TAD COON’S TRICKS
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Told at Twilight Stories
By JOHN BRECK
MOSTLY ABOUT NIBBLE THE BUNNY
NIBBLE RABBIT MAKES MORE FRIENDS
THE SINS OF SILVERTIP THE FOX
TAD COON’S TRICKS
THE WAVY TAILED WARRIOR
TAD COON’S GREAT ADVENTURE
THE BAD LITTLE OWLS
THE JAY BIRD WHO WENT TAME
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[Illustration: Tad sent a big rock rushing down on top of Grandpop
Snapping Turtle.]
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Told at Twilight Stories
Tad Coon’s Tricks
by
John Breck
Illustrated by
William T. Andrews
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1923
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COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY THE ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y
First Edition
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CONTENTS
I. Songs of the Hunt
II. Tad Coon’s Tricks and His Troubles
III. Grandpop’s Bite that Never Let Go
IV. Tad’s Tricks Come Home to Roost
V. The Time Tad Coon Was Trickier Than He Knew
VI. Tad Makes a Compact with Watch and Tommy Peele
VII. Black Crime in the Hen House
VIII. How Nibble Turned Detective
IX. Stripes Skunk Learns How to Behave
X. Stripes Skunk Begins to be Good
XI. Stripes Continues His Good Works
XII. Doctor Muskrat Tells Why Skunks Are So
XIII. In Defense of a Lady
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Tad sent a big rock rushing down
Snap! went Grandpop Snapping Turtle’s mouth on Tad Coon’s playful tail
Tad Coon hits Trailer on the head with a hornet’s nest
Tad Coon needs Doctor Muskrat
At the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s Pond
The Bad Little Owl comes flipping by
Nibble accuses Stripes of stealing
Bob White was caught in Tommy Peele’s snare
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TAD COON’S TRICKS
CHAPTER I
SONGS OF THE HUNT
You’d have thought every wing and paw in the Woods and Fields (except
the Bad Little Owls, of course) would have been glad to know that
Silvertip the Fox was caught. ’Specially Nibble Rabbit, who started the
hunt, and wise old Doctor Muskrat, who planned it, and Tommy Peele’s
good dog, Watch, and Trailer the Hound, who were still barking on his
trail way out in the middle of the Deep Woods. For Silvertip was just as
clever as he was wicked; the very last thing he’d done was to fool those
two dogs again.
I s’pose old Grandpop Snapping Turtle, who did the catching was--glad, I
mean. But Doctor Muskrat just looked very, very sober, and Nibble felt
the shivers run from the puff on his tufty tail to the tips of his
tickly whiskers whenever he thought about it. They didn’t have a word to
say while they waited for the two hunters to come back to the
meeting-place by the flat stone at the edge of the Pond.
But they thought of course the dogs would bark the good news so loud
that Tommy could hear it way down the road at the schoolhouse. Instead,
Trailer just gasped, “How awful!” in a very awed voice. And Watch looked
as if somebody’d rubbed him the wrong way.
“Awful!” repeated Trailer. “Poor Silvertip! Think of his being caught by
a stupid old mud-grubber like that!” He drooped his tail and ears.
“Why, that’s just the way I felt about it!” Nibble exclaimed. “But I
never dreamed you would. I thought you hated him.”
“Hate him!” said both dogs at once. “Why, he was the smartest Beast we
ever chased. We hadn’t any reason to hate him.”
That certainly made Nibble open his eyes pretty wide. “Then why did you
try to kill him?” he demanded. “Was it because you’re hungry?” He was
glad to know that the Pickery Things were close behind him when he asked
that.
Trailer laughed. “I’m always hungry.” But his tail went up when he said
it, so Nibble didn’t run. “But that isn’t why I hunt. You have to know a
beast to hate him. I’ve killed plenty of beasts I never saw before I
found their trail. Lots that I don’t eat, either.”
“I couldn’t do that!” Nibble gasped and Doctor Muskrat nodded.
“Of course not,” said Trailer, quite proudly, too. “But that’s what I
was made for. My mother taught me to use my nose before my eyes were
open and to sing the trailing song as soon as I could talk above a
whimper.”
“Sing it,” begged the woodsfolk. “Please.”
Trailer raised his head and bayed with an open throat:
“Drop your nose on the odorous trail,
For the warmest footprint soon grows stale.
Tow-row-row!
Leap the fences, plough through the mire,
At a steady gallop that’s slow to tire,
Follow the game of the hounds’ desire.
Raise your eyes--There he flies!
Hail!
Mark the flick of his fleeting tail!
Tow-row-row!”
“You see,” he explained, “one dog doesn’t do all the singing. He sings
one line and someone else answers with the next one, round and round
again.”
The sound sent a queer, scary thrill through Nibble Rabbit. But now he
wasn’t really afraid of the smiling hound any more than he was of Watch.
Watch sat with his ears pricked and his nostrils twitching while he
listened to the Hound’s Hunting Song. “Eh, but that’s grand!” he barked.
“It puts the tickle into your feet to be up and running.”
Nibble Rabbit squirmed closer to the Pickery Things. He wasn’t afraid of
the dogs, but he felt very queer. “It starts my feet tickling, too,” he
sniffed. “And my fur’s all fluffed out like a moulting bird.”
Trailer laughed. “That’s partly what we sing it for,” he explained. “It
rouses up you Game Beasts and gets you running, and when your coat
stands up on end your scent is easier to follow.”
“You don’t say?” Nibble’s eyes were sparkling. “Then that’s why the
Quail say ‘Hold your scent!’ when they mean ‘sleek down your feathers.’”
“Exactly,” nodded Trailer. “And they’re so clever that it takes a
special dog, who makes a business of birds, to find them. He has a
special song, too, but I never learned it. I only follow furry things.”
“That was splendid!” put in Doctor Muskrat, who had been listening
thoughtfully to the talk. He wasn’t at all sorry because the dogs had
politely left him a clear path to the water. He could have dived in a
flash if he had wanted to. “You’ve made the frogs very jealous, Mr.
Trailer.” Sure enough, the frogs were tuning up all over the pond.
“There’s something very queer about this,” he went on. “Your song
doesn’t do anything to me--because I’ve never been chased that way. But
there was one dog, a noisy little one, who used to drive me nearly out
of my wits when I was younger.”
“That might have been Spice the Terrier, who was here when I was a pup,”
said Watch. “I know his song well enough. He was always shouting it at
something.
“A cat hunt!
A rat hunt!
A bird, beast, or bat hunt!
Fur or feather, hide or skin,
Shake him out and claw him in.
Grip your teeth beneath his chin
And there’s the end of that hunt.”
Watch had fairly snapped out Spice’s song.
“That’s it!” squealed the Doctor. “That’s the very song--and look at my
fur! It will take a dip in cold water to smooth it again.” He was as
fluffy as Tad Coon’s tail. “Now, Watch, what’s your song?”
“Oh, I’m no regular kind of a dog, so I really haven’t any,” said Watch,
looking a bit regretful. “I just do--whatever I’m told the best I can
and”--here his ears pricked and his tail began to wag--“I look after
Tommy Peele.”
“But why must you always do things?” said Nibble.
“Why, everyone has to have a job of some kind,” said Trailer. “Or else
he’s a worthless old scrump not worth feeding. And, if it’s really your
own special job, you enjoy doing it. I love to hunt, but I wouldn’t care
much about driving cows.”
“Sure you would if you learned how,” said Watch. “I really do.”
“There, you see?” laughed Trailer. And Nibble nodded.
“Speaking of driving cows,” smiled Trailer, “who do you think drove up
to Tommy Peele’s this morning?” He said it to tease Watch. He and Watch
had gone out before daybreak to hunt Silvertip and now it was way past
milking time.
But Watch wasn’t teased a bit.
“The cows slept in the barn,” he grinned. “Nobody had to drive them--so
there! The only job I have waiting for me right now is to clean up my
breakfast plate before Chirp Sparrow gets his scratchy little feet into
it.”
Trailer forgot all about how tired he was. “Fine,” said he. “I’m ready
to help you.” And off they trotted with their tails waving.