but killer never finished. he’d scared himself ’most to death telling about the ghost owl; so when he did hear a sound he made a frantic scratching to squeeze into the crack in the hop-toad’s stone, where he’d been talking, and then he bounced off at full speed for his own safe crack between the two stones on the bank of doctor muskrat’s pond. “ah-h-h!” he breathed. “safe at last! even the ghost owl’s claw cannot find me here. tooth cannot bite, and paw cannot dig to disturb me. if only i weren’t so desperate, starvation hungry. i do wish i’d caught the hop-toad. i do wish i’d eaten those owls—but i’ll do it next summer when it’s safe to hunt here. to-night i’ll go back to the deep woods and stay—if i have to live on acorns.”
as soon as the hop-toad was perfectly sure killer had gone, he hopped to the narrow crack that was the door of his cave and squeezed out again. he cocked his deaf ears and felt with his little gloved paws on the ground. then he began to laugh himself right out of his skin. “ho, ho! it’s only those harmless man-tadpoles.” that’s what croaker toad calls tommy peele and louie thomson.
croaker could feel them tramping along the lane. killer had heard them whistling. they were calling watch to help them find out who it was that had chased nibble rabbit and tad coon and stripes skunk and doctor muskrat, and all the rest of them out of tommy’s woods and fields. watch was busy about something else, way far off, when he heard them. mighty busy, too.
but they didn’t need him. killer had gone padding up and down the banks of doctor muskrat’s pond looking for tracks of someone he could eat, and he’d left his own. he’d left a clear trail from the hop-toad’s home to his own. “lessee who’s here!” said tommy peele. he tried to lift one of killer’s big stones.
“try this,” said louie thomson. he picked up a big stick and poked it into the crack between them. then both little boys began to shove on the stick. slowly it pried the crack apart. one of the big stones reared up on end and fell over backward. and there sat snaky-slim, bristly whiskered, snarly toothed killer, with his wicked eyes rage-red and his wicked claws set to spring at them!
why didn’t he do it? well, it was the same reason stripes skunk explained to nibble rabbit and nibble tried on the cat. they weren’t afraid of him.
indeed they weren’t even angry, for they didn’t know all the harm he’d been doing and there wasn’t anybody in all the woods and fields who could tell them. tommy said: “what’s that?” and louie answered, “first time i ever saw him,” and they just stood still and stared at him.
killer certainly was afraid of them. his wits were as muddled as a pollywog’s puddle when a duck goes fishing in it. first place, what had happened to his nice safe home? tooth nor toenail couldn’t dig into it. then why did that great big stone flop right over on its back and leave him without a place to hide in? he didn’t know it was because the little boys used a stick to pry it with just like the first man used a stick to pry the stone that shut up the pass to his little island against the wolves in the first-off beginning of things.
killer was as bad as any wolf, but the little boys didn’t know that. they didn’t know enough to be afraid of the wicked little beast who scrouched down at their very feet, snarling and swearing at them. all they thought of was the funny faces he was making. they were snarlier and funnier than any stripes skunk could ever make, or even tad coon.
“te-hee,” giggled louie. “my, but he thinks he’s big!”
“ho-ho!” laughed tommy, thinking of the fight between nibble rabbit and the cat that morning, “i’d like to see what our old tabby would say to him.”
that was too much for killer. he did jump. but he didn’t jump at them. he went leaping off into the woods, spitting like a firecracker and looking for a new place to hide from them. and he found—the big oak that was blown down in the terrible storm where the bad little owls were hidden! wow! but wasn’t killer mad when he bounced into the hole of the big oak!
he hadn’t more than poked his whiskers inside the hollow tree than he smelled owl. he smelled other things, too, but he was too mad to think about them.
“yah!” he snarled, sniffing viciously. “so that’s where you are, you lying little flap-wings. just you wait until i get my breath and i’ll teach you a few things. you told me it was good hunting here, you did! well, there isn’t so much as a mouse-tail swishing, or a feather flying, or even a frog hopping by your fine pond. not a trail has been made since the big rain that almost washed me out of my snug stones.
“and, next, did you think i wouldn’t hear what happened to silvertip the fox? he isn’t dead. he’s turned into the worst enemy we weasels have; he’s a ghost owl and he’s haunting these very woods and fields. that’s why all the other creatures have gone.”
“he isn’t! truly he isn’t,” wailed screecher’s wife. “grandpop snappingturtle ate him.”
“hm. so that’s the story you’re telling now, is it?” snapped killer. “i thought you said he was hunting duck in the big marsh over on the other side of the deep woods. didn’t you?”
“ye-es,” sniffed the owl. (she did, you know.) “but——”
now if killer had let her say another word she would have told him why she lied and she’d have explained that grandpop snappingturtle was gone, and things might have been very different whether he believed her or not. but he didn’t. he began crouching, creeping toward the very darkest end of the long log where he could hear the scared little birds squirming in terror. his eyes gleamed red in the blackness, with green flashes, as he peered for them.
but you surely haven’t forgotten that this was the very tree where stripes skunk found the honey that helped him make friends with tad coon and tommy peele.
the bees were fast asleep. they woke up all right enough when those scared little owls began scratching scared little claws into their nice neat home. “brzz?” they began to call. “what’s happening? call out the guard. shake a wing, there! see who’s attacking us!”
did the little screecher owls pay any attention? they did not. killer the weasel was gnashing his teeth at them and glaring his eyes in the black dark. “whe-e-e!” moaned the owl’s wife as she climbed up the soft comb until she bumped her head against the top of the log, right by the little hole. “who-o-o,” shivered her mate, scrambling after her. “ur-r-rk!” she squawked as the first of the bee guards got his sting between her feathers.
she gave a flounce—and the honeycomb broke away. she could see the sky through the hole! scuttle, scramble, scratch, and flutter—my, but it was a tight fit! all the same she did just manage to squeeze through, and her mate grabbed hold of her tight new tailfeathers and dragged through behind her. but killer didn’t!
killer couldn’t even see to try. he was a regular ball of angry bees, and he hadn’t bee-proof fur like stripes skunk, even if he did claim to be stripes’ cousin. he went bouncing down that long hollow trunk, bumping into every jagged splinter on the whole inside of it. he went racing for doctor muskrat’s pond, just like any other wild thing, and plunged in. because he knew no bee would dare plunge in after him. only the very few whose stings were tangled in his fur wet their wings.
but he hadn’t more than got his head under water than he was in just as much of a hurry to get out again. what if the owl had told the truth for once? what if silvertip the fox was eaten by grandpop snappingturtle?
when he came out his nose was beginning to swell, but it wasn’t so swelled that he couldn’t smell tommy and louie, hunting for him. his eyes were beginning to close, but they weren’t shut so tight he couldn’t see them. he turned his head to look and ran right spang into tad coon’s tree. up it he climbed and out across the limb where chatter squirrel comes over from his hickory when he wants a drink from the pond. up that he climbed—high up. he wanted to squint across the bare limbs to see where the squirrel roads ran so he could follow them through the tree-tops.
but high up in that hickory is where chatter squirrel made his winter nest of leaves, all woven together and neatly tucked in around the edges. it’s the best place in the world to hide because it looks like an old crow’s nest that the leaves have blown into.
chatter wasn’t asleep. the bad little owls had wakened him and killer splashing in the pond had kept him awake.
“here,” thought chatter, who’s the most curious somebody on toepads, “something’s going on. i guess i’ll stretch my legs. it isn’t so very cold. i’d kind of like to know how long i’ve been asleep—it must be more’n a week.” so out popped his head.
scritchy, scritchy came claws up his very own tree. chatter pricked his ears. then he squirmed far enough out of his front door so he could look down on—the big bulging whiskers of killer the weasel. hm! you ought to have heard chatter squirrel. the little owls weren’t in it at all when he began screeching!
