BLACK CRIME IN THE HEN HOUSE
The woods weren’t peaceful at all next morning. Watch came tearing down
to Doctor Muskrat’s Pond with the bristles pricked up on his shoulders
and his teeth snapping. “Where’s that coon?” he snarled. “Give me that
coon. He’s broken his compact already. Now I will have to kill him, and
you might just as well have let me do it yesterday.”
Doctor Muskrat popped his head out of the pond. “What’s the matter?” he
asked. “And where’s Tommy Peele?”
“He’s coming,” snapped Watch. “And he knows who did it, too.”
“Then he knows more than you do,” called Nibble Rabbit, hurrying through
the Pickery Things. “Tad Coon hasn’t been out of the woods a single
minute.”
“He has!” snarled Watch. “He’s slit the throats of every chick belonging
to old Topknot--the hen who was good to you, Nibble Rabbit. Perhaps
that’s one of his jokes.”
“Oh-h-h!” gasped Nibble. “But what makes you sure it was Tad?”
“Topknot says it was someone who wore stripes. Who else could it be?”
“The cat!” guessed Nibble. “She wears them.”
“No, it wasn’t! I smelled, and it didn’t smell like her.”
“Then smell of me,” said Tad. And he marched right out of the Pickery
Things, not a bit afraid because he did-n’t have a guilty conscience.
“It won’t smell like me, either.”
So when Tommy Peele came running up, there stood Tad Coon with his fur
all fluffed up to let the scent out (you remember how the quails sleeked
their feathers to hold it), but he wasn’t snarling. He wasn’t even
angry. And Watch was sniffing carefully all around him.
“Sic him! S-s-s-sic him!” called Tommy Peele. My, but he was the angry
one.
“No,” barked Watch. “Beg pardon, Tad. It wasn’t your smell, either.”
“Whoever it was,” said Nibble, “I’m coming up to the barn to help find
him.”
Maybe you think Tommy Peele wasn’t puzzled! “S-s-s-sic him!” he ordered
impatiently. “Whatever is the matter with you, anyway? You aren’t scared
of him, are you? Yesterday you wanted to kill him for nothing at all,
and to-day you won’t touch him. But if he didn’t kill all poor Topknot’s
little chicks, who did? It’s a regular coon trick--dad says so. S-s-sic
him! Go on!”
“A-aour-r!” Watch whined unhappily. “If I only could tell you that it
wasn’t Tad Coon!”
“We’ve just got to find out for ourselves and show him,” said Nibble
Rabbit. “The sooner we start the fresher the scent,” he quoted from an
old dog-song. “Come along.”
“I’m coming, too,” announced Tad Coon. “This is some of my business.”
“No, you’re not,” said Nibble. “We don’t want another paw-mark until we
examine every trail up by the barn.”
“That’s right,” said Watch. “That kind of a thief doesn’t fly. I didn’t
stop to look because I was so sure I knew who did it.”
“But you couldn’t make any mistake about mine,” protested Tad, holding
up his handy-paw. “No one, not even my cousin Gurf Bear, who has hind
feet like mine, has one anything like it.”
Now Tommy was angry enough about those chicks of Topknot the Hen’s, but
he was angrier yet because Watch wouldn’t obey him. “You’re a bad, bad
dog!” he scolded. “I’m going right over to get Trailer. He isn’t
afraid.” And you know Trailer the Hound, who belonged to Tommy’s big
cousin Sandy, was Tad Coon’s worst enemy.
“There!” Watch exclaimed. “You see you’d better keep away. Trailer won’t
make any compact with you, and he wouldn’t even listen if I tried to
explain how your tracks came to be there, but if you don’t leave any
he’ll tell Tommy so the same way I’ve been trying to.” And Watch
galloped off to catch up with the cross little boy.
But Tommy wouldn’t forgive him no matter how much Watch begged and
explained. Only when he passed the place where the dead chicks had lain
he cried, “Why, they aren’t all here! That killer must have come back
after them.” He saw Watch sniff them just as carefully as he had sniffed
Tad Coon down by the pond. And he knew just where Tad Coon had been
every minute of the time. Tad didn’t take them. So now he understood.
“All right, Watch. Good dog,” he said. “It wasn’t the coon. Then who was
it? S-s-sic him!”
And maybe you think that didn’t make Watch happy!
If Nibble hadn’t been in such a hurry to get up to the barn and see
Topknot’s little dead chicks he might have found who really killed them
all the sooner. But here was a new killer whom no one had ever seen, so
no one knew how to hide from him or where to expect him. No wonder
Nibble was too excited to think of listening at the Brushpile for the
Bad Little Owls.
Just about the time he went slipping down the fence row under the safe
pickers of the blackberry canes they were having their first full meal
since Chaik and his family mauled them for trying to help Silvertip.
Chaik had pulled out so many feathers that they couldn’t hunt well. And
now they had swallowed one of those fuzzy little chickens, fluff, legs,
and all, because they were so hungry.
“My, but that chick tasted good,” said the Lady Owl. “Do you know, when
Stripes came waddling by this morning and bragged about what he’d done,
I didn’t believe him. I don’t see why he didn’t eat every last one of
them instead of leaving them for us.”
“He didn’t leave them for us at all,” snapped the he owl. “And don’t you
ever tell him we took one, either. He just killed them and laid them out
in a neat row so it would look like one of Tad Coon’s tricks. Then that
boy would think it was the coon and make all sorts of trouble for him.”
“Why doesn’t Stripes like Tad Coon?” said his mate thoughtfully.
“He’s jealous because Tad has a compact with that shaggy dog so it won’t
chase him, and he’s mad because it’s getting to such a pass in the woods
and fields that you hardly dare rob a nest for fear that rabbit will
tell on you.”
“What happens then?” asked his wife, sleepily, for it was long after
sunup.
“That’s the mystery,” he answered in an awed voice. “But Silvertip has
disappeared, and Grandpop Snapping Turtle, and you know yourself that
Foulfang the Rattlesnake was nothing more than ant food when we found
him.”
“Then you aren’t going to help Stripes? He might feed us.”
“I’m not going to help any one but myself. And right now I’ll help
myself to one more chicken. I could sleep right through a full moon if I
had a full stomach. Stripes is asleep in the oak that blew down in the
Terrible Storm. Keep your eye on him. We can take what he leaves without
helping him fight that rabbit.” And off he flew, steering very badly
with his ragged tail.
But Nibble Rabbit wouldn’t have known who Stripes was, even if he had
overheard the little owls.
[Illustration: The bad little Owl comes flipping by.]