his mate wheeled around to think it over. she certainly didn’t like the looks of that storm. besides, it wouldn’t hurt to just show killer the stump. the minute he took his eye off her she’d hide and she wouldn’t come back until after he had eaten and gone. she could hear him calling. her mate answered with the funny little yap owls use between them when they are hunting together. down she dropped, but she gripped her claws good and tight into the branch of a tree near the mouse’s stump before she called, “here we are!”
“huh-huh-huh,” panted the wicked beast. “i didn’t know where you had gone. snff, snff! lots of tracks here, all right enough!” he chuckled. it was inky dark, so of course he couldn’t see that the footprints of the mice were all leading out and none leading back in again; you remember chaik jay had sent every last tail scuttling out of the woods and fields as fast as mice could run. scritch, scritch! if great-grandfather fieldmouse had heard killer’s claws tearing at the rotten wood he wouldn’t have boasted that no one but a bear could break in and eat them. then——
boom! crash-h-h! r-r-r-rip! splash! down in one blinding sheet came the first rain of that storm. it was surely a bad one!
the hoptoad was right when he said there was going to be rain—“floods of it.” there was. and there was wind and lightning and thunder and terrible squeaking and squawking and rustling and pounding—all the noises that make a storm such a scary thing. of course it wasn’t as bad as chaik jay told the mouse it was going to be, but the mice didn’t know that. they were all hidden in the stone pile by the cornfield fence, or in logs and stumps in the deep woods. some of them even went all the way up to tommy peele’s barn and hid in the strawstack. they didn’t hide in the haystack because——
but first i want to tell you the rest of what happened down by doctor muskrat’s pond. the owls tried to fly home, but their wings got so waterlogged with the rain they had to creep into the hollow oak that was blown down in the terrible storm—the time nibble rabbit rescued the woodsfolk who were living in it and had a storm party in his little cornstalk tent.
killer tried to hide in his crack between two stones in the bank of doctor muskrat’s pond. but the water found him. first it trickled in from the ground above, where louie thomson’s little blanket tent used to stand, and most washed him out; and then the pond grew fuller and fuller and higher and higher until it most drowned him. so he had to go out in all that rain, gnashing his teeth and swearing.
“those pesky owls!” he snarled (only he said something worse than just “pesky”). “i’m going to drag them out of their snug hole by their scrawny little necks and eat them and live in it myself till this storm is gone.”
up he climbed. his paw wasn’t hurt a bit—when he told the owl it was he was only pretending, you know. of course the owls weren’t in it. he squeezed into it himself, but it was so small for him he had to double all up inside and the mouse bones in the bottom of it were very uncomfortable. wasn’t he starved and squirmy and peevish, the wicked thing!
but the woodsfolk weren’t. nibble rabbit knew his way about tommy peele’s barn quite as well as he knew his way about the woods and fields. and that made silk-ears think he was smarter than ever. doctor muskrat learned from the white ducks, who aren’t nearly as stupid as they look, all about the ponds the rain was making, so he was happy. and stripes skunk had the finest hunting in the world in the haystack. he stationed one of his kittens at each of the rat holes, so whenever ouphe’s sons or grandsons tried to dodge out of the stack to hunt a meal someone was sure to catch him. he turned into a feast instead of finding one. so they were all very comfortable and happy. except the bad rats!
pretty clever of them, wasn’t it? but you forget that killer was clever, too. though i don’t blame you for that—so did the woodsfolk. they never dreamed that killer would find out where they’d run away to. or that he’d be bold enough to follow them. people always forget that the old saying “he who fights and runs away may live to fight another day,” doesn’t mean that he who runs away gets out of fighting for good and all.
no, it was war to the tooth in the end. fur and feathers fought together on both sides, for the bad little owls kept right on helping killer—they didn’t dare not to. and every decent bird was more than willing to wear out his summer wings, if need be, to help good old doctor muskrat and his friends. so it was pretty even.
but the woodsfolk won in the end—’cause they had help that was neither one nor tother—feathers or fur, or even skin or scales. it was something mother nature herself had never dreamed of in the first-off beginning of things. it was——
why, great beef-bones! as watch would say. here i am at ’most the very last line in this book. well, you’d better copy that wise dog and think about all the nicest things you know to keep from worrying while you wait for the next story to find out just what it was.
该作者的其它作品
《tad coon's tricks》
《nibble rabbit makes more friends》
《the sins of silvertip the fox》
