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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cfd39d6 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #64216 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64216) diff --git a/old/64216-0.txt b/old/64216-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2d90b6e..0000000 --- a/old/64216-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2180 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tad Coon's Tricks, by John Breck - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Tad Coon's Tricks - -Author: John Breck - -Illustrator: William T. Andrews - -Release Date: January 05, 2021 [eBook #64216] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Roger Frank - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAD COON'S TRICKS *** - - - TAD COON’S TRICKS - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - 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: Tad sent a big rock rushing down on top of Grandpop -Snapping Turtle.] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - Told at Twilight Stories - - Tad Coon’s Tricks - - by - John Breck - - 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. Songs of the Hunt - II. Tad Coon’s Tricks and His Troubles - III. Grandpop’s Bite that Never Let Go - IV. Tad’s Tricks Come Home to Roost - V. The Time Tad Coon Was Trickier Than He Knew - VI. Tad Makes a Compact with Watch and Tommy Peele - VII. Black Crime in the Hen House - VIII. How Nibble Turned Detective - IX. Stripes Skunk Learns How to Behave - X. Stripes Skunk Begins to be Good - XI. Stripes Continues His Good Works - XII. Doctor Muskrat Tells Why Skunks Are So - XIII. In Defense of a Lady - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -ILLUSTRATIONS - - Tad sent a big rock rushing down - Snap! went Grandpop Snapping Turtle’s mouth on Tad Coon’s playful tail - Tad Coon hits Trailer on the head with a hornet’s nest - Tad Coon needs Doctor Muskrat - At the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s Pond - The Bad Little Owl comes flipping by - Nibble accuses Stripes of stealing - Bob White was caught in Tommy Peele’s snare - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - TAD COON’S TRICKS - - - CHAPTER I - SONGS OF THE HUNT - -You’d have thought every wing and paw in the Woods and Fields (except -the Bad Little Owls, of course) would have been glad to know that -Silvertip the Fox was caught. ’Specially Nibble Rabbit, who started the -hunt, and wise old Doctor Muskrat, who planned it, and Tommy Peele’s -good dog, Watch, and Trailer the Hound, who were still barking on his -trail way out in the middle of the Deep Woods. For Silvertip was just as -clever as he was wicked; the very last thing he’d done was to fool those -two dogs again. - -I s’pose old Grandpop Snapping Turtle, who did the catching was--glad, I -mean. But Doctor Muskrat just looked very, very sober, and Nibble felt -the shivers run from the puff on his tufty tail to the tips of his -tickly whiskers whenever he thought about it. They didn’t have a word to -say while they waited for the two hunters to come back to the -meeting-place by the flat stone at the edge of the Pond. - -But they thought of course the dogs would bark the good news so loud -that Tommy could hear it way down the road at the schoolhouse. Instead, -Trailer just gasped, “How awful!” in a very awed voice. And Watch looked -as if somebody’d rubbed him the wrong way. - -“Awful!” repeated Trailer. “Poor Silvertip! Think of his being caught by -a stupid old mud-grubber like that!” He drooped his tail and ears. - -“Why, that’s just the way I felt about it!” Nibble exclaimed. “But I -never dreamed you would. I thought you hated him.” - -“Hate him!” said both dogs at once. “Why, he was the smartest Beast we -ever chased. We hadn’t any reason to hate him.” - -That certainly made Nibble open his eyes pretty wide. “Then why did you -try to kill him?” he demanded. “Was it because you’re hungry?” He was -glad to know that the Pickery Things were close behind him when he asked -that. - -Trailer laughed. “I’m always hungry.” But his tail went up when he said -it, so Nibble didn’t run. “But that isn’t why I hunt. You have to know a -beast to hate him. I’ve killed plenty of beasts I never saw before I -found their trail. Lots that I don’t eat, either.” - -“I couldn’t do that!” Nibble gasped and Doctor Muskrat nodded. - -“Of course not,” said Trailer, quite proudly, too. “But that’s what I -was made for. My mother taught me to use my nose before my eyes were -open and to sing the trailing song as soon as I could talk above a -whimper.” - -“Sing it,” begged the woodsfolk. “Please.” - -Trailer raised his head and bayed with an open throat: - - “Drop your nose on the odorous trail, - For the warmest footprint soon grows stale. - Tow-row-row! - Leap the fences, plough through the mire, - At a steady gallop that’s slow to tire, - Follow the game of the hounds’ desire. - Raise your eyes--There he flies! - Hail! - Mark the flick of his fleeting tail! - Tow-row-row!” - -“You see,” he explained, “one dog doesn’t do all the singing. He sings -one line and someone else answers with the next one, round and round -again.” - -The sound sent a queer, scary thrill through Nibble Rabbit. But now he -wasn’t really afraid of the smiling hound any more than he was of Watch. - -Watch sat with his ears pricked and his nostrils twitching while he -listened to the Hound’s Hunting Song. “Eh, but that’s grand!” he barked. -“It puts the tickle into your feet to be up and running.” - -Nibble Rabbit squirmed closer to the Pickery Things. He wasn’t afraid of -the dogs, but he felt very queer. “It starts my feet tickling, too,” he -sniffed. “And my fur’s all fluffed out like a moulting bird.” - -Trailer laughed. “That’s partly what we sing it for,” he explained. “It -rouses up you Game Beasts and gets you running, and when your coat -stands up on end your scent is easier to follow.” - -“You don’t say?” Nibble’s eyes were sparkling. “Then that’s why the -Quail say ‘Hold your scent!’ when they mean ‘sleek down your feathers.’” - -“Exactly,” nodded Trailer. “And they’re so clever that it takes a -special dog, who makes a business of birds, to find them. He has a -special song, too, but I never learned it. I only follow furry things.” - -“That was splendid!” put in Doctor Muskrat, who had been listening -thoughtfully to the talk. He wasn’t at all sorry because the dogs had -politely left him a clear path to the water. He could have dived in a -flash if he had wanted to. “You’ve made the frogs very jealous, Mr. -Trailer.” Sure enough, the frogs were tuning up all over the pond. -“There’s something very queer about this,” he went on. “Your song -doesn’t do anything to me--because I’ve never been chased that way. But -there was one dog, a noisy little one, who used to drive me nearly out -of my wits when I was younger.” - -“That might have been Spice the Terrier, who was here when I was a pup,” -said Watch. “I know his song well enough. He was always shouting it at -something. - - “A cat hunt! - A rat hunt! - A bird, beast, or bat hunt! - Fur or feather, hide or skin, - Shake him out and claw him in. - Grip your teeth beneath his chin - And there’s the end of that hunt.” - -Watch had fairly snapped out Spice’s song. - -“That’s it!” squealed the Doctor. “That’s the very song--and look at my -fur! It will take a dip in cold water to smooth it again.” He was as -fluffy as Tad Coon’s tail. “Now, Watch, what’s your song?” - -“Oh, I’m no regular kind of a dog, so I really haven’t any,” said Watch, -looking a bit regretful. “I just do--whatever I’m told the best I can -and”--here his ears pricked and his tail began to wag--“I look after -Tommy Peele.” - -“But why must you always do things?” said Nibble. - -“Why, everyone has to have a job of some kind,” said Trailer. “Or else -he’s a worthless old scrump not worth feeding. And, if it’s really your -own special job, you enjoy doing it. I love to hunt, but I wouldn’t care -much about driving cows.” - -“Sure you would if you learned how,” said Watch. “I really do.” - -“There, you see?” laughed Trailer. And Nibble nodded. - -“Speaking of driving cows,” smiled Trailer, “who do you think drove up -to Tommy Peele’s this morning?” He said it to tease Watch. He and Watch -had gone out before daybreak to hunt Silvertip and now it was way past -milking time. - -But Watch wasn’t teased a bit. - -“The cows slept in the barn,” he grinned. “Nobody had to drive them--so -there! The only job I have waiting for me right now is to clean up my -breakfast plate before Chirp Sparrow gets his scratchy little feet into -it.” - -Trailer forgot all about how tired he was. “Fine,” said he. “I’m ready -to help you.” And off they trotted with their tails waving. - - - CHAPTER II - TAD COON’S TRICKS AND HIS TROUBLES - -“I wonder why all the Tame Beasts have work to do or milk to give or -eggs or whatever it happens to be?” Nibble Rabbit remarked. “We don’t -What’s our job, Doctor Muskrat? Trailer says a Beast without a job isn’t -worth feeding.” - -“That’s just the point.” The doctor’s bright eyes were twinkling. “You -silly rabbit! Do you think Trailer would be so nice and obedient to -Watch and Tommy if he didn’t know the people up at the house would feed -him? If he had to catch his breakfast or go hungry there wouldn’t be any -bunny. He licked his lips every time he sniffed you. But so long as he -does what he’s told, Tommy’ll feed him. We feed ourselves.” - -“I see.” Nibble flicked his tail thoughtfully. “And we find our own -holes and take care of ourselves and we like doing it.” - -“Do we, indeed?” said a whiny, complainy voice from the bulrushes on the -bank. “Is that dog gone?” It was Tad Coon. He came splashing out of the -water and flopped down in the sun. Then he got very busy with his funny -little paws. The front ones were handy ones, but the hind feet made a -print like a baby’s would except that there was a little round hole, -where the claw pricked, in front of every toe. He would wipe them in his -warm fur and lick them, one by one, with his warm tongue. Nibble -couldn’t think what he was doing. - -“There,” he said at last, not quite so crossly. “I can feel with them. -The water’s awfully cold. And I had to stand in it all the time you -beasts were talking. That hound is my very worst enemy--I can’t yet see -for the life of me why he didn’t make a snap at Nibble Rabbit.” - -“Because I belong to Tommy Peele,” Nibble explained. “Why don’t you make -friends with him?” - -“Huh!” grunted Tad, crosser than ever. “Do you s’pose those dogs would -let me? Never!” - -You know Nibble Rabbit. First he’s scared and next he’s curious. That’s -why he has such a very good time--he’s always finding out about new -things. But you don’t know Tad Coon--not yet. There’s this about Tad -Coon. First, he’s very, very unhappy and then suddenly he’s got a lovely -joke on someone. - -He was very unhappy on this particular morning, though he was spread out -very comfortably in the warm sun where Trailer had lain. Still he kept -on complaining. - -“It isn’t any trouble to you fellows to find a hole,” he was saying. “A -nice spot to dig and there you are. But I live in trees, and not every -tree in the woods has a big enough hollow for me to hide in. I used to -sleep in that big oak--it went and blew down in the Terrible Storm” (he -said this exactly as though the poor old oak did it on purpose), “and I -had another that the wood-duck nested in. Silvertip the Fox spoiled the -nest and he didn’t leave me a single egg, either. And I had the nicest -of all in a great big elm; now there’s a cross old mother coon with four -young ones in it. I haven’t any place to go-o-o!” - -“That’s too bad,” said Doctor Muskrat, edging nearer the water because -Tad Coon’s temper isn’t very good. - -“Get a square meal and then you won’t want to sit there squalling like a -blind kitten.” And in he dove. - -Tad Coon didn’t dive after him. He didn’t even get angry. He just went -on wailing, “I haven’t eaten anything but frogs all spring and I’m so -sick of them I can’t bear the sight of them.” - -“Try fish, then,” advised Doctor Muskrat, from the pond. - -Tad Coon stopped whimpering. He looked at Doctor Muskrat, and then he -looked at Nibble Rabbit. “I believe I will,” he said. And he looked at -Nibble again. Then he walked out on the flat stone that used to be -Doctor Muskrat’s. - -“Don’t go in there,” warned Nibble. “That’s right where Grandpop -Snapping Turtle just caught Silvertip the Fox.” - -“I know that,” answered Tad. “I don’t dive; I go fishing. I take my -tail--” and he did it--“like this. And I tickle the water--like this. -And when a fish comes up, thinking it’s a fly just dropped in the water, -I reach out my paw and catch him. Move around behind me, so you won’t -cast a shadow. I must see what I’m doing.” - -So Nibble moved around where Tad told him to and craned his neck. This -looked interesting. - -Swish, swish, swish, went Tad Coon’s bushy tail. He cocked his head. -Swish--out went his hand--splash, went a great big wave all over Nibble -Rabbit. - -“Ugh! Snff-snff-choo-a-a-ka-choo!” he sneezed. He stamped his feet -angrily. - -Tad looked over his shoulder and then went back to his fishing as though -he didn’t know what he had done, but Nibble could hear him snort as he -tried to choke down his laughter, and his fur was shaking. - -Tad was sitting right over the place where Grandpop Snapping Turtle had -caught Silvertip the Fox. Tad knew perfectly well he was there, but it -would take something smarter than a loggy old turtle to catch Tad Coon. -Besides, he knew, too, that Grandpop Snapping Turtle wouldn’t pay -attention to anything else until Silvertip was all eaten up. So he sat -there flicking the water with the tip-end of his tail, pretending he was -fooling the fish into thinking it was a fly alighting. He was trying to -think up another trick to play. - -But there was one thing Tad didn’t know. He didn’t know what Doctor -Muskrat was doing. Doctor Muskrat was paddling around in the pond, -diving now and then as though he were fishing--and so he was, fishing up -trouble for Tad Coon. The first time he came up to find out the meaning -of Tad’s splash he sniffed. And it wasn’t to blow the water out of his -nose--it was to make Nibble look at him. Nibble did look. And Doctor -Muskrat closed both of his eyes in a big wink. After that you can be -pretty sure Nibble kept his eyes on that playful tail of Tad Coon. - -Flick! it went. Swish! For Tad wasn’t thinking what he was doing. He had -an idea for another joke. “Pop!” Up comes the ugly head of Grandpop -Snapping Turtle, his beady eyes peering, his hissy mouth open. Snap! it -went on the end of that playful tail. Jerk! And Tad Coon was bouncing up -the bank, his fluffy breeches sticking straight out with fright. And -when Grandpop Snapping Turtle’s ugly head sank back it was wearing -whiskers--whiskers which used to belong to the very last tip-end of -that smarty coon’s tail. - -And then didn’t Doctor Muskrat and Nibble Rabbit have their turn to -chuckle! Nibble laughed till he stamped, only this time he wasn’t the -one who was angry. And Doctor Muskrat paddled away round and came up on -the bank beside him. - -“What made Grandpop Snapping Turtle wake up?” asked Nibble. - -“Mussel shells,” giggled the wise muskrat. “You know Bobby Robin’s story -about the Babes in the Woods that the robins covered with leaves? That’s -just what I’ve been doing to Silvertip. Only leaves don’t sink, so I -used empty mussel shells. I’ve shied them down at him until Grandpop -Snapping Turtle couldn’t take a bite without getting his beak into one -of them. He thinks Tad Coon did it.” - -“He-he!” snickered Nibble Rabbit. “And Tad Coon blames it all right back -on him!” - - - CHAPTER III - GRANDPOP’S BITE THAT NEVER LET GO - -“Ow, ow, ow!” wailed Tad from way up the bank in the Pickery Things. And -he had the tip of his tail in his mouth, so you could hardly make out -what he was saying. “Ow, ow, my tail’s bitten right off!” “Do you think -it’s really as bad as all that?” asked Nibble anxiously. Tad’s eyes were -bulging so wide that they showed white all round them when he went -bouncing off the flat stone. If he were really truly hurt it wouldn’t -seem so funny. They liked him. - -“Let’s go and see,” said the doctor, and he scuffled up the bank as fast -as he could travel. “Did that turtle really bite you?” he asked. “Let me -look so I’ll know what kind of a remedy to go after.” - -So Tad took his tail out of his mouth and showed it to the doctor. He -wouldn’t look at it himself for fear there would be blood on it. Tad’s -very timid that way. And Doctor Muskrat examined it carefully. At last -he said: “Why, Tad Coon, there’s nothing wrong with this tail.” - -“Isn’t there?” asked Tad in a relieved voice. “It felt as if there was. -It truly did.” So he took back his tail and combed the hair out and -examined it most carefully with his little handy-paws, but all he could -find was a tiny weeny bare spot at the very tip where Grandpop Snapping -Turtle had pulled the hair out. “That’s good,” he smiled with a -satisfied air. He wasn’t the least bit ashamed of having made such a -fuss about nothing. - -[Illustration: Snap! went Grandpop Snapping Turtle’s mouth on Tad Coon’s -playful tail.] - -He wasn’t even thinking about it. Pretty soon he burst right out -laughing. “Ho, ho! That old turtle’s got tickly coon hairs in his mouth. -I hope they set him choking.” Then he cocked his head on one side and -the most mischievous sparkle came into his dark brown eyes which peer -out from a band of dark brown fur that lies across his nose like a pair -of goggles. “I’ll get even with him,” he chuckled. “I’ll find his nest -when his wife comes out to lay her eggs on the beach and I’ll eat every -last one of them.” - -“That won’t be till June,” answered Doctor Muskrat. “You’d better find -something else in the meantime. I know where there are some marshmallow -roots and we’ll all share them.” - -“That sounds fine,” Tad agreed. “Just wait a minute.” - -“What do you s’pose he’s up to now?” asked Nibble curiously. - -But he knew in just a moment. Tad found himself a nice big rock. And he -shoved and pushed and tugged and grunted until he worked it out on the -edge of the flat stone and sent it crashing down on top of Grandpop -Snapping Turtle. - -Kerchug! went the rock. And that was the last straw that broke Grandpop -Snapping Turtle’s temper. He came flopping up on land as fast as he -could travel. And he had his wicked eye on Tad Coon. - -Swish, went Doctor Muskrat back into the water. That was the safest -place for him because he can swim as fast as any one and a little bit -faster than any turtle who ever flipped a paddle. Bounce, went Nibble -Rabbit clear through the woods and past the Brushpile and out into the -head of the Broad Field before he stopped to listen. Scritch, scratch, -went lazy Tad Coon to the top of a big stump where Grandpop Snapping -Turtle couldn’t reach him. And that turtle was digging in his claws and -tearing up the earth as he marched round and round it, reaching up his -long neck and hissing: “Just you wait till I get hold of your leg with -my bite that never lets go!” - -“Grandpop’s lost his temper,” said Nibble to himself. “Something’s sure -to happen. It always does. It happened to Chatter Squirrel and Silvertip -the Fox, and Mrs. Hooter, and the Red Cow----” Here he pricked up his -ears, for Watch the Dog was barking at the other end of the pasture. And -Watch had Tommy Peele and Tommy’s big cousin Sandy and Trailer the Hound -with him. So he signalled Watch to hurry. Then he hurried back to hide -in the Pickery Things where he could see what that happening was going -to be. He was so curious he forgot all about Tad Coon. - -But Tad Coon hadn’t forgotten about himself. He hadn’t lost his temper. -As soon as he heard the dogs coming he watched his chance while Grandpop -Snapping Turtle was on the far side of the stump and jumped over to the -nearest tree. And you should have seen his little handy-paws shin up it! - -So all Tommy Peele and his cousin Sandy found was a spitting, swearing -old shellback marching round and round that stump. - -“Oh-h-h!” shouted Sandy. “Turtle soup for supper. Um-m!” - -“Don’t hurt him!” cried Tommy. “He doesn’t do any harm.” - -“Doesn’t he?” exclaimed Sandy. “He just spoils all the fishing in your -pond, and he’s simply death on muskrats.” - -Of course that settled Tommy Peele, because Doctor Muskrat was his -friend. - -So Sandy took up a long stick and held it out in front of Grandpop -Snapping Turtle. “Ah-h-h!” he hissed triumphantly. And he grabbed it -right in the middle with his bite that never lets go. - -“Pick up the other end,” said Sandy. Tommy did, and there they had the -turtle hanging between them, so blazing angry and so proud of his bite -that won’t let go, that he never noticed that they were carrying him -farther and farther away from his pond. And that was the last Nibble -ever saw of him. - - - CHAPTER IV - TAD’S TRICKS COME HOME TO ROOST - -But there was a whole lot of excitement near the Pond. There was Tad -Coon snug in the crotch of a tree, there was Trailer the Hound sniffing -the top of the stump where Tad had sat to keep out of reach of the angry -turtle, and there was Nibble Rabbit snuggled beneath the Pickery Things, -so curious that he couldn’t sit still. - -Pretty soon Trailer began to whimper. “Coon, coon, coon,” he said to -himself. “Where did he come from? Where did he go?” And he was so -puzzled that he shook his head until his ears flopped. - -That was too much for Tad Coon. He pulled off a strip of bark and -dropped it right on top of Trailer. The hound jumped as though something -had stung him. - -And wasn’t Nibble surprised? He didn’t see how Tad dared play tricks on -the very dog he said was his worst enemy. - -Pretty soon Tad began to call out: “Hey; you hound, go away! I want to -come down before that Man with the gun gets back here.” - -“Go away?” barked Trailer. “I most certainly won’t. I’ll stay right here -and keep you until I see what Sandy and Tommy Peele want to do with -you.” - -“Tommy won’t hurt you,” shouted Nibble. “He’ll just make friends with -you.” - -“No, thank you,” grinned Tad Coon. “Not the way he makes friends. I -don’t want to be trapped like you and Doctor Muskrat, and I don’t want -to be hunted like Silvertip the Fox. I’m going.” - -“But you haven’t been stealing his chickens like Silvertip did,” argued -Nibble. - -“How do you know?” asked Tad. For it was his guilty conscience that made -him afraid. He didn’t exactly steal Tommy Peele’s chickens, but he had -eaten some eggs that were very nearly hatched. And all this time Nibble -could see him working away at something with his little handy-paws. -Pretty soon he called again: “Mister Hound, I asks you for the last -time, are you going to let me down?” - -“Yah!” barked Trailer. “I ’most certainly am not.” - -“Hm,” sniffed Tad Coon. “We’ll see about that, then.” Blam! He hit -Trailer square on the head with something. And this time the hound -jumped because he really was stung. “Ow, ow, ow!” he yelped, and he -started for home on the run with a trail of buzzing insects strung out -behind him. - -[Illustration: Tad Coon hits Trailer on the head with a hornet’s nest.] - -“Run, run, run!” squalled Tad. “Look at that hound run! He’s only -hitting the high spots. Ye-a-o-u-w! See him go!” And he danced about on -the limb until the limb danced with him. - -Trailer was surely running--faster than ever he’d run on any trail. But -this time he wasn’t chasing any one--the buzzers were chasing him. For -it wasn’t a piece of bark Tad threw down the last time--it was the fat -round nest of some paper wasps. - -Nibble Rabbit wasn’t seeing any of the fun. He knew something about -paper wasps. They were buzzing all over everywhere, and they don’t care -who they sting when they get angry. He sat very still in the Pickery -Things with his twitchy nose tucked down between his furry feet, and his -waggly ears laid flat back, and his bright eyes squinched up as tight as -ever he could shut them. Some of those wasps flew right by him and never -knew he was anything but a round stone--not even the one that tangled -its legs in his whiskers. He did feel awfully sorry for poor Trailer; -but all the same Tad Coon had been pretty smart to send him home. - -But Tad Coon wasn’t quite as smart as he thought he was. Trailer ran so -fast that he left most of those wasps behind him. And he went bouncing -through the brush at such a rate that he scraped a lot more off of him. -Pretty soon they began coming back to where their nest had been. And -they couldn’t find it. That didn’t improve their tempers, I can tell -you. But if they couldn’t find their nest, they certainly could find Tad -Coon. And just didn’t they? - -Now it was Tad’s turn to howl. “Ow-ow-ow!” he cried. And he squinched up -his eyes as tight as ever Nibble did and began to scramble down as fast -as ever his little handy-paws would let him. But when he opened his -mouth a wasp stung him right on the tongue, and when he shut it his -little black nose got the stinging. And when he tried to cover it with -his paw he lost his hold and went tumbling down to the ground. - -Blam! It almost knocked the breath out of him. But he rolled over and -over till he found his feet and then he scuttled to Doctor Muskrat’s -Pond as fast as he could limp on three of them. He kept trying to brush -the wasps off his nose and ears with the other one, until he could jump -into the water. And then he splashed around as hard as ever he could. -The wasps didn’t like that a little bit, because they can’t fly when -their wings get wet. So they went away and left him. - -Then poor Tad Coon began shouting: “Do’ Mu’a! Do’ Mu’a!” Because his -poor stung tongue couldn’t say Doctor Muskrat. - -He wished he hadn’t dropped that wasps’ nest down on Trailer. And he -wished those wasps hadn’t come back and stung him. And he wished he -hadn’t fallen out of the tree and bumped himself. And he wished his nose -wasn’t swollen up so he couldn’t see around it. And he wished his poor -tongue wasn’t hanging out of the corner of his mouth with such a great -big sting that he couldn’t say any of his wishes. All he could do was -shout “Do’ Mu’a!” when he was trying with all his might to shout “Doctor -Muskrat!” And Doctor Muskrat wouldn’t come. - -But Nibble Rabbit did. And when he heard Tad Coon’s great big sobs and -saw the tears in his eyes he felt mighty sorry for him. So he began to -thump and pound for the doctor. - -Pretty soon Doctor Muskrat came out on top of his house in the middle of -the pond and answered. “I hear you,” he snapped. “And I heard Tad Coon -in the first place. But I’m not going to do anything for him. I don’t -mind the funny tricks he plays, but that one just played on Trailer the -Hound was cruel.” - -“I ’o,” sniffed Tad. “I i’ ‘o’ i’ u’ hu’ ho.” - -“He didn’t know it would hurt so,” Nibble translated. “Don’t scratch -your ears, Tad. Come over and let me lick them.” - -“That’s no excuse,” said Doctor Muskrat severely. “What if Tommy Peele -thinks we did it? That hound can’t explain. And he doesn’t know anybody -else is here with us.” - -“Yes, but Tad doesn’t know Tommy,” Nibble pleaded. “He’s awfully afraid -of being caught. You know how that hurts your own self. And lots of -times they put coons in cages, and I didn’t like my cage. But he’s sorry -as anything that he did it.” - -“So I see,” said the doctor, just as gruffly as ever, and he dove back -into the pond. Poor Tad hitched himself over to the flat stone so Nibble -could fix his ears while he splashed the cool water over his nose and -tongue. My, but he was meek! He didn’t even blame Doctor Muskrat for -being angry with him. - -Then suddenly up popped a head right beside him. “Open your mouth,” said -the doctor. “Bite on that.” And he slipped a soft, soothing chewed root -poultice on to Tad’s tongue. “Now raise your head.” And he clapped a -blue clay plaster on Tad’s nose. “Snort!” And Tad snorted a pair of -holes to breathe through. “There,” said he; “you’ll be all right before -long.” - -But Nibble had his ears pricked. “There comes Watch,” he said. “I heard -him bark. Tad can’t run.” - -“You hide him in the Pickery Things,” ordered the doctor. “I’ll try to -get this matter settled.” - -“M-m-m-m!” grunted Tad Coon gratefully through his poultice. And he -limped off after Nibble, still holding up his nose. - - - CHAPTER V - THE TIME TAD COON WAS TRICKIER THAN HE KNEW - -“Aough, aough!” barked Watch. “Yah!” he yapped breathlessly when he -found Doctor Muskrat sitting out on the flat stone, waiting to meet him. -“You’re just who I was looking for. Trailer just stumbled up to the -house with his eyes bunged shut and his nose as big as a soupbone, -mumbling something about a coon as near as I can understand him. But no -coon ever did anything like that to him.” - -The doctor cocked his ears. “Can’t talk, can’t he? Poor fellow. Did you -try what blue clay will do for him? I’ll get you some.” - -[Illustration: Tad Coon needs Doctor Muskrat.] - -“Ok, he’ll be all right. His master Sandy’s working over him,” Watch -answered. “But what did do it?” - -“Those striped buzzers with hot spots in their tails. They’re over there -guarding the nest that fell down on Trailer. The rest of them are -building a new one up in that tree--and you just ought to have seen what -they did to poor Tad Coon. He was up there hiding.” - -“Well, you just tell him to stay hidden, too,” whined Watch, stretching -his stiff legs thoughtfully. “I’ve had enough of hunting after Silvertip -the Fox to last me awhile.” - -“But what happened to Grandpop Snapping Turtle?” called Nibble from the -Pickery Things. - -“He’s in a pot on the fire right now,” answered Watch. - -“What’s a pot? What’s a fire?” asked the two wild folks. - -“Fire? You know fire. When men make that red spot that’s all hot--like a -buzzer’s tail, you know--come out of the end of a stick--that’s fire,” -he explained. - -“They do it to the bulrushes,” nodded the doctor. “The red spot gets -bigger and bigger until everything’s red and then the hot things -disappear.” - -“Exactly. But men don’t always let it make everything red. They keep it -in one place and use it to cook with. They’re cooking Grandpop.” - -“Cooking?” echoed Nibble and Doctor Muskrat. - -“Bare bones and broken biscuits!” sniffed Watch. “I can’t explain that -to you any more than I can explain about the buzzers to Tommy Peele. But -I can show them to him--and I’d better.” So off he set with his tail -drooping because he was puzzled. - -“It isn’t so very queer that Tommy Peele’s own dog can’t tell him that -Grandpop Snapping Turtle ate Silvertip, when you really come to think -about it,” observed Nibble Rabbit thoughtfully. “Tommy can’t even talk -to the tame beasts. That’s why Watch has to take him all the way down -here to the pond to show him these striped buzzers before he’ll -understand who bit Trailer. But I don’t see why Watch can’t tell us what -Tommy did to Grandpop Snapping Turtle. They certainly didn’t put an ugly -thing like that in any cage.” - -“There!” exclaimed Doctor Muskrat. “He can’t make us understand what -he’s talking about because we Woodsfolk haven’t the words for things -we’ve never seen. Those man-words Watch uses don’t mean anything to us. -You talk about a cage. I don’t know what you mean and you can’t even -tell me.” - -“Why, a cage,” Nibble began--“a cage is a sort of a cave, only it isn’t -in the ground. It bites like wood, but it doesn’t look like any tree I -ever saw, and it has something in front of it that you can see through -and the wind can blow through, but you can’t jump through it.” Now we -might guess that was a packing-box with a big open front of -chicken-wire. But even Nibble couldn’t be sure of wood when its bark was -off. - -“Um-hm!” grinned Doctor Muskrat. “A cave that isn’t in the ground? Wood -that isn’t in a tree? What does that mean?” - -Nibble laughed at himself. To one of the Woodsfolk it did sound foolish. - -“Now if a cage is like a barn, only little,” said the doctor, “I can -think about it. I’ve seen a barn from the outside, and if it’s hollow -like a tree I can guess what the inside is like.” - -“It is! It is!” Nibble cried. “Why didn’t I think of that?” - -“Then Grandpop Snapping Turtle can’t live in one. He can’t eat unless -he’s under water. Watch says Tommy’s cooking him. I don’t know what that -means, either, but I can guess. Tommy eats him. There isn’t anything -that hasn’t someone who eats it and no one else can eat Grandpop unless -Tommy Peele does.” - -“Maybe,” Nibble agreed; “but the real question is what will Tommy do to -Tad Coon. Tad can’t run away, and Watch knows he’s here. If Tommy is -very angry because Tad made those striped buzzers bite Trailer he’ll -make Watch find him.” - -“If Tommy’s eaten Grandpop he won’t be a bit hungry,” began Doctor -Muskrat hopefully. Then a bright idea struck him. “And Tommy’ll never -know Tad’s to blame. No one can tell him!” - -“That’s so!” Nibble exclaimed. “No one can!” - -All the same, when Nibble heard Watch bringing Tommy to the woods to -show him the paper wasps’ nest so he’d know who bit Trailer, the rabbit -couldn’t help feeling that something would go wrong. Tommy would find -out and then wouldn’t he be angry with Tad Coon! And neither Nibble nor -Doctor Muskrat could bear to have Tad hunted like Silvertip the Fox. -Poor Tad couldn’t even run. - -Watch galloped up to the wasps’ nest and barked. “There they are, Tommy. -They did it. Those are the buzzers with hot tails I’ve been trying to -tell you about.” - -“That’s funny,” said Tommy, and he looked right up into the tree. The -wasps up there were buzzing over which was the best twig to begin -building another nest on. “I wonder how it came to fall down.” - -Of course Nibble didn’t understand him--but Watch did! “Yow!” he barked. -“That coon made it fall. Trailer was trying to tell me. Coon, coon, -coon!” he sang, sniffing around to find him. - -“Lie still,” warned Doctor Muskrat, who was hiding with Tad in the -Pickery Things. - -“I can’t,” whimpered Tad. “This place is all right for a rabbit, but the -pond is where I belong.” And with that he staggered to his feet and -started for it. But right on the edge of the bank he stumbled. Down he -rolled, paws over fur, with Nibble Rabbit and Doctor Muskrat scuttling -after him. - -“Look out!” barked Watch. “Let me get at him. He’ll fight like anything! -They always do.” - -“Come here, Watch! Go lie down!” shouted Tommy Peele. - -“Why?” whimpered Watch. But Tommy Peele never answered. He couldn’t! -There was Tad Coon sniffling through his puffy nose, peering through his -squinty eyes, snarling with his swollen lips, and all smeared with -Doctor Muskrat’s mud plaster and chewed root poultice. He was making the -awfullest faces you ever saw. Maybe you think Tommy Peele could help -laughing at him. Well, you couldn’t your own self. - -“You lucky coon!” squealed Nibble. “When he laughs he can’t stay angry.” - -[Illustration: At the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s pond.] - - - CHAPTER VI - TAD MAKES A COMPACT WITH WATCH AND TOMMY PEELE - -“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Tommy. “You ought to see yourself. You look a -funny picture of a coon with the lines all wiggly.” And Tad Coon -certainly did. - -But pretty soon Tommy stopped laughing. “You poor beast,” he said in a -sorry voice; “it must hurt you awfully.” Nibble Rabbit knew that voice. -It was the same one he had used when he took Nibble out of the wire trap -and when he let Doctor Muskrat out of the cold steel jaws that had -bitten his toe off. - -“Er-yow!” argued Watch, Tommy’s dog. He meant it was all Tad’s fault. - -“Bz-z-z!” went the wasps who were guarding their nest on the ground -until the little white grubs in it should hatch. They meant that they -had something to say about it. - -But Tommy didn’t understand and he didn’t care. “Be still, Watch!” he -ordered. Then he took a long branch and speared the nest on the tip of -it. Splash! He sent it into the middle of Doctor Muskrat’s pond. Some of -the wasps were drowned and the rest flew up into the tree, buzzing with -all their wings that the old nest was bewitched and they wouldn’t have -anything more to do with it. So there it floated wherever the wind blew -it, like a deserted ship. And the wind began blowing it right back to -Tad Coon. - -“Come on, Tad,” called Doctor Muskrat from the pond. “Tommy isn’t going -to hurt you.” So Tad limped down and took a drink and washed himself. - -Then he felt a lot better. After all, there aren’t very many places -where his fur is so short a wasp can sting him. - -Nibble looked at Tad, and then he looked at Tommy. “I think Tommy means -to be friends,” he said. “But he hasn’t brought you anything to eat -yet.” - -“He’s brought this,” answered Tad, and he waded out and caught the -wasps’ nest. Then he sat himself down on Doctor Muskrat’s nice, warm -stone and picked the fat white grubs out of it with his clever little -fingery toes. “Mm’m!” he grunted contentedly with his mouth full. - -He was so busy and sober about it that he set Tommy laughing all over -again. Nibble twiddled his tail thoughtfully. “Doctor Muskrat,” he -remarked, “I’m beginning to wonder if Tommy makes friends with us -because he caught us or because he felt sorry we were hurt?” - -Right then Watch spoke up. “I haven’t made friends with Tad, and you -remember I don’t always take Tommy when I go hunting.” - -“Be still, Watch!” Tommy ordered. “I want to see what’s going to happen -next.” - -“Nothing, now,” Watch answered. “But it will just as soon as you aren’t -here to stop me.” And he laid his nose on his paws and rolled the whites -of his eyes at Tad. - -“Why?” demanded Nibble. Just the way he cocked his ears made Tommy -understand that he and Watch were talking, though he couldn’t even hear -the Woodsfolk. - -“Because Tad’s just as bad as Silvertip the Fox,” snarled Watch. “He -eats Tommy’s eggs and his chickens--and he eats rabbits, too, when he’s -smart enough to catch them, you silly bunny. And you ought to see what -he does to the green corn that’s sprouting in the Broad Field.” - -“He doesn’t!” gasped Nibble. “He could have caught me a dozen times. I -don’t believe it.” - -But Tad Coon looked down his nose at his bad little handy-paws, he was -so ashamed, and nodded. “Yes, I do,” he owned honestly. “After I’ve -slept through the winter I come out in the spring so terrible starvation -hungry. But I wouldn’t eat you. I’d rather dig grubs from a rotten log, -even if we haven’t any compact.” And Nibble knew he meant it. - -But Watch didn’t. “A lot of good that would do!” he snarled. - -“That’s just what the cows said about their compact with you dogs -in the First-Off Beginning,” interrupted Doctor Muskrat in his -sober voice. “But you did keep it. Tad Coon isn’t one of the -Things-from-under-the-Earth that Mother Nature herself can’t -trust. Let’s all make a compact. Why fight unless you have to?” - -Now this was very wise, because no dog likes to fight with a coon. “I’ll -make this much of a compact,” said Watch. “I won’t bother Tad Coon as -long as he behaves himself. If he doesn’t--Gr-r-rr!” - -“All right,” Tad agreed cheerfully, for he meant to be very, very good. -All the same, he floundered into the pond and brought up a clam to give -Watch, just as though it were a regular compact. Watch didn’t eat it of -course, but he did touch his tongue to it. “I s’pose you’d think it -awfully funny if that shelly thing bit me,” he grinned, and he even -wagged his tail. Then Nibble sniffed of it, and Doctor Muskrat--and of -course Tommy was so puzzled he picked it up and put it in his pocket. He -wanted to ask his father if there was anything the matter with it. But -the beasts thought he was in the compact, too, so they were all happy. - -Nobody dreamed that Bad One was hiding in the willows across the pond, -listening to every word Watch had spoken and saying to himself: “It -won’t take me long to start some trouble there.” And it didn’t. - - - CHAPTER VII - BLACK CRIME IN THE HEN HOUSE - -The woods weren’t peaceful at all next morning. Watch came tearing down -to Doctor Muskrat’s Pond with the bristles pricked up on his shoulders -and his teeth snapping. “Where’s that coon?” he snarled. “Give me that -coon. He’s broken his compact already. Now I will have to kill him, and -you might just as well have let me do it yesterday.” - -Doctor Muskrat popped his head out of the pond. “What’s the matter?” he -asked. “And where’s Tommy Peele?” - -“He’s coming,” snapped Watch. “And he knows who did it, too.” - -“Then he knows more than you do,” called Nibble Rabbit, hurrying through -the Pickery Things. “Tad Coon hasn’t been out of the woods a single -minute.” - -“He has!” snarled Watch. “He’s slit the throats of every chick belonging -to old Topknot--the hen who was good to you, Nibble Rabbit. Perhaps -that’s one of his jokes.” - -“Oh-h-h!” gasped Nibble. “But what makes you sure it was Tad?” - -“Topknot says it was someone who wore stripes. Who else could it be?” - -“The cat!” guessed Nibble. “She wears them.” - -“No, it wasn’t! I smelled, and it didn’t smell like her.” - -“Then smell of me,” said Tad. And he marched right out of the Pickery -Things, not a bit afraid because he did-n’t have a guilty conscience. -“It won’t smell like me, either.” - -So when Tommy Peele came running up, there stood Tad Coon with his fur -all fluffed up to let the scent out (you remember how the quails sleeked -their feathers to hold it), but he wasn’t snarling. He wasn’t even -angry. And Watch was sniffing carefully all around him. - -“Sic him! S-s-s-sic him!” called Tommy Peele. My, but he was the angry -one. - -“No,” barked Watch. “Beg pardon, Tad. It wasn’t your smell, either.” - -“Whoever it was,” said Nibble, “I’m coming up to the barn to help find -him.” - -Maybe you think Tommy Peele wasn’t puzzled! “S-s-s-sic him!” he ordered -impatiently. “Whatever is the matter with you, anyway? You aren’t scared -of him, are you? Yesterday you wanted to kill him for nothing at all, -and to-day you won’t touch him. But if he didn’t kill all poor Topknot’s -little chicks, who did? It’s a regular coon trick--dad says so. S-s-sic -him! Go on!” - -“A-aour-r!” Watch whined unhappily. “If I only could tell you that it -wasn’t Tad Coon!” - -“We’ve just got to find out for ourselves and show him,” said Nibble -Rabbit. “The sooner we start the fresher the scent,” he quoted from an -old dog-song. “Come along.” - -“I’m coming, too,” announced Tad Coon. “This is some of my business.” - -“No, you’re not,” said Nibble. “We don’t want another paw-mark until we -examine every trail up by the barn.” - -“That’s right,” said Watch. “That kind of a thief doesn’t fly. I didn’t -stop to look because I was so sure I knew who did it.” - -“But you couldn’t make any mistake about mine,” protested Tad, holding -up his handy-paw. “No one, not even my cousin Gurf Bear, who has hind -feet like mine, has one anything like it.” - -Now Tommy was angry enough about those chicks of Topknot the Hen’s, but -he was angrier yet because Watch wouldn’t obey him. “You’re a bad, bad -dog!” he scolded. “I’m going right over to get Trailer. He isn’t -afraid.” And you know Trailer the Hound, who belonged to Tommy’s big -cousin Sandy, was Tad Coon’s worst enemy. - -“There!” Watch exclaimed. “You see you’d better keep away. Trailer won’t -make any compact with you, and he wouldn’t even listen if I tried to -explain how your tracks came to be there, but if you don’t leave any -he’ll tell Tommy so the same way I’ve been trying to.” And Watch -galloped off to catch up with the cross little boy. - -But Tommy wouldn’t forgive him no matter how much Watch begged and -explained. Only when he passed the place where the dead chicks had lain -he cried, “Why, they aren’t all here! That killer must have come back -after them.” He saw Watch sniff them just as carefully as he had sniffed -Tad Coon down by the pond. And he knew just where Tad Coon had been -every minute of the time. Tad didn’t take them. So now he understood. -“All right, Watch. Good dog,” he said. “It wasn’t the coon. Then who was -it? S-s-sic him!” - -And maybe you think that didn’t make Watch happy! - -If Nibble hadn’t been in such a hurry to get up to the barn and see -Topknot’s little dead chicks he might have found who really killed them -all the sooner. But here was a new killer whom no one had ever seen, so -no one knew how to hide from him or where to expect him. No wonder -Nibble was too excited to think of listening at the Brushpile for the -Bad Little Owls. - -Just about the time he went slipping down the fence row under the safe -pickers of the blackberry canes they were having their first full meal -since Chaik and his family mauled them for trying to help Silvertip. -Chaik had pulled out so many feathers that they couldn’t hunt well. And -now they had swallowed one of those fuzzy little chickens, fluff, legs, -and all, because they were so hungry. - -“My, but that chick tasted good,” said the Lady Owl. “Do you know, when -Stripes came waddling by this morning and bragged about what he’d done, -I didn’t believe him. I don’t see why he didn’t eat every last one of -them instead of leaving them for us.” - -“He didn’t leave them for us at all,” snapped the he owl. “And don’t you -ever tell him we took one, either. He just killed them and laid them out -in a neat row so it would look like one of Tad Coon’s tricks. Then that -boy would think it was the coon and make all sorts of trouble for him.” - -“Why doesn’t Stripes like Tad Coon?” said his mate thoughtfully. - -“He’s jealous because Tad has a compact with that shaggy dog so it won’t -chase him, and he’s mad because it’s getting to such a pass in the woods -and fields that you hardly dare rob a nest for fear that rabbit will -tell on you.” - -“What happens then?” asked his wife, sleepily, for it was long after -sunup. - -“That’s the mystery,” he answered in an awed voice. “But Silvertip has -disappeared, and Grandpop Snapping Turtle, and you know yourself that -Foulfang the Rattlesnake was nothing more than ant food when we found -him.” - -“Then you aren’t going to help Stripes? He might feed us.” - -“I’m not going to help any one but myself. And right now I’ll help -myself to one more chicken. I could sleep right through a full moon if I -had a full stomach. Stripes is asleep in the oak that blew down in the -Terrible Storm. Keep your eye on him. We can take what he leaves without -helping him fight that rabbit.” And off he flew, steering very badly -with his ragged tail. - -But Nibble Rabbit wouldn’t have known who Stripes was, even if he had -overheard the little owls. - -[Illustration: The bad little Owl comes flipping by.] - - - CHAPTER VIII - HOW NIBBLE TURNED DETECTIVE - -The very first thing Nibble did when he got to the barn was to hunt up -poor Topknot. He had a hard time finding her. For he had to be very -careful himself, I can tell you. He listened and peeked behind every -corner, expecting to see the flashing eyes and snarling teeth of the -killer no one knew. - -That was why the Bad Little Owl didn’t see him when he came flipping by. -“What’s he doing out this time of day?” thought Nibble. Then he saw, for -the little owl swooped down and staggered off with a furry yellow chick. -Its poor head was dangling, and it was such a load that he could -scarcely lift it above the bushes, and he steered more crookedly than -ever. As he passed a clump of burdock, out dashed Topknot, squawking and -screeching, and it was only by sheer luck that he escaped her beak. - -“That owl never killed them, did he?” asked Nibble when he came up with -the hen. - -“Not while I was with them,” she answered, ruffling up her feathers. “He -wouldn’t dare. No. It was a furry thing with stripes. He’d reach in his -paw and draw them out from under me--so gently at first I didn’t know -what he was doing.” - -Now that certainly did sound a lot like Tad Coon. “Did he have a black -mask across his face?” Nibble wanted to know. - -“It was so very dark I couldn’t see,” she clucked. “He had a bushy tail -and no matter where I tried to attack him he kept his back turned.” - -No wonder Watch the Dog had thought it was Tad. Even Nibble felt -doubtful. He was a very sober rabbit when he hopped over to where Watch -and Tommy Peele were examining the chicks. - -“They’re not all here. The killer’s come back for them!” Tommy was just -shouting excitedly. “We’ve been with him all the time, so it’s not the -coon. What is it?” But Nibble knew that the little owl had taken them, -and he certainly wasn’t the killer, either. - -Watch sniffed very carefully. “It isn’t Tad’s smell,” he whined, -circling about. Suddenly he barked, bristling. “But it certainly is his -trail!” For there right beneath his nose was a hind footprint, something -like a baby’s, and very much more like Tad Coon’s. “He won’t fool me -again,” Watch raged. “I’ll fix him!” - -“Wait a minute,” Nibble protested. - -“That’s too small to be Tad. It might be another coon. No, no! It hasn’t -a handy-paw. Look!” For the print of the forefoot was clawed and padded -like Watch’s own, and not a bit like any coon’s. - -Watch sat right down. This was too puzzling for him. - -“We’ll find out yet,” Nibble encouraged him. “You look out up here--you -might catch him, red-toothed, any minute. I’m going to see what the -little owls know about him.” - -But he didn’t tell why he was sure they knew. - -Now if Nibble had gone straight to Doctor Muskrat and asked, “Who has a -hind footprint like a little coon’s and a front one like a dog’s?” the -wise old doctor would have told him in a moment. - -But he didn’t. Because Tad was down at Doctor Muskrat’s Pond waiting for -him, to know if Tommy Peele believed him. How could Nibble say, “Well, -we’re pretty sure you told the truth, but we can’t find any one else to -lay it to. The real killer must be too smart for us.” So he just crept -into the Brushpile beneath the two little owls, asleep like two small -knots on their limb. - -They slept late, for they had feasted on those chicks that morning. It -was almost dark before they stretched their wings and twiddled their -stumpy tails. “Have you seen anything of Stripes?” asked the Lady Owl, -polishing her beak on the rough bark, just the way you want to brush -your teeth before breakfast. “Or are you going back for another chick?” - -“No,” answered her mate. “I’d rather follow him.” And he flew over to -the hollow in the fallen oak. “He’s gone!” he cried when he came back -again. “He’s been gone a long time. His scent’s quite cold.” - -“That’s no sign,” she said cheerfully. “Stripes can leave less scent -than any fur I ever knew, when he pleases--and make more when he isn’t -pleased!” - -Nibble almost squealed. “Stripes is a skunk! I’ve never seen him, but -Watch has. What a joke on that dog!” What Nibble had learned surely -would have burst out of him if she hadn’t added: “Never mind, we’ll find -him fast enough.” And off they flew. - -“So will I,” chuckled Nibble, racing along behind them. - -He’d have lost them in the dark, because they flew zig-zagging all -about, if they hadn’t kept calling to each other all the while. “Where? -Where?” they cried every other minute. Then “Here! Here!” shouted the -little he owl “Under the bridge!” And, sure enough, Nibble could see a -white thing moving around by the bridge across the brook that came out -of the lower end of Doctor Muskrat’s Pond. - -He could make out the queer blotchy streaks of white that Stripes was -named from. The white tuft was probably the tip of his tail. Oh, yes, he -could see that skunk all right enough--but he couldn’t see someone else -who was hunting clams right beside Stripes. He could only hear. - -“Get out! I’ve taken this hunting ground.” That was a horrid, snarly -voice. - -“All right. Then I’ll be moving right along.” That was the fat, smily -voice of Tad Coon. In the dark you couldn’t see his stripes at all. -There was splashing. - -“Ah! Wah! Yah! Gr-r-r-yah!” yelped the snarly voice. Then Nibble smelled -the awfullest smell you ever imagined--the smell of Stripes when he -isn’t pleased. - -Nibble’s nose was twitching so fast he had to wipe it on the nice damp -earth, just as the little owl wiped her beak on the rough bark of her -perch. But he stayed there, squeezed in between the stems of a leafy -elder bush, trying to guess what had happened. - -Pat-pat, came leisurely footsteps. “Uh-huh,” coughed a voice. Then -someone snorted. Nibble’s ears flew up; he knew that sound. Tad Coon was -trying to keep from laughing. Pat-pat, went his handy-paws, and then -there was a splashing and a scrubbing. Nibble hopped down to the pond, -and there was Tad squirming about in the damp sand. - -“That you, Nibble?” Tad asked as he heard the soft lip-it, lip-it of -Nibble’s furry feet. “Keep to windward. Keep to windward, if you don’t -want to strangle, as I’m almost doing.” He was lying on his back and he -stopped squirming while he spoke. Nibble could see his limp paws fairly -shaking with laughter. - -“Whew, I should say so! What happened? Did you have a fight with -Stripes?” Nibble asked curiously as he moved around Tad. “You aren’t -hurt, are you?” - -“Hurt!” snorted Tad. “Of course not. Stripes Skunk won’t fight. He -doesn’t have to. He wouldn’t face any one anywhere near his own size--he -just turns around so you can’t find anything but the tip of his tail to -chew on. And that’s all shaggy, slippery hairs, so you couldn’t possibly -get a grip on it, and if you did he knows he could make you let go. He -has this scent,” Tad sniffed disgustedly, “and it’s worse than any bite -he could give because it shows all your enemies where you are.” - -“But Watch was trying to follow Stripes, because he’s the killer of -those poor little chicks up at the barn, and he could hardly trail him -at all.” - -“Of course not,” Tad giggled, “Stripes hates it himself. He’s so afraid -of getting it on his own fur that he won’t use it unless someone’s -foolish enough to plague him into it--like me,” he finished, sanding a -new spot to get it clean. “But Watch can trail him now.” - -“What did you do?” My, but Nibble was curious to know. - -Tad looked half ashamed, the way he always does when his tricks come -back on him. “Well, he just would turn his back on me--and he was so -rude and there was a mussel, such a big one, with a big sharp shell--so -all the time I was being so polite I was letting it close on the end of -his tail. And he couldn’t make it let go when he wanted to. My, but -wasn’t he scared!” - -So that was Tad’s trick. It was certainly clever, but Nibble didn’t -sleep very close to him that night. - - - CHAPTER IX - STRIPES SKUNK LEARNS HOW TO BEHAVE - -Early, early in the morning Stripes Skunk came snooping into the Pickery -Things. Of course they caught hold of him until Nibble Rabbit waked up. -And as soon as he sniffed that scent in the air he said, “Is that you, -Tad Coon?” - -“No,” said a meek, whiny voice; “it’s me, Stripes Skunk. I’ve been -talking with the little owls. Please, won’t you make a compact with me?” - -“Compact!” Nibble exclaimed. “Of course I won’t! And no one else will!” -At that Stripes began to cry. “Won’t you even try me?” he sobbed. “I’d -not want to be friends. I just want to be let alone as long as I’m good. -Won’t you give me a chance to show you how very good I can be?” - -So Nibble finally promised to talk things over with Watch and Doctor -Muskrat. Doctor Muskrat didn’t say anything, but he waited out on his -flat stone for Watch. And when Watch came he fairly howled at the idea. - -“Make a compact with that murderer?” he barked. “Not when he’s killed -those little chicks that belong to Tommy Peele. I’ll kill him.” - -“Watch,” said Doctor Muskrat, “who made you executioner of all the woods -and fields? Killing Stripes won’t give back those chicks to Tommy Peele. -But if you put Stripes to work instead, he can pay back for them. He can -keep down the mice who steal Tommy’s grain; he can kill snakes, and -locusts, and beetles, and all manner of grubs. If he just picks bugs off -Tommy’s potatoes he’ll pay for all the harm he’s done.” - -Watch put his head to one side. He could remember how Tommy hated to -pick the bugs off those potatoes. “Wurff,” he growled at last. “I wish I -knew what Tommy would think about it. I’ll wait until I know.” - -As soon as Doctor Muskrat had finished speaking, Watch went rambling up -to the old house with his ears laid back. He wanted to get a nice -comfortable bone in a quiet corner and think about it. Doctor Muskrat -was right; no one, not even Tommy Peele, had appointed him executioner -of the woods and fields, and he’d been pretty quick about wanting to -kill every one who did any harm, instead of letting them learn -better--if they would. You see, a dog is so big and strong he has to be -careful not to bully the other beasts. No decent dog can be happy if he -does that. But he couldn’t make up his mind that Stripes Skunk deserved -to be trusted. - -Neither did Nibble Rabbit. He wanted to know what every other one of the -Woodsfolk thought about it. Right now he knew that Stripes was waiting -to find out what Watch had decided to do to him, and yet he couldn’t -help shaking at the idea of going to talk with him. For the first thing -every mother rabbit teaches the fluffy bunny babies, as soon as they -open their eyes, is to run from anything that has the strange and scary -scent of the Things-from-under-the-Earth, whether they wear scales or -fur. Snakes have it just the same as Stripes the Skunk, or Slyfoot the -Mink, or the weasel whom the Woodsfolk usually mean when they speak of -the Killer. He’s so terribly bloodthirsty and cruel that they never give -him any other name. - -But when Nibble found Stripes waiting patiently beside his Pickery -Things, right where the faithful thorns had warned him to stop when he -came begging for help that morning, even a scarier rabbit than Nibble -wouldn’t have been afraid. Stripes was trembling and trying his best not -to cry. “What did he say?” he begged anxiously. “Please, Nibble, quick! -What did that big dog say? It’s too late for me to try to run away from -him. He could trail me anywhere, and I’m so slow he’d overtake me in -just a little while.” - -“He’s gone off to make up his mind,” said Nibble. “Doctor Muskrat put in -a word for you. He said that if you hunted the mice in Tommy Peele’s -grain and kept the potato bugs off his vines, you could pay Tommy back -for those chicks you killed, if you didn’t do any more harm.” - -“I will! I will!” chattered Stripes. “I just love mice and potato bugs, -too. Only I thought those chicks belonged to a hen. Who’s Tommy Peele?” - -[Illustration: Nibble accuses Stripes of stealing.] - -“Why, Tommy Peele is a boy. He owns all these woods and fields, and the -hen as well. That’s why Watch, his dog, takes care of them all,” Nibble -began. - -“But what’s a boy?” Stripes demanded, his eyes opened very wide. - -“A boy? Why, he’s a man’s kitten,” Nibble explained patiently. (Kittens -are what Stripes calls his own young.) “This is his hunting ground. But -he only hunts Bad Ones. We Woodsfolk aren’t afraid of him, and Doctor -Muskrat is his special friend.” - -“I must thank Doctor Muskrat,” exclaimed Stripes very eagerly. “I’d like -to bring him a present--how about a nice fresh egg? I just found some -here.” - -And just then Bob White’s wife, over in the Quail’s Thicket, began to -scream. “Prr-whit! My nest! Someone’s spoiled my beautiful eggs! -Prr-whit! Two of them are nothing but empty shells,” she wailed. And the -air was filled with whirring wings. Every other quail in the covey who -wasn’t sitting on eggs of her own had come to see what was the matter. -And my, but weren’t they angry! - -But Nibble Rabbit was angrier still. “You took those eggs!” he accused -Stripes. “You just finished telling me so. And you were trying to -pretend you would be good. Is that your way?” He looked savage enough to -kick Stripes and send him end over end. That’s the rabbit way of -fighting. He stamped his feet. - -But Stripes never bared a tooth to defend himself. He just turned his -back, just as Tad said he always did, and hunched himself into a little -ball. “I did,” he confessed. “I did take them but I didn’t know it was -bad. Truly I didn’t. Please don’t look that way. I don’t want to do -anything more to be sorry for.” - -“Then why did you steal?” Nibble demanded. - -“I just found them,” Stripes pleaded. “There wasn’t any one with them at -all. I knew I mustn’t kill any more quail, but eggs are different. -Aren’t they?” he asked anxiously. - -“No,” said Nibble. “They are not. This year’s eggs are next year’s -quail. If we let every one help himself to all the eggs he came across -there wouldn’t be any more quail to lay them.” - -“But I’ve always done it,” whimpered Stripes, peeking over his shoulder -to see how Nibble was bristling. “And I only took two.” - -“That’s as bad as taking them all. Do you suppose she’ll go back to them -now that she knows you’ve found them?” Nibble began to suspect that -Stripes really didn’t know any better after all, but this was no time to -teach him. - -“Wouldn’t she if I promised never to do it again?” he asked hopefully. - -“She wouldn’t believe you,” snapped Nibble decidedly. “Watch the Dog -gave you one chance even after you killed Tommy Peele’s little chicks. -Now you’ve been bad right over again. No one here ever will trust you. -You’d better go back where you came from as fast as you can -travel--Watch will certainly rage about this.” - -“But I don’t wa-a-ant to go,” sniffed Stripes. “I want to stay right -here and learn how to behave. Way back in the Deep Woods I heard about -it. It’s the peacefulest place in the world----” - -“So you came to see if you couldn’t make us a little trouble!” Nibble -was in a terrible temper. “Tried to lay all on poor Tad Coon, didn’t -you? You’d better foot it if you want to save your skin. That dog will -most certainly kill you.” - -So off trudged Stripes with his head hanging. And Nibble hopped over to -the Quail’s Thicket just in time to hear them asking each other, -“Where’s Bob? Where IS Bob?” - - - CHAPTER X - STRIPES SKUNK BEGINS TO BE GOOD - -You know quail live together in the winter but separate when they nest -in the spring. They mostly settle near enough together so that when -anything goes wrong the covey call can bring them all in. They help each -other if they can; if they can’t at least they learn about the danger to -those precious nests of their own. - -But when Bob White’s wife gave that horrified “Prr-whit!” that a quail’s -ears can hear so far, her own husband did not come. The other birds -might scatter all over the woods and fields calling anxiously, “Bob -White, Bob White, Oh, Bob White!” but he did not answer. - -Nibble was the only one who knew for sure who had taken the eggs. He -didn’t tell on Stripes Skunk--not yet, for fear the little owls would -hear of it. He called Chaik Jay and whispered, “Tell Watch the Dog to -find my trail and follow it.” Then he set out after Stripes. “That bad -killer knows what happened to Bob,” he said to himself. “I’m glad I -didn’t let him fool me a second time. He wanted me to persuade Bob’s -wife to go back to her nest and trust him--then he’d have caught her, -and maybe I wouldn’t be in trouble! Just maybe!” And he ran as fast as -ever he could. - -But he was only half right. Stripes did know what had happened to Bob -White, but he wasn’t to blame for it. Instead he was doing his best to -help the poor bird. He was waddling back to the Quail’s Thicket with his -tongue hanging out the side of his mouth and his long hairy tail -waggling because he was too winded to gallop. - -Nibble ran right straight into him. The first thing he said was, “What -are you doing here?” and the next was “What about Bob White Quail?” - -And wasn’t Stripes s’prised? “How ever did you hear?” he gasped. “I -haven’t seen a single wing I could send for help, so I’ve ’most burst my -sides coming after you my own self. He’s hanging upside down from a -little tree. He’ll die if you don’t get him down soon. Hurry! Hurry!” - -Hurry! You just better believe Nibble did. He knew what that meant. Bob -was caught in exactly the same kind of a snare that Tommy Peele had set -for Nibble. You remember he fastened a wire noose to the tip end of a -springy sapling, and then he bent it over and pegged it down. The minute -anything touched it, swish went the sapling and swish went whatever was -caught in that wicked wire. This one had tight hold of Bob White’s foot, -and there he hung with his head limp and his wings just weakly -fluttering. - -[Illustration: Bob White was caught in Tommy Peele’s snare.] - -“I guess I’ll have to try to gnaw through this tree,” said Nibble -anxiously. “I simply can’t climb.” And he looked at his furry feet that -are made to run. - -Stripes looked at them, too, and then he looked at his own. You remember -the queer tracks he left up by the barn. His front feet were like a -dog’s but his hind ones were something like Tad Coon’s, and you know how -Tad could climb! “I never tried it,” he murmured doubtfully, “but maybe -I can.” - -Nibble almost squealed. “If you can get up there and bend that top -down----” And right then Stripes clambered up on a log and sprang. He -caught in the lower branches, and then he began--well, Tad Coon or -Chatter Squirrel would never have called it climbing! It was scratch and -scramble and grunt and whine, but he kept right on. And the higher he -went the lower the sapling leaned. Down, down came Bob White till he lay -on the ground. Nibble had hardly touched his teeth to that wicked wire -when it let go its hold and Bob White was free. And just about then -Stripes Skunk let go, too, and came tumbling down on top of them. - -There lay Bob White, too weak to fly, his eyes closed, and his poor -little thirsty beak half open. “Now,” thought Nibble, “that skunk is -going to try and eat him.” Of course that’s what any bad -Thing-from-under-the-Earth would do. - -But Stripes didn’t. All that he scrunched was a couple of fat wood -snails. Pretty soon he found what he was looking for--a fat, juicy grub. -He knew Bob White would like it because skunks and birds eat so many of -the same things. And Bob White did. The minute he smelled it he opened -his eyes, and then he opened his beak. My, but that grub felt cool and -moist on his tongue when he gulped it in! But didn’t he start when he -saw who had given it to him? - -And didn’t Nibble Rabbit prick up his ears when he heard what Stripes -Skunk was saying? “I broke up your nest and stole your eggs this -morning,” he told Bob White. “I thought maybe I’d pay you back even if I -can’t be trusted to kill mice and potato bugs to pay back for those -chickens of Tommy Peele’s I killed.” He still talked in his whiny, -discouraged voice. - -“What’s that?” cheeped Bob. He simply couldn’t believe his ears. “Well, -I’ll be feathered! I’d as soon expect the Great Horned Owl to tell me -such a thing. Eggs? You’re perfectly welcome. It’s not too late to nest -over again. But for a skunk you’re certainly queer.” - -“I--I--feel queer,” said Stripes in a funny, high voice, as though he -were going to cry. “I feel queer and different.” - -“You just feel happy,” said Nibble. “And you’ll feel happier yet when -you’ve fixed those potato bugs for Tommy.” - - - CHAPTER XI - STRIPES CONTINUES HIS GOOD WORKS - -You just ought to have heard the commotion in the Quail’s Thicket when -Bob White came whirring home with his wild tale. But do you think he -could make the quail believe that Stripes Skunk had helped Nibble Rabbit -set him free again? Not until Nibble Rabbit himself came hopping along -and told them exactly the same thing--only he gave Stripes all the -credit. - -“Eggs! Eggs!” exclaimed Bob White’s wife when Stripes explained he was -trying to pay back because he’d mussed up her nest that morning. “What -are a couple of eggs? I’ll scrape them back into the nest and lay a -couple more in no time. I hadn’t begun to set on them.” - -“Come along, Stripes,” said Nibble. “We must tell Doctor Muskrat. You -know he told Watch the Dog to try you. If the quail can trust you, I -guess I can. Your cousin Slyfoot the Mink would have eaten me long ago -if I’d come this close to him. Why didn’t you?” - -“I was afraid,” Stripes owned up. “The little owls warned me that if I -did the dog would come after me. Anyway, I couldn’t catch you. Neither -could Slyfoot if you only knew it. - -“You know,” he went on to explain, “we things from under the earth are -all scary--just as scary as you are. Only you’re so afraid of us that -you never remember we have any one to be afraid of. When Slyfoot chases -one of you silly bunnies you run round and round through the brush -trying to hide yourself from him. But as long as you hide he’s hidden, -too. All the time he’s trailing you. So he can take his time about -finding you--and he always does. Now if you’d run straight out in the -open, where the grass is short and there isn’t any place to hide, he -wouldn’t dare to follow. He knows the owl would get him.” - -“If he didn’t get us first,” was Nibble’s sly comment. - -“But you’ve got twice as many chances to get away. You can dodge and -run,” Stripes insisted. “Besides, your furry feet are so quiet; ours -make much more noise when we’re galloping. And the big owl hears you -before he looks for you.” - -“He does?” Nibble exclaimed. “How do you know?” - -“Why every one in the woods knows that an owl is either right-eared or -left-eared. And whichever ear he uses most, that side of his head gets -lop-sided from listening,” Stripes said. - -“But his feathers are so fluffy I don’t see how any one would find out, -if it’s really so,” Nibble objected. - -“Killer (he meant the big weasel) ate one,” grinned Stripes. “I guess he -ought to know. You see everything has something to be afraid of.” - -They weren’t going very fast, Stripes was eating snails and licking -little clusters of insect eggs from the under sides of leaves and -digging grubs among the roots, while Nibble took a bite here and a bite -there as is the way with rabbits. “Everything has something to be afraid -of--and yet it’s terrible to be afraid,” he said. - -“But if you’re not afraid, the others are afraid of you,” answered -Stripes. “You’re the only rabbit who ever scared me. When you got so -cross because I stole those quail eggs, I didn’t know what you’d do to -me. Honest I didn’t.” - -“I didn’t, either,” Nibble giggled, remembering how funny Stripes looked -when he scrouched all up with his back turned and squinted over his -shoulder. “I was too angry with you for being so bad. What could I have -done, anyway?” - -“I wouldn’t like you to kick me,” Stripes sniffed, nodding his head very -earnestly. “You’ve got picky claws on those big furry kickers of yours. -They’d rip a fellow worse than teeth do, and you’re awfully big for a -rabbit.” - -“Am I?” asked Nibble in great surprise. “It’s a long time since I’ve -seen another bunny--not since the day my mother left me.” - -“Well, you’ll see plenty before long, now that the news is going through -the Deep Woods that this is such a peaceful place.” By now they were -patting up the beach of Doctor Muskrat’s Pond. Stripes stopped suddenly. -“Wait a minute,” he exclaimed, “I’ve got to do something before I meet -the doctor.” And off he trotted, his long, hairy tail waggling behind -him. - -“Peaceful?” thought Nibble. “He calls this peaceful when something’s -happening every minute. What must the Deep Woods and the Far Marshes be -if this is peaceful? Wonder what that hairy scamp is up to now?” But he -didn’t worry. - -Pretty soon Stripes came running back with his mouth full. He laid a -mouse on the doctor’s flat stone and then he laid something else beside -it. “It’s so early,” he explained. “I had quite a hunt to find this -potato bug.” - -And then didn’t Nibble laugh! And didn’t Doctor Muskrat? But Stripes was -deadly serious. “That’s to show you I mean to pay Tommy Peele for those -chicks. He’ll have to hunt harder than I did if he wants to find any -potato bugs after I’m through with them. I like being good, but how did -you know I’d like it?” - -“Ahem,” Doctor Muskrat cleared his throat. “Way back in the First-Off -Beginning----” - -And you know how that would please Nibble. - - - CHAPTER XII - DOCTOR MUSKRAT TELLS WHY SKUNKS ARE SO - -“Way back in the First-Off Beginning,” said Doctor Muskrat impressively, -“there was one of the Things-from-under-the-Earth who really wanted to -be good----” - -“The skunk!” exclaimed Nibble Rabbit. “Wasn’t it?” - -“Was it?” asked Stripes Skunk. - -Doctor Muskrat didn’t answer right away. He sat there sleeking his -whiskers with a clammy wet paw to hide a smile, and his little eyes were -twinkling. “I was just wondering,” he went on at last, “whether they -still tell this story in your family or whether you made up your mind on -your own account.” - -“On my own account,” owned Stripes truthfully. “I got awfully scared at -what the little owls told me after you found out I’d been making trouble -for Tad Coon. And I got to thinking. Then it seemed as if I just had to -try how it would be to live so nice and peaceful--the way you want it.” -He was squirming a pebble in his paw and squinting down his pointy nose, -looking very much ashamed of himself. - -“Ah,” cried Doctor Muskrat in a delighted voice. “That’s exactly the -story of the First Skunk in the First-Off Beginning. He was bad--just as -bad as all the other Things-from-under-the-Earth. He went running -around, making all the trouble he could, while Mother Nature was away -fixing up the other half of the world and this half all went wrong -again. You remember, Nibble, how the sun and the wind and the rain -didn’t take care of things the way she’d ordered them to, so winter -came, and the plants hid in the earth and wouldn’t be eaten, and her -very own new creatures got so terrible starvation hungry that some of -them took to eating each other--like the wolves ate the cows. - -“All the Things-from-under-the-Earth wore scales in the First-Off -Beginning. When winter came most of them went right back under the earth -and they stayed scaly, and are to this very day. But some of them found -it was so easy to Mother Nature’s poor starved new creatures they -couldn’t bear to stop eating them. They didn’t bother picking their poor -lean bones; they just ate the tender parts that weren’t so starvation -thin--like brains. They drank blood, and it went to their heads, so at -last they killed for the sheer fun of killing.” - -“Like Killer the Weasel,” nodded Stripes knowingly. - -“Like some of Mother Nature’s own creatures, the wildcats and the -wolves,” said Doctor Muskrat. “And they didn’t care a bit who they were -killing, either. If the Things-from-under-the-Earth came near they took -after them. They took after the First Skunk whenever they came across -him--you’d better believe he was scared! The ground was so frozen by -that time that he couldn’t dig down into it. So he hid in a hollow tree, -with nothing but his scales on, and he was terribly cold and miserable -and unhappy. And that was the first thing that set him to thinking.” - -“Think of being in a windy tree with nothing but a clammy coat of scales -on,” said Nibble, his teeth almost chattering. “Sometimes it’s bad -enough in the Pickery Things, and they surely keep the wind off.” - -“Well, he didn’t suffer very long,” went on the old doctor. “The first -thing Mother Nature said was, ‘Any one can have fur that wants it.’ Now -she didn’t say ‘my own creatures,’ nor she didn’t say ‘except the Bad -Ones’--she just said ‘any one.’ And there was the First Skunk in a nice -warm suit of fur, looking like any of her own things, except that his -earholes were so far over the sides of his head his ears came too low -down--and so did those of all the Things-from-under-the-Earth; that’s -one way you can always tell them. And he was so happy. He said to -himself, ‘This is all I wanted,’ and he curled right up tight and fell -fast asleep. - -“But when he woke up he began to think again. And by this time he could -think of several things he wanted. So he started out to find how he’d -get them. And it didn’t take him long to discover that he got his fur -because Mother Nature gave it to him; or to learn not to hunt her up -where she was busy trying to put things in order in this half of the -world again. - -“She was fairly discouraged at the way the sun and the wind and the rain -had spoiled it and disgusted at the way some of her creatures had been -behaving--’specially the wolves, for eating the poor cows, you know. So -the First Skunk didn’t dare to trouble her; he just sat there listening. -And he thought and thought, until his head was tired, for the -Things-from-under-the-Earth aren’t used to thinking. Perhaps that’s why -they always stay Bad Ones----” - -“It is!” Stripes interrupted. “It certainly is.” And his little low ears -were so pricked up over the idea that he didn’t look snaky and sneaky -any more, but just nice and pert and interested. - -“Well, anyway,” continued Doctor Muskrat, “at last the First Skunk crept -up close and whined, ‘Won’t you have the earth fixed up the way it was -before very long? I want to ask something before you’re all done.’ - -“‘I can’t do that,’ she answered sadly, ‘because it’s been lived, so it -can’t be done over again. I’ll have to do the best I can with things as -they are. But who are you?’ She didn’t know him at all because he was so -different from the last time she’d seen him. But she knew right off from -his ears that she’d never made him. - -“‘I’m the skunk,’ he answered. ‘This is my new fur you gave me this -morning!’ And then wasn’t she angry--angry with herself and angry with -him! It was hard enough to have the sun and the rain and the wind be so -careless that they let winter come, without having some of the Bad Ones -stay up from under the earth to hunt her poor beasts all through it. If -they had only scales on they couldn’t, but here was one with fur. Just -because she was so hurried and flustered she hadn’t stopped to think -what she’d been saying when she said ‘any one’ could have it. - -“But the First Skunk didn’t know how she felt about it. He was so -pert and proud because he’d been thinking a little. He said, ‘I -like the way you want things. I want to be good and live up here -in the sun with your own creatures instead of going back down under -the Earth-that-is-common-to-all.’ - -“‘Well, be good, then,’ she snapped. She really didn’t believe him. - -“‘But,’ he argued, ‘someone will have to show me how.’ You see her own -creatures were all made good, and they had to learn how to be bad from -the Bad Ones. A Bad One may want ever so much to be good, but he hasn’t -any idea where to begin. - -“She didn’t stop to think of that. She thought he was just making -excuses, so she said, ‘You can stay up all winter now that you’ve got -fur. I don’t see why you need anything else.’ - -“‘Because I’m so small and so slow it’s terribly scary for me now that -your own beasts have taken to killing,’ he whimpered. ‘I don’t know how -to run away.’ - -“‘Oho!’ Mother Nature was very sarcastic, but he didn’t know enough to -know it. ‘You Bad Ones taught them how. I should think you’d be proud -over the way they’ve learned it. What else do you want, then?’ - -“‘Lots of things,’ answered the First Skunk more cheerfully. ‘Paws, for -instance.’” - -“Did they have feet?” Stripes Skunk interrupted again. “Snakes haven’t.” - -“They had then,” replied Doctor Muskrat; “splay-footed, lizardy ones. -The First Skunk wasn’t sure which he wanted, handy-paws like Tad Coon or -paddy ones like the wolves, so he could run away from them. He left all -that to Mother Nature. ‘Anyway you want to fix me,’ he said, ‘so I’m not -always being chased and they can’t hold me if they do catch me.’ - -“Mother Nature just stared at that First Skunk. ‘Well, of all the -impudence!’ she exclaimed. ‘Of all the impudence! There you are, then!’ - -“And there he was, indeed! Only he had paddy-paws on in front, where he -wanted the handy-ones, and Tad Coon’s paws behind, where he couldn’t run -on them, and a long, hairy tail no tooth could hang on to, and that -terrible scent so no one could even want to try. You can imagine how -that First Skunk felt!” - - - CHAPTER XIII - IN DEFENSE OF A LADY - -“That poor First Skunk!” exclaimed Nibble Rabbit. “Mother Nature was -mean to give him everything he asked for just the opposite to the way he -wanted it. I’d have gone right off and been just as bad as ever I knew -how to be.” - -“Eh, Stripes Skunk?” asked Doctor Muskrat, “is that how you feel about -it?” - -“N-n-no,” Stripes answered slowly. “Being good is something even Mother -Nature couldn’t give the First Skunk; he’d have to get it for himself. -For the other things, I like being just the way we are. When I had to -climb the tree to help Bob White Quail I’d have liked the handy-paws the -First Skunk wanted. But that’s just because I’ve never practised -climbing, like my little cousin Spotty. And handy-paws are no earthly -good to dig with--you just ought to see these paddy-paws of mine make -the dirt fly. But paddy-paws behind, where he wanted them, wouldn’t be -half as nice as these good firm footy soles I stand on. - -“I wouldn’t even give up my hairy tail. It’s heavy, but no one can bite -it, and it’s wonderful to sleep in.” He whisked it into a billowy rug -about his toes; then he finished contentedly, “I don’t mind Mother -Nature making us so we can’t chase other folks, seeing that she gave us -our scent so we’re not always being chased. She was perfectly fair.” - -“Fair!” You ought to have seen Nibble turn his sniffy nose up at this. -“She played you a horrid kind of a joke.” - -“Not at all!” answered Stripes--and he was really quite indignant. “We -don’t have to be unpleasant. Anyway, it’s better than fighting, and I -notice even you bunnies don’t like to be eaten. Only nobody but Doctor -Muskrat seems to understand.” - -“Furry-foot,” chuckled that wise old beast, “Mother Nature played that -joke on a lot of other fellows besides the skunk. We were all of us -asking for scents, and she simply couldn’t understand it. She thought if -she gave the First Skunk that one, the rest of us wouldn’t want them.” - -“Why did you?” Nibble wanted to know. “We didn’t.” - -“You didn’t, didn’t you?” Doctor Muskrat’s little eyes twinkled. “Why do -you run around the Pickery Things each evening and give a stamp at every -tunnel?” - -“So if any other rabbit comes he’ll know that the place belongs to me.” - -“How will he know?” asked the doctor. “He mightn’t see you or hear -you----” - -“He’d smell me, of course!” Nibble’s eyes were big and round. - -“He would. Now do you see why nearly every one wanted some way of -leaving messages for other Woodsfolk while he went off to hide or feed? -You don’t dare make a noise; you can’t wait too long for fear someone -will see you; so you leave that little smelly mark that stays and stays -long after the warm smell of your body is blown away so you can’t be -followed. But you’re so used to it you never think about it.” - -“Oh-h-h!” said Nibble. “I hadn’t thought of that. I guess I’m beginning -to understand.” - -“I hope so,” sniffed the doctor. “Of course nobody’ll ever be wise -enough to know just how generous Mother Nature’s been. But remember, you -never nibble a clover leaf that you haven’t her to thank for it.” - -Clover leaf! the bunny’s twitchy nose began to sniff for one. Stripes -Skunk cocked up one ear and looked at the Doctor with a little twinkle -in his eye. “I s’pose we can thank her for snails,” said he. -“’Cause----” Schloop! he licked a juicy one off the under side of a dock -leaf, “’cause at least (crunch! crunch!) we can run fast--enough--to -catch ’em.” - - THE END - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAD COON'S TRICKS *** - -***** This file should be named 64216-0.txt or 64216-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - https://www.gutenberg.org/6/4/2/1/64216/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Tad Coon's Tricks</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: John Breck</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: William T. Andrews</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 05, 2021 [eBook #64216]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Roger Frank</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAD COON'S TRICKS ***</div> - -<div class='tac mt20 mb20'> - <h1>TAD COON’S TRICKS</h1> -</div> - -<div class='section mt20 mb20 tac'> - <div>Told at Twilight Stories</div> - <div class='fs11 mb07'>By JOHN BRECK</div> - <div class='fs09'>MOSTLY ABOUT NIBBLE THE BUNNY<br/> - NIBBLE RABBIT MAKES MORE FRIENDS<br/> - THE SINS OF SILVERTIP THE FOX<br/> - TAD COON’S TRICKS<br/> - THE WAVY TAILED WARRIOR<br/> - TAD COON’S GREAT ADVENTURE<br/> - THE BAD LITTLE OWLS<br/> - THE JAY BIRD WHO WENT TAME</div> -</div> - -<div class='section tac mt20 mb20'> - <div id='i001' class='mt10 mb00' style='margin-left:15.0%; width:70%;'> - <img src='images/illus-001.jpg' alt='' style='width:100%' /> - <div class='tac mt00'>Tad sent a big rock rushing down on top of Grandpop Snapping Turtle.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='section mt20 mb20 tac'> - <div class='mb05' style='text-decoration:underline'>Told at Twilight Stories</div> - <div class='fs14 mb07'>Tad Coon’s Tricks</div> - <div>by</div> - <div class='fs12 mb07'>John Breck</div> - <div>Illustrated by</div> - <div class='fs11 mb02'>William T. Andrews</div> - <div class='fs08'>Garden City New York</div> - <div class='fs08 mb05'>Doubleday, Page & Company</div> - <div class='fs08'>1923</div> -</div> - -<div class='section mt20 mb20 tac fs08'> - <div class='mb07'>COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY<br/> - DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY</div> - <div class='mb07'>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF<br/> - TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,<br/> - INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN</div> - <div class='mb07'>COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS</div> - <div class='mb07'>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES<br/> - AT<br/> - THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y</div> - <div class='mb07'>First Edition</div> -</div> - -<div class='section mt40'> - <div>CONTENTS</div> - <ul class='mt02' style='list-style-Type:none'> - <li><span>I.</span> <a href='#ch_I'>Songs of the Hunt</a></li> - <li><span>II.</span> <a href='#ch_II'>Tad Coon’s Tricks and His Troubles</a></li> - <li><span>III.</span> <a href='#ch_III'>Grandpop’s Bite that Never Let Go</a></li> - <li><span>IV.</span> <a href='#ch_IV'>Tad’s Tricks Come Home to Roost</a></li> - <li><span>V.</span> <a href='#ch_V'>The Time Tad Coon Was Trickier Than He Knew</a></li> - <li><span>VI.</span> <a href='#ch_VI'>Tad Makes a Compact with Watch and Tommy Peele</a></li> - <li><span>VII.</span> <a href='#ch_VII'>Black Crime in the Hen House</a></li> - <li><span>VIII.</span> <a href='#ch_VIII'>How Nibble Turned Detective</a></li> - <li><span>IX.</span> <a href='#ch_IX'>Stripes Skunk Learns How to Behave</a></li> - <li><span>X.</span> <a href='#ch_X'>Stripes Skunk Begins to be Good</a></li> - <li><span>XI.</span> <a href='#ch_XI'>Stripes Continues His Good Works</a></li> - <li><span>XII.</span> <a href='#ch_XII'>Doctor Muskrat Tells Why Skunks Are So</a></li> - <li><span>XIII.</span> <a href='#ch_XIII'>In Defense of a Lady</a></li> - </ul> -</div> - -<div class='section mt40'> - <div>ILLUSTRATIONS</div> - <ul class='mt02' style='list-style-type:none'> - <li><a href='#i001'>Tad sent a big rock rushing down</a></li> - <li><a href='#i002'>Snap! went Grandpop Snapping Turtle’s mouth on Tad Coon’s playful tail</a></li> - <li><a href='#i003'>Tad Coon hits Trailer on the head with a hornet’s nest</a></li> - <li><a href='#i004'>Tad Coon needs Doctor Muskrat</a></li> - <li><a href='#i005'>At the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s Pond</a></li> - <li><a href='#i006'>The Bad Little Owl comes flipping by</a></li> - <li><a href='#i007'>Nibble accuses Stripes of stealing</a></li> - <li><a href='#i008'>Bob White was caught in Tommy Peele’s snare</a></li> - </ul> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<div class='tac fs12 mb10'> -TAD COON’S TRICKS -</div> - -<h2 id='ch_I' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="SONGS OF THE HUNT">CHAPTER I<br/> -<span class='fssm'>SONGS OF THE HUNT</span> -</h2> - -<p>You’d have thought every wing and paw in the Woods and Fields (except -the Bad Little Owls, of course) would have been glad to know that -Silvertip the Fox was caught. ’Specially Nibble Rabbit, who started the -hunt, and wise old Doctor Muskrat, who planned it, and Tommy Peele’s -good dog, Watch, and Trailer the Hound, who were still barking on his -trail way out in the middle of the Deep Woods. For Silvertip was just as -clever as he was wicked; the very last thing he’d done was to fool those -two dogs again.</p> - -<p>I s’pose old Grandpop Snapping Turtle, who did the catching was—glad, I -mean. But Doctor Muskrat just looked very, very sober, and Nibble felt -the shivers run from the puff on his tufty tail to the tips of his -tickly whiskers whenever he thought about it. They didn’t have a word to -say while they waited for the two hunters to come back to the -meeting-place by the flat stone at the edge of the Pond.</p> - -<p>But they thought of course the dogs would bark the good news so loud -that Tommy could hear it way down the road at the schoolhouse. Instead, -Trailer just gasped, “How awful!” in a very awed voice. And Watch looked -as if somebody’d rubbed him the wrong way.</p> - -<p>“Awful!” repeated Trailer. “Poor Silvertip! Think of his being caught by -a stupid old mud-grubber like that!” He drooped his tail and ears.</p> - -<p>“Why, that’s just the way I felt about it!” Nibble exclaimed. “But I -never dreamed you would. I thought you hated him.”</p> - -<p>“Hate him!” said both dogs at once. “Why, he was the smartest Beast we -ever chased. We hadn’t any reason to hate him.”</p> - -<p>That certainly made Nibble open his eyes pretty wide. “Then why did you -try to kill him?” he demanded. “Was it because you’re hungry?” He was -glad to know that the Pickery Things were close behind him when he asked -that.</p> - -<p>Trailer laughed. “I’m always hungry.” But his tail went up when he said -it, so Nibble didn’t run. “But that isn’t why I hunt. You have to know a -beast to hate him. I’ve killed plenty of beasts I never saw before I -found their trail. Lots that I don’t eat, either.”</p> - -<p>“I couldn’t do that!” Nibble gasped and Doctor Muskrat nodded.</p> - -<p>“Of course not,” said Trailer, quite proudly, too. “But that’s what I -was made for. My mother taught me to use my nose before my eyes were -open and to sing the trailing song as soon as I could talk above a -whimper.”</p> - -<p>“Sing it,” begged the woodsfolk. “Please.”</p> - -<p>Trailer raised his head and bayed with an open throat:</p> - -<div style='margin-top:.4em; margin-bottom:.4em; margin-left:2em;'> -“Drop your nose on the odorous trail,<br/> -For the warmest footprint soon grows stale.<br/> - Tow-row-row!<br/> -Leap the fences, plough through the mire,<br/> -At a steady gallop that’s slow to tire,<br/> -Follow the game of the hounds’ desire.<br/> -Raise your eyes—There he flies!<br/> -Hail!<br/> -Mark the flick of his fleeting tail!<br/> - Tow-row-row!” -</div> - -<p>“You see,” he explained, “one dog doesn’t do all the singing. He sings -one line and someone else answers with the next one, round and round -again.”</p> - -<p>The sound sent a queer, scary thrill through Nibble Rabbit. But now he -wasn’t really afraid of the smiling hound any more than he was of Watch.</p> - -<p>Watch sat with his ears pricked and his nostrils twitching while he -listened to the Hound’s Hunting Song. “Eh, but that’s grand!” he barked. -“It puts the tickle into your feet to be up and running.”</p> - -<p>Nibble Rabbit squirmed closer to the Pickery Things. He wasn’t afraid of -the dogs, but he felt very queer. “It starts my feet tickling, too,” he -sniffed. “And my fur’s all fluffed out like a moulting bird.”</p> - -<p>Trailer laughed. “That’s partly what we sing it for,” he explained. “It -rouses up you Game Beasts and gets you running, and when your coat -stands up on end your scent is easier to follow.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t say?” Nibble’s eyes were sparkling. “Then that’s why the -Quail say ‘Hold your scent!’ when they mean ‘sleek down your feathers.’”</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” nodded Trailer. “And they’re so clever that it takes a -special dog, who makes a business of birds, to find them. He has a -special song, too, but I never learned it. I only follow furry things.”</p> - -<p>“That was splendid!” put in Doctor Muskrat, who had been listening -thoughtfully to the talk. He wasn’t at all sorry because the dogs had -politely left him a clear path to the water. He could have dived in a -flash if he had wanted to. “You’ve made the frogs very jealous, Mr. -Trailer.” Sure enough, the frogs were tuning up all over the pond. -“There’s something very queer about this,” he went on. “Your song -doesn’t do anything to me—because I’ve never been chased that way. But -there was one dog, a noisy little one, who used to drive me nearly out -of my wits when I was younger.”</p> - -<p>“That might have been Spice the Terrier, who was here when I was a pup,” -said Watch. “I know his song well enough. He was always shouting it at -something.</p> - -<div style='margin-top:.4em; margin-bottom:.4em; margin-left:2em;'> -“A cat hunt!<br/> -A rat hunt!<br/> -A bird, beast, or bat hunt!<br/> -Fur or feather, hide or skin,<br/> -Shake him out and claw him in.<br/> -Grip your teeth beneath his chin<br/> -And there’s the end of that hunt.” -</div> - -<p>Watch had fairly snapped out Spice’s song.</p> - -<p>“That’s it!” squealed the Doctor. “That’s the very song—and look at my -fur! It will take a dip in cold water to smooth it again.” He was as -fluffy as Tad Coon’s tail. “Now, Watch, what’s your song?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m no regular kind of a dog, so I really haven’t any,” said Watch, -looking a bit regretful. “I just do—whatever I’m told the best I can -and”—here his ears pricked and his tail began to wag—“I look after -Tommy Peele.”</p> - -<p>“But why must you always do things?” said Nibble.</p> - -<p>“Why, everyone has to have a job of some kind,” said Trailer. “Or else -he’s a worthless old scrump not worth feeding. And, if it’s really your -own special job, you enjoy doing it. I love to hunt, but I wouldn’t care -much about driving cows.”</p> - -<p>“Sure you would if you learned how,” said Watch. “I really do.”</p> - -<p>“There, you see?” laughed Trailer. And Nibble nodded.</p> - -<p>“Speaking of driving cows,” smiled Trailer, “who do you think drove up -to Tommy Peele’s this morning?” He said it to tease Watch. He and Watch -had gone out before daybreak to hunt Silvertip and now it was way past -milking time.</p> - -<p>But Watch wasn’t teased a bit.</p> - -<p>“The cows slept in the barn,” he grinned. “Nobody had to drive them—so -there! The only job I have waiting for me right now is to clean up my -breakfast plate before Chirp Sparrow gets his scratchy little feet into -it.”</p> - -<p>Trailer forgot all about how tired he was. “Fine,” said he. “I’m ready -to help you.” And off they trotted with their tails waving.</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_II' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="TAD COON’S TRICKS AND HIS TROUBLES">CHAPTER II<br/> -<span class='fssm'>TAD COON’S TRICKS AND HIS TROUBLES</span> -</h2> - -<p>“I wonder why all the Tame Beasts have work to do or milk to give or eggs -or whatever it happens to be?” Nibble Rabbit remarked. “We don’t What’s -our job, Doctor Muskrat? Trailer says a Beast without a job isn’t worth -feeding.”</p> - -<p>“That’s just the point.” The doctor’s bright eyes were twinkling. “You -silly rabbit! Do you think Trailer would be so nice and obedient to -Watch and Tommy if he didn’t know the people up at the house would feed -him? If he had to catch his breakfast or go hungry there wouldn’t be any -bunny. He licked his lips every time he sniffed you. But so long as he -does what he’s told, Tommy’ll feed him. We feed ourselves.”</p> - -<p>“I see.” Nibble flicked his tail thoughtfully. “And we find our own -holes and take care of ourselves and we like doing it.”</p> - -<p>“Do we, indeed?” said a whiny, complainy voice from the bulrushes on the -bank. “Is that dog gone?” It was Tad Coon. He came splashing out of the -water and flopped down in the sun. Then he got very busy with his funny -little paws. The front ones were handy ones, but the hind feet made a -print like a baby’s would except that there was a little round hole, -where the claw pricked, in front of every toe. He would wipe them in his -warm fur and lick them, one by one, with his warm tongue. Nibble -couldn’t think what he was doing.</p> - -<p>“There,” he said at last, not quite so crossly. “I can feel with them. -The water’s awfully cold. And I had to stand in it all the time you -beasts were talking. That hound is my very worst enemy—I can’t yet see -for the life of me why he didn’t make a snap at Nibble Rabbit.”</p> - -<p>“Because I belong to Tommy Peele,” Nibble explained. “Why don’t you make -friends with him?”</p> - -<p>“Huh!” grunted Tad, crosser than ever. “Do you s’pose those dogs would -let me? Never!”</p> - -<p>You know Nibble Rabbit. First he’s scared and next he’s curious. That’s -why he has such a very good time—he’s always finding out about new -things. But you don’t know Tad Coon—not yet. There’s this about Tad -Coon. First, he’s very, very unhappy and then suddenly he’s got a lovely -joke on someone.</p> - -<p>He was very unhappy on this particular morning, though he was spread out -very comfortably in the warm sun where Trailer had lain. Still he kept -on complaining.</p> - -<p>“It isn’t any trouble to you fellows to find a hole,” he was saying. “A -nice spot to dig and there you are. But I live in trees, and not every -tree in the woods has a big enough hollow for me to hide in. I used to -sleep in that big oak—it went and blew down in the Terrible Storm” (he -said this exactly as though the poor old oak did it on purpose), “and I -had another that the wood-duck nested in. Silvertip the Fox spoiled the -nest and he didn’t leave me a single egg, either. And I had the nicest -of all in a great big elm; now there’s a cross old mother coon with four -young ones in it. I haven’t any place to go-o-o!”</p> - -<p>“That’s too bad,” said Doctor Muskrat, edging nearer the water because -Tad Coon’s temper isn’t very good.</p> - -<p>“Get a square meal and then you won’t want to sit there squalling like a -blind kitten.” And in he dove.</p> - -<p>Tad Coon didn’t dive after him. He didn’t even get angry. He just went -on wailing, “I haven’t eaten anything but frogs all spring and I’m so -sick of them I can’t bear the sight of them.”</p> - -<p>“Try fish, then,” advised Doctor Muskrat, from the pond.</p> - -<p>Tad Coon stopped whimpering. He looked at Doctor Muskrat, and then he -looked at Nibble Rabbit. “I believe I will,” he said. And he looked at -Nibble again. Then he walked out on the flat stone that used to be -Doctor Muskrat’s.</p> - -<p>“Don’t go in there,” warned Nibble. “That’s right where Grandpop -Snapping Turtle just caught Silvertip the Fox.”</p> - -<p>“I know that,” answered Tad. “I don’t dive; I go fishing. I take my -tail—” and he did it—“like this. And I tickle the water—like this. -And when a fish comes up, thinking it’s a fly just dropped in the water, -I reach out my paw and catch him. Move around behind me, so you won’t -cast a shadow. I must see what I’m doing.”</p> - -<p>So Nibble moved around where Tad told him to and craned his neck. This -looked interesting.</p> - -<p>Swish, swish, swish, went Tad Coon’s bushy tail. He cocked his head. -Swish—out went his hand—splash, went a great big wave all over Nibble -Rabbit.</p> - -<p>“Ugh! Snff-snff-choo-a-a-ka-choo!” he sneezed. He stamped his feet -angrily.</p> - -<p>Tad looked over his shoulder and then went back to his fishing as though -he didn’t know what he had done, but Nibble could hear him snort as he -tried to choke down his laughter, and his fur was shaking.</p> - -<p>Tad was sitting right over the place where Grandpop Snapping Turtle had -caught Silvertip the Fox. Tad knew perfectly well he was there, but it -would take something smarter than a loggy old turtle to catch Tad Coon. -Besides, he knew, too, that Grandpop Snapping Turtle wouldn’t pay -attention to anything else until Silvertip was all eaten up. So he sat -there flicking the water with the tip-end of his tail, pretending he was -fooling the fish into thinking it was a fly alighting. He was trying to -think up another trick to play.</p> - -<p>But there was one thing Tad didn’t know. He didn’t know what Doctor -Muskrat was doing. Doctor Muskrat was paddling around in the pond, -diving now and then as though he were fishing—and so he was, fishing up -trouble for Tad Coon. The first time he came up to find out the meaning -of Tad’s splash he sniffed. And it wasn’t to blow the water out of his -nose—it was to make Nibble look at him. Nibble did look. And Doctor -Muskrat closed both of his eyes in a big wink. After that you can be -pretty sure Nibble kept his eyes on that playful tail of Tad Coon.</p> - -<p>Flick! it went. Swish! For Tad wasn’t thinking what he was doing. He had -an idea for another joke. “Pop!” Up comes the ugly head of Grandpop -Snapping Turtle, his beady eyes peering, his hissy mouth open. Snap! it -went on the end of that playful tail. Jerk! And Tad Coon was bouncing up -the bank, his fluffy breeches sticking straight out with fright. And -when Grandpop Snapping Turtle’s ugly head sank back it was wearing -whiskers—whiskers which used to belong to the very last tip-end of -that smarty coon’s tail.</p> - -<p>And then didn’t Doctor Muskrat and Nibble Rabbit have their turn to -chuckle! Nibble laughed till he stamped, only this time he wasn’t the -one who was angry. And Doctor Muskrat paddled away round and came up on -the bank beside him.</p> - -<p>“What made Grandpop Snapping Turtle wake up?” asked Nibble.</p> - -<p>“Mussel shells,” giggled the wise muskrat. “You know Bobby Robin’s story -about the Babes in the Woods that the robins covered with leaves? That’s -just what I’ve been doing to Silvertip. Only leaves don’t sink, so I -used empty mussel shells. I’ve shied them down at him until Grandpop -Snapping Turtle couldn’t take a bite without getting his beak into one -of them. He thinks Tad Coon did it.”</p> - -<p>“He-he!” snickered Nibble Rabbit. “And Tad Coon blames it all right back -on him!”</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_III' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="GRANDPOP’S BITE THAT NEVER LET GO">CHAPTER III<br/> -<span class='fssm'>GRANDPOP’S BITE THAT NEVER LET GO</span> -</h2> - -<p>“Ow, ow, ow!” wailed Tad from way up the bank in the Pickery Things. And -he had the tip of his tail in his mouth, so you could hardly make out -what he was saying. “Ow, ow, my tail’s bitten right off!” “Do you think -it’s really as bad as all that?” asked Nibble anxiously. Tad’s eyes were -bulging so wide that they showed white all round them when he went -bouncing off the flat stone. If he were really truly hurt it wouldn’t -seem so funny. They liked him.</p> - -<p>“Let’s go and see,” said the doctor, and he scuffled up the bank as fast -as he could travel. “Did that turtle really bite you?” he asked. “Let me -look so I’ll know what kind of a remedy to go after.”</p> - -<p>So Tad took his tail out of his mouth and showed it to the doctor. He -wouldn’t look at it himself for fear there would be blood on it. Tad’s -very timid that way. And Doctor Muskrat examined it carefully. At last -he said: “Why, Tad Coon, there’s nothing wrong with this tail.”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t there?” asked Tad in a relieved voice. “It felt as if there was. -It truly did.” So he took back his tail and combed the hair out and -examined it most carefully with his little handy-paws, but all he could -find was a tiny weeny bare spot at the very tip where Grandpop Snapping -Turtle had pulled the hair out. “That’s good,” he smiled with a -satisfied air. He wasn’t the least bit ashamed of having made such a -fuss about nothing.</p> - -<div class='tac mt20 mb20'> - <div id='i002' class='mt10 mb00' style='margin-left:15.0%; width:70%;'> - <img src='images/illus-002.jpg' alt='' style='width:100%' /> - <div class='tac mt00'>Snap! went Grandpop Snapping Turtle’s mouth on Tad Coon’s playful tail.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p>He wasn’t even thinking about it. Pretty soon he burst right out -laughing. “Ho, ho! That old turtle’s got tickly coon hairs in his mouth. -I hope they set him choking.” Then he cocked his head on one side and -the most mischievous sparkle came into his dark brown eyes which peer -out from a band of dark brown fur that lies across his nose like a pair -of goggles. “I’ll get even with him,” he chuckled. “I’ll find his nest -when his wife comes out to lay her eggs on the beach and I’ll eat every -last one of them.”</p> - -<p>“That won’t be till June,” answered Doctor Muskrat. “You’d better find -something else in the meantime. I know where there are some marshmallow -roots and we’ll all share them.”</p> - -<p>“That sounds fine,” Tad agreed. “Just wait a minute.”</p> - -<p>“What do you s’pose he’s up to now?” asked Nibble curiously.</p> - -<p>But he knew in just a moment. Tad found himself a nice big rock. And he -shoved and pushed and tugged and grunted until he worked it out on the -edge of the flat stone and sent it crashing down on top of Grandpop -Snapping Turtle.</p> - -<p>Kerchug! went the rock. And that was the last straw that broke Grandpop -Snapping Turtle’s temper. He came flopping up on land as fast as he -could travel. And he had his wicked eye on Tad Coon.</p> - -<p>Swish, went Doctor Muskrat back into the water. That was the safest -place for him because he can swim as fast as any one and a little bit -faster than any turtle who ever flipped a paddle. Bounce, went Nibble -Rabbit clear through the woods and past the Brushpile and out into the -head of the Broad Field before he stopped to listen. Scritch, scratch, -went lazy Tad Coon to the top of a big stump where Grandpop Snapping -Turtle couldn’t reach him. And that turtle was digging in his claws and -tearing up the earth as he marched round and round it, reaching up his -long neck and hissing: “Just you wait till I get hold of your leg with -my bite that never lets go!”</p> - -<p>“Grandpop’s lost his temper,” said Nibble to himself. “Something’s sure -to happen. It always does. It happened to Chatter Squirrel and Silvertip -the Fox, and Mrs. Hooter, and the Red Cow——” Here he pricked up his -ears, for Watch the Dog was barking at the other end of the pasture. And -Watch had Tommy Peele and Tommy’s big cousin Sandy and Trailer the Hound -with him. So he signalled Watch to hurry. Then he hurried back to hide -in the Pickery Things where he could see what that happening was going -to be. He was so curious he forgot all about Tad Coon.</p> - -<p>But Tad Coon hadn’t forgotten about himself. He hadn’t lost his temper. -As soon as he heard the dogs coming he watched his chance while Grandpop -Snapping Turtle was on the far side of the stump and jumped over to the -nearest tree. And you should have seen his little handy-paws shin up it!</p> - -<p>So all Tommy Peele and his cousin Sandy found was a spitting, swearing -old shellback marching round and round that stump.</p> - -<p>“Oh-h-h!” shouted Sandy. “Turtle soup for supper. Um-m!”</p> - -<p>“Don’t hurt him!” cried Tommy. “He doesn’t do any harm.”</p> - -<p>“Doesn’t he?” exclaimed Sandy. “He just spoils all the fishing in your -pond, and he’s simply death on muskrats.”</p> - -<p>Of course that settled Tommy Peele, because Doctor Muskrat was his -friend.</p> - -<p>So Sandy took up a long stick and held it out in front of Grandpop -Snapping Turtle. “Ah-h-h!” he hissed triumphantly. And he grabbed it -right in the middle with his bite that never lets go.</p> - -<p>“Pick up the other end,” said Sandy. Tommy did, and there they had the -turtle hanging between them, so blazing angry and so proud of his bite -that won’t let go, that he never noticed that they were carrying him -farther and farther away from his pond. And that was the last Nibble -ever saw of him.</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_IV' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="TAD’S TRICKS COME HOME TO ROOST">CHAPTER IV<br/> -<span class='fssm'>TAD’S TRICKS COME HOME TO ROOST</span> -</h2> - -<p>But there was a whole lot of excitement near the Pond. There was Tad -Coon snug in the crotch of a tree, there was Trailer the Hound sniffing -the top of the stump where Tad had sat to keep out of reach of the angry -turtle, and there was Nibble Rabbit snuggled beneath the Pickery Things, -so curious that he couldn’t sit still.</p> - -<p>Pretty soon Trailer began to whimper. “Coon, coon, coon,” he said to -himself. “Where did he come from? Where did he go?” And he was so -puzzled that he shook his head until his ears flopped.</p> - -<p>That was too much for Tad Coon. He pulled off a strip of bark and -dropped it right on top of Trailer. The hound jumped as though something -had stung him.</p> - -<p>And wasn’t Nibble surprised? He didn’t see how Tad dared play tricks on -the very dog he said was his worst enemy.</p> - -<p>Pretty soon Tad began to call out: “Hey; you hound, go away! I want to -come down before that Man with the gun gets back here.”</p> - -<p>“Go away?” barked Trailer. “I most certainly won’t. I’ll stay right here -and keep you until I see what Sandy and Tommy Peele want to do with -you.”</p> - -<p>“Tommy won’t hurt you,” shouted Nibble. “He’ll just make friends with -you.”</p> - -<p>“No, thank you,” grinned Tad Coon. “Not the way he makes friends. I -don’t want to be trapped like you and Doctor Muskrat, and I don’t want -to be hunted like Silvertip the Fox. I’m going.”</p> - -<p>“But you haven’t been stealing his chickens like Silvertip did,” argued -Nibble.</p> - -<p>“How do you know?” asked Tad. For it was his guilty conscience that made -him afraid. He didn’t exactly steal Tommy Peele’s chickens, but he had -eaten some eggs that were very nearly hatched. And all this time Nibble -could see him working away at something with his little handy-paws. -Pretty soon he called again: “Mister Hound, I asks you for the last -time, are you going to let me down?”</p> - -<p>“Yah!” barked Trailer. “I ’most certainly am not.”</p> - -<p>“Hm,” sniffed Tad Coon. “We’ll see about that, then.” Blam! He hit -Trailer square on the head with something. And this time the hound -jumped because he really was stung. “Ow, ow, ow!” he yelped, and he -started for home on the run with a trail of buzzing insects strung out -behind him.</p> - -<div class='tac mt20 mb20'> - <div id='i003' class='mt10 mb00' style='margin-left:15.0%; width:70%;'> - <img src='images/illus-003.jpg' alt='' style='width:100%' /> - <div class='tac mt00'>Tad Coon hits Trailer on the head with a hornet’s nest.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p>“Run, run, run!” squalled Tad. “Look at that hound run! He’s only -hitting the high spots. Ye-a-o-u-w! See him go!” And he danced about on -the limb until the limb danced with him.</p> - -<p>Trailer was surely running—faster than ever he’d run on any trail. But -this time he wasn’t chasing any one—the buzzers were chasing him. For -it wasn’t a piece of bark Tad threw down the last time—it was the fat -round nest of some paper wasps.</p> - -<p>Nibble Rabbit wasn’t seeing any of the fun. He knew something about -paper wasps. They were buzzing all over everywhere, and they don’t care -who they sting when they get angry. He sat very still in the Pickery -Things with his twitchy nose tucked down between his furry feet, and his -waggly ears laid flat back, and his bright eyes squinched up as tight as -ever he could shut them. Some of those wasps flew right by him and never -knew he was anything but a round stone—not even the one that tangled -its legs in his whiskers. He did feel awfully sorry for poor Trailer; -but all the same Tad Coon had been pretty smart to send him home.</p> - -<p>But Tad Coon wasn’t quite as smart as he thought he was. Trailer ran so -fast that he left most of those wasps behind him. And he went bouncing -through the brush at such a rate that he scraped a lot more off of him. -Pretty soon they began coming back to where their nest had been. And -they couldn’t find it. That didn’t improve their tempers, I can tell -you. But if they couldn’t find their nest, they certainly could find Tad -Coon. And just didn’t they?</p> - -<p>Now it was Tad’s turn to howl. “Ow-ow-ow!” he cried. And he squinched up -his eyes as tight as ever Nibble did and began to scramble down as fast -as ever his little handy-paws would let him. But when he opened his -mouth a wasp stung him right on the tongue, and when he shut it his -little black nose got the stinging. And when he tried to cover it with -his paw he lost his hold and went tumbling down to the ground.</p> - -<p>Blam! It almost knocked the breath out of him. But he rolled over and -over till he found his feet and then he scuttled to Doctor Muskrat’s -Pond as fast as he could limp on three of them. He kept trying to brush -the wasps off his nose and ears with the other one, until he could jump -into the water. And then he splashed around as hard as ever he could. -The wasps didn’t like that a little bit, because they can’t fly when -their wings get wet. So they went away and left him.</p> - -<p>Then poor Tad Coon began shouting: “Do’ Mu’a! Do’ Mu’a!” Because his -poor stung tongue couldn’t say Doctor Muskrat.</p> - -<p>He wished he hadn’t dropped that wasps’ nest down on Trailer. And he -wished those wasps hadn’t come back and stung him. And he wished he -hadn’t fallen out of the tree and bumped himself. And he wished his nose -wasn’t swollen up so he couldn’t see around it. And he wished his poor -tongue wasn’t hanging out of the corner of his mouth with such a great -big sting that he couldn’t say any of his wishes. All he could do was -shout “Do’ Mu’a!” when he was trying with all his might to shout “Doctor -Muskrat!” And Doctor Muskrat wouldn’t come.</p> - -<p>But Nibble Rabbit did. And when he heard Tad Coon’s great big sobs and -saw the tears in his eyes he felt mighty sorry for him. So he began to -thump and pound for the doctor.</p> - -<p>Pretty soon Doctor Muskrat came out on top of his house in the middle of -the pond and answered. “I hear you,” he snapped. “And I heard Tad Coon -in the first place. But I’m not going to do anything for him. I don’t -mind the funny tricks he plays, but that one just played on Trailer the -Hound was cruel.”</p> - -<p>“I ’o,” sniffed Tad. “I i’ ‘o’ i’ u’ hu’ ho.”</p> - -<p>“He didn’t know it would hurt so,” Nibble translated. “Don’t scratch -your ears, Tad. Come over and let me lick them.”</p> - -<p>“That’s no excuse,” said Doctor Muskrat severely. “What if Tommy Peele -thinks we did it? That hound can’t explain. And he doesn’t know anybody -else is here with us.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, but Tad doesn’t know Tommy,” Nibble pleaded. “He’s awfully afraid -of being caught. You know how that hurts your own self. And lots of -times they put coons in cages, and I didn’t like my cage. But he’s sorry -as anything that he did it.”</p> - -<p>“So I see,” said the doctor, just as gruffly as ever, and he dove back -into the pond. Poor Tad hitched himself over to the flat stone so Nibble -could fix his ears while he splashed the cool water over his nose and -tongue. My, but he was meek! He didn’t even blame Doctor Muskrat for -being angry with him.</p> - -<p>Then suddenly up popped a head right beside him. “Open your mouth,” said -the doctor. “Bite on that.” And he slipped a soft, soothing chewed root -poultice on to Tad’s tongue. “Now raise your head.” And he clapped a -blue clay plaster on Tad’s nose. “Snort!” And Tad snorted a pair of -holes to breathe through. “There,” said he; “you’ll be all right before -long.”</p> - -<p>But Nibble had his ears pricked. “There comes Watch,” he said. “I heard -him bark. Tad can’t run.”</p> - -<p>“You hide him in the Pickery Things,” ordered the doctor. “I’ll try to -get this matter settled.”</p> - -<p>“M-m-m-m!” grunted Tad Coon gratefully through his poultice. And he -limped off after Nibble, still holding up his nose.</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_V' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="THE TIME TAD COON WAS TRICKIER THAN HE KNEW">CHAPTER V<br/> -<span class='fssm'>THE TIME TAD COON WAS TRICKIER THAN HE KNEW</span> -</h2> - -<p>“Aough, aough!” barked Watch. “Yah!” he yapped breathlessly when he -found Doctor Muskrat sitting out on the flat stone, waiting to meet him. -“You’re just who I was looking for. Trailer just stumbled up to the house -with his eyes bunged shut and his nose as big as a soupbone, mumbling -something about a coon as near as I can understand him. But no coon ever -did anything like that to him.”</p> - -<p>The doctor cocked his ears. “Can’t talk, can’t he? Poor fellow. Did you -try what blue clay will do for him? I’ll get you some.”</p> - -<div class='tac mt20 mb20'> - <div id='i004' class='mt10 mb00' style='margin-left:15.0%; width:70%;'> - <img src='images/illus-004.jpg' alt='' style='width:100%' /> - <div class='tac mt00'>Tad Coon needs Doctor Muskrat.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p>“Ok, he’ll be all right. His master Sandy’s working over him,” Watch -answered. “But what did do it?”</p> - -<p>“Those striped buzzers with hot spots in their tails. They’re over there -guarding the nest that fell down on Trailer. The rest of them are -building a new one up in that tree—and you just ought to have seen what -they did to poor Tad Coon. He was up there hiding.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you just tell him to stay hidden, too,” whined Watch, stretching -his stiff legs thoughtfully. “I’ve had enough of hunting after Silvertip -the Fox to last me awhile.”</p> - -<p>“But what happened to Grandpop Snapping Turtle?” called Nibble from the -Pickery Things.</p> - -<p>“He’s in a pot on the fire right now,” answered Watch.</p> - -<p>“What’s a pot? What’s a fire?” asked the two wild folks.</p> - -<p>“Fire? You know fire. When men make that red spot that’s all hot—like a -buzzer’s tail, you know—come out of the end of a stick—that’s fire,” -he explained.</p> - -<p>“They do it to the bulrushes,” nodded the doctor. “The red spot gets -bigger and bigger until everything’s red and then the hot things -disappear.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly. But men don’t always let it make everything red. They keep it -in one place and use it to cook with. They’re cooking Grandpop.”</p> - -<p>“Cooking?” echoed Nibble and Doctor Muskrat.</p> - -<p>“Bare bones and broken biscuits!” sniffed Watch. “I can’t explain that -to you any more than I can explain about the buzzers to Tommy Peele. But -I can show them to him—and I’d better.” So off he set with his tail -drooping because he was puzzled.</p> - -<p>“It isn’t so very queer that Tommy Peele’s own dog can’t tell him that -Grandpop Snapping Turtle ate Silvertip, when you really come to think -about it,” observed Nibble Rabbit thoughtfully. “Tommy can’t even talk -to the tame beasts. That’s why Watch has to take him all the way down -here to the pond to show him these striped buzzers before he’ll -understand who bit Trailer. But I don’t see why Watch can’t tell us what -Tommy did to Grandpop Snapping Turtle. They certainly didn’t put an ugly -thing like that in any cage.”</p> - -<p>“There!” exclaimed Doctor Muskrat. “He can’t make us understand what -he’s talking about because we Woodsfolk haven’t the words for things -we’ve never seen. Those man-words Watch uses don’t mean anything to us. -You talk about a cage. I don’t know what you mean and you can’t even -tell me.”</p> - -<p>“Why, a cage,” Nibble began—“a cage is a sort of a cave, only it isn’t -in the ground. It bites like wood, but it doesn’t look like any tree I -ever saw, and it has something in front of it that you can see through -and the wind can blow through, but you can’t jump through it.” Now we -might guess that was a packing-box with a big open front of -chicken-wire. But even Nibble couldn’t be sure of wood when its bark was -off.</p> - -<p>“Um-hm!” grinned Doctor Muskrat. “A cave that isn’t in the ground? Wood -that isn’t in a tree? What does that mean?”</p> - -<p>Nibble laughed at himself. To one of the Woodsfolk it did sound foolish.</p> - -<p>“Now if a cage is like a barn, only little,” said the doctor, “I can -think about it. I’ve seen a barn from the outside, and if it’s hollow -like a tree I can guess what the inside is like.”</p> - -<p>“It is! It is!” Nibble cried. “Why didn’t I think of that?”</p> - -<p>“Then Grandpop Snapping Turtle can’t live in one. He can’t eat unless -he’s under water. Watch says Tommy’s cooking him. I don’t know what that -means, either, but I can guess. Tommy eats him. There isn’t anything -that hasn’t someone who eats it and no one else can eat Grandpop unless -Tommy Peele does.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe,” Nibble agreed; “but the real question is what will Tommy do to -Tad Coon. Tad can’t run away, and Watch knows he’s here. If Tommy is -very angry because Tad made those striped buzzers bite Trailer he’ll -make Watch find him.”</p> - -<p>“If Tommy’s eaten Grandpop he won’t be a bit hungry,” began Doctor -Muskrat hopefully. Then a bright idea struck him. “And Tommy’ll never -know Tad’s to blame. No one can tell him!”</p> - -<p>“That’s so!” Nibble exclaimed. “No one can!”</p> - -<p>All the same, when Nibble heard Watch bringing Tommy to the woods to -show him the paper wasps’ nest so he’d know who bit Trailer, the rabbit -couldn’t help feeling that something would go wrong. Tommy would find -out and then wouldn’t he be angry with Tad Coon! And neither Nibble nor -Doctor Muskrat could bear to have Tad hunted like Silvertip the Fox. -Poor Tad couldn’t even run.</p> - -<p>Watch galloped up to the wasps’ nest and barked. “There they are, Tommy. -They did it. Those are the buzzers with hot tails I’ve been trying to -tell you about.”</p> - -<p>“That’s funny,” said Tommy, and he looked right up into the tree. The -wasps up there were buzzing over which was the best twig to begin -building another nest on. “I wonder how it came to fall down.”</p> - -<p>Of course Nibble didn’t understand him—but Watch did! “Yow!” he barked. -“That coon made it fall. Trailer was trying to tell me. Coon, coon, -coon!” he sang, sniffing around to find him.</p> - -<p>“Lie still,” warned Doctor Muskrat, who was hiding with Tad in the -Pickery Things.</p> - -<p>“I can’t,” whimpered Tad. “This place is all right for a rabbit, but the -pond is where I belong.” And with that he staggered to his feet and -started for it. But right on the edge of the bank he stumbled. Down he -rolled, paws over fur, with Nibble Rabbit and Doctor Muskrat scuttling -after him.</p> - -<p>“Look out!” barked Watch. “Let me get at him. He’ll fight like anything! -They always do.”</p> - -<p>“Come here, Watch! Go lie down!” shouted Tommy Peele.</p> - -<p>“Why?” whimpered Watch. But Tommy Peele never answered. He couldn’t! -There was Tad Coon sniffling through his puffy nose, peering through his -squinty eyes, snarling with his swollen lips, and all smeared with -Doctor Muskrat’s mud plaster and chewed root poultice. He was making the -awfullest faces you ever saw. Maybe you think Tommy Peele could help -laughing at him. Well, you couldn’t your own self.</p> - -<p>“You lucky coon!” squealed Nibble. “When he laughs he can’t stay angry.”</p> - -<div class='tac mt20 mb20'> - <div id='i005' class='mt10 mb00' style='margin-left:15.0%; width:70%;'> - <img src='images/illus-005.jpg' alt='' style='width:100%' /> - <div class='tac mt00'>At the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s pond.</div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_VI' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="TAD MAKES A COMPACT WITH WATCH AND TOMMY PEELE">CHAPTER VI<br/> -<span class='fssm'>TAD MAKES A COMPACT WITH WATCH AND TOMMY PEELE</span> -</h2> - -<p>“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Tommy. “You ought to see yourself. You look a -funny picture of a coon with the lines all wiggly.” And Tad Coon -certainly did.</p> - -<p>But pretty soon Tommy stopped laughing. “You poor beast,” he said in a -sorry voice; “it must hurt you awfully.” Nibble Rabbit knew that voice. -It was the same one he had used when he took Nibble out of the wire trap -and when he let Doctor Muskrat out of the cold steel jaws that had -bitten his toe off.</p> - -<p>“Er-yow!” argued Watch, Tommy’s dog. He meant it was all Tad’s fault.</p> - -<p>“Bz-z-z!” went the wasps who were guarding their nest on the ground -until the little white grubs in it should hatch. They meant that they -had something to say about it.</p> - -<p>But Tommy didn’t understand and he didn’t care. “Be still, Watch!” he -ordered. Then he took a long branch and speared the nest on the tip of -it. Splash! He sent it into the middle of Doctor Muskrat’s pond. Some of -the wasps were drowned and the rest flew up into the tree, buzzing with -all their wings that the old nest was bewitched and they wouldn’t have -anything more to do with it. So there it floated wherever the wind blew -it, like a deserted ship. And the wind began blowing it right back to -Tad Coon.</p> - -<p>“Come on, Tad,” called Doctor Muskrat from the pond. “Tommy isn’t going -to hurt you.” So Tad limped down and took a drink and washed himself.</p> - -<p>Then he felt a lot better. After all, there aren’t very many places -where his fur is so short a wasp can sting him.</p> - -<p>Nibble looked at Tad, and then he looked at Tommy. “I think Tommy means -to be friends,” he said. “But he hasn’t brought you anything to eat -yet.”</p> - -<p>“He’s brought this,” answered Tad, and he waded out and caught the -wasps’ nest. Then he sat himself down on Doctor Muskrat’s nice, warm -stone and picked the fat white grubs out of it with his clever little -fingery toes. “Mm’m!” he grunted contentedly with his mouth full.</p> - -<p>He was so busy and sober about it that he set Tommy laughing all over -again. Nibble twiddled his tail thoughtfully. “Doctor Muskrat,” he -remarked, “I’m beginning to wonder if Tommy makes friends with us -because he caught us or because he felt sorry we were hurt?”</p> - -<p>Right then Watch spoke up. “I haven’t made friends with Tad, and you -remember I don’t always take Tommy when I go hunting.”</p> - -<p>“Be still, Watch!” Tommy ordered. “I want to see what’s going to happen -next.”</p> - -<p>“Nothing, now,” Watch answered. “But it will just as soon as you aren’t -here to stop me.” And he laid his nose on his paws and rolled the whites -of his eyes at Tad.</p> - -<p>“Why?” demanded Nibble. Just the way he cocked his ears made Tommy -understand that he and Watch were talking, though he couldn’t even hear -the Woodsfolk.</p> - -<p>“Because Tad’s just as bad as Silvertip the Fox,” snarled Watch. “He -eats Tommy’s eggs and his chickens—and he eats rabbits, too, when he’s -smart enough to catch them, you silly bunny. And you ought to see what -he does to the green corn that’s sprouting in the Broad Field.”</p> - -<p>“He doesn’t!” gasped Nibble. “He could have caught me a dozen times. I -don’t believe it.”</p> - -<p>But Tad Coon looked down his nose at his bad little handy-paws, he was -so ashamed, and nodded. “Yes, I do,” he owned honestly. “After I’ve -slept through the winter I come out in the spring so terrible starvation -hungry. But I wouldn’t eat you. I’d rather dig grubs from a rotten log, -even if we haven’t any compact.” And Nibble knew he meant it.</p> - -<p>But Watch didn’t. “A lot of good that would do!” he snarled.</p> - -<p>“That’s just what the cows said about their compact with you dogs -in the First-Off Beginning,” interrupted Doctor Muskrat in his -sober voice. “But you did keep it. Tad Coon isn’t one of the -Things-from-under-the-Earth that Mother Nature herself can’t -trust. Let’s all make a compact. Why fight unless you have to?”</p> - -<p>Now this was very wise, because no dog likes to fight with a coon. “I’ll -make this much of a compact,” said Watch. “I won’t bother Tad Coon as -long as he behaves himself. If he doesn’t—Gr-r-rr!”</p> - -<p>“All right,” Tad agreed cheerfully, for he meant to be very, very good. -All the same, he floundered into the pond and brought up a clam to give -Watch, just as though it were a regular compact. Watch didn’t eat it of -course, but he did touch his tongue to it. “I s’pose you’d think it -awfully funny if that shelly thing bit me,” he grinned, and he even -wagged his tail. Then Nibble sniffed of it, and Doctor Muskrat—and of -course Tommy was so puzzled he picked it up and put it in his pocket. He -wanted to ask his father if there was anything the matter with it. But -the beasts thought he was in the compact, too, so they were all happy.</p> - -<p>Nobody dreamed that Bad One was hiding in the willows across the pond, -listening to every word Watch had spoken and saying to himself: “It -won’t take me long to start some trouble there.” And it didn’t.</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_VII' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="BLACK CRIME IN THE HEN HOUSE">CHAPTER VII<br/> -<span class='fssm'>BLACK CRIME IN THE HEN HOUSE</span> -</h2> - -<p>The woods weren’t peaceful at all next morning. Watch came tearing down -to Doctor Muskrat’s Pond with the bristles pricked up on his shoulders -and his teeth snapping. “Where’s that coon?” he snarled. “Give me that -coon. He’s broken his compact already. Now I will have to kill him, and -you might just as well have let me do it yesterday.”</p> - -<p>Doctor Muskrat popped his head out of the pond. “What’s the matter?” he -asked. “And where’s Tommy Peele?”</p> - -<p>“He’s coming,” snapped Watch. “And he knows who did it, too.”</p> - -<p>“Then he knows more than you do,” called Nibble Rabbit, hurrying through -the Pickery Things. “Tad Coon hasn’t been out of the woods a single -minute.”</p> - -<p>“He has!” snarled Watch. “He’s slit the throats of every chick belonging -to old Topknot—the hen who was good to you, Nibble Rabbit. Perhaps -that’s one of his jokes.”</p> - -<p>“Oh-h-h!” gasped Nibble. “But what makes you sure it was Tad?”</p> - -<p>“Topknot says it was someone who wore stripes. Who else could it be?”</p> - -<p>“The cat!” guessed Nibble. “She wears them.”</p> - -<p>“No, it wasn’t! I smelled, and it didn’t smell like her.”</p> - -<p>“Then smell of me,” said Tad. And he marched right out of the Pickery -Things, not a bit afraid because he did-n’t have a guilty conscience. -“It won’t smell like me, either.”</p> - -<p>So when Tommy Peele came running up, there stood Tad Coon with his fur -all fluffed up to let the scent out (you remember how the quails sleeked -their feathers to hold it), but he wasn’t snarling. He wasn’t even -angry. And Watch was sniffing carefully all around him.</p> - -<p>“Sic him! S-s-s-sic him!” called Tommy Peele. My, but he was the angry -one.</p> - -<p>“No,” barked Watch. “Beg pardon, Tad. It wasn’t your smell, either.”</p> - -<p>“Whoever it was,” said Nibble, “I’m coming up to the barn to help find -him.”</p> - -<p>Maybe you think Tommy Peele wasn’t puzzled! “S-s-s-sic him!” he ordered -impatiently. “Whatever is the matter with you, anyway? You aren’t scared -of him, are you? Yesterday you wanted to kill him for nothing at all, -and to-day you won’t touch him. But if he didn’t kill all poor Topknot’s -little chicks, who did? It’s a regular coon trick—dad says so. S-s-sic -him! Go on!”</p> - -<p>“A-aour-r!” Watch whined unhappily. “If I only could tell you that it -wasn’t Tad Coon!”</p> - -<p>“We’ve just got to find out for ourselves and show him,” said Nibble -Rabbit. “The sooner we start the fresher the scent,” he quoted from an -old dog-song. “Come along.”</p> - -<p>“I’m coming, too,” announced Tad Coon. “This is some of my business.”</p> - -<p>“No, you’re not,” said Nibble. “We don’t want another paw-mark until we -examine every trail up by the barn.”</p> - -<p>“That’s right,” said Watch. “That kind of a thief doesn’t fly. I didn’t -stop to look because I was so sure I knew who did it.”</p> - -<p>“But you couldn’t make any mistake about mine,” protested Tad, holding -up his handy-paw. “No one, not even my cousin Gurf Bear, who has hind -feet like mine, has one anything like it.”</p> - -<p>Now Tommy was angry enough about those chicks of Topknot the Hen’s, but -he was angrier yet because Watch wouldn’t obey him. “You’re a bad, bad -dog!” he scolded. “I’m going right over to get Trailer. He isn’t -afraid.” And you know Trailer the Hound, who belonged to Tommy’s big -cousin Sandy, was Tad Coon’s worst enemy.</p> - -<p>“There!” Watch exclaimed. “You see you’d better keep away. Trailer won’t -make any compact with you, and he wouldn’t even listen if I tried to -explain how your tracks came to be there, but if you don’t leave any -he’ll tell Tommy so the same way I’ve been trying to.” And Watch -galloped off to catch up with the cross little boy.</p> - -<p>But Tommy wouldn’t forgive him no matter how much Watch begged and -explained. Only when he passed the place where the dead chicks had lain -he cried, “Why, they aren’t all here! That killer must have come back -after them.” He saw Watch sniff them just as carefully as he had sniffed -Tad Coon down by the pond. And he knew just where Tad Coon had been -every minute of the time. Tad didn’t take them. So now he understood. -“All right, Watch. Good dog,” he said. “It wasn’t the coon. Then who was -it? S-s-sic him!”</p> - -<p>And maybe you think that didn’t make Watch happy!</p> - -<p>If Nibble hadn’t been in such a hurry to get up to the barn and see -Topknot’s little dead chicks he might have found who really killed them -all the sooner. But here was a new killer whom no one had ever seen, so -no one knew how to hide from him or where to expect him. No wonder -Nibble was too excited to think of listening at the Brushpile for the -Bad Little Owls.</p> - -<p>Just about the time he went slipping down the fence row under the safe -pickers of the blackberry canes they were having their first full meal -since Chaik and his family mauled them for trying to help Silvertip. -Chaik had pulled out so many feathers that they couldn’t hunt well. And -now they had swallowed one of those fuzzy little chickens, fluff, legs, -and all, because they were so hungry.</p> - -<p>“My, but that chick tasted good,” said the Lady Owl. “Do you know, when -Stripes came waddling by this morning and bragged about what he’d done, -I didn’t believe him. I don’t see why he didn’t eat every last one of -them instead of leaving them for us.”</p> - -<p>“He didn’t leave them for us at all,” snapped the he owl. “And don’t you -ever tell him we took one, either. He just killed them and laid them out -in a neat row so it would look like one of Tad Coon’s tricks. Then that -boy would think it was the coon and make all sorts of trouble for him.”</p> - -<p>“Why doesn’t Stripes like Tad Coon?” said his mate thoughtfully.</p> - -<p>“He’s jealous because Tad has a compact with that shaggy dog so it won’t -chase him, and he’s mad because it’s getting to such a pass in the woods -and fields that you hardly dare rob a nest for fear that rabbit will -tell on you.”</p> - -<p>“What happens then?” asked his wife, sleepily, for it was long after -sunup.</p> - -<p>“That’s the mystery,” he answered in an awed voice. “But Silvertip has -disappeared, and Grandpop Snapping Turtle, and you know yourself that -Foulfang the Rattlesnake was nothing more than ant food when we found -him.”</p> - -<p>“Then you aren’t going to help Stripes? He might feed us.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not going to help any one but myself. And right now I’ll help -myself to one more chicken. I could sleep right through a full moon if I -had a full stomach. Stripes is asleep in the oak that blew down in the -Terrible Storm. Keep your eye on him. We can take what he leaves without -helping him fight that rabbit.” And off he flew, steering very badly -with his ragged tail.</p> - -<p>But Nibble Rabbit wouldn’t have known who Stripes was, even if he had -overheard the little owls.</p> - -<div class='tac mt20 mb20'> - <div id='i006' class='mt10 mb00' style='margin-left:15.0%; width:70%;'> - <img src='images/illus-006.jpg' alt='' style='width:100%' /> - <div class='tac mt00'>The bad little Owl comes flipping by.</div> - </div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_VIII' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="HOW NIBBLE TURNED DETECTIVE">CHAPTER VIII<br/> -<span class='fssm'>HOW NIBBLE TURNED DETECTIVE</span> -</h2> - -<p>The very first thing Nibble did when he got to the barn was to hunt up -poor Topknot. He had a hard time finding her. For he had to be very -careful himself, I can tell you. He listened and peeked behind every -corner, expecting to see the flashing eyes and snarling teeth of the -killer no one knew.</p> - -<p>That was why the Bad Little Owl didn’t see him when he came flipping by. -“What’s he doing out this time of day?” thought Nibble. Then he saw, for -the little owl swooped down and staggered off with a furry yellow chick. -Its poor head was dangling, and it was such a load that he could -scarcely lift it above the bushes, and he steered more crookedly than -ever. As he passed a clump of burdock, out dashed Topknot, squawking and -screeching, and it was only by sheer luck that he escaped her beak.</p> - -<p>“That owl never killed them, did he?” asked Nibble when he came up with -the hen.</p> - -<p>“Not while I was with them,” she answered, ruffling up her feathers. “He -wouldn’t dare. No. It was a furry thing with stripes. He’d reach in his -paw and draw them out from under me—so gently at first I didn’t know -what he was doing.”</p> - -<p>Now that certainly did sound a lot like Tad Coon. “Did he have a black -mask across his face?” Nibble wanted to know.</p> - -<p>“It was so very dark I couldn’t see,” she clucked. “He had a bushy tail -and no matter where I tried to attack him he kept his back turned.”</p> - -<p>No wonder Watch the Dog had thought it was Tad. Even Nibble felt -doubtful. He was a very sober rabbit when he hopped over to where Watch -and Tommy Peele were examining the chicks.</p> - -<p>“They’re not all here. The killer’s come back for them!” Tommy was just -shouting excitedly. “We’ve been with him all the time, so it’s not the -coon. What is it?” But Nibble knew that the little owl had taken them, -and he certainly wasn’t the killer, either.</p> - -<p>Watch sniffed very carefully. “It isn’t Tad’s smell,” he whined, -circling about. Suddenly he barked, bristling. “But it certainly is his -trail!” For there right beneath his nose was a hind footprint, something -like a baby’s, and very much more like Tad Coon’s. “He won’t fool me -again,” Watch raged. “I’ll fix him!”</p> - -<p>“Wait a minute,” Nibble protested.</p> - -<p>“That’s too small to be Tad. It might be another coon. No, no! It hasn’t -a handy-paw. Look!” For the print of the forefoot was clawed and padded -like Watch’s own, and not a bit like any coon’s.</p> - -<p>Watch sat right down. This was too puzzling for him.</p> - -<p>“We’ll find out yet,” Nibble encouraged him. “You look out up here—you -might catch him, red-toothed, any minute. I’m going to see what the -little owls know about him.”</p> - -<p>But he didn’t tell why he was sure they knew.</p> - -<p>Now if Nibble had gone straight to Doctor Muskrat and asked, “Who has a -hind footprint like a little coon’s and a front one like a dog’s?” the -wise old doctor would have told him in a moment.</p> - -<p>But he didn’t. Because Tad was down at Doctor Muskrat’s Pond waiting for -him, to know if Tommy Peele believed him. How could Nibble say, “Well, -we’re pretty sure you told the truth, but we can’t find any one else to -lay it to. The real killer must be too smart for us.” So he just crept -into the Brushpile beneath the two little owls, asleep like two small -knots on their limb.</p> - -<p>They slept late, for they had feasted on those chicks that morning. It -was almost dark before they stretched their wings and twiddled their -stumpy tails. “Have you seen anything of Stripes?” asked the Lady Owl, -polishing her beak on the rough bark, just the way you want to brush -your teeth before breakfast. “Or are you going back for another chick?”</p> - -<p>“No,” answered her mate. “I’d rather follow him.” And he flew over to -the hollow in the fallen oak. “He’s gone!” he cried when he came back -again. “He’s been gone a long time. His scent’s quite cold.”</p> - -<p>“That’s no sign,” she said cheerfully. “Stripes can leave less scent -than any fur I ever knew, when he pleases—and make more when he isn’t -pleased!”</p> - -<p>Nibble almost squealed. “Stripes is a skunk! I’ve never seen him, but -Watch has. What a joke on that dog!” What Nibble had learned surely -would have burst out of him if she hadn’t added: “Never mind, we’ll find -him fast enough.” And off they flew.</p> - -<p>“So will I,” chuckled Nibble, racing along behind them.</p> - -<p>He’d have lost them in the dark, because they flew zig-zagging all -about, if they hadn’t kept calling to each other all the while. “Where? -Where?” they cried every other minute. Then “Here! Here!” shouted the -little he owl “Under the bridge!” And, sure enough, Nibble could see a -white thing moving around by the bridge across the brook that came out -of the lower end of Doctor Muskrat’s Pond.</p> - -<p>He could make out the queer blotchy streaks of white that Stripes was -named from. The white tuft was probably the tip of his tail. Oh, yes, he -could see that skunk all right enough—but he couldn’t see someone else -who was hunting clams right beside Stripes. He could only hear.</p> - -<p>“Get out! I’ve taken this hunting ground.” That was a horrid, snarly -voice.</p> - -<p>“All right. Then I’ll be moving right along.” That was the fat, smily -voice of Tad Coon. In the dark you couldn’t see his stripes at all. -There was splashing.</p> - -<p>“Ah! Wah! Yah! Gr-r-r-yah!” yelped the snarly voice. Then Nibble smelled -the awfullest smell you ever imagined—the smell of Stripes when he -isn’t pleased.</p> - -<p>Nibble’s nose was twitching so fast he had to wipe it on the nice damp -earth, just as the little owl wiped her beak on the rough bark of her -perch. But he stayed there, squeezed in between the stems of a leafy -elder bush, trying to guess what had happened.</p> - -<p>Pat-pat, came leisurely footsteps. “Uh-huh,” coughed a voice. Then -someone snorted. Nibble’s ears flew up; he knew that sound. Tad Coon was -trying to keep from laughing. Pat-pat, went his handy-paws, and then -there was a splashing and a scrubbing. Nibble hopped down to the pond, -and there was Tad squirming about in the damp sand.</p> - -<p>“That you, Nibble?” Tad asked as he heard the soft lip-it, lip-it of -Nibble’s furry feet. “Keep to windward. Keep to windward, if you don’t -want to strangle, as I’m almost doing.” He was lying on his back and he -stopped squirming while he spoke. Nibble could see his limp paws fairly -shaking with laughter.</p> - -<p>“Whew, I should say so! What happened? Did you have a fight with -Stripes?” Nibble asked curiously as he moved around Tad. “You aren’t -hurt, are you?”</p> - -<p>“Hurt!” snorted Tad. “Of course not. Stripes Skunk won’t fight. He -doesn’t have to. He wouldn’t face any one anywhere near his own size—he -just turns around so you can’t find anything but the tip of his tail to -chew on. And that’s all shaggy, slippery hairs, so you couldn’t possibly -get a grip on it, and if you did he knows he could make you let go. He -has this scent,” Tad sniffed disgustedly, “and it’s worse than any bite -he could give because it shows all your enemies where you are.”</p> - -<p>“But Watch was trying to follow Stripes, because he’s the killer of -those poor little chicks up at the barn, and he could hardly trail him -at all.”</p> - -<p>“Of course not,” Tad giggled, “Stripes hates it himself. He’s so afraid -of getting it on his own fur that he won’t use it unless someone’s -foolish enough to plague him into it—like me,” he finished, sanding a -new spot to get it clean. “But Watch can trail him now.”</p> - -<p>“What did you do?” My, but Nibble was curious to know.</p> - -<p>Tad looked half ashamed, the way he always does when his tricks come -back on him. “Well, he just would turn his back on me—and he was so -rude and there was a mussel, such a big one, with a big sharp shell—so -all the time I was being so polite I was letting it close on the end of -his tail. And he couldn’t make it let go when he wanted to. My, but -wasn’t he scared!”</p> - -<p>So that was Tad’s trick. It was certainly clever, but Nibble didn’t -sleep very close to him that night.</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_IX' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="STRIPES SKUNK LEARNS HOW TO BEHAVE">CHAPTER IX<br/> -<span class='fssm'>STRIPES SKUNK LEARNS HOW TO BEHAVE</span> -</h2> - -<p>Early, early in the morning Stripes Skunk came snooping into the Pickery -Things. Of course they caught hold of him until Nibble Rabbit waked up. -And as soon as he sniffed that scent in the air he said, “Is that you, -Tad Coon?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said a meek, whiny voice; “it’s me, Stripes Skunk. I’ve been -talking with the little owls. Please, won’t you make a compact with me?”</p> - -<p>“Compact!” Nibble exclaimed. “Of course I won’t! And no one else will!” -At that Stripes began to cry. “Won’t you even try me?” he sobbed. “I’d -not want to be friends. I just want to be let alone as long as I’m good. -Won’t you give me a chance to show you how very good I can be?”</p> - -<p>So Nibble finally promised to talk things over with Watch and Doctor -Muskrat. Doctor Muskrat didn’t say anything, but he waited out on his -flat stone for Watch. And when Watch came he fairly howled at the idea.</p> - -<p>“Make a compact with that murderer?” he barked. “Not when he’s killed -those little chicks that belong to Tommy Peele. I’ll kill him.”</p> - -<p>“Watch,” said Doctor Muskrat, “who made you executioner of all the woods -and fields? Killing Stripes won’t give back those chicks to Tommy Peele. -But if you put Stripes to work instead, he can pay back for them. He can -keep down the mice who steal Tommy’s grain; he can kill snakes, and -locusts, and beetles, and all manner of grubs. If he just picks bugs off -Tommy’s potatoes he’ll pay for all the harm he’s done.”</p> - -<p>Watch put his head to one side. He could remember how Tommy hated to -pick the bugs off those potatoes. “Wurff,” he growled at last. “I wish I -knew what Tommy would think about it. I’ll wait until I know.”</p> - -<p>As soon as Doctor Muskrat had finished speaking, Watch went rambling up -to the old house with his ears laid back. He wanted to get a nice -comfortable bone in a quiet corner and think about it. Doctor Muskrat -was right; no one, not even Tommy Peele, had appointed him executioner -of the woods and fields, and he’d been pretty quick about wanting to -kill every one who did any harm, instead of letting them learn -better—if they would. You see, a dog is so big and strong he has to be -careful not to bully the other beasts. No decent dog can be happy if he -does that. But he couldn’t make up his mind that Stripes Skunk deserved -to be trusted.</p> - -<p>Neither did Nibble Rabbit. He wanted to know what every other one of the -Woodsfolk thought about it. Right now he knew that Stripes was waiting -to find out what Watch had decided to do to him, and yet he couldn’t -help shaking at the idea of going to talk with him. For the first thing -every mother rabbit teaches the fluffy bunny babies, as soon as they -open their eyes, is to run from anything that has the strange and scary -scent of the Things-from-under-the-Earth, whether they wear scales or -fur. Snakes have it just the same as Stripes the Skunk, or Slyfoot the -Mink, or the weasel whom the Woodsfolk usually mean when they speak of -the Killer. He’s so terribly bloodthirsty and cruel that they never give -him any other name.</p> - -<p>But when Nibble found Stripes waiting patiently beside his Pickery -Things, right where the faithful thorns had warned him to stop when he -came begging for help that morning, even a scarier rabbit than Nibble -wouldn’t have been afraid. Stripes was trembling and trying his best not -to cry. “What did he say?” he begged anxiously. “Please, Nibble, quick! -What did that big dog say? It’s too late for me to try to run away from -him. He could trail me anywhere, and I’m so slow he’d overtake me in -just a little while.”</p> - -<p>“He’s gone off to make up his mind,” said Nibble. “Doctor Muskrat put in -a word for you. He said that if you hunted the mice in Tommy Peele’s -grain and kept the potato bugs off his vines, you could pay Tommy back -for those chicks you killed, if you didn’t do any more harm.”</p> - -<p>“I will! I will!” chattered Stripes. “I just love mice and potato bugs, -too. Only I thought those chicks belonged to a hen. Who’s Tommy Peele?”</p> - -<div class='tac mt20 mb20'> - <div id='i007' class='mt10 mb00' style='margin-left:15.0%; width:70%;'> - <img src='images/illus-007.jpg' alt='' style='width:100%' /> - <div class='tac mt00'>Nibble accuses Stripes of stealing.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p>“Why, Tommy Peele is a boy. He owns all these woods and fields, and the -hen as well. That’s why Watch, his dog, takes care of them all,” Nibble -began.</p> - -<p>“But what’s a boy?” Stripes demanded, his eyes opened very wide.</p> - -<p>“A boy? Why, he’s a man’s kitten,” Nibble explained patiently. (Kittens -are what Stripes calls his own young.) “This is his hunting ground. But -he only hunts Bad Ones. We Woodsfolk aren’t afraid of him, and Doctor -Muskrat is his special friend.”</p> - -<p>“I must thank Doctor Muskrat,” exclaimed Stripes very eagerly. “I’d like -to bring him a present—how about a nice fresh egg? I just found some -here.”</p> - -<p>And just then Bob White’s wife, over in the Quail’s Thicket, began to -scream. “Prr-whit! My nest! Someone’s spoiled my beautiful eggs! -Prr-whit! Two of them are nothing but empty shells,” she wailed. And the -air was filled with whirring wings. Every other quail in the covey who -wasn’t sitting on eggs of her own had come to see what was the matter. -And my, but weren’t they angry!</p> - -<p>But Nibble Rabbit was angrier still. “You took those eggs!” he accused -Stripes. “You just finished telling me so. And you were trying to -pretend you would be good. Is that your way?” He looked savage enough to -kick Stripes and send him end over end. That’s the rabbit way of -fighting. He stamped his feet.</p> - -<p>But Stripes never bared a tooth to defend himself. He just turned his -back, just as Tad said he always did, and hunched himself into a little -ball. “I did,” he confessed. “I did take them but I didn’t know it was -bad. Truly I didn’t. Please don’t look that way. I don’t want to do -anything more to be sorry for.”</p> - -<p>“Then why did you steal?” Nibble demanded.</p> - -<p>“I just found them,” Stripes pleaded. “There wasn’t any one with them at -all. I knew I mustn’t kill any more quail, but eggs are different. -Aren’t they?” he asked anxiously.</p> - -<p>“No,” said Nibble. “They are not. This year’s eggs are next year’s -quail. If we let every one help himself to all the eggs he came across -there wouldn’t be any more quail to lay them.”</p> - -<p>“But I’ve always done it,” whimpered Stripes, peeking over his shoulder -to see how Nibble was bristling. “And I only took two.”</p> - -<p>“That’s as bad as taking them all. Do you suppose she’ll go back to them -now that she knows you’ve found them?” Nibble began to suspect that -Stripes really didn’t know any better after all, but this was no time to -teach him.</p> - -<p>“Wouldn’t she if I promised never to do it again?” he asked hopefully.</p> - -<p>“She wouldn’t believe you,” snapped Nibble decidedly. “Watch the Dog -gave you one chance even after you killed Tommy Peele’s little chicks. -Now you’ve been bad right over again. No one here ever will trust you. -You’d better go back where you came from as fast as you can -travel—Watch will certainly rage about this.”</p> - -<p>“But I don’t wa-a-ant to go,” sniffed Stripes. “I want to stay right -here and learn how to behave. Way back in the Deep Woods I heard about -it. It’s the peacefulest place in the world——”</p> - -<p>“So you came to see if you couldn’t make us a little trouble!” Nibble -was in a terrible temper. “Tried to lay all on poor Tad Coon, didn’t -you? You’d better foot it if you want to save your skin. That dog will -most certainly kill you.”</p> - -<p>So off trudged Stripes with his head hanging. And Nibble hopped over to -the Quail’s Thicket just in time to hear them asking each other, -“Where’s Bob? Where IS Bob?”</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_X' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="STRIPES SKUNK BEGINS TO BE GOOD">CHAPTER X<br/> -<span class='fssm'>STRIPES SKUNK BEGINS TO BE GOOD</span> -</h2> - -<p>You know quail live together in the winter but separate when they nest -in the spring. They mostly settle near enough together so that when -anything goes wrong the covey call can bring them all in. They help each -other if they can; if they can’t at least they learn about the danger to -those precious nests of their own.</p> - -<p>But when Bob White’s wife gave that horrified “Prr-whit!” that a quail’s -ears can hear so far, her own husband did not come. The other birds -might scatter all over the woods and fields calling anxiously, “Bob -White, Bob White, Oh, Bob White!” but he did not answer.</p> - -<p>Nibble was the only one who knew for sure who had taken the eggs. He -didn’t tell on Stripes Skunk—not yet, for fear the little owls would -hear of it. He called Chaik Jay and whispered, “Tell Watch the Dog to -find my trail and follow it.” Then he set out after Stripes. “That bad -killer knows what happened to Bob,” he said to himself. “I’m glad I -didn’t let him fool me a second time. He wanted me to persuade Bob’s -wife to go back to her nest and trust him—then he’d have caught her, -and maybe I wouldn’t be in trouble! Just maybe!” And he ran as fast as -ever he could.</p> - -<p>But he was only half right. Stripes did know what had happened to Bob -White, but he wasn’t to blame for it. Instead he was doing his best to -help the poor bird. He was waddling back to the Quail’s Thicket with his -tongue hanging out the side of his mouth and his long hairy tail -waggling because he was too winded to gallop.</p> - -<p>Nibble ran right straight into him. The first thing he said was, “What -are you doing here?” and the next was “What about Bob White Quail?”</p> - -<p>And wasn’t Stripes s’prised? “How ever did you hear?” he gasped. “I -haven’t seen a single wing I could send for help, so I’ve ’most burst my -sides coming after you my own self. He’s hanging upside down from a -little tree. He’ll die if you don’t get him down soon. Hurry! Hurry!”</p> - -<p>Hurry! You just better believe Nibble did. He knew what that meant. Bob -was caught in exactly the same kind of a snare that Tommy Peele had set -for Nibble. You remember he fastened a wire noose to the tip end of a -springy sapling, and then he bent it over and pegged it down. The minute -anything touched it, swish went the sapling and swish went whatever was -caught in that wicked wire. This one had tight hold of Bob White’s foot, -and there he hung with his head limp and his wings just weakly -fluttering.</p> - -<div class='tac mt20 mb20'> - <div id='i008' class='mt10 mb00' style='margin-left:15.0%; width:70%;'> - <img src='images/illus-008.jpg' alt='' style='width:100%' /> - <div class='tac mt00'>Bob White was caught in Tommy Peele’s snare.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p>“I guess I’ll have to try to gnaw through this tree,” said Nibble -anxiously. “I simply can’t climb.” And he looked at his furry feet that -are made to run.</p> - -<p>Stripes looked at them, too, and then he looked at his own. You remember -the queer tracks he left up by the barn. His front feet were like a -dog’s but his hind ones were something like Tad Coon’s, and you know how -Tad could climb! “I never tried it,” he murmured doubtfully, “but maybe -I can.”</p> - -<p>Nibble almost squealed. “If you can get up there and bend that top -down——” And right then Stripes clambered up on a log and sprang. He -caught in the lower branches, and then he began—well, Tad Coon or -Chatter Squirrel would never have called it climbing! It was scratch and -scramble and grunt and whine, but he kept right on. And the higher he -went the lower the sapling leaned. Down, down came Bob White till he lay -on the ground. Nibble had hardly touched his teeth to that wicked wire -when it let go its hold and Bob White was free. And just about then -Stripes Skunk let go, too, and came tumbling down on top of them.</p> - -<p>There lay Bob White, too weak to fly, his eyes closed, and his poor -little thirsty beak half open. “Now,” thought Nibble, “that skunk is -going to try and eat him.” Of course that’s what any bad -Thing-from-under-the-Earth would do.</p> - -<p>But Stripes didn’t. All that he scrunched was a couple of fat wood -snails. Pretty soon he found what he was looking for—a fat, juicy grub. -He knew Bob White would like it because skunks and birds eat so many of -the same things. And Bob White did. The minute he smelled it he opened -his eyes, and then he opened his beak. My, but that grub felt cool and -moist on his tongue when he gulped it in! But didn’t he start when he -saw who had given it to him?</p> - -<p>And didn’t Nibble Rabbit prick up his ears when he heard what Stripes -Skunk was saying? “I broke up your nest and stole your eggs this -morning,” he told Bob White. “I thought maybe I’d pay you back even if I -can’t be trusted to kill mice and potato bugs to pay back for those -chickens of Tommy Peele’s I killed.” He still talked in his whiny, -discouraged voice.</p> - -<p>“What’s that?” cheeped Bob. He simply couldn’t believe his ears. “Well, -I’ll be feathered! I’d as soon expect the Great Horned Owl to tell me -such a thing. Eggs? You’re perfectly welcome. It’s not too late to nest -over again. But for a skunk you’re certainly queer.”</p> - -<p>“I—I—feel queer,” said Stripes in a funny, high voice, as though he -were going to cry. “I feel queer and different.”</p> - -<p>“You just feel happy,” said Nibble. “And you’ll feel happier yet when -you’ve fixed those potato bugs for Tommy.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_XI' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="STRIPES CONTINUES HIS GOOD WORKS">CHAPTER XI<br/> -<span class='fssm'>STRIPES CONTINUES HIS GOOD WORKS</span> -</h2> - -<p>You just ought to have heard the commotion in the Quail’s Thicket when -Bob White came whirring home with his wild tale. But do you think he -could make the quail believe that Stripes Skunk had helped Nibble Rabbit -set him free again? Not until Nibble Rabbit himself came hopping along -and told them exactly the same thing—only he gave Stripes all the -credit.</p> - -<p>“Eggs! Eggs!” exclaimed Bob White’s wife when Stripes explained he was -trying to pay back because he’d mussed up her nest that morning. “What -are a couple of eggs? I’ll scrape them back into the nest and lay a -couple more in no time. I hadn’t begun to set on them.”</p> - -<p>“Come along, Stripes,” said Nibble. “We must tell Doctor Muskrat. You -know he told Watch the Dog to try you. If the quail can trust you, I -guess I can. Your cousin Slyfoot the Mink would have eaten me long ago -if I’d come this close to him. Why didn’t you?”</p> - -<p>“I was afraid,” Stripes owned up. “The little owls warned me that if I -did the dog would come after me. Anyway, I couldn’t catch you. Neither -could Slyfoot if you only knew it.</p> - -<p>“You know,” he went on to explain, “we things from under the earth are -all scary—just as scary as you are. Only you’re so afraid of us that -you never remember we have any one to be afraid of. When Slyfoot chases -one of you silly bunnies you run round and round through the brush -trying to hide yourself from him. But as long as you hide he’s hidden, -too. All the time he’s trailing you. So he can take his time about -finding you—and he always does. Now if you’d run straight out in the -open, where the grass is short and there isn’t any place to hide, he -wouldn’t dare to follow. He knows the owl would get him.”</p> - -<p>“If he didn’t get us first,” was Nibble’s sly comment.</p> - -<p>“But you’ve got twice as many chances to get away. You can dodge and -run,” Stripes insisted. “Besides, your furry feet are so quiet; ours -make much more noise when we’re galloping. And the big owl hears you -before he looks for you.”</p> - -<p>“He does?” Nibble exclaimed. “How do you know?”</p> - -<p>“Why every one in the woods knows that an owl is either right-eared or -left-eared. And whichever ear he uses most, that side of his head gets -lop-sided from listening,” Stripes said.</p> - -<p>“But his feathers are so fluffy I don’t see how any one would find out, -if it’s really so,” Nibble objected.</p> - -<p>“Killer (he meant the big weasel) ate one,” grinned Stripes. “I guess he -ought to know. You see everything has something to be afraid of.”</p> - -<p>They weren’t going very fast, Stripes was eating snails and licking -little clusters of insect eggs from the under sides of leaves and -digging grubs among the roots, while Nibble took a bite here and a bite -there as is the way with rabbits. “Everything has something to be afraid -of—and yet it’s terrible to be afraid,” he said.</p> - -<p>“But if you’re not afraid, the others are afraid of you,” answered -Stripes. “You’re the only rabbit who ever scared me. When you got so -cross because I stole those quail eggs, I didn’t know what you’d do to -me. Honest I didn’t.”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t, either,” Nibble giggled, remembering how funny Stripes looked -when he scrouched all up with his back turned and squinted over his -shoulder. “I was too angry with you for being so bad. What could I have -done, anyway?”</p> - -<p>“I wouldn’t like you to kick me,” Stripes sniffed, nodding his head very -earnestly. “You’ve got picky claws on those big furry kickers of yours. -They’d rip a fellow worse than teeth do, and you’re awfully big for a -rabbit.”</p> - -<p>“Am I?” asked Nibble in great surprise. “It’s a long time since I’ve -seen another bunny—not since the day my mother left me.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you’ll see plenty before long, now that the news is going through -the Deep Woods that this is such a peaceful place.” By now they were -patting up the beach of Doctor Muskrat’s Pond. Stripes stopped suddenly. -“Wait a minute,” he exclaimed, “I’ve got to do something before I meet -the doctor.” And off he trotted, his long, hairy tail waggling behind -him.</p> - -<p>“Peaceful?” thought Nibble. “He calls this peaceful when something’s -happening every minute. What must the Deep Woods and the Far Marshes be -if this is peaceful? Wonder what that hairy scamp is up to now?” But he -didn’t worry.</p> - -<p>Pretty soon Stripes came running back with his mouth full. He laid a -mouse on the doctor’s flat stone and then he laid something else beside -it. “It’s so early,” he explained. “I had quite a hunt to find this -potato bug.”</p> - -<p>And then didn’t Nibble laugh! And didn’t Doctor Muskrat? But Stripes was -deadly serious. “That’s to show you I mean to pay Tommy Peele for those -chicks. He’ll have to hunt harder than I did if he wants to find any -potato bugs after I’m through with them. I like being good, but how did -you know I’d like it?”</p> - -<p>“Ahem,” Doctor Muskrat cleared his throat. “Way back in the First-Off -Beginning——”</p> - -<p>And you know how that would please Nibble.</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_XII' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="DOCTOR MUSKRAT TELLS WHY SKUNKS ARE SO">CHAPTER XII<br/> -<span class='fssm'>DOCTOR MUSKRAT TELLS WHY SKUNKS ARE SO</span> -</h2> - -<p>“Way back in the First-Off Beginning,” said Doctor Muskrat impressively, -“there was one of the Things-from-under-the-Earth who really wanted to -be good——”</p> - -<p>“The skunk!” exclaimed Nibble Rabbit. “Wasn’t it?”</p> - -<p>“Was it?” asked Stripes Skunk.</p> - -<p>Doctor Muskrat didn’t answer right away. He sat there sleeking his -whiskers with a clammy wet paw to hide a smile, and his little eyes were -twinkling. “I was just wondering,” he went on at last, “whether they -still tell this story in your family or whether you made up your mind on -your own account.”</p> - -<p>“On my own account,” owned Stripes truthfully. “I got awfully scared at -what the little owls told me after you found out I’d been making trouble -for Tad Coon. And I got to thinking. Then it seemed as if I just had to -try how it would be to live so nice and peaceful—the way you want it.” -He was squirming a pebble in his paw and squinting down his pointy nose, -looking very much ashamed of himself.</p> - -<p>“Ah,” cried Doctor Muskrat in a delighted voice. “That’s exactly the -story of the First Skunk in the First-Off Beginning. He was bad—just as -bad as all the other Things-from-under-the-Earth. He went running -around, making all the trouble he could, while Mother Nature was away -fixing up the other half of the world and this half all went wrong -again. You remember, Nibble, how the sun and the wind and the rain -didn’t take care of things the way she’d ordered them to, so winter -came, and the plants hid in the earth and wouldn’t be eaten, and her -very own new creatures got so terrible starvation hungry that some of -them took to eating each other—like the wolves ate the cows.</p> - -<p>“All the Things-from-under-the-Earth wore scales in the First-Off -Beginning. When winter came most of them went right back under the earth -and they stayed scaly, and are to this very day. But some of them found -it was so easy to Mother Nature’s poor starved new creatures they -couldn’t bear to stop eating them. They didn’t bother picking their poor -lean bones; they just ate the tender parts that weren’t so starvation -thin—like brains. They drank blood, and it went to their heads, so at -last they killed for the sheer fun of killing.”</p> - -<p>“Like Killer the Weasel,” nodded Stripes knowingly.</p> - -<p>“Like some of Mother Nature’s own creatures, the wildcats and the -wolves,” said Doctor Muskrat. “And they didn’t care a bit who they were -killing, either. If the Things-from-under-the-Earth came near they took -after them. They took after the First Skunk whenever they came across -him—you’d better believe he was scared! The ground was so frozen by -that time that he couldn’t dig down into it. So he hid in a hollow tree, -with nothing but his scales on, and he was terribly cold and miserable -and unhappy. And that was the first thing that set him to thinking.”</p> - -<p>“Think of being in a windy tree with nothing but a clammy coat of scales -on,” said Nibble, his teeth almost chattering. “Sometimes it’s bad -enough in the Pickery Things, and they surely keep the wind off.”</p> - -<p>“Well, he didn’t suffer very long,” went on the old doctor. “The first -thing Mother Nature said was, ‘Any one can have fur that wants it.’ Now -she didn’t say ‘my own creatures,’ nor she didn’t say ‘except the Bad -Ones’—she just said ‘any one.’ And there was the First Skunk in a nice -warm suit of fur, looking like any of her own things, except that his -earholes were so far over the sides of his head his ears came too low -down—and so did those of all the Things-from-under-the-Earth; that’s -one way you can always tell them. And he was so happy. He said to -himself, ‘This is all I wanted,’ and he curled right up tight and fell -fast asleep.</p> - -<p>“But when he woke up he began to think again. And by this time he could -think of several things he wanted. So he started out to find how he’d -get them. And it didn’t take him long to discover that he got his fur -because Mother Nature gave it to him; or to learn not to hunt her up -where she was busy trying to put things in order in this half of the -world again.</p> - -<p>“She was fairly discouraged at the way the sun and the wind and the rain -had spoiled it and disgusted at the way some of her creatures had been -behaving—’specially the wolves, for eating the poor cows, you know. So -the First Skunk didn’t dare to trouble her; he just sat there listening. -And he thought and thought, until his head was tired, for the -Things-from-under-the-Earth aren’t used to thinking. Perhaps that’s why -they always stay Bad Ones——”</p> - -<p>“It is!” Stripes interrupted. “It certainly is.” And his little low ears -were so pricked up over the idea that he didn’t look snaky and sneaky -any more, but just nice and pert and interested.</p> - -<p>“Well, anyway,” continued Doctor Muskrat, “at last the First Skunk crept -up close and whined, ‘Won’t you have the earth fixed up the way it was -before very long? I want to ask something before you’re all done.’</p> - -<p>“‘I can’t do that,’ she answered sadly, ‘because it’s been lived, so it -can’t be done over again. I’ll have to do the best I can with things as -they are. But who are you?’ She didn’t know him at all because he was so -different from the last time she’d seen him. But she knew right off from -his ears that she’d never made him.</p> - -<p>“‘I’m the skunk,’ he answered. ‘This is my new fur you gave me this -morning!’ And then wasn’t she angry—angry with herself and angry with -him! It was hard enough to have the sun and the rain and the wind be so -careless that they let winter come, without having some of the Bad Ones -stay up from under the earth to hunt her poor beasts all through it. If -they had only scales on they couldn’t, but here was one with fur. Just -because she was so hurried and flustered she hadn’t stopped to think -what she’d been saying when she said ‘any one’ could have it.</p> - -<p>“But the First Skunk didn’t know how she felt about it. He was so -pert and proud because he’d been thinking a little. He said, ‘I -like the way you want things. I want to be good and live up here -in the sun with your own creatures instead of going back down under -the Earth-that-is-common-to-all.’</p> - -<p>“‘Well, be good, then,’ she snapped. She really didn’t believe him.</p> - -<p>“‘But,’ he argued, ‘someone will have to show me how.’ You see her own -creatures were all made good, and they had to learn how to be bad from -the Bad Ones. A Bad One may want ever so much to be good, but he hasn’t -any idea where to begin.</p> - -<p>“She didn’t stop to think of that. She thought he was just making -excuses, so she said, ‘You can stay up all winter now that you’ve got -fur. I don’t see why you need anything else.’</p> - -<p>“‘Because I’m so small and so slow it’s terribly scary for me now that -your own beasts have taken to killing,’ he whimpered. ‘I don’t know how -to run away.’</p> - -<p>“‘Oho!’ Mother Nature was very sarcastic, but he didn’t know enough to -know it. ‘You Bad Ones taught them how. I should think you’d be proud -over the way they’ve learned it. What else do you want, then?’</p> - -<p>“‘Lots of things,’ answered the First Skunk more cheerfully. ‘Paws, for -instance.’”</p> - -<p>“Did they have feet?” Stripes Skunk interrupted again. “Snakes haven’t.”</p> - -<p>“They had then,” replied Doctor Muskrat; “splay-footed, lizardy ones. -The First Skunk wasn’t sure which he wanted, handy-paws like Tad Coon or -paddy ones like the wolves, so he could run away from them. He left all -that to Mother Nature. ‘Anyway you want to fix me,’ he said, ‘so I’m not -always being chased and they can’t hold me if they do catch me.’</p> - -<p>“Mother Nature just stared at that First Skunk. ‘Well, of all the -impudence!’ she exclaimed. ‘Of all the impudence! There you are, then!’</p> - -<p>“And there he was, indeed! Only he had paddy-paws on in front, where he -wanted the handy-ones, and Tad Coon’s paws behind, where he couldn’t run -on them, and a long, hairy tail no tooth could hang on to, and that -terrible scent so no one could even want to try. You can imagine how -that First Skunk felt!”</p> - -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - -<h2 id='ch_XIII' style='page-break-before:avoid;' title="IN DEFENSE OF A LADY">CHAPTER XIII<br/> -<span class='fssm'>IN DEFENSE OF A LADY</span> -</h2> - -<p>“That poor First Skunk!” exclaimed Nibble Rabbit. “Mother Nature was -mean to give him everything he asked for just the opposite to the way he -wanted it. I’d have gone right off and been just as bad as ever I knew -how to be.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, Stripes Skunk?” asked Doctor Muskrat, “is that how you feel about -it?”</p> - -<p>“N-n-no,” Stripes answered slowly. “Being good is something even Mother -Nature couldn’t give the First Skunk; he’d have to get it for himself. -For the other things, I like being just the way we are. When I had to -climb the tree to help Bob White Quail I’d have liked the handy-paws the -First Skunk wanted. But that’s just because I’ve never practised -climbing, like my little cousin Spotty. And handy-paws are no earthly -good to dig with—you just ought to see these paddy-paws of mine make -the dirt fly. But paddy-paws behind, where he wanted them, wouldn’t be -half as nice as these good firm footy soles I stand on.</p> - -<p>“I wouldn’t even give up my hairy tail. It’s heavy, but no one can bite -it, and it’s wonderful to sleep in.” He whisked it into a billowy rug -about his toes; then he finished contentedly, “I don’t mind Mother -Nature making us so we can’t chase other folks, seeing that she gave us -our scent so we’re not always being chased. She was perfectly fair.”</p> - -<p>“Fair!” You ought to have seen Nibble turn his sniffy nose up at this. -“She played you a horrid kind of a joke.”</p> - -<p>“Not at all!” answered Stripes—and he was really quite indignant. “We -don’t have to be unpleasant. Anyway, it’s better than fighting, and I -notice even you bunnies don’t like to be eaten. Only nobody but Doctor -Muskrat seems to understand.”</p> - -<p>“Furry-foot,” chuckled that wise old beast, “Mother Nature played that -joke on a lot of other fellows besides the skunk. We were all of us -asking for scents, and she simply couldn’t understand it. She thought if -she gave the First Skunk that one, the rest of us wouldn’t want them.”</p> - -<p>“Why did you?” Nibble wanted to know. “We didn’t.”</p> - -<p>“You didn’t, didn’t you?” Doctor Muskrat’s little eyes twinkled. “Why do -you run around the Pickery Things each evening and give a stamp at every -tunnel?”</p> - -<p>“So if any other rabbit comes he’ll know that the place belongs to me.”</p> - -<p>“How will he know?” asked the doctor. “He mightn’t see you or hear -you——”</p> - -<p>“He’d smell me, of course!” Nibble’s eyes were big and round.</p> - -<p>“He would. Now do you see why nearly every one wanted some way of -leaving messages for other Woodsfolk while he went off to hide or feed? -You don’t dare make a noise; you can’t wait too long for fear someone -will see you; so you leave that little smelly mark that stays and stays -long after the warm smell of your body is blown away so you can’t be -followed. But you’re so used to it you never think about it.”</p> - -<p>“Oh-h-h!” said Nibble. “I hadn’t thought of that. I guess I’m beginning -to understand.”</p> - -<p>“I hope so,” sniffed the doctor. “Of course nobody’ll ever be wise -enough to know just how generous Mother Nature’s been. But remember, you -never nibble a clover leaf that you haven’t her to thank for it.”</p> - -<p>Clover leaf! the bunny’s twitchy nose began to sniff for one. Stripes -Skunk cocked up one ear and looked at the Doctor with a little twinkle -in his eye. “I s’pose we can thank her for snails,” said he. -“’Cause——” Schloop! he licked a juicy one off the under side of a dock -leaf, “’cause at least (crunch! crunch!) we can run fast—enough—to -catch ’em.”</p> - -<div class='tac mt07'>THE END</div> - -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAD COON'S TRICKS ***</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>This file should be named 64216-h.htm or 64216-h.zip</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/6/4/2/1/64216/</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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