REDDY HIDES THE FAT HEN
Dishonesty will run away
Where Honesty will boldly stay.
_Bowser the Hound._
Reddy Fox was in a fix! He certainly was in a fix! Here he was with the
fat hen which he had come such a long, long way to get, and no chance to
eat it, for Bowser the Hound was on his trail. Ordinarily Reddy Fox can
run faster than can Bowser, but it is one thing to run with nothing to
carry, and another thing altogether to with a burden as heavy as a fat
hen. Reddy's wits were working quite as fast as his legs.
"I can't carry this fat hen far," thought Reddy, "for Bowser will surely
catch me. I don't want to drop it, because I have come such a long way
to get it, and goodness knows when I will be able to catch another. The
thing for me to do is to hide it where I can come back and get it after
I get rid of that pesky dog. Goodness, what a noise he makes!"
As he ran, Reddy watched sharply this way and that way for a place to
hide the fat hen. He knew he must find a place soon, because already
that fat hen was growing very heavy. Presently he spied the hollow stump
of a tree. He didn't know it was hollow when he first saw it, but from
its looks he thought it might be. The top of it was only about two feet
above the ground. Reddy stopped and stood up on his hind legs so as to
see if the top of that stump was hollow. It was. With a quick look this
way and that way to make sure he wasn't seen, he tossed the fat hen over
into the hollow and then, with a sigh of relief, darted away.
With the weight of that fat hen off his shoulders, and the worry about
it off his mind, Reddy could give all his attention to getting rid of
Bowser the Hound. He had no intention of running any farther than he
must. In the first place he had traveled so far that he did not feel
like running. In the second place he wanted to get back to that hollow
stump and the fat hen just as soon as possible.
It wasn't long before Reddy realized that it was not going to be so easy
to fool Bowser the Hound. Bowser was too wise to be fooled by common
tricks such as breaking the trail by jumping far to one side after
running back on his own tracks a little way; or by running along a
fallen tree and jumping from the end of it as far as he could. Of course
he tried these tricks, but each time Bowser simply made a big circle
with his nose to the ground and picked up Reddy's new trail.
Reddy didn't know that country about there at all, and little by little
he began to realize how much this meant. At home he knew every foot of
the ground for a long distance in every direction. This made all the
difference in the world, because he knew just how to play all kinds of
tricks. But here it was different. It seemed to him that all he could do
was to run and run.