TAD COON’S GREAT ADVENTURE
Told at Twilight Stories
By JOHN BRECK
MOSTLY ABOUT NIBBLE THE BUNNY
NIBBLE RABBIT MAKES MORE FRIENDS
THE SINS OF SILVERTIP THE FOX
THE COON’S TRICKS
THE WAVY TAILED WARRIOR
TAD COON’S GREAT ADVENTURE
THE BAD LITTLE OWLS
THE JAY BIRD WHO WENT TAME
[Illustration: Maybe Tad Coon didn’t run! He hit the cellar steps just
twice--blam! blam!]
Told at Twilight Stories
TAD COON’S GREAT ADVENTURE
by
John Breck
Book VI
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. The Romance of Nibble Rabbit
II. New Households in the Woods and Fields
III. Nibble’s Bunny Makes One Friend Too Many
IV. Dark Hours in Louie Thomson’s Prison
V. Why Louie Thomson Whistled
VI. The Woodsfolk Wonder About Louie
VII. Tad Coon Goes Back to Prison
VIII. Could a Little Boy Go Wild?
IX. Louie Takes Lessons of the Woodsfolk
X. The Rule of Tents
XI. Great Doings by Night in the Woods and Fields
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Maybe Tad Coon didn’t run!
They all twiddled their little tufty cottony tails
One bunny poked out its curious little nose
When Tommy tickled her nose with the tender end of a grass-blade
she ate it
“Good Morning, Hop-toad. This is my family”
Tad and Louie had the grain sacks flying
When Louie opened his eyes, all the woodsfolk were out getting
their breakfasts
The woodsfolk were delighted with Louie’s tent
TAD COON’S GREAT ADVENTURE
CHAPTER I
THE ROMANCE OF NIBBLE RABBIT
Tad Coon was lost! And Doctor Muskrat and Nibble felt pretty
discouraged over their chances of ever seeing him again. All the same
they meant to try. They sent word of a meeting to the Woodsfolk by
everyone they met. When they reached the pond, Stripes Skunk was
sitting out on Doctor Muskrat’s flat stone, waiting for him.
“I’m leaving,” said he. “But I have to thank you for all you’ve done
for me. Perhaps I’ll come back some time.” He seemed very sorry over
it. His tail was droopy.
“You can’t go!” exclaimed the doctor. “You belong here in the Woods
and Fields ever since you killed the crook-tailed snake for us. Now
we’re counting on you to help us hunt for Tad.”
“But I must go,” said Stripes. “My mate wouldn’t leave the Deep Woods.
She knew it was a dangerous place to live and she sent me hunting
about to find a better one. Then she refused to come. I couldn’t think
why she wouldn’t. But Chewee the Chickadee just came flying in with
the news that the weasel has killed her. And she’s left three little
kittens behind. I’ve got to do their hunting for them.”
“I see,” nodded the doctor. “But you send Chewee back here to-morrow
at sunset. I’ll have a message for you.” He didn’t say a word about
the meeting. So off went Stripes, with his ears drooped low and his
tail most sorrowfully dragging.
When the Woodsfolk gathered by his pond the next afternoon Doctor
Muskrat laid Tad Coon’s case before them. “We know what has happened
to Tad Coon,” he said. “He chased some mice into a corn-crib and a man
shut the door on him. What man, what corn-crib we do not know. One
mouse escaped to tell the tale but the little owls ate him. If Tad is
still alive the Woodsfolk must do their very best to find him.”
“We will, we will!” they squealed and yapped and chirped and whistled
in all their different tongues. Even the little bats woke up inside
their hollow tree and squeaked out that they, too, would keep an eye
open for him.
“Another thing,” went on Doctor Muskrat. “Tad Coon is gone. Now
Stripes Skunk has had to go into the Deep Woods to look after his
kittens. The fieldmice are foolish but they are many and full of
notions. We have only the hawks and owls to fight them. First thing we
know the minks will be creeping in, unless Stripes brings his family
to live with us.”
“Hooray! Hooray! for Stripes and his family! Bring ’em along!” shouted
the Woodsfolk and that’s just the very message he wanted to send.
But just as the shouting was beginning to die down Chewee the
Chickadee broke out in his shrill little voice: “And Nibble Rabbit’s
mate said I was to tell him his bunnies were out of the ground and
ready to travel.”
“Nibble Rabbit! Nibble Rabbit!” they hooted. “Oh, you sly one!” And
Nibble dragged his ear down and licked it so he could hide his shyness
behind it. There was more shouting and laughing than ever. But Doctor
Muskrat was fairly flabbergasted. “Nibble!” he gasped. “You never told
me!”
He was hurt because Nibble Rabbit had gone off and found himself a
mate and raised a family without saying a word to him. He sat on his
stone and almost sulked about it.
“But, Doctor Muskrat,” pleaded Nibble, “please let me explain----”
“What is there to explain?” retorted the doctor, “except that you
never even told me.”
“There’s this much,” Nibble answered with a funny smile, “I didn’t
know about them myself until just now.”
“What do you mean-‘didn’t know’?” snorted the old muskrat. “Is this
some joke of Chewee’s? I don’t understand.”
“No,” said Nibble, and he looked very happy about it. “They’re mine
all right enough, but this is the first I’ve heard from them.” Then he
went on to tell about how it happened.
“You told me about scents. Of course I went off to find how everyone
used them. My, it was fun! I could tell how folks lived, and what they
ate, and when they were home, and where they went and who they saw
while they were away. And I found that nearly everyone was making love
to someone. I just couldn’t understand it.
“I couldn’t until I found a rabbit trail back in the Deep Woods. It
was a lady rabbit’s trail. Of course I let her know I’d called before
I came away. But next day I went back there. And I could see her
bright eyes shining underneath the Pickery Things she hid in. By and
by she came hopping out. Oh, Doctor Muskrat, she was the loveliest
rabbit you’ve ever seen. She was just full of tricks and games and
frolics. And run? she was swift as a fish, darting across your pond.
“She liked me, too. She didn’t even think I looked funny when I danced
under the last full moon, even if the mice say I do. I kept telling
her how nice it was here and she kept promising to come and meet you.
Wouldn’t you have been s’prised?”
“No, I can’t really say I would,” chuckled the old muskrat.
That did surprise Nibble. “Then,” he went on, “she disappeared. Of
course I thought Slyfoot the Mink had caught her. Why do you s’pose
she hid away like that?”
“Ask her,” laughed Doctor Muskrat. “Run along, Bunny. Run along and
ask her that yourself. They all do it.”
Everyone in the Woods and Fields insists that Chewee the Chickadee
can’t keep his wings still or his tongue silent for a minute at a
time. But they’re wrong. He sat perfectly quiet all the time Nibble
Rabbit was telling Doctor Muskrat about his mate back in the Deep
Woods. He had promised to let his mate know when Nibble was coming. He
didn’t even let himself laugh when Nibble wanted to know why she had
hidden away from him. That is, he didn’t until he saw Nibble hopping
around the end of Doctor Muskrat’s pond to the place where Nibble
jumps across the brook. Then Chewee took to his stubby wings and maybe
you think he didn’t chuckle about it. He got the giggles so hard that
he had to perch and hang on tight until he got over them.
Lippity, lippity, lippity, went Nibble’s furry feet--my, but he was in
a hurry to find his mate and his baby bunnies! Thump, thump, he went
outside the Pickery Things she used to hide in while she waited for
him. And out she came, with five of the cunningest, fattest, softest
little balls of brown fur you ever saw. And they all twiddled their
little tufty, cottony tails and pricked up their soft ears and opened
their bright eyes wide at Nibble. But they wouldn’t let him come near
them.
[Illustration: They all twiddled their little tufty, cottony tails.]
That was because they thought he was angry. He thought he was, too. He
said: “Why did you treat me like this, running away and hiding from
me, and never even letting me know we had a family? You hurt my
feelings dreadfully, Silk-ears.”
“Why, we always do it,” she protested. “Every mother rabbit makes her
nest in some place where it’s hidden even from the father rabbit.”
“But you didn’t need to,” said Nibble. “We’re different. You didn’t
think I’d hurt them, did you? Birds don’t do that. I’d have helped you
take care of them.”
“That’s what father rabbits always say,” laughed Silk-ears, for that
was the mother rabbit’s name.
“How many families have you raised, anyway?” Nibble wanted to know.
“This is the first,” smiled Silk-ears. “Aren’t they lovely bunnies for
the first ones? But I’ve had a wise old mother rabbit, who’s raised
ever and ever so many, to show me how. That was one reason I stayed
here. And the other reason is that you couldn’t have helped me. We’re
not like the birds. I don’t need your help to feed them and you leave
a trail that’s ever so much plainer than mine. You’d have insisted on
coming to see them and then Slyfoot the Mink would have followed you
and found them. That’s why we mother rabbits always hide them away,
even from you, until they’re big enough to run.”
Then wasn’t Nibble sorry he’d been cross! “I might have known you had
a good reason,” he said. “You’re so clever.” He said it just as though
she’d thought of it all by herself. And the minute those bunny babies
heard he wasn’t angry any more they began to come closer and closer.
One of them patted his white tail that was so much bigger than its own
little puffy wisp, and another cuddled right up to him.