THE WAVY TAILED WARRIOR
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Told at Twilight Stories
By JOHN BRECK
MOSTLY ABOUT NIBBLE THE BUNNY
NIBBLE RABBIT MAKES MORE FRIENDS
THE SINS OF SILVERTIP THE FOX
TAD COON’S TRICKS
THE WAVY TAILED WARRIOR
TAD COON’S GREAT ADVENTURE
THE BAD LITTLE OWLS
THE JAY BIRD WHO WENT TAME
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[Illustration: The hive had sent out a cloud of fighting bees to stand
guard]
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Told at Twilight Stories
THE WAVY TAILED WARRIOR
by
John Breck
Book V
Illustrated by
William T. Andrews
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1923
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COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
First Edition
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CONTENTS
I. Stripes Turns a Trick on Tad Coon
II. The Sweetness of Harmony and Honey
III. Tommy Would A-Fishing Go
IV. A Compact Between Fishermen
V. Of the Tick in Tommy’s Pocket Which Wasn’t a Bug After All
VI. The Battle of the Potato Bugs
VII. The Birds Enlist in the War
VIII. The Battle of the Crook Tailed Snake
IX. The Secret of the Snake Guard
X. The Field Mice Protest
XI. War to the Tooth
XII. The Mice Defeat Themselves
XIII. Where, Oh Where, Is Tad Coon?
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ILLUSTRATIONS
The hive had sent out a cloud of fighting bees to stand guard
Tommy fished and fished, but at first he did not get a single bite
Stripes battles with a big fish
Tommy takes off his “skin” to dry
Tad Coon finds a new kind of bug
When the moon came up there wasn’t a single tail stirring
Nibble takes the lady mouse to Doctor Muskrat
Tad Coon chased a couple of mice into a corn crib
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The Wavy Tailed Warrior
CHAPTER I
STRIPES TURNS A TRICK ON TAD COON
“Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch,” went a noise in the woods not very
far away from the pond where Doctor Muskrat was telling a story to
Nibble Rabbit and Stripes Skunk. Nibble’s ears flew up; the doctor got
ready to dive; Stripes hunched himself up and peered anxiously over his
shoulder because the sound came from the only direction where he knew of
a hole to hide in. The willows, where he first lived, were over on the
far side of the pond—and Stripes simply hates to swim. His tail gets all
soggy, so it’s just as if you tried swimming with all your clothes on.
Scritch—r-r-rip! went the noise. Patter, patter, patter, came footsteps
of somebody running. Then Nibble laughed. “Ho! It’s only old Tad Coon,”
he said. “He’s in kind of a hurry.”
But when Tad Coon came out into the grassy space between the trees and
the sand he was just strolling along as dignified as a duck in a puddle.
“Morning, Doctor Muskrat,” he said politely. “Hello, Nibble. Who’s the
visitor?” He knew all the time, but he was just pretending, to see what
Stripes would do.
“This is Stripes Skunk,” said Nibble. “He wants to stay here and clean
up the potato-bugs for Tommy Peele.”
“He does, does he?” Tad straddled his hind legs wide apart and sat back
to stare at him in a most insulting way.
“Well, I hope you’ve warned all the birds. He’s the fellow who can keep
their nests cleaned up for them.”
That made Stripes pretty angry. He turned half-way round and stamped his
feet. “You’re mighty worried about them all of a sudden,” he snarled.
“But I notice when the folks found those little dead chicks, they knew
who to lay it to.”
“And I notice you were the one who killed them,” growled Tad with a
crooked smile that showed all his teeth. He was getting ready to fight
about it.
But wise old Doctor Muskrat just drawled in a sleepy, soothing voice,
“As the grubby carp-fish said to the snapping-turtle, ‘My, but your nose
is muddy!’”
That set Nibble Rabbit to giggling. “Hadn’t I better call the little
owls?” he asked. “Then you can all throw mud at each other.”
“It’s mighty funny for you,” protested Tad Coon, “but as long as he
stays here, that Skunk will be getting me into trouble.”
“No, I won’t. I did it in the first place because I was jealous. You
could stay here and I couldn’t. But if I can stay, too, I won’t have
anything to be jealous about, will I?” One thing about Stripes—he always
tells the truth, you know.
“That’s so,” agreed Tad. “I’ll think about it.” Then he smiled the smile
he has when he thinks about a joke. “Say, Stripes, do you like honey? I
know where there is some.”
“Like honey?” You ought to have seen Stripes’ little pink tongue hang
out at the very idea.
“Doctor Muskrat,” whispered Nibble when Tad and Stripes marched off,
tail to tail, as companionable as though they’d never thought of
fighting, “I’ve guessed Tad’s joke. He’s got those bees all angry—that
was why he was running before he saw us. Now he’s going to set them on
Stripes Skunk and have them chase him away, just as he set the striped
buzzers with hot tails (paper-wasps he meant) on Trailer the Hound.
Hadn’t I better warn him?”
“Now don’t you get to meddling, Nibble,” the doctor answered. “Those two
will have to settle their own troubles. If Watch the Dog isn’t
executioner of these woods and fields, neither are you their hen, to
brood over them. You’re getting as bad as Jenny Wren in nesting season.”
He said that because Jenny Wren is the fussiest thing in feathers, and
she’s always scolding other people for not doing what she thinks is the
proper way to do things. She nearly drives the meadowlarks wild by
saying, “I told you so” every time someone finds their eggs that they
hide in the long grass, just because she can’t make them take to nesting
in her little squinchy dark knotholes.
“Just the same,” Nibble insisted, “I’m going to see what they’re doing,”
And off he hopped.
But he didn’t hop so very far. For the bees had hung up their shelves
upon shelves of little wax honey-bottles in the upper limb of the oak
that was blown down in the Terrible Storm. Tad Coon had clawed off all
the bark around their hole trying to reach his handy-paw into it. But he
wasn’t going near it now—oh, no! He’d had one taste of their stings. And
now the hive had sent out a swarm of fighting bees to stand guard. They
were hanging in a noisy black cloud just above it.
Up went Stripes Skunk, balancing on the wide branch as nicely as you
please, and he walked right into the middle of them. And then you should
have heard them. They were fairly shrieking their sting song:
Sting, sting!
Buzz a valiant wing.
With fatal thrust
Defend our trust;
Let our foe’s ears ring
With the wing song—
The sting song.
Die singing as you sting!
And bees always use it to work themselves up when they have a fight on
so they’ll forget that as soon as they use their stings they’ll die.
“Oh!” cried Nibble. “He must be blinded. See what you’ve done with your
jokes, you careless coon! This is worse than the one you played on
Trailer.”
Even Tad Coon was shocked. He called, “Stripes, Stripes! come this way!
Follow me! If you run through the brush they’ll leave you.”
But of course the bees were making such a noise Stripes Skunk couldn’t
hear what he was saying. So he just called back, “I can’t reach in
here—my paw’s too fat—but I have another idea.” Down he came. They could
see him batting at the bees with his paddy paws until he popped into the
big hollow in the oak’s trunk.