But Killer never finished. He’d scared himself ’most to death telling
about the Ghost Owl; so when he did hear a sound he made a frantic
scratching to squeeze into the crack in the Hop-toad’s stone, where he’d
been talking, and then he bounced off at full speed for his own safe
crack between the two stones on the bank of Doctor Muskrat’s pond.
“Ah-h-h!” he breathed. “Safe at last! Even the Ghost Owl’s claw cannot
find me here. Tooth cannot bite, and paw cannot dig to disturb me. If
only I weren’t so desperate, starvation hungry. I do wish I’d caught the
Hop-toad. I do wish I’d eaten those owls--but I’ll do it next summer when
it’s safe to hunt here. To-night I’ll go back to the Deep Woods and
stay--if I have to live on acorns.”
As soon as the Hop-toad was perfectly sure Killer had gone, he hopped to
the narrow crack that was the door of his cave and squeezed out again.
He cocked his deaf ears and felt with his little gloved paws on the
ground. Then he began to laugh himself right out of his skin. “Ho, ho!
It’s only those harmless man-tadpoles.” That’s what Croaker Toad calls
Tommy Peele and Louie Thomson.
Croaker could feel them tramping along the lane. Killer had heard them
whistling. They were calling Watch to help them find out who it was that
had chased Nibble Rabbit and Tad Coon and Stripes Skunk and Doctor
Muskrat, and all the rest of them out of Tommy’s Woods and Fields. Watch
was busy about something else, way far off, when he heard them. Mighty
busy, too.
But they didn’t need him. Killer had gone padding up and down the banks
of Doctor Muskrat’s pond looking for tracks of someone he could eat, and
he’d left his own. He’d left a clear trail from the Hop-toad’s home to
his own. “Lessee who’s here!” said Tommy Peele. He tried to lift one of
Killer’s big stones.
“Try this,” said Louie Thomson. He picked up a big stick and poked it
into the crack between them. Then both little boys began to shove on the
stick. Slowly it pried the crack apart. One of the big stones reared up
on end and fell over backward. And there sat snaky-slim, bristly
whiskered, snarly toothed Killer, with his wicked eyes rage-red and his
wicked claws set to spring at them!
Why didn’t he do it? Well, it was the same reason Stripes Skunk
explained to Nibble Rabbit and Nibble tried on the cat. They weren’t
afraid of him.
Indeed they weren’t even angry, for they didn’t know all the harm he’d
been doing and there wasn’t anybody in all the Woods and Fields who
could tell them. Tommy said: “What’s that?” and Louie answered, “First
time I ever saw him,” and they just stood still and stared at him.
Killer certainly was afraid of them. His wits were as muddled as a
pollywog’s puddle when a duck goes fishing in it. First place, what had
happened to his nice safe home? Tooth nor toenail couldn’t dig into it.
Then why did that great big stone flop right over on its back and leave
him without a place to hide in? He didn’t know it was because the little
boys used a stick to pry it with just like the First Man used a stick to
pry the stone that shut up the pass to his little island against the
wolves in the First-off Beginning of Things.
Killer was as bad as any wolf, but the little boys didn’t know that.
They didn’t know enough to be afraid of the wicked little beast who
scrouched down at their very feet, snarling and swearing at them. All
they thought of was the funny faces he was making. They were snarlier
and funnier than any Stripes Skunk could ever make, or even Tad Coon.
“Te-hee,” giggled Louie. “My, but he thinks he’s big!”
“Ho-ho!” laughed Tommy, thinking of the fight between Nibble Rabbit and
the cat that morning, “I’d like to see what our old Tabby would say to
him.”
That was too much for Killer. He did jump. But he didn’t jump at them.
He went leaping off into the Woods, spitting like a firecracker and
looking for a new place to hide from them. And he found--the Big Oak that
was blown down in the Terrible Storm where the Bad Little Owls were
hidden! Wow! But wasn’t Killer mad when he bounced into the hole of the
Big Oak!
He hadn’t more than poked his whiskers inside the hollow tree than he
smelled owl. He smelled other things, too, but he was too mad to think
about them.
“Yah!” he snarled, sniffing viciously. “So that’s where you are, you
lying little flap-wings. Just you wait until I get my breath and I’ll
teach you a few things. You told me it was good hunting here, you did!
Well, there isn’t so much as a mouse-tail swishing, or a feather flying,
or even a frog hopping by your fine pond. Not a trail has been made
since the big rain that almost washed me out of my snug stones.
“And, next, did you think I wouldn’t hear what happened to Silvertip the
Fox? He isn’t dead. He’s turned into the worst enemy we weasels have;
he’s a Ghost Owl and he’s haunting these very Woods and Fields. That’s
why all the other creatures have gone.”
“He isn’t! Truly he isn’t,” wailed Screecher’s wife. “Grandpop
Snappingturtle ate him.”
“Hm. So that’s the story you’re telling now, is it?” snapped Killer. “I
thought you said he was hunting duck in the Big Marsh over on the other
side of the Deep Woods. Didn’t you?”
“Ye-es,” sniffed the owl. (She did, you know.) “But----”
Now if Killer had let her say another word she would have told him why
she lied and she’d have explained that Grandpop Snappingturtle was
gone, and things might have been very different whether he believed her
or not. But he didn’t. He began crouching, creeping toward the very
darkest end of the long log where he could hear the scared little birds
squirming in terror. His eyes gleamed red in the blackness, with green
flashes, as he peered for them.
But you surely haven’t forgotten that this was the very tree where
Stripes Skunk found the honey that helped him make friends with Tad Coon
and Tommy Peele.
The bees were fast asleep. They woke up all right enough when those
scared little owls began scratching scared little claws into their nice
neat home. “Brzz?” they began to call. “What’s happening? Call out the
guard. Shake a wing, there! See who’s attacking us!”
Did the little Screecher Owls pay any attention? They did not. Killer
the Weasel was gnashing his teeth at them and glaring his eyes in the
black dark. “Whe-e-e!” moaned the owl’s wife as she climbed up the soft
comb until she bumped her head against the top of the log, right by
the little hole. “Who-o-o,” shivered her mate, scrambling after her.
“Ur-r-rk!” she squawked as the first of the bee guards got his sting
between her feathers.
She gave a flounce--and the honeycomb broke away. She could see the sky
through the hole! Scuttle, scramble, scratch, and flutter--my, but it was
a tight fit! All the same she did just manage to squeeze through, and
her mate grabbed hold of her tight new tailfeathers and dragged through
behind her. But Killer didn’t!
Killer couldn’t even see to try. He was a regular ball of angry bees,
and he hadn’t bee-proof fur like Stripes Skunk, even if he did claim to
be Stripes’ cousin. He went bouncing down that long hollow trunk,
bumping into every jagged splinter on the whole inside of it. He went
racing for Doctor Muskrat’s pond, just like any other Wild Thing, and
plunged in. Because he knew no bee would dare plunge in after him. Only
the very few whose stings were tangled in his fur wet their wings.
But he hadn’t more than got his head under water than he was in just as
much of a hurry to get out again. What if the owl had told the truth for
once? What if Silvertip the Fox was eaten by Grandpop Snappingturtle?
When he came out his nose was beginning to swell, but it wasn’t so
swelled that he couldn’t smell Tommy and Louie, hunting for him. His
eyes were beginning to close, but they weren’t shut so tight he
couldn’t see them. He turned his head to look and ran right spang into
Tad Coon’s tree. Up it he climbed and out across the limb where Chatter
Squirrel comes over from his hickory when he wants a drink from the
pond. Up that he climbed--high up. He wanted to squint across the bare
limbs to see where the squirrel roads ran so he could follow them
through the tree-tops.
[Illustration: Killer climbs the big hickory tree after Chatter
Squirrel.]
But high up in that hickory is where Chatter Squirrel made his winter
nest of leaves, all woven together and neatly tucked in around the
edges. It’s the best place in the world to hide because it looks like an
old crow’s nest that the leaves have blown into.
Chatter wasn’t asleep. The Bad Little Owls had wakened him and Killer
splashing in the pond had kept him awake.
“Here,” thought Chatter, who’s the most curious somebody on toepads,
“something’s going on. I guess I’ll stretch my legs. It isn’t so very
cold. I’d kind of like to know how long I’ve been asleep--it must be
more’n a week.” So out popped his head.
Scritchy, scritchy came claws up his very own tree. Chatter pricked his
ears. Then he squirmed far enough out of his front door so he could look
down on--the big bulging whiskers of Killer the Weasel. Hm! You ought to
have heard Chatter Squirrel. The little owls weren’t in it at all when
he began screeching!