chatter squirrel scrambled up to the very tippest twig of his tree and there he hung while he told killer all about himself. “slit-throat!” and “furred-snake!” and “mud-belly!” were about the only things i dare to repeat. and all the time he kept rocking that springy treetop until killer was fairly seasick.
did tommy peele and louie thomson hear him? you know they did. the hop-toad didn’t try to tell them about killer because they didn’t talk his language. chatter didn’t try either. he was just speaking out his mind and he didn’t care who happened to be listening. all the same, those two little boys didn’t have to know squirrel talk to understand.
but it wasn’t a safe thing for chatter to do. he made killer so terribly angry that he forgot to be scared and he forgot to be hungry and he forgot to be seasick—all he wanted was to hush up that squirrel. up he came, foot over paw.
up he came—and chatter hadn’t any higher place to climb! he’d lost his temper, too. but as soon as he saw what a pickle he was in he found it again, and his wits with it. he rocked until his perch had a good long swing and then he let himself go. out he leaped, all paws spread, sailing like a bird, then down—down——
down went chatter squirrel. he kept right side up for he had his tail to help him. there was a big branch right beyond him. one good flick of his rudder, like a swimming fish, and his toes caught it. he swung right around it, like a trapeze man in a circus, scratched his nose on a twig, and then clamped his poor kicking hind feet against the bark. there he stuck with his poor little sides panting.
down went killer the weasel. his measly little scrump of a tail was mighty little use to him. he went toes over ears. he never so much as got a claw on any twig because he couldn’t see to catch them; but he knew where every one of them was. they whipped him and switched him from behind and before as he whirled through them. he got a terrible spank when he found his branch, for he found it wrong side first and went bouncing off again, bing, into nibble rabbit’s pickery things. “yip! yeaur-r-r!” rip! tear! blam! he hit the earth at last.
there he lay. for a minute he thought he was dead—right then. then he began to breathe; before he really knew what to do next he found his legs were running, running, just like nibble rabbit runs when killer is after him. and he let them go. past the brushpile he ran, across the clover-patch, through the corn. suddenly right before him he saw the stone-pile. down a crack he dove and pulled his tail in after him.
he found a little bed of dry grass no wind had ever blown in there, but he didn’t stop to think about it then. he was so weak and tired and bumped about he couldn’t keep his eyes open. he hardly hit the bottom before he was sound asleep.
now some of the fieldmice who ran away from doctor muskrat’s pond before the big rain had chosen that stone-pile to live in—those who didn’t go all the way up to the barn. if killer hadn’t been more hurt than he was hungry and more tired than he was hurt, he wouldn’t have had to smell very far to find out it was a mouse’s own bed he’d fallen asleep on.
the mice knew soon enough, and then of all the wailing and weeping and sniffing and squeaking you ever heard tell of—well! of course, they called a meeting. they held it outside, in the cold wind that was whistling through the stones. but not all of the mice would come.
one mad old mother mouse decided to stay and run the risk of being eaten rather than go to new dangers; and one greedy weepy mouse refused to leave his second set of winter stores.
poor old great-grandfather fieldmouse, who’s so old his ears are all crinkled, sat all hunched up with his whiskers drooping and his tail as straight as a sick pig’s. but he was very wise for a fieldmouse. “mice,” said he, lifting a shaky paw, “we must not think; we must run. and
‘down wind to flee from danger.
up wind to meet a stranger.’
so here is our road.” he turned his old back to the breeze and began to hump himself along, though even a mouse wouldn’t have called it running. he was lucky, too, for the wind blew him right into the straw-stack where all the rest of the mice had settled the night they ran away from doctor muskrat’s pond. they thought they had found mouse-heaven because the stack wasn’t thrashed yet. but the mice who tried to do something different, right out of their foolish heads—you can guess what happened to them!
it was in the middle of the night when killer the weasel woke up. the stone-pile was a whole lot quieter than it had been that evening when he flopped into it, and for a minute he thought he was back in his own snug home between two stones on the bank of doctor muskrat’s pond.
just then one of the little mice, who belonged to the fat old mamma mouse who was too stubborn to leave, began to squall. “eh? what’s that?” killer pricked up his ears. “where am i, anyhow?” he began to look himself over. he was bumps and lumps from head to foot, his fur was torn—and when he moved he snubbed his nose on all sorts of rolly little stones.
“this isn’t my home,” said he.
but he did find that foolish mother mouse and fished her children out of their nest with his slinky paw. and he did find that greedy mouse, who wouldn’t leave his stores. he was sticking in a crack too small for his fat middle, with his feet kicking in the air. killer felt quite full and rested after he’d eaten them all. “mice are very nice,” he said to himself as he picked the last of their bones. “very nice and juicy! hunting these woodsfolk has got me into a clawful of trouble. i believe i’ll live on mice for a while.”
out he climbed and went sniffing all the trails until he found the big clear wide one where the mice ran away from him. “so-ho,” said he. “now i wonder where these fellows went to.” sniff, sniff, he went gliding off into the darkness, down the wind, hiding in every grass-clump to be sure nobody was after him, until he crawled into the very bottom of the straw-stack where the mice were living. how rich and mousy it smelled! if the fat grains seemed like heaven to the mice, the fat mice all around him seemed like heaven to him.
