the most puzzled little boy you ever saw tramping off to school on a rainy morning was certainly tommy peele. unless it was louie thomson. “hey, tommy,” he called, when he heard tommy’s tall rubber boots splashing along behind him, “i want to ask you something.”
“hey, yourself,” tommy called back, “i want to ask you something, too. what have you done to make my muskrat run away from his pond? and all my skunks? and the rabbits? huh? they’re all up at my barn!”
louie’s eyes grew big and round. “i didn’t do a thing. cross my heart didn’t—’cepting to feed them, like you showed me. the coon and the jay bird are living up at mine.”
“they are!” exclaimed tommy. “then i guess you didn’t do anything to them.”
“do you s’pose they wanted to see what it was like to be tame—just like i tried being wild?” louie wondered.
“n-n-no,” drawled tommy thoughtfully. “my rabbit’s tried it before. but he always goes wild again. i guess he likes it best.”
“now that fox is back by doctor muskrat’s pond—i’ll bet you anything!”
the two boys wouldn’t have been so puzzled if they had known how the bad little owls had invited killer the weasel to tommy’s woods and fields. it was to avoid him that all the woodsfolk had come to stay with the boys for a while; indeed, they had even warned the obstinate mice to leave, so that killer and the bad little owls would have to go hungry.
killer and the bad little owls were hungry—killer especially. he wasn’t enjoying his visit to the woods and fields one bit. for it rained and it rained, and it rained and it kept on raining. and nobody with fur can hunt in the rain because the water washes away all the trails; you can’t see where they come from or where they’re going to; you can’t even smell them.
it was way along in the afternoon before he poked out his wicked nose and found the sun was out, too, and the leaves were dancing. but he didn’t want to dance; his poor skin was doing it for him and he didn’t like it a bit; he was shivering because he was empty as a drum and the wind was thumping him. he crept down and tiptoed over to doctor muskrat’s pond. he walked all around it, but he didn’t see a single footprint. he didn’t even see a frog. by this time he was hungry enough to eat one, but they were all buried down in the warm mud. the only fellow he found was the hop-toad.
the hop-toad was very happy. most every leaf that blew down in the wind had under it a fine fat angleworm who had come up to nibble a pleasant change from the grass-blades they eat all summer. besides, they were simply loaded with bug cradles of every sort.
as a result, the hop-toad was so full he could hardly squeeze his fat yellow vest into his own front door beneath his own big stone; so he just sat and blinked his ruby eyes at killer and grinned. who else in all the woods and fields would have dared to do that?
“hail, sharptooth!” began the hop-toad in his deep scary croak that rumbled like thunder in the back of his stony cave. “have you come to hear your fortune? you have come in time. there were signs and omens brewing in the battle between the frost and the rain this morning.”
now the weasel didn’t know what an omen was—it’s a sort of bad news, like the dark clouds that foretold the big rain and the terrible storm. he doesn’t sit by the week like the hop-toad does, just thinking and remembering things. he hasn’t any more education than a pollywog, in spite of all his experiences. all the same the weasel knew more than to own up that he wanted to eat the hop-toad. so he thought, “i’ll pretend that’s just what i came for, to hear my fortune, and he’ll never guess.”
“no one can follow a wet trail on a cloudy night so truly as the hop-toad,” killer said. the hop-toad never follows a trail at all. that was only the silly weasel’s way of pretending he thought the hop-toad was smarter than he.
of course the hop-toad knew killer was just making it up. “two can play at that game,” he blinked to himself. “i’ll scare him away and then my good friends will come back again.” then he said out loud: “oh, me, that sounds just like my wise friend silvertip the fox. he used to say, ‘the bones of yesterday lie where even the blind ants can find them, but the bones of tomorrow—only the hop-toad knows whose skins they run in.’ he knew i could foretell what was coming. but he listened to the owls instead of listening to me—see what happened to him!”
“what did happen?” demanded killer. you remember the owl’s wife lied to him. she said silvertip was hunting in the big marsh, the other side of the deep woods!
“he went where no ant ever gnawed his bones,” answered the wise hop-toad. “that’s why no tooth hunts by doctor muskrat’s pond.”
when the hop-toad croaked these words in the dark cave under the big stone, every little crack seemed to have a scary little echo hidden in it to whisper them after him. killer the weasel shook to the tip ends of his fur.
“is he dead?” asked the wicked thing in a husky voice.
“who knows?” said the hop-toad. he knew, himself, but he didn’t want to say so. “if he is, neither fur, scale, nor feather did the killing.” that’s true. you know it was grandpop snappingturtle, and he isn’t a beast or a fish or a bird.
the weasel thought a minute. then he remembered that louie thomson had been living by the pond and those same lying little owls, who told him silvertip was still alive, said he couldn’t hurt any one. “ho,” he said, “i know! it was a man?”
“certainly not!” snapped the hop-toad as though he were cross over such a foolish question. “how could those toothless, clawless man-tadpoles hurt any one?”
“oh-h-h!” exclaimed killer in a long shivery breath. “i know what you mean. he’s a ghost owl. eh?” but the hop-toad never answered a word.
the beautiful duck had told nibble rabbit, the day before the terrible storm, that everything was afraid of something. killer the weasel was afraid of two things—silvertip the fox and the ghost owl.
now the ghost owl is a real bird. it is a big white owl who comes down from far-away north where the storms grow. at night it hunts killer, and the minks and the bad skunks, and all the wicked folk who prowl around trying to catch mother nature’s own children while they’re asleep. in the daytime it goes off to some river and catches fish. nobody knows when or where it sleeps.
whenever a weasel disappears you can be pretty sure the fox or the owl has caught him. so the weasel-folk got the two so mixed up in their minds at last they decided they were the same. they thought the ghost owl was a fox who turned into an owl because it was better hunting. if a fox died and they saw his bones they knew that was the end of him. if he just disappeared—well, they couldn’t be sure he did turn into an owl, but they couldn’t be sure he didn’t.
so killer the weasel thought if silvertip just disappeared and the ants didn’t gnaw his bones, as the hop-toad said, tommy peele’s woods and fields were no place for him.
“hop-toad,” he whined, “i know what you mean. you mean that silvertip isn’t dead at all. he’s hunting these woods and fields in a ghost owl’s skin.”
“what an idea!” croaked the hidden hop-toad. “who ever told you that?”
“aha! you needn’t pretend to me!” sniffed killer. “we weasels know a lot of things. we know that no real owl can stand the sunlight. the ghost owl can. many a mink has seen it diving for fish like a kingfisher in the daytime. many a weasel has felt its claws in his ribs in the dead of night. yet whose tooth has ever found its magic throat? can you name me one who has ever picked its bones? no! nor will there ever be such a one. for the ghost owl has no mate, it builds no nest, it hatches no young. it is born in a fox’s skin until the magic shedding when feathers instead of fur prick through its hide. it never dies. it lives on us who are strongest, swiftest, cleverest of hunters—we folk from under-the-earth whom mother nature herself cannot govern.”
you just ought to have seen croaker hop-toad’s side shake at the idea. he didn’t know a thing about the ghost owl, except that there was one, but he knew more than to believe what killer was telling him. it’s what we call a “tall story” and the woodsfolk a “tail-ruffler.” only an ignorant creature like the weasel could pretend it was true. he hadn’t told killer what really did kill silvertip because he knew killer would be a lot more frightened at what he didn’t know than at what really did happen. but he hadn’t dreamed of scaring him as hard as all this. it was great fun. he wanted killer to go on talking about it. so he said, “it’s very good of you to explain all these things to me. i wouldn’t see them for myself, living as i do under my stone. but if the ghost owl never dies, what becomes of it?”
“ah,” said killer. “nobody knows but the crazy loon. but sometimes, when there’s a fearful storm, you hear it squawking and its feathers come fluttering down. they aren’t real feathers, you know; they’re only frozen. that’s why it only comes in ice-time. so we think—ssh! who’s coming?”
