THE WOODSFOLK WONDER ABOUT LOUIE
When Tad Coon got out of that damp, smelly cellar he was just about
the happiest coon who ever hunted wood snails under a burdock leaf. He
was happy until he’d eaten several snails and three fieldmice and one
green frog. Then all of a sudden he remembered the bad news he had for
Nibble Rabbit. You know he thought Louie had killed Nibble’s poor
little bunny. My, how he hated to tell Nibble and Silk-ears!
So he lost his smile. His face got longer and longer as he dragged his
feet toward Doctor Muskrat’s pond. It felt most as long as his tail.
His eyes got all teary and his nose got all sniffy, just thinking how
badly they were going to feel. But when he came around the end of the
Quail’s Thicket who should he see but Nibble talking excitedly to
Doctor Muskrat. Silk-ears and a lot of little bunnies were with him.
“It was Tad Coon, all right,” Doctor Muskrat was answering. “No one
but Tad would have known all those stories he told the baby about you,
Nibble. Now we’ll get Tommy Peele’s dog Watch to take Tommy after him.
Tommy can undo that cage door. You’d better hurry right off and find
him. We can’t leave Tad there another hour!”
How had that baby bunny come home? Tad couldn’t imagine. But here she
was, and here were all his friends planning to rescue him. He felt so
happy, all of a sudden, that he grinned until the tips of his prick-up
ears most met. He just danced up, like a skittish butterfly in a
breeze, squealing, “I’m here! I’m here!”
“However did you get away?” gasped Nibble and Doctor Muskrat in the
same breath.
“That awful boy opened the cage door and I just ran,” chuckled Tad.
“How did the baby get away from him?”
“She didn’t,” Nibble explained. “He brought her back to the hop-toad’s
stone. And she says he isn’t awful a bit. She isn’t scared of him.” He
looked around for the bunny, but she’d scuttled into the Pickery
Things the second she saw Tad Coon. Nibble had to call and call.
By and by she squeaked: “I’m not scared of that boy, but I’m awfully
scared of that coon. He said he’d eat me.”
“Yes, I did,” Tad owned up. “I told her little rabbits mustn’t trust
us coons. But I won’t eat you now. I’m not a bit hungry.”
“There’s something queer about this,” said Doctor Muskrat. “That bad
Louie Thomson wasn’t bad to the little bunny.”
But if the Woodsfolk were wondering about Louie Thomson that morning,
they wondered a lot more that afternoon. And they weren’t the only
ones who wondered. Tommy Peele came down for some more fishing. Of
course Doctor Muskrat and Stripes Skunk were interested in that, and
Stripes’s three kittens sat still as still, with their toes tucked in
like a pussy-cat’s, and the white tips of their tails twitching,
because every other fish belonged to them. The bunnies were snoozing
in the Pickery Things, Chatter Squirrel and Chaik the Jay were having
an argument, and Tommy’s dog, Watch, was barking at them, and Tad Coon
was down at the lower end of the pond, happy as a frog on a lily pad,
full of mussels to his very chin. Suddenly he looked up and saw Louie
Thomson looking through the fence--right at him.
Wow! But you ought to have seen him go! He bounced past Tommy Peele,
splattering water all over him. Everybody hid, even Chatter Squirrel;
everybody but Watch, who began growling and barking.
This made Louie angry. He just leaned over the fence and squalled:
“You can have your darned old coon! He’s just as mean as your darned
old dog! I wisht I hadn’t let him go. I wisht I’d killed him when I
had him--I do!”
“When did you ever have him?” jeered Tommy Peele.
“This morning. I had one of your rabbits, too--a little bitty one--but
’twasn’t big enough to keep, so I let it go again.”
“You broke your promise!” shouted Tommy. “You broke your promise. You
said you’d never come over here and catch my wild things again!” My,
but he was angry.
“I didn’t--so, there!” snapped Louie. “I caught that coon in our
corn-crib. And I caught that little bunny right here where I’m
standing now. But I don’t want any of your old pets, seeing you’re so
selfish about them.”
“I am not selfish,” Tommy answered back. “You could have pets
yourself, only you’re too lazy to feed them.”
“I’d like to know what I’d feed them with?” asked Louie. “I see my pa
letting me go into his feed bins like your pa lets you. He wouldn’t
even let me have some for my coon, but Ma gave me bread for him.” No
wonder poor Tad was hungry!
Tommy most forgot to be angry. Maybe Louie Thomson wasn’t so very bad,
after all. Maybe he did want to be friends. Every little boy didn’t
have a father like his, who knew all about boys and wild things. “Say,
Louie,” Tommy said in a different voice, “all these fellows love
roasting ears. You can get some from our cornfield if you want--my dad
won’t care.”
Did Louie want to? Did he? You just ought to have seen the feast he
laid out, over by his fence, not by the flat stone where Tommy always
put his feasts, so the Woodsfolk would guess it wasn’t from Tommy
Peele.
Before long, “Munch, munch!” went Nibble Rabbit and Silk-ears, and all
their little bunnies. “Crunch, crunch!” went Stripes Skunk and his
kittens. “Scrunch, scrunch!” went Doctor Muskrat, and Chatter
Squirrel, and Tad Coon. “Pick, peck, pick!” went Chaik the Jay, all
busy on those sweet, juicy young ears of corn.
Tommy Peele and Louie Thomson were driving up Louie’s cows as friendly
as though they’d never had a quarrel. But Tommy’s dog, Watch, pricked
up both his ears as he listened to them. Then he galloped over to the
feast and barked: “That’s Louie Thomson’s corn. He’s trying to make
friends with you.”
“Yah! ’Tis not!” squawked Chaik. “He got it in Tommy Peele’s own
field. I saw him!” You see, they didn’t know Tommy said he might
because Louie’s father wouldn’t let him take any from his own
cornfield, even if Louie did the hoeing.
“It’s in Tommy’s woods,” pointed out Doctor Muskrat. “We haven’t made
any compact!”
But Tad Coon surprised them all. “Are you sure, Watch?” he asked.
“’Cause if you’re certain sure I’m going back to his cellar again.”
“Back to that smelly, stuffy, dark cage!” exclaimed Nibble Rabbit. And
his ears flicked straight up, he was so s’prised to be asking such a
foolish question.
“Sure as mice is mice!” chuckled Tad. “That cellar’s just alive with
them. And there’s that rat who bothered your bunny, Nibble. I’ve got a
bone to pick with him--and he’s going to furnish the bone!”
“Don’t do it!” warned Stripes excitedly. “You’ll get caught again!”
“No, I won’t,” sniffed Tad. “I’m not going near that old trap.” Tad
meant the corn-crib.
“But it’s all over traps!” Stripes insisted. “Traps and cages, for
cows and horses and pigs and sheep--and men, even!” You see Stripes
thought the houses and barns and sheds were all traps to catch the
things who live in them and keep them from going wild again. And
that’s half true, isn’t it?
“Traps for men?” squealed everybody. “Men don’t hunt men.”
“Don’t they, though?” asked Stripes. “Well, we skunks know something
about that. There used to be wolves and bears and all sorts of wild
things here, even wild men. They weren’t like these men. They were the
colour of Chatter Squirrel, and they lived in little shady trees made
of skin or in log piles, like the beavers.” He meant the tents and the
winter houses of the Indians. “We skunks used to be good friends with
them. But these men weren’t. They hunted them, just like they hunted
the bears and the wolves and the beavers, too. The wild men were
smarter than any of the other wild things, but these men who live here
now just kept building more and more traps to catch them in. Now every
last one of them is gone!”
“That’s so,” said Doctor Muskrat. And it is half true, too. The
Indians did disappear when the white men built their houses, but of
course it wasn’t because the white men trapped them the same as they
trapped the wild things.