HOW A BUNNY UNDERTOOK TO HUNT A FOX
Madame snowflake swished her tail thoughtfully for a moment; then she
went back to chewing her cud as a sign that her story was all done.
“My horns!” exclaimed the Red Cow. “That’s awfully interesting.”
“Yes,” drawled the story-teller. “But can’t you see how worrisome it is?
If Tommy Peele lets wolves go galloping through this barn we’ll have to
go wild again. It’s in the compact. That’s what I’ve been trying to
explain.”
“Noo-oo-oo,” the Red Cow moaned. “I don’t want to go wild. I won’t go
wild again. I’ve been wild once, and I like being Tommy Peele’s tame cow
ever so much better.”
“Nonsense!” interrupted Nibble Rabbit, sitting up very straight. “It
hasn’t anything at all to do with you cows. Silvertip’s no more of a
wolf than Watch is. Besides, I’m the only one he was chasing. He won’t
come back again unless I do, and I won’t come until there isn’t any
Silvertip to chase me.”
“Hoo-oo,” teased the White Cow. “What can you do to Silvertip?”
“Wait and see,” said Nibble. And off he set. But as he ran he said to
himself, “Silvertip’s very big and clever—whatever can I do to him?”
For a while he was just about the most thoughtful bunny that ever
flopped an ear. He’d made the White Cow a great big promise, one no
grownup rabbit would ever have thought of.
And he had to have help about it. He was pretty glad, I can tell you,
when he saw Watch scouting about the pasture with his nose to the
ground.
“Have you found where Silvertip went to?” Nibble asked when the big dog
stopped to speak with him.
“No,” said Watch in a discouraged tone. “There was a mist this morning
and it’s washed away all the scent. But what do you want of Silvertip?”
“I’ve got to help you catch him,” murmured Nibble.
“You!” exclaimed Watch. “You must be as crazy as a chickadee! Has any
thing bitten you?” You know dogs are terribly afraid of being bitten by
a crazy beast—it makes them go mad, too.
“No. But—but I promised the White Cow that I wouldn’t come back to the
barn while Silvertip was alive to chase into it after me—and I won’t
stay away from the Red Cow’s baby for ever and ever. Something’s got to
happen to Silvertip.”
“I wouldn’t want him chasing me if I were you,” Watch agreed. This
sounded more sensible. “But I don’t see what the White Cow has to do
with it.”
“She says Silvertip is really a wolf,” Nibble explained, “and if Tommy
Peele lets wolves come right into his barn, whether it’s calves or
rabbits they’re hunting, the cows will have to go wild again. That’s in
the compact between cows and man in the First-Off Beginning.”
“Wurr-r-r!” Watch growled thoughtfully. “So it is. But that’s my
trouble, and the cow’s and Tommy’s. It hasn’t anything to do with you.”
Suddenly Nibble remembered something and quoted:
“By dusk and by dawn you shall travel alone.
And all troubles are yours excepting your own.
That’s my fortune. The stars told it to Doctor Muskrat the day I left
home.”
“I understand,” Watch nodded wisely. “Well, the trouble about all this
is that I can’t explain it to Tommy. And we need him. What can you do to
Silvertip—except give him a stomachache from eating too much rabbit,
eh?”
“I can see where he is and what he does. I know how he gets into the
chicken coop and where he hid the pullet he stole this morning and the
feathers from all the rest he’s been stealing.”
“How—when—where!” barked Watch excitedly. “We don’t have to tell that to
Tommy—we can show it to him. Quick, Nibble! How did Silvertip get into
the chicken coop? Tommy’ll be home from school any minute.”
So Nibble took him around to the little back door. “That fox is
certainly clever,” sniffed Watch. “He’s gnawed the hook right off. I’ve
smelt him around here dozens of times, but I never thought of looking
inside of the coop for him.” Then he lifted it with his nose, just as
Silvertip had done, but he was too big to crawl in.
It was Nibble who squeezed through and took a hop on to the soft straw
of the chicken coop floor. Then he sat up to sniff around. The hens were
scratching busily, but the rooster was dozing off a full crop on his
perch. Nibble poked his nose into a box of feed and the bird next to him
went, “Cut, cut!” That woke the rooster. He opened his eye and caught
sight of Nibble’s whiskers.
“Er—er—err, I’m Chanticleer!” he crowed. “And you’re the rascal who
stole my beautiful young wife, Specklefeather, this morning! You’re the
one who took Stripedwing, the best setting hen ever a rooster owned, and
dear little red-wattled Minorca—and all the rest who’ve been snatched
from my perches. Your time has come! I’ll show you——” and he flapped
down and began to peck poor Nibble and kick him with those long spurs
roosters wear on their legs.
[Illustration: Nibble visits the chicken coop.]
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Nibble cried. But the rooster wouldn’t
listen. Then a voice behind Nibble called, “Here, here,” and he darted
under the perches and squeezed into a dark nest beside a hen.
“There,” she clucked. “That old bully never comes here. It isn’t proper
for a rooster to come into the nesting corner. Poor Stripedwing. She
used to set in here most of the time because he was so cruel to her. And
he killed our son because Minorca was in love with him. I wish the fox
had taken him.”
Nibble peeked out again and saw the rooster strutting around as though
he’d really done something grand, calling on the hens to admire him. And
now he could hear Watch shouting, “Come along, Tommy—come quick!” In a
minute more he was barking outside the front door, and Tommy opened it.
“What’s the matter?” asked Tommy. Out hopped Nibble Rabbit. “However did
you get in here?” gasped the little boy. And with that Nibble slipped
through the little back door as neat as you please. Maybe Tommy didn’t
whistle! And maybe he wasn’t still more surprised when he saw the hook
all gnawed! But maybe he wasn’t maddest of all when Nibble and Watch
took him across the field to Silvertip’s fence corner, all full of
feathers, with poor dead Specklefeather lying in the middle of it!
“The fox!” Tommy exclaimed. “Old chicken thief; he ought to be hunted
with a gun!”
“That’s all right,” Watch wagged his tail. “Now Tommy’ll find the gun
and a man to shoot it, but we’ll have to find Silvertip so they can
shoot him. I’ll sleep in the haystack and watch the barn, and you see if
he’s hidden in the woods.”
So Nibble cocked his own little puffy tail and laid back his ears and
scuttled through the cornfield. Because the first one he meant to ask
was Doctor Muskrat. And it didn’t take much thumping to wake the doctor.
“My whiskers, but I’m glad to see you,” said the nice old beast as soon
as he got his nose out of the water. “I was afraid that fox had really
caught you. He came down here for a drink early this morning. He was
feeling pretty sick, but he said he wasn’t going to do another thing
until he’d pulled your long ears out by the roots and made a meal of
you.”
“Well, he doesn’t want to find me any more than I want to find him,”
said Nibble. And he told how Silvertip had followed him into the barn
and jumped smash through the window, and what trouble that made for the
cows, and the way he’d killed Tommy’s chickens, and how angry Tommy was
about it.
“Shoot him? I wish they would.” Doctor Muskrat agreed. “He’s the worst
beast in all the woods and fields, and we’ve plenty more to look out
for—Slyfoot the Mink and the Marsh Hawk are back, and Grandpop Snapping
Turtle is out again—but you’ll have to be mighty careful. You dig
yourself a root and stay hidden while I see what the birds know about
him.”
So Doctor Muskrat asked every bird who came down to drink if he’d keep
an eye out for Silvertip. That was a great many, too, for whole clouds
of them were coming north on every south wind. But they were all so busy
about courting and nesting it was three days before Doctor Muskrat had
any news. Late in the evening a whippoorwill came dipping down like a
great feathery moth and called softly: “Doctor Muskrat!” Then he perched
on the doctor’s house and whispered: “Silvertip’s living in the hollow
log that shadows my last year’s nest. He’s still too sick to hunt
anything but frogs and tadpoles and the eggs of us poor ground birds,
but the minute he can gallop he’s going to get that rabbit. He lies
there growling and swearing about him.”
Nibble couldn’t hear what the whippoorwill said. And that was lucky,
because he was lying very still in the Quail’s Thicket with those
screech owls perched right above him.