s Pond. It
was a little bit of a crack--so little you wouldn’t think a garter
snake could much more than squeeze into it. But it held a lot of
trouble. Because trouble is brains--not size.

Trouble was the meanest of all the things from under-the-earth who
came up to spoil Mother Nature’s nice plans in the far-back, First-Off
Beginning of Things. Trouble was Killer the Weasel, with his snaky
head and his cruel beady eyes and his conceited smile. And he was
peering through that crack to see how the Woodsfolk behaved before he
tried a very funny trick the wife of the Bad Little Owls had whispered
to him.

The first thing he saw was Watch the Dog bounding along with his tail
in the air as though he hadn’t a care in the world. “Ho,” said the
wicked weasel to himself, “that clumsy beast would carry his tail
between his legs if he knew I was here!” I told you he was conceited.

The next thing he saw was Bobby Robin flitting past as careless as a
butterfly in a breeze. “A-ha!” said the weasel to himself, “that
foolish bird would set up a fine squawking if he knew I was here.”
Wasn’t he just conceited?

Then he laid his ear to the crack to hear if they were talking about
him. But they weren’t--not a single word. It really hurt his feelings.
That’s how conceited he was!

All he heard was Chaik Jay waking up in the bottom of the bush where
he’d crept the night before. “What a place to sleep!” thought the
wicked weasel. “It’s a pity I didn’t see him.”

Chaik gave himself a little shake; then he tried to stretch.
“Ye-a-a-ak!” he squawked. “Ow, my sore wing! Oh, my cramped claws!
Whee! my stiff feathers!”

“What a noise to make!” growled the wicked weasel to himself. “I don’t
believe he can fly a little bit. Now that dog will make a quick meal
of him.”

But the dog didn’t at all. He just said: “Here, Chaik, let me lick the
soreness out, the way we dogs do.”

“No, thanks,” Chaik almost giggled, because the idea was really funny.
“I’d never find head nor tail of myself again if you mussed me up with
your great wet tongue. I’d much rather have Doctor Muskrat bring me a
blister beetle if he can find one.”

And the wicked weasel didn’t know what to make of that. Chaik was
sitting on the lowest branch where anybody could have caught him, and
Watch wasn’t even trying to eat him!

Instead of that, he went down by Doctor Muskrat’s big flat stone and
barked. And instead of diving down to the deepest bottom of the pond
and hiding beneath the water lilies, up swam Doctor Muskrat himself,
and he flopped on his stone. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Did any
one want me?”

“Ye-ah,” called the bird. “I’ve hurt my wing. And I’m sore all over. I
feel like a mouse after a cat has been playing with it.”

“You do, do you?” said the good old muskrat, flopping over to him.
“Well, you look as if you’d been caught in a hailstorm. Let’s see
what’s the matter with your flapper. M-m-m. It isn’t broken. Just give
it a day’s rest.”

“How about a blister beetle?” asked Chaik. “I feel scary here on the
ground. I want to get to flying again.”

“Fine for fur, but no good at all for feathers,” the doctor explained.
“There, there! Don’t flutter yourself. I guess you had too much party
last night by the looks of you. You’d better be careful about eating.
I recommend a little acid. Try an ant or two. Or perhaps you’d like a
nice red sumach berry from the Quail’s Thicket. I’ll cut down a branch
so you can reach them.” Sumach berry, indeed! You know how Chaik loves
them. Off he hopped, dragging his wing.

“Queerer and queerer,” thought the bad beast hiding under the stone.

The next thing he saw was Nibble’s bunnies trooping down to drink--my,
but they made his mouth water! And he could hear all the birds
spluttering and splashing at the edge of the sand where it would be
easy to catch them! Still, he stayed hidden.

But when Stripes Skunk came strolling down with his three fat kittens
behind him and the bunnies actually began playing with them he made up
his mind. “That little owl told the truth!” said the weasel to
himself. “She said the Woodsfolk were all friends, but I couldn’t
believe her. Well, if they’ve made friends with my cousin Stripes
Skunk, they’ll make friends with me. How nice that will be. They’ll
walk right into my jaws. I’ll do exactly what the owl told me to. Her
advice is worth having!” And he began to prick up his ears and
carefully slick back his whiskers.

He didn’t have very much elbow room in that narrow crack between the
two big stones but the way he managed to fix himself up was surely
surprising. The wife of the Bad Little Owl would never in the world
have known he was the bristly whiskered ruffian with red in his eye
she found gnawing a robin in the door of his den.

When he squeezed through the crack and shook himself he was really a
very elegant-looking creature. His little ears were perked up as pert
as he could prick them. His tail didn’t stick straight out behind; it
was all fluffed out and he cocked it up the way Chatter Squirrel does.
He didn’t slink along like a snake gliding through the bushes; he
arched his neck and he arched his back and he hopped as neatly as a
rabbit. I won’t say he was comfortable, but he really did look
handsome.

Well, the first beast he met was that very bunny who had been locked
up in the cage in Louie Thomson’s cellar. “Good morning, Miss Rabbit,”
said he in his politest voice. “Can you tell me where I can find my
cousin, Tad Coon? I’ve come to visit him.” He said that because he
wanted to find out where Tad was. He was the least little bit scared
he might have to be careful about Tad.

The bunny opened her eyes very wide. You remember Tad Coon was the
fellow who taught her how foolish she was to trust strangers. He told
her that his family ate little rabbits. If this was a cousin of Tad’s
she wasn’t going to risk being eaten. She didn’t even stop to answer;
she just flicked her white tail in his very face and made for the
Pickery Things.

“That’s funny,” thought the weasel. “But maybe she’s only young and
foolish.” So he edged along by some tall grass to where Stripes Skunk
was catching some grasshoppers. “Good morning, Cousin Stripes,” he
said. “I’m your cousin Slick.” (He thought maybe he could fool even
Stripes, just a little, because he looked so different.) “Won’t you
introduce me to your friends? I’m tired of living in the Deep Woods. I
want to be good and happy like the rest of you.” (That’s what the Bad
Little Owl had told him to say.)

Stripes was most as scared as the bunny. But he could see something
the bunny didn’t see--something the wicked weasel didn’t see, either.
For that good old dog Watch was standing right behind him. And he
looked different, too. He wasn’t sleek and good-tempered any more. He
was red-eyed and bristly, thinking about what the weasel had done to
the poor robins. He didn’t take a step, or Killer’s sharp ears would
have heard him. He crouched for a great big spring, and then----

[Illustration: The Doctor said Chaik had had too much party and
should be careful about eating]




CHAPTER VI

A PLAN TO FOIL THE ENEMY


“Aough-ah!” came a sound from the little blanket tent Everybody
looked. Then Stripes and Watch both knew what it was; Louie Thomson
was waking up inside of it. And in the next instant, Watch the Dog and
Stripes Skunk were staring at each other all alone. Killer wasn’t
there at all!

“Oh!” gasped Stripes. “Where has he gone?” He began turning round and
round, trying to see what had become of the wicked beast.

“Where has who gone? What do you mean?” asked Watch. For the wise dog
was pretending he hadn’t even seen him.

“My cousin,” Stripes explained, feeling scarier and scarier. “He came
to visit me. Isn’t it too bad I hadn’t a chance to say good-bye to
him?”

“Say good-bye to him?” said the dog, wagging his wavy tail in a joking
way. “How could you say good-bye to any one who wasn’t here? I’ve been
here all the time, but I’m not your cousin.”

“Then I’ll say good-bye to you instead.” Stripes’s teeth were almost
chattering. “I’m going. Give my regards to my cousin if you should
happen to see him.”

“Wherever are you going?” asked Watch. He was really puzzled by this
time.

“I’m going----” Stripes couldn’t think for a minute where he was
going. He just wasn’t going to stay in the Woods and Fields now that
that bad beast had come. “I’m going with Bobby Robin on the long
flight,” he said at last. Which was very foolish because he couldn’t
begin to run fast enough to keep up with a bird when it was flying.
Even Nibble Rabbit can’t. But he humped himself off in a great hurry,
so scared that his hair was all bristling.

You know where Killer hid when Louie gave that big noisy yawn? He just
slid back into his narrow crack between the two big stones. “I’m
safe,” he sniffed to himself. “Nobody can get me out of here--not even
that foolish dog. This rock is too hard digging for anybody’s
toenails.” He felt shivery all right enough. Because scary folk aren’t
all bad, but, deep down inside them, bad ones are always scary.

In a minute he began to hear his cousin Stripes Skunk asking Watch the
Dog where he’d gone to.

He squinted through his crack to see how soon they were going, and
what do you think he saw? He saw Louie Thomson. Yes, even if Louie
didn’t see him, he saw Louie squirm out from under his blanket tent.
First came his tously head; then came his shoulders. “Whoever in all
the woods is that?” thought the weasel, and his eyes began to pop.

Killer tried to listen and then he tried to sniff in the direction of
Louie Thomson because he just couldn’t believe his eyes. Suddenly
Louie scrambled to his feet and stood up. The weasel’s hair stood up,
too. Now he understood. “It’s a man!” he hissed, and he ground his
teeth in a rage. “That’s what I get for listening to the owl. She
knows we’re deadly enemies. Just let me get out of this hole without
being seen, and I’ll hustle back to the Deep Woods in two long bounces
and a tailflip. But I’ll give that lying little bird a lick with my
tongue that won’t smooth her feathers!” He felt so hateful that he
tried to grip his own claws into the hard stone.

Louie Thomson washed himself and dug a root, and then he went up to
his house to see if his mother had saved him any civilized breakfast.
Watch took a good, long lap of water and then he sniffed about.
“Wonder where everybody’s gone?” he puzzled. “I guess I’ll get some
breakfast up at Louie’s house. They’ll be all through long ago at
Tommy’s.” So off they strolled. And the pond was quieter yet--there
wasn’t anybody there at all.

That is, anybody but Killer the Weasel, down in his nice, safe crack.
And he didn’t make any noise, either. He’d gone off to sleep. He
sleeps in the daytime, anyway, and he slept very soundly because there
wasn’t a sound to waken him.

There wasn’t a pat, or a flutter, or a chirp, or a squeak, or even a
sneeze, because there wasn’t any one to make them. Not even a
fieldmouse! This is what happened: You remember Doctor Muskrat
prescribed sumach berries for poor Chaik Jay. He even went over to the
Quail’s Thicket and cut down a couple of stalks with his chisel teeth.
They’re very nice, though a bit seedy for us--but that’s exactly what
the birds like--so he took a taste or two himself while he watched
Chaik gulp a fine crawful.

“Well, Chaik,” he said at last, “I guess Nibble Rabbit can look after
you now. I’ve got a couple of things back at the pond I must attend
to.”

“Don’t go back there,” fluttered Chaik, suddenly remembering. “I
overheard the Bad Little Owls, last night, just before I got hurt.
They say Killer the Weasel is coming to our Woods and Fields. Whatever
will we do about it?”

“Time enough to think about it when he comes,” said the old muskrat
comfortably. “No wonder you tumbled off your perch, if you had a dream
like that.”

And that was the very minute when the baby bunny came bounding in.
“Daddy Rabbit,” she squealed, “there’s a strange beast down by the
pond!”

“There! Maybe you think she’s dreaming, too!” cheeped Chaik
triumphantly. “It’s Killer, sure as sure! What did he look like?”

Now you remember how Killer fixed himself all up, the way the owl’s
wife had told him to, when he tried to make friends with the
Woodsfolk. “Eh?” said Nibble, when the bunny finished telling about
him, “that’s never Killer.”

“Then who is it?” asked the sensible muskrat. “There’s no such animal
as that in all the woods--not that I ever heard tell of.”

[Illustration: “Run for your lives, everybody. Killer has come to the
pond!”]

But before even Chaik could answer him, in galloped Stripes Skunk.
“Hey! Where are my kittens?” he gasped. “Call your bunnies, Nibble!
Run for your lives, everybody. Killer has come to the pond!”

And Doctor Muskrat and Nibble Rabbit and Nibble’s mate and all her
bunnies, and Stripes’s own kittens, who came gliding through the
tunnels under the Pickery Things, looked at each other with their eyes
as big and round as so many thorn apples, they were so scared.

Chaik Jay was the first to speak. “Poor me!” he wailed. “He’ll eat me
before sunset. My wing simply won’t fly. I can’t make it.”

“Can’t you hang on by somebody’s fur and come along?” suggested Nibble
anxiously.

“It’s too slippery,” sighed poor Chaik. “I’d slip off and get hurt
again.”

“Listen here, Chaik,” said Doctor Muskrat. “Your claws can still
climb. This thicket is full of little, fine twigs that won’t begin to
hold up Killer. He’s as heavy as I am. Couldn’t you hop up and perch
in the middle of them?”

“Yes,” exclaimed Nibble enthusiastically. “And the Pickery Things have
thorns all over them. They pick as hard on the top as they do on the
bottom. Killer hates them.”

Chaik tried. And he found he could move a great deal better than he
could that morning. He slipped and stumbled and scrambled and flapped
his well wing, and squawked as softly as he could when he bumped his
sore one, but climb he did. “Flit along,” he chirped cheerfully in a
minute; “I wouldn’t ask a better place to perch in.” He didn’t feel as
cheerful as he sounded, but he didn’t want them to get into trouble by
waiting for him.

“All right,” thumped Nibble with his furry feet. That’s safer than
whispering. Then he remembered. “But where are we going? To the marsh
on the far-away side of the Deep Woods, where the sun goes to sleep?”
The Woodsfolk didn’t know that the sun went a great deal farther than
that. The near side of that marsh was as far as any of them had gone.

“We can’t run fast enough,” mourned Stripes. “He’d catch up with us
before very long.”

“An I can’t run at all,” said the fat old muskrat. “I’d better go back
and trust the water to hide me from him.”

“Nonsense!” sniffed Stripes. “I’ve seen him swim. We’ll all run across
the Broad Field as fast as we can--he hates to leave the woods worse
than anything----”

“Yes,” interrupted Nibble, flicking his long ears as a bright idea
struck him. “We’ll cross the Broad Field and we’ll hide by Tommy
Peele’s barn. There’s food and water for every one. We’ll treat him as
I told the fieldmice to treat you when you were fighting them--we’ll
run off and leave him alone!” And he twiddled his tufty tail just to
show how pleased he felt over his bright idea.




CHAPTER VII

THE CLEVERNESS OF CHAIK JAY


Poor Chaik Jay felt a lot sadder than he looked when he saw the
Woodsfolk go skipping across the Broad Field one at a time so nobody
would notice them, on the way to Tommy Peele’s barn.

But he was a pretty sensible bird. “I’m glad they’re gone,” he said to
himself. “That was a fine idea of Nibble Rabbit’s to go away. Killer
won’t stay here long if he finds there isn’t any hunting.”

Pretty soon he was very busy exercising his stiff wing and thinking:
“I can reach every sumach berry in this thicket. They’re fine eating.
I feel better every minute. I’ll be able to fly before very long--if I
can’t fly across the Broad Field to-night I’ll surely be able to do it
in the morning.” He really did feel better. That was the funny part of
it. It wasn’t long before he had his feathers all prinked up and his
crest perked as sassy as if he were going courting.

“It’s too bad about those foolish mice,” he thought to himself. “The
bad old weasel can live on them for a long time if there’s nobody else
here to hunt them.” He thought harder than ever. “It would be nicer
yet,” he said after another minute, “if the mice would go, too. Killer
can’t eat clams and snails and bugs and roots and such things like the
rest of us Woodsfolk. He’d have to go away.”

But how could Chaik do that--just one lone bluejay with a hurt wing?
He kept on thinking, all the same; he thought so hard his head needed
scratching. At last he began to have an idea. “Isn’t it a lucky thing
they did leave me here? I can talk more bird and beast talk than any
one else in all the Woods and Fields, except Miau the Catbird. I wish
he’d happen along, I do. I could use him. If we could warn all the
birds, Killer would never be able to catch one. But the mice----”

And just them someone did happen along. It wasn’t Miau, but--but,
listen! It was the hoptoad! You know him--so terrible scary-ugly, but
nice as anything--the one who found Nibble Rabbit’s lost bunny. Well,
the hoptoad called, in his funny, gulpy voice, “Chirpy, Chaik Jay! Do
you see anything of the rain?” He loves rain because it makes the
wings of the bugs all waterlogged and it’s easy to catch them.

“Chirpy, Croaker Toad,” Chaik answered, “I can’t see a sign of it.”

“It’s coming, all the same,” gulped Croaker. “Floods of it. I feel
it.”

“It is?” asked Chaik eagerly. “Mice, oh, mice! How they hate it!” And
he bounced on his perch until Croaker Toad stared with his big round
eyes. But a lot Chaik cared!

He carried on at such a rate that a big saw-billed duck slanted down
to see what was the matter. “It’s going to rain,” he sang, looking
mischievously at the duck, his feathers all puffed out from laughing.

“Of course it’s going to rain,” quacked the duck, making a gawpy face
with his long red bill that set Chaik giggling all over again. “It’s
going to rain hard, and it’s going to rain soon. You won’t find it a
laughing matter, old soggy feathers.” (A duck never forgets to tease
the other birds about not having a nice water-proof coat, you know.)
And off he flew.

[Illustration: Chaik frightens the mice away to save them from Killer
the Weasel]

But Chaik Jay didn’t care a wormy thorn apple what the duck thought
about him. He was just waiting for a fieldmouse. The very first time
he heard one stirring out in the thicket he called: “Hey! Who’s there?
Is that you, Nibble Rabbit?” He knew it wasn’t Nibble, because Nibble
had gone away, but he said it on purpose.

“No,” came the answer; “it’s Scritch Mouse.” But I tell you he felt
kind of flattered at being taken for someone as big and important as a
rabbit. “I haven’t seen or heard anything of him since this morning.”

“Chirk-cheree!” exclaimed Chaik impatiently. “I do wish he’d come.
Won’t you peek in his hole for me and see if he’s there? I want to get
along myself before it comes.”

“Before what comes?” asked the mouse. “I’m perfectly sure he isn’t
there.”

“Before the rain, of course,” answered the clever bird. “Every one
else has run away, but I was to wait and warn him. There’s the most
terrible rain coming--I just heard about it from the saw-billed duck.”
(No mouse would ever dare to ask questions of a saw-bill for
himself--the bird would eat him as easy as quack at him, so Chaik went
right on adding to it.) “The birds coming down from the north had to
swim two days instead of flying. It’s going to flood these Woods and
Fields from the Brushpile to the Robins’ Roosting Tree--maybe worse.
It’s the worst----”

“Well,” interrupted the mouse, “it’s a funny thing nobody told us.”

“Oh, nobody told me not to tell you,” said Chaik. “But you haven’t
been very friendly with the Woodsfolk lately, have you?”

Scritch ran as fast as his claws could catch on the ground. He went
straight to the stump where Great-grandfather Fieldmouse, who’s so old
his ears are crinkly, lives with all his family. Every one was taking
an afternoon nap when he bounced right in and woke them. “Quick,
quick!” he squeaked. “An awful thing is happening. We must run!”

Great-grandfather Fieldmouse raised his rumply head and blinked at
him. “Eh? What? Who’s that? Was any one chasing you?” he asked.

“No,” said Scritch. “It’s worse than that. Hurry! The rest of the
Woodsfolk have gone already--every last one.”

“Ho, they left because they’re afraid of Killer the Weasel,” sniffed
the old fieldmouse. “But we’re not going. He can’t eat many more of us
than they do themselves. He isn’t like a bear who could tear this
stump right open and kill us all--but you don’t know about that. Bears
were long before your time.” They were long before Great-grandfather
Fieldmouse’s time, too, but he’s always pretending. The fat old fellow
set to combing his rumpled head with a stiff hind paw.

“That isn’t why they’ve gone,” squealed Scritch triumphantly. “They
just pretended that it was. They’ve gone because the ducks say there’s
a terrible storm coming. They say they had to swim in it for two days
instead of flying. They say Doctor Muskrat’s Pond is going to grow so
fast it will swallow up the Woods and Fields, and we’ll all be
drowned!”

“That’s what they tell you,” sneered the old mouse. “They don’t like
to own up that they’re afraid of a little beast like Killer.”

“But they didn’t mean to. It was Chaik Jay. He thought I was Nibble
Rabbit.” My, but wasn’t Scritch proud when he remembered Chaik took
him for Nibble! “And Chaik said they didn’t warn us because we weren’t
friends.”

“They didn’t, didn’t they?” snarled the old mouse. “We’ll show them if
we’ll stay here and be drowned.” That settled it. In less than an hour
Chaik saw the last mouse tail go trooping into the cornfield.

“Chay!” he laughed. “Now, Killer, you’ll have a hard time finding
anything to eat around this pond. I’ll give you two days to go back to
the Deep Woods where you belong. And you’ll be a whole lot thinner
than when you came, old slinky-sides.”

It was true, there wasn’t a single bit of fur for Killer to put his
teeth into when he woke up from his daytime sleep and went hunting.
But Chaik was determined Killer wouldn’t make his supper off a bird,
either. Every time one lit to drink at Doctor Muskrat’s Pond Chaik
would send it away.

He told some one reason for leaving and some another, just whatever he
thought would scare them the most. Once a whole flock of gorgeous
little fellows swooped down and he was puzzled. They were warblers
from the far-away south; they come up north every summer, but they live
all by themselves and speak their own language, so none of the
northern birds can talk to them at all. “Now, how in the world can I
frighten those silly little spiggoty birds?” he mused with his head on
one side, most discouraged. “They won’t listen to reason.”

Suddenly he began chuckling to himself. “If they can’t talk my talk
they can’t talk the marsh hawk’s, either.” He practised quietly for a
minute or two. Then he began to shout the hawk’s hunting call.
“Kee-yah!” he squawked. “Kee-yah!” And you should have heard those
warblers flutter their wings. They flew off without even stopping to
look behind them.

It was really a fine imitation. It fooled more than the scary little
spiggoty birds. It fooled the marsh hawk himself. He woke up on his
perch down in the bulrushes where he dozes until the mice begin to
stir for their suppers. He thought surely it was one of his sons who
was hunting with his mother over in the Big Marsh, on the far-away
side of the Deep Woods, where the Woodsfolk think the sun goes to
sleep. “What’s he doing here?” wondered the old bird. “Surely his
mother never sent him to tell me we were going to start south ahead of
the storm.” And up he flew, craning his neck all around and calling.

Of course Chaik knew better than to answer. He dropped down under the
leaves of the pickery thorn tree of the Quail’s Thicket and hid from
the hawk by scrambling around its trunk, keeping always on the
opposite side of it. “Lucky thing for me Killer the Weasel isn’t on
the prowl for me right now,” he thought. “I believe this is a poor
place to sleep. These leaves will let in ever so much rain, and if the
owls should take to hunting me from above and Killer from below they
wouldn’t be very long about catching me.”

Just then his heart ’most stopped beating; he heard a rustling beneath
him--right at the very foot of the tree he was hiding on. He squinched
himself flat tight against the bark so he looked like nothing more
than a bumpy knothole and peeked--into the smiling face of Tad Coon.

[Illustration: Chaik dropped from the tree and told Tad all about
everything]




CHAPTER VIII

KILLER FINDS THE POND MIGHTY LONESOME


“Tad Coon!” gasped Chaik Jay. “What are you doing here? My, but I’m
glad you came.” And he dropped down from the trunk of the pickery
thorn tree.

He told Tad all about everything; how the other Woodsfolk had gone up
to stay at Tommy Peele’s barn while Killer lived at the pond, and how
he’d fooled the mice into leaving it, and scared the birds so the
wicked beast wouldn’t find a thing to eat when he did wake up except
crawfish and snails, and angleworms, and he doesn’t like them.

“Te-hee!” snickered Tad into his fur, because he was trying not to
make any noise about it. “That’s a wonderful joke. How hungry he’s
going to be! And hunger bites the inside of your ribs worse than the
Buzzers with hot tails I shook down on Trailer the Hound bite the
outside of them. Not a thing can he eat anywhere around unless he
tries to catch the hawk. I believe I’ll paddle out to his perch and
warn him.”

“Yes,” cheeped Chaik, in a discouraged voice, “or unless he catches
me. I still can’t use my wing.”

“Oh, you can come up to the barn,” said Tad easily. “There are lots of
fine places to perch in.”

“But I can’t get there,” Chaik explained.

“Sure you can,” Tad grinned. “I came down here with Louie Thomson.
Watch the Dog said he was coming after his little skin tree he sleeps
in. (Tad meant Louie’s blanket tent, you know.) He’s going to live
with the house folks until after the big storm that’s coming. Just let
him catch you and he’ll take you home and feed you till you can fly.”

“Oh, no! Oh, no! I wouldn’t dare do that! Not even with Tommy Peele,”
fluttered Chaik. “I couldn’t stand being locked up.”

“Locked up! How long do you s’pose you’d be locked up while I was
running around with my handy-paws? It’s better than being eaten, isn’t
it?” Tad demanded.

“Ye-es,” chirped the bird, rather doubtfully.

“Then get on a branch and flutter so he’ll see you,” ordered Tad, as
cheerfully as though it were the most natural thing in the world for
birds to let themselves be caught by their little boy friends.

So Chaik hopped and sidled out to the tip of a bough where Louie could
see him.

The little boy couldn’t have helped finding him, for there sat Tad
Coon right beneath him, with his sniffy black nose turned up, pointing
straight at him. And Chaik Jay was fluttering in a scared way.

“You rascally old thing!” scolded Louie. Of course he thought Tad was
the one the pretty blue bird was afraid of; he never dreamed any one
would be afraid of him any more, because he never dreamed of hurting
his wild friends. “Is that the kind of a beast you are? You’re all
right while you know you can’t catch him, but the minute he can’t fly
you want to eat him. Well, I won’t let you. If you’re so hungry you
can’t wait till supper time you can go catch yourself a frog!”

A lot Tad cared! He knew Louie wouldn’t hurt him, and he didn’t know
what the scolding was about--he guessed maybe Louie thought someone
had hurt Chaik’s wing on purpose. He just winked the tips of his ears
to cheer up the bird when the little boy reached out his hand to take
him.

It was a very gentle hand.

It tried very softly to untangle Chaik’s feet from the branch. Before
either of them knew just exactly how it happened Chaik found himself
holding on very tight to Louie’s soft, warm finger instead of the
rough wood, balancing himself with his well wing. And suddenly he
found he wasn’t scared any more. He felt perfectly safe and happy. And
you know how Louie Thomson would feel! He was so pleased and proud he
just couldn’t get home fast enough to show his mother.

Do you know how happy Chaik Jay felt when he went riding up the lane
perched on Louie’s finger? He felt so happy he got actually impudent.
He looked up at the marsh hawk, still skimming over Doctor Muskrat’s
Pond wondering who had called him, and gave the hawk’s hunting call
again. That brought the hawk circling right over them. The hawk came
so near Louie could see the black tips to his blue-gray wings, like a
seagull’s, and the wide black bar on the end of his tail, and his
feathery whiskers--even the surprised look in his eyes, as bright and
coppery as a new penny.

“Well, I’m ruffled!” he exclaimed, quite indignantly. “Were you the
one giving my call?”

“Surely,” said that very impudent jay, bobbing his head and flicking
his own striped tail. “I thought you might want to know there’s not a
claw stirring in all these Woods and Fields except yours and Killer
the Weasel’s and those of the Bad Little Owls.”

“Ha-a-ah!” The hawk made a cup of his tail and wings and hung above
them for a moment while he thought this over. “Thanks,” he said, and
his voice wasn’t nearly as harsh. “I’m glad to know it. If that’s
what’s going on, the pond is no place for me!” He’s not a very big
hawk, you know--not nearly as big as the fine red lady hawk who came
to help Stripes Skunk kill the crook-tailed snake which stole eggs
from the meadowlarks. He had good reason to be afraid of Killer. So
round he turned and Louie saw the queer white patch on his back that
you only notice from behind go jogging off toward his mate on the
far-off side of the Deep Woods.

So when the wicked weasel woke up and squeezed himself through the
narrow crack between his two stones, he didn’t see any one at all.
“That’s queer,” he thought. “It’s certainly supper time for those
juicy little rabbits.” He listened. He didn’t hear any one at all, so
he began exploring, with his nose to the ground. And he could smell
where all the Woodsfolk had been scuttling around--tracks and tracks
of them. That satisfied him. “They’ll be coming down for a drink
before long,” he told himself. “I’ll just step under this bush, where
they won’t see me too soon, and wait for them.”




CHAPTER IX

TROUBLE COMES HOME TO THE BAD LITTLE OWLS


Well, Killer waited, and waited, and waited. But nobody came at all.
Nobody unless you count the bats. Killer didn’t because only a bird
can catch them when they’re awake, and it’s a mighty lucky bird if it
does.

He got hungrier, and hungrier, and hungrier. Still nobody came. And
the hungrier he got the madder he was because the Little Screecher
Owls had brought him there. He thought they were playing a trick on
him. So he began to slip from one tree to another, hunting for the one
they perch in.

The ground under an owl’s perch always has little gray wads of fur and
feathers and bones beneath it--the leftovers of the last food the owls
have been eating.

If there are very many weasels and cats to bother them, the owls
neatly carry these to some other tree than the one they sleep in. But
these Bad Little Owls were too lazy to attend to their housekeeping.
Killer put his nose into a whole pile of this rubbish the very first
thing.

“Robin!” he sniffed. “Let me think. That owl said she didn’t hunt
robins. Then she stole them; she stole them from under the Robins’
Roost. I’ll teach that owl to let my birds alone, just exactly
wherever I choose to leave them. She stole those robins! I’ll----” But
he pricked up his ears because he heard the little owls begin to talk
on their perch just over his head.

“I wonder if Killer and the Woodsfolk have made friends by now,” said
one. “I’ve been listening ever since I woke up, and I haven’t heard a
thing.”

“Few beasts can move so quietly that an owl doesn’t hear them even if
he’s listening,” thought Killer proudly.

“Of course they’ve made friends,” said the lady owl. “If they made
friends with Stripes Skunk, of course they would with him. He’s ever
so much smarter, and I think he’s much handsomer.” She did, too. Owls
think it’s fine to be fierce looking.

“But what if they don’t?” insisted her mate.

“Why, then I’ll show him where they have their holes and help him hunt
them, that’s all,” she answered.

“A-ha!” said Killer to himself. “That won’t be a bad plan. I won’t
quarrel with her yet. I’ll let her help me all she can before I get
even with her. All the same, I want to know what that man is doing out
here, and why she didn’t warn me.”

He meant Louie Thomson.

If those little owls had known there wasn’t another thing for him to
eat in all the Woods and Fields except the flittery bats, which he
couldn’t catch, and Chatter Squirrel, safely hidden in his secret
nest, they’d have had the appetites scared right out of them--and
that’s the most you can possibly scare an owl. But they didn’t. So
there they perched, feasting on the robins they had stored in their
hole, which they used for a pantry.

“Speaking of holes,” said the little he-owl, “I’ve been wondering if
we oughtn’t to look up some more. This one we have will never hold all
we’ll have to hide when that weasel begins killing the Woodsfolk.”

“It’s no use,” answered his wicked little wife. “Those Woodsfolk are
all too big for us to carry. We’ll have to eat them where he leaves
them, like we did when Silvertip was doing our hunting.”

“Silvertip!” bristled the weasel. “O-ho! I remember that fox. He
couldn’t catch me. I’m too smart for him. But I’d better keep an eye
out. I wonder where he is now?”

“I wish Killer would catch some more robins,” said the little he-owl,
wiping his beak clean of the feathers that were sticking to it.
“They’re very convenient, and we’ve eaten all but the very last one.
Shall I get it?”

“Um-hm!” the weasel nodded to himself. “Now I understand. You birds
invited me here to do your hunting, did you? Well, I’ll see to it you
don’t get anything you don’t earn.” But of course he didn’t say
it--not yet. He wanted to hear what else they’d talk about.

“Only one robin left!” exclaimed the lady owl. “My claws! Who’d have
thought we’d eat those birds all up in such a short time? You must
have been at them while I was sleeping, you greedy thing! I’ve had
hardly any of them.” She clattered her beak at the other owl so
angrily that he moved away from her down the limb.

“You’ve had as many as I have,” he whimpered. “Can’t we show Killer
the stump where the mice live? They’d be easy to carry, and he’d kill
any amount of them.”

“Fine!” she agreed. “We’ll need them. There’s going to be a storm.”

“Well, we might just as well eat this robin then,” argued her piggy
little mate, “and then we can clean out the hole and leave it all
ready to store the mice in.”

Killer listened while the owl tugged and grunted, getting the bird out
of his narrow pantry door. Suddenly he called: “I’ll trouble you for
that robin. It’s mine, and I want it myself!”

Plunk! Down fell the bird, ’most on top of the wide burdock leaf where
Killer was hiding from them. But that wasn’t on purpose. The little
he-owl never meant to let it fall--he just jumped so hard from fright
that he dropped it.

My, but his wife wanted to peck him! She didn’t dare, for fear Killer
would see how angry she was about losing it. She gave her husband a
horrid glare with her scary, starey eyes, and then she said in her
politest voice: “Certainly, Mr. Weasel, you’re welcome to anything we
have.”

“But I don’t see how you come to have it,” said Killer rudely.

“Owl custom, owl custom, my dear sir,” said she, preening herself so
her feathers wouldn’t ruffle and show how scared she was. “We pick up
the odds and ends you clever hunters don’t care about, and store them
up here in our hole. You can see it from where you are, and I’m sure I
hope you’ll help yourself whenever you feel like it.” All this time
she was saying to herself: “That’s the last thing we’ll hide in this
hole, now he knows where it is.” Wasn’t she deceitful?

“You’re very kind, I’m sure,” he answered more politely. “But I’ve
hurt my paw so I can’t climb.” He said that because he hoped the owls
would go on roosting there so he could come and catch them in the
daytime if he wanted to.

“Isn’t that too bad,” she sympathized. Really she was glad; her
feathers unruffled again, now that she felt sure he couldn’t sneak up
on her while she wasn’t looking.

By this time he was picking the robin’s bones. Pretty soon he licked
his whiskers with a raspy tongue; it made cold shivers run through
those bad little birds. Even the lady owl was sorry she’d brought him
to Tommy Peele’s Woods and Fields. That’s what she got for losing her
temper. She wondered how long he’d been listening and what he’d heard.

The wicked weasel knew just what she was thinking about. He said in a
voice as raspy as his tongue: “I heard you say something about a
mouse’s stump. That sounds like a quick place to get a full meal
before this storm that’s coming. I’ll ask you to take me there so I
won’t have to waste any time hunting for it. But first I want to ask
you some questions. Come down here so I don’t have to shout. Come
along!”

His wife stared at the Bad Little Owl and the Bad Little Owl stared
back at her. Their eyes grew wider and shinier, and their clothes felt
pin-featherier than ever they had since the day those birds were
hatched. My, but they were scared! Slowly they both turned to stare
down at Killer the Weasel, who sat beneath their tree. And let me tell
you he wasn’t the handsome, slicked-up beast with the pricky ears and
the arched neck and the fluffed tail who had tried to make friends
with the Woodsfolk--he looked too sharp-toothed and snaky for
anything.

“Hustle!” called Killer in his raspy voice. “I’m not going to shout at
you way up there for every one to hear, and I’m not going to hunt,
until I know several things that you forgot to tell me when you
invited me here. But we’ve no time to waste. If this turns out to be a
three-days’ storm we’ll be hungry enough by the end of it, even if we
get a good meal before it begins. Come along!” He fixed his eye on the
lady owl, and she saw a red spark gleaming in it.

She didn’t mean to come--not she. But somehow she couldn’t seem to
help herself. Before he knew quite what she was doing, down she came.
She grabbed at the springy, pickery stem of a wild raspberry--no bird
in its sane senses would ever think of perching on one--and there she
hung. But she knew he could jump right up and catch her.

“Now!” he hissed in that dreadful whisper things from under-the-earth
use, whether they wear fur or scales, “Where’s Silvertip the Fox, my
deadly enemy?”

“Silvertip? Oh, he’s duck hunting in the Big Marsh, way off the other
side of the Deep Woods,” lied the owl. She didn’t dare tell him
Silvertip was dead.

“Ah,” growled the weasel. “Well, then, why didn’t you warn me about
that man?” (He meant Louie Thomson.) “Did you think I wouldn’t know
these woods are full of his jaws, just gaping for me to put my foot in
one?” (He meant traps, of course.)

“Who-o-o!” exclaimed the owl. “That man hasn’t any more jaws or claws
than a hoptoad. Men don’t get them till they’re grown, and he’s just a
little harmless wild one. He never hunts; he lives on corn. Once in a
while he comes over here for a root from Doctor Muskrat, who owns the
pond--just like the other wild things do if they’re sick or hurt. Then
he goes back again.”

“Hey? What’s that? A wild man? There isn’t any such thing!” snarled
Killer.

“Well, he’s wild. You could see for yourself even the rabbits weren’t
afraid of him,” the owl kept on arguing.

The weasel thought for a minute. That certainly was true; so were the
corncobs, left from Louie’s feast, he saw piled beside the little
blanket tent. “All right,” said he. “Then show me the mouse’s stump.
Flap along, bird, flap along!”




CHAPTER X

THE BIG RAIN PUTS AN END TO EVIL DOINGS FOR A TIME


I just tell you the wife of the Bad Little Owl was glad to get on her
wings. She flew so fast that her mate, flying along behind her, said:
“Hey! Killer can’t keep up with us at this rate. Where are you going?”

“I’m scared to death of that wicked weasel,” she answered. “I’m going
as fast and as far as ever I can.”

“What a way to talk!” he hooted indignantly. “The poor fellow was
hungry. No wonder he was cross. Just as soon as he gets a good meal
he’ll be friendly again. We can’t change our hunting ground with this
storm coming on. There won’t be any grasshoppers to speak of, and it
takes so many of them to make a meal. We mightn’t have the luck to
catch a sparrow, and we wouldn’t know a single mousehole. It’s too
dangerous.”

“It’s not nearly as dangerous as Killer!” snapped his wife. “He didn’t
make you come right down close to him, the way he made me. He could
have caught me. I won’t risk it again.”

“He made me give him that robin,” answered the little he-owl. “But I
don’t care a bit. I’m tired of eating robins. Think of all we had to
carry home from the Robins’ Roost. And we didn’t help him kill a
single one. Now, if we help him kill the mice we’ll get every other
one of them. Um-m!” And he smacked his beak. Wasn’t he just a greedy
little bird?

[Illustration: The Owl helps Killer find the stump where the mice
live]

His mate wheeled around to think it over. She certainly didn’t like
the looks of that storm. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to just show Killer
the stump. The minute he took his eye off her she’d hide and she
wouldn’t come back until after he had eaten and gone. She could hear
him calling. Her mate answered with the funny little yap owls use
between them when they are hunting together. Down she dropped, but she
gripped her claws good and tight into the branch of a tree near the
mouse’s stump before she called, “Here we are!”

“Huh-huh-huh,” panted the wicked beast. “I didn’t know where you
had gone. Snff, snff! Lots of tracks here, all right enough!” he
chuckled. It was inky dark, so of course he couldn’t see that the
footprints of the mice were all leading out and none leading back
in again; you remember Chaik Jay had sent every last tail
scuttling out of the Woods and Fields as fast as mice could run.
Scritch, scritch! If Great-grandfather Fieldmouse had heard
Killer’s claws tearing at the rotten wood he wouldn’t have boasted
that no one but a bear could break in and eat them. Then----

Boom! Crash-h-h! R-r-r-rip! Splash! Down in one blinding sheet came
the first rain of that storm. It was surely a bad one!

The hoptoad was right when he said there was going to be rain--“floods
of it.” There was. And there was wind and lightning and thunder and
terrible squeaking and squawking and rustling and pounding--all the
noises that make a storm such a scary thing. Of course it wasn’t as
bad as Chaik Jay told the mouse it was going to be, but the mice
didn’t know that. They were all hidden in the stone pile by the
cornfield fence, or in logs and stumps in the Deep Woods. Some of them
even went all the way up to Tommy Peele’s barn and hid in the
strawstack. They didn’t hide in the haystack because----

But first I want to tell you the rest of what happened down by Doctor
Muskrat’s Pond. The owls tried to fly home, but their wings got so
waterlogged with the rain they had to creep into the hollow oak that
was blown down in the terrible storm--the time Nibble Rabbit rescued
the Woodsfolk who were living in it and had a storm party in his
little cornstalk tent.

Killer tried to hide in his crack between two stones in the bank of
Doctor Muskrat’s Pond. But the water found him. First it trickled in
from the ground above, where Louie Thomson’s little blanket tent used
to stand, and most washed him out; and then the pond grew fuller and
fuller and higher and higher until it most drowned him. So he had to
go out in all that rain, gnashing his teeth and swearing.

“Those pesky owls!” he snarled (only he said something worse than just
“pesky”). “I’m going to drag them out of their snug hole by their
scrawny little necks and eat them and live in it myself till this
storm is gone.”

Up he climbed. His paw wasn’t hurt a bit--when he told the owl it was
he was only pretending, you know. Of course the owls weren’t in it. He
squeezed into it himself, but it was so small for him he had to double
all up inside and the mouse bones in the bottom of it were very
uncomfortable. Wasn’t he starved and squirmy and peevish, the wicked
thing!

But the Woodsfolk weren’t. Nibble Rabbit knew his way about Tommy
Peele’s barn quite as well as he knew his way about the Woods and
Fields. And that made Silk-ears think he was smarter than ever. Doctor
Muskrat learned from the white ducks, who aren’t nearly as stupid as
they look, all about the ponds the rain was making, so he was happy.
And Stripes Skunk had the finest hunting in the world in the haystack.
He stationed one of his kittens at each of the rat holes, so whenever
Ouphe’s sons or grandsons tried to dodge out of the stack to hunt a
meal someone was sure to catch him. He turned into a feast instead of
finding one. So they were all very comfortable and happy. Except the
bad rats!

Pretty clever of them, wasn’t it? But you forget that Killer was
clever, too. Though I don’t blame you for that--so did the Woodsfolk.
They never dreamed that Killer would find out where they’d run away
to. Or that he’d be bold enough to follow them. People always forget
that the old saying “He who fights and runs away may live to fight
another day,” doesn’t mean that he who runs away gets out of fighting
for good and all.

No, it was war to the tooth in the end. Fur and feathers fought
together on both sides, for the Bad Little Owls kept right on helping
Killer--they didn’t dare not to. And every decent bird was more than
willing to wear out his summer wings, if need be, to help good old
Doctor Muskrat and his friends. So it was pretty even.

But the Woodsfolk won in the end--’cause they had help that was
neither one nor tother--feathers or fur, or even skin or scales. It
was something Mother Nature herself had never dreamed of in the
First-Off Beginning of Things. It was----

Why, Great beef-bones! as Watch would say. Here I am at ’most the very
last line in this book. Well, you’d better copy that wise dog and
think about all the nicest things you know to keep from worrying while
you wait for the next story to find out just what it was.

THE END



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