In the meantime, while Watch the Dog was busy in the barn, Stripes
Skunk’s kittens came dashing up calling, “Come! Quick, quick! Come!” And
what do you suppose they’d found? An oil-can that fell off the mowing
machine and got raked up in the hay. Its spout was broken off so it
didn’t hold any more oil, but it wasn’t empty. Great Grass-seeds, no!
It held a mouse. And she was squealing away inside, making the funniest,
tinniest sound, like talking into a teapot. “I’m Nibble Rabbit’s friend!
I’ve got something dreadfully important to tell him. Call Nibble
Rabbit!”
They did call Nibble. He came a-hopping. He squeezed in as close as ever
he could get to that oil-can. “Well!” he exclaimed, “if it isn’t the
lady mouse who saved my life when Ouphe the Rat was after me! You
needn’t worry, Ma’am. My hunting friends won’t hurt you.”
“They can’t,” chuckled the mouse. “Even Ouphe’s wicked grandsons
couldn’t. They gnawed my front door till their teeth ached but they
couldn’t make it any bigger, and even their grabby paws wouldn’t reach
to the bottom of it. But I’ve sat here listening and listening and
squirming in my skin because they were listening, too, so I couldn’t get
out to warn you. This is what I heard:
“All the mice from the Woods and Fields are living in the stack of grain
Tommy Peele’s father grew to feed the cows in the winter time. Not just
a few of us, like other years, but hundreds and hundreds all nibbling
and destroying it. Before long there won’t be anything left. Then, the
rats say, the cows will go wild and the men will starve, and the mice
will have all these houses and barns and everything else that’s in them.
But the rats will rule over them. You know what that means. I’d rather
have men.”
Nibble Rabbit’s face was as long as his ears when he backed out of the
haystack. And he repeated every word the lady mouse had just been
telling him.
“Hm!” remarked Stripes Skunk who had been listening with his head on one
side. “Looks to me as if it was time for us Woodsfolk to do something.
Let’s call a meeting. Doctor Muskrat, Chaik Jay, and Tad Coon are still
to be heard from. Here, sons,” he waved a paw, “go bring them.” And off
scuttled his three kittens.
Well, to make a long story short, a meeting they had. But little good
did it do them. The mice were in the stack; they didn’t have to leave it
for any reason, and unless they did, none of the Woodsfolk could catch
them.
“Urr-wrr!” growled Watch uneasily after the fiftieth time they’d been
over the question. “We might do something if we could make the cat talk
with us.”
You ought to have seen the Woodsfolk prick up their ears when Watch the
Dog spoke of the cat. Nobody else knew a single thing about her, but
instead of listening to what Watch had to say they all began to talk at
once--isn’t that always the way?
“What good can that cat do? She’s a sneak and a liar,” said Nibble
Rabbit.
“A cat has no friends--she always hunts alone,” put in Stripes Skunk.
“She’s a lazy, greedy, ill-mannered brute,” said Tad.
“Dear me,” grinned Watch, “what an awful creature she must be, to hear
you tell about her. Let’s have Doctor Muskrat’s opinion.”
“I don’t know anything,” answered the wise old beast, “but I suspect
she’s like these white ducks I’ve been hunting with the last few days.
They’d be dreadful fools to a wild duck’s way of thinking, but they’ve
taught me a lot. Maybe that cat would teach us a lot more. Eh, Watch?
What about her?”
“You’re all of you right,” sniffed Watch, thoughtfully cocking one ear.
“For the first three months I spent on this farm I don’t think I was
ever without one of her claw-marks on me. So I used to hate her. And
you’re all of you wrong, too.” He cocked the other ear. “Once she taught
me to chase my own rats and gnaw my own bones I learned there isn’t a
creature in fur honester or with better manners. She’s friends with
nobody, yet I feel mighty friendly toward her. Man-ways or beast-ways,
she knows more than all of us put together. She could teach us a lot,
but she won’t. Yet if she chose to advise us, without giving a single
reason, I’d do exactly what she said and trust her for the rest. She’s
clever!”
“Well, Watch,” came a purring voice from nowhere in particular (it was
pretty dark by now), “if that’s the way you feel, I’ll tell you this. Be
on foot here tomorrow night and you’ll see the last mouse blow to the
woods on the sunset wind.” The voice stopped. It certainly was Mrs.
Tabitha Puss-cat who had been talking, but crane their necks as they
would, nobody could see a sign of her.
Nibble sat down and scratched his collar with his hind foot, he was that
puzzled about it. “Well,” he gasped, “what do you s’pose she meant?”
“I don’t know,” Watch answered, “but she must have had a reason of her
own.”
“I did,” said the puss-cat voice, and there Mrs. Tabitha stood right
beside him, purring. “Until we get these mice cleaned off this farm I
want to make a compact with your friends. If they won’t hunt me I won’t
hunt them.” She looked specially at Tad Coon.
“By the curl in the bull-frog’s tail.” Tad exclaimed admiringly. “You
are a clever one. Oh, mice, what a lot of claws you’ll find a-waiting
for you.” Of course the Woodsfolk were willing to be friends.
But the cat hadn’t told all her reason. She knew Killer the Weasel had
just crawled into that mouse’s straw-stack. She didn’t want to be the one
to fight him when he came out again. And she knew just when and why he
was coming. That was a secret, too.
How did Mrs. Tabitha Puss-Cat know the mice were going to leave their
straw-stack at sundown the very next evening? Because she knew there
wouldn’t be any stack left for them to stay in, or any grain left to
eat. Up at the house Tommy Peele’s father had just been saying: “Better
go to bed early, young fellow, if you’re going to stay home from school
tomorrow to help me with the thrashing.”
You know what thrashing is. A great big engine comes puffing into the
barnyard with a great big machine that shakes all the fat little grains
out of their thin little chaff overcoats. Tommy Peele’s father thrashed
at the very last, latest end of the season, because he knew those fat
little grains would keep on getting fatter even after their stems were
cut off, if he just piled them up into a nice stack and let them go
quietly off to sleep for the winter. They hide a lot of good food in
their hollow stems; the furry folk aren’t the only ones who get ready
for the hungry season.
“Toot-toot!” whistled the engine. “Fsssh!” it sent up a cloud of steam.
“Clank, clank, squeak, squeak, cough!” went the thrashing machine. Then
“Wurr-wurr-wurr,” its tongue began to lick up the bundles of straw with
the grains all wrapped up on the ends of their stalks. It licked so fast
that the men who were feeding it could hardly keep up with its appetite.
“Whish,” came the straw tumbling out of a long hollow arm with a crook
on the end of it that spread the straw into a new pile.
And you ought to have seen the little overcoats go sailing off in the
wind. But the sleepy little grains didn’t know anything about it. They
came pouring out of the side of that machine, all nice and warm, and
snuggled together in a comfortable sack, ready to be stored away--where
the mice couldn’t get them--for Tommy’s own hungry season.
Watch wanted to shake himself by the scruff of his own furry neck for
not thinking about it. Now he knew what that cat meant. The new
strawpile grew bigger and bigger; the old stack, where the mice were
hidden, grew smaller and smaller. Those foolish mice soon wouldn’t have
any stack left to hide in. Pretty soon they’d have to begin coming
out--but he didn’t know who else was coming! The cat didn’t tell him.