THE TIME TAD COON WAS TRICKIER THAN HE KNEW
“Aough, aough!” barked Watch. “Yah!” he yapped breathlessly when he
found Doctor Muskrat sitting out on the flat stone, waiting to meet him.
“You’re just who I was looking for. Trailer just stumbled up to the
house with his eyes bunged shut and his nose as big as a soupbone,
mumbling something about a coon as near as I can understand him. But no
coon ever did anything like that to him.”
The doctor cocked his ears. “Can’t talk, can’t he? Poor fellow. Did you
try what blue clay will do for him? I’ll get you some.”
[Illustration: Tad Coon needs Doctor Muskrat.]
“Ok, he’ll be all right. His master Sandy’s working over him,” Watch
answered. “But what did do it?”
“Those striped buzzers with hot spots in their tails. They’re over there
guarding the nest that fell down on Trailer. The rest of them are
building a new one up in that tree--and you just ought to have seen what
they did to poor Tad Coon. He was up there hiding.”
“Well, you just tell him to stay hidden, too,” whined Watch, stretching
his stiff legs thoughtfully. “I’ve had enough of hunting after Silvertip
the Fox to last me awhile.”
“But what happened to Grandpop Snapping Turtle?” called Nibble from the
Pickery Things.
“He’s in a pot on the fire right now,” answered Watch.
“What’s a pot? What’s a fire?” asked the two wild folks.
“Fire? You know fire. When men make that red spot that’s all hot--like a
buzzer’s tail, you know--come out of the end of a stick--that’s fire,”
he explained.
“They do it to the bulrushes,” nodded the doctor. “The red spot gets
bigger and bigger until everything’s red and then the hot things
disappear.”
“Exactly. But men don’t always let it make everything red. They keep it
in one place and use it to cook with. They’re cooking Grandpop.”
“Cooking?” echoed Nibble and Doctor Muskrat.
“Bare bones and broken biscuits!” sniffed Watch. “I can’t explain that
to you any more than I can explain about the buzzers to Tommy Peele. But
I can show them to him--and I’d better.” So off he set with his tail
drooping because he was puzzled.
“It isn’t so very queer that Tommy Peele’s own dog can’t tell him that
Grandpop Snapping Turtle ate Silvertip, when you really come to think
about it,” observed Nibble Rabbit thoughtfully. “Tommy can’t even talk
to the tame beasts. That’s why Watch has to take him all the way down
here to the pond to show him these striped buzzers before he’ll
understand who bit Trailer. But I don’t see why Watch can’t tell us what
Tommy did to Grandpop Snapping Turtle. They certainly didn’t put an ugly
thing like that in any cage.”
“There!” exclaimed Doctor Muskrat. “He can’t make us understand what
he’s talking about because we Woodsfolk haven’t the words for things
we’ve never seen. Those man-words Watch uses don’t mean anything to us.
You talk about a cage. I don’t know what you mean and you can’t even
tell me.”
“Why, a cage,” Nibble began--“a cage is a sort of a cave, only it isn’t
in the ground. It bites like wood, but it doesn’t look like any tree I
ever saw, and it has something in front of it that you can see through
and the wind can blow through, but you can’t jump through it.” Now we
might guess that was a packing-box with a big open front of
chicken-wire. But even Nibble couldn’t be sure of wood when its bark was
off.
“Um-hm!” grinned Doctor Muskrat. “A cave that isn’t in the ground? Wood
that isn’t in a tree? What does that mean?”
Nibble laughed at himself. To one of the Woodsfolk it did sound foolish.
“Now if a cage is like a barn, only little,” said the doctor, “I can
think about it. I’ve seen a barn from the outside, and if it’s hollow
like a tree I can guess what the inside is like.”
“It is! It is!” Nibble cried. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Then Grandpop Snapping Turtle can’t live in one. He can’t eat unless
he’s under water. Watch says Tommy’s cooking him. I don’t know what that
means, either, but I can guess. Tommy eats him. There isn’t anything
that hasn’t someone who eats it and no one else can eat Grandpop unless
Tommy Peele does.”
“Maybe,” Nibble agreed; “but the real question is what will Tommy do to
Tad Coon. Tad can’t run away, and Watch knows he’s here. If Tommy is
very angry because Tad made those striped buzzers bite Trailer he’ll
make Watch find him.”
“If Tommy’s eaten Grandpop he won’t be a bit hungry,” began Doctor
Muskrat hopefully. Then a bright idea struck him. “And Tommy’ll never
know Tad’s to blame. No one can tell him!”
“That’s so!” Nibble exclaimed. “No one can!”
All the same, when Nibble heard Watch bringing Tommy to the woods to
show him the paper wasps’ nest so he’d know who bit Trailer, the rabbit
couldn’t help feeling that something would go wrong. Tommy would find
out and then wouldn’t he be angry with Tad Coon! And neither Nibble nor
Doctor Muskrat could bear to have Tad hunted like Silvertip the Fox.
Poor Tad couldn’t even run.
Watch galloped up to the wasps’ nest and barked. “There they are, Tommy.
They did it. Those are the buzzers with hot tails I’ve been trying to
tell you about.”
“That’s funny,” said Tommy, and he looked right up into the tree. The
wasps up there were buzzing over which was the best twig to begin
building another nest on. “I wonder how it came to fall down.”
Of course Nibble didn’t understand him--but Watch did! “Yow!” he barked.
“That coon made it fall. Trailer was trying to tell me. Coon, coon,
coon!” he sang, sniffing around to find him.
“Lie still,” warned Doctor Muskrat, who was hiding with Tad in the
Pickery Things.
“I can’t,” whimpered Tad. “This place is all right for a rabbit, but the
pond is where I belong.” And with that he staggered to his feet and
started for it. But right on the edge of the bank he stumbled. Down he
rolled, paws over fur, with Nibble Rabbit and Doctor Muskrat scuttling
after him.
“Look out!” barked Watch. “Let me get at him. He’ll fight like anything!
They always do.”
“Come here, Watch! Go lie down!” shouted Tommy Peele.
“Why?” whimpered Watch. But Tommy Peele never answered. He couldn’t!
There was Tad Coon sniffling through his puffy nose, peering through his
squinty eyes, snarling with his swollen lips, and all smeared with
Doctor Muskrat’s mud plaster and chewed root poultice. He was making the
awfullest faces you ever saw. Maybe you think Tommy Peele could help
laughing at him. Well, you couldn’t your own self.
“You lucky coon!” squealed Nibble. “When he laughs he can’t stay angry.”
[Illustration: At the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s pond.]