blue foxes, half flongboos. As they pattered pitty-pat, pitty-pat,
each with feet and toenails, ears and hair, everything but tails, into
the Philadelphia union depot, they had nothing to say. And yet though
they had nothing to say the passengers in the union depot waiting for
trains thought they had something to say and were saying it. So the
passengers in the union depot waiting for trains listened. But with
all their listening the passengers never heard the blue foxes and
yellow flongboos say anything.
"They are saying it to each other in some strange language from where
they belong," said one passenger waiting for a train.
"They have secrets to keep among each other, and never tell us," said
another passenger.
"We will find out all about it reading the newspapers upside down
to-morrow morning," said a third passenger.
Then the blue foxes and the yellow flongboos pattered pitty-pat,
pitty-pat, each with feet and toenails, ears and hair, everything
except tails, pattered scritch scratch over the stone floors out into
the train shed. They climbed into a special smoking car hooked on
ahead of the engine.
"This car hooked on ahead of the engine was put on special for us so
we will always be ahead and we will get there before the train does,"
said the chairman to the committee.
The train ran out of the train shed. It kept on the tracks and never
left the rails. It came to the Horseshoe Curve near Altoona where the
tracks bend like a big horseshoe. Instead of going around the long
winding bend of the horseshoe tracks up and around the mountains, the
train acted different. The train jumped off the tracks down into the
valley and cut across in a straight line on a cut-off, jumped on the
tracks again and went on toward Ohio.
The conductor said, "If you are going to jump the train off the
tracks, tell us about it beforehand."
"When we lost our tails nobody told us about it beforehand," said the
old flongboo umpire.
Two baby blue foxes, the youngest on the committee, sat on the front
platform. Mile after mile of chimneys went by. Four hundred smokestacks
stood in a row and tubs on tubs of sooty black soot marched out.
"This is the place where the black cats come to be washed," said the
first baby blue fox.
"I believe your affidavit," said the second blue fox.
Crossing Ohio and Indiana at night the flongboos took off the roof of
the car. The conductor told them, "I must have an explanation." "It
was between us and the stars," they told him.
The train ran into Chicago. That afternoon there were pictures upside
down in the newspapers showing the blue foxes and the yellow flongboos
climbing telephone poles standing on their heads eating pink ice cream
with iron axes.
Each blue fox and yellow flongboo got a newspaper for himself and each
one looked long and careful upside down to see how he looked in the
picture in the newspaper climbing a telephone pole standing on his
head eating pink ice cream with an iron ax.
Crossing Minnesota the sky began to fill with the snow ghosts of
Minnesota snow weather. Again the foxes and flongboos lifted the roof
off the car, telling the conductor they would rather wreck the train
than miss the big show of the snow ghosts of the first Minnesota snow
weather of the winter.
Some went to sleep but the two baby blue foxes stayed up all night
watching the snow ghosts and telling snow ghost stories to each other.
Early in the night the first baby blue fox said to the second, "Who
are the snow ghosts the ghosts of?" The second baby blue fox answered,
"Everybody who makes a snowball, a snow man, a snow fox or a snow fish
or a snow pattycake, everybody has a snow ghost."
And that was only the beginning of their talk. It would take a big book
to tell all that the two baby foxes told each other that night about
the Minnesota snow ghosts, because they sat up all night telling old
stories their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers
told them, and making up new stories never heard before about where the
snow ghosts go on Christmas morning and how the snow ghosts watch the
New Year in.
Somewhere between Winnipeg and Moose Jaw, somewhere it was they
stopped the train and all ran out in the snow where the white moon was
shining down a valley of birch trees. It was the Snowbird Valley where
all the snowbirds of Canada come early in the winter and make their
snow shoes.
At last they came to Medicine Hat, near the Saskatchewan River, where
the blizzards and the chinooks begin, where nobody works unless they
have to and they nearly all have to. There they ran in the snow till
they came to the place where the Head Spotter of the Weather Makers
sits on a high stool in a high tower on a high hill watching the
weather.
"Let loose another big wind to blow back our tails to us, let loose a
big freeze to freeze our tails onto us again, and so let us get back
our lost tails," they said to the Head Spotter of the Weather Makers.
Which was just what he did, giving them exactly what they wanted, so
they all went back home satisfied, the blue foxes each with a big wavy
brush of a tail to help him when he runs, when he eats, when he walks
or talks, when he makes pictures or writes letters in the snow or when
he puts a snack of bacon meat with stripes of fat and lean to hide
till he wants it under a big rock by the river--and the yellow
flongboos each with a long yellow torch of a tail to light up his home
in a hollow tree or to light up his way when he sneaks at night on the
prairie, sneaking up on the flangwayer, the hipper or the hangjast.
[Illustration]