madame snowflake swished her tail thoughtfully for a moment; then she went back to chewing her cud as a sign that her story was all done.
“my horns!” exclaimed the red cow. “that’s awfully interesting.”
“yes,” drawled the story-teller. “but can’t you see how worrisome it is? if tommy peele lets wolves go galloping through this barn we’ll have to go wild again. it’s in the compact. that’s what i’ve been trying to explain.”
“noo-oo-oo,” the red cow moaned. “i don’t want to go wild. i won’t go wild again. i’ve been wild once, and i like being tommy peele’s tame cow ever so much better.”
“nonsense!” interrupted nibble rabbit, sitting up very straight. “it hasn’t anything at all to do with you cows. silvertip’s no more of a wolf than watch is. besides, i’m the only one he was chasing. he won’t come back again unless i do, and i won’t come until there isn’t any silvertip to chase me.”
“hoo-oo,” teased the white cow. “what can you do to silvertip?”
“wait and see,” said nibble. and off he set. but as he ran he said to himself, “silvertip’s very big and clever—whatever can i do to him?”
for a while he was just about the most thoughtful bunny that ever flopped an ear. he’d made the white cow a great big promise, one no grownup rabbit would ever have thought of.
and he had to have help about it. he was pretty glad, i can tell you, when he saw watch scouting about the pasture with his nose to the ground.
“have you found where silvertip went to?” nibble asked when the big dog stopped to speak with him.
“no,” said watch in a discouraged tone. “there was a mist this morning and it’s washed away all the scent. but what do you want of silvertip?”
“i’ve got to help you catch him,” murmured nibble.
“you!” exclaimed watch. “you must be as crazy as a chickadee! has any thing bitten you?” you know dogs are terribly afraid of being bitten by a crazy beast—it makes them go mad, too.
“no. but—but i promised the white cow that i wouldn’t come back to the barn while silvertip was alive to chase into it after me—and i won’t stay away from the red cow’s baby for ever and ever. something’s got to happen to silvertip.”
“i wouldn’t want him chasing me if i were you,” watch agreed. this sounded more sensible. “but i don’t see what the white cow has to do with it.”
“she says silvertip is really a wolf,” nibble explained, “and if tommy peele lets wolves come right into his barn, whether it’s calves or rabbits they’re hunting, the cows will have to go wild again. that’s in the compact between cows and man in the first-off beginning.”
“wurr-r-r!” watch growled thoughtfully. “so it is. but that’s my trouble, and the cow’s and tommy’s. it hasn’t anything to do with you.”
suddenly nibble remembered something and quoted:
“by dusk and by dawn you shall travel alone.
and all troubles are yours excepting your own.
that’s my fortune. the stars told it to doctor muskrat the day i left home.”
“i understand,” watch nodded wisely. “well, the trouble about all this is that i can’t explain it to tommy. and we need him. what can you do to silvertip—except give him a stomachache from eating too much rabbit, eh?”
“i can see where he is and what he does. i know how he gets into the chicken coop and where he hid the pullet he stole this morning and the feathers from all the rest he’s been stealing.”
“how—when—where!” barked watch excitedly. “we don’t have to tell that to tommy—we can show it to him. quick, nibble! how did silvertip get into the chicken coop? tommy’ll be home from school any minute.”
so nibble took him around to the little back door. “that fox is certainly clever,” sniffed watch. “he’s gnawed the hook right off. i’ve smelt him around here dozens of times, but i never thought of looking inside of the coop for him.” then he lifted it with his nose, just as silvertip had done, but he was too big to crawl in.
it was nibble who squeezed through and took a hop on to the soft straw of the chicken coop floor. then he sat up to sniff around. the hens were scratching busily, but the rooster was dozing off a full crop on his perch. nibble poked his nose into a box of feed and the bird next to him went, “cut, cut!” that woke the rooster. he opened his eye and caught sight of nibble’s whiskers.
“er—er—err, i’m chanticleer!” he crowed. “and you’re the rascal who stole my beautiful young wife, specklefeather, this morning! you’re the one who took stripedwing, the best setting hen ever a rooster owned, and dear little red-wattled minorca—and all the rest who’ve been snatched from my perches. your time has come! i’ll show you——” and he flapped down and began to peck poor nibble and kick him with those long spurs roosters wear on their legs.
“wait a minute, wait a minute!” nibble cried. but the rooster wouldn’t listen. then a voice behind nibble called, “here, here,” and he darted under the perches and squeezed into a dark nest beside a hen.
“there,” she clucked. “that old bully never comes here. it isn’t proper for a rooster to come into the nesting corner. poor stripedwing. she used to set in here most of the time because he was so cruel to her. and he killed our son because minorca was in love with him. i wish the fox had taken him.”
nibble peeked out again and saw the rooster strutting around as though he’d really done something grand, calling on the hens to admire him. and now he could hear watch shouting, “come along, tommy—come quick!” in a minute more he was barking outside the front door, and tommy opened it.
“what’s the matter?” asked tommy. out hopped nibble rabbit. “however did you get in here?” gasped the little boy. and with that nibble slipped through the little back door as neat as you please. maybe tommy didn’t whistle! and maybe he wasn’t still more surprised when he saw the hook all gnawed! but maybe he wasn’t maddest of all when nibble and watch took him across the field to silvertip’s fence corner, all full of feathers, with poor dead specklefeather lying in the middle of it!
“the fox!” tommy exclaimed. “old chicken thief; he ought to be hunted with a gun!”
“that’s all right,” watch wagged his tail. “now tommy’ll find the gun and a man to shoot it, but we’ll have to find silvertip so they can shoot him. i’ll sleep in the haystack and watch the barn, and you see if he’s hidden in the woods.”
so nibble cocked his own little puffy tail and laid back his ears and scuttled through the cornfield. because the first one he meant to ask was doctor muskrat. and it didn’t take much thumping to wake the doctor.
“my whiskers, but i’m glad to see you,” said the nice old beast as soon as he got his nose out of the water. “i was afraid that fox had really caught you. he came down here for a drink early this morning. he was feeling pretty sick, but he said he wasn’t going to do another thing until he’d pulled your long ears out by the roots and made a meal of you.”
“well, he doesn’t want to find me any more than i want to find him,” said nibble. and he told how silvertip had followed him into the barn and jumped smash through the window, and what trouble that made for the cows, and the way he’d killed tommy’s chickens, and how angry tommy was about it.
“shoot him? i wish they would.” doctor muskrat agreed. “he’s the worst beast in all the woods and fields, and we’ve plenty more to look out for—slyfoot the mink and the marsh hawk are back, and grandpop snapping turtle is out again—but you’ll have to be mighty careful. you dig yourself a root and stay hidden while i see what the birds know about him.”
so doctor muskrat asked every bird who came down to drink if he’d keep an eye out for silvertip. that was a great many, too, for whole clouds of them were coming north on every south wind. but they were all so busy about courting and nesting it was three days before doctor muskrat had any news. late in the evening a whippoorwill came dipping down like a great feathery moth and called softly: “doctor muskrat!” then he perched on the doctor’s house and whispered: “silvertip’s living in the hollow log that shadows my last year’s nest. he’s still too sick to hunt anything but frogs and tadpoles and the eggs of us poor ground birds, but the minute he can gallop he’s going to get that rabbit. he lies there growling and swearing about him.”
nibble couldn’t hear what the whippoorwill said. and that was lucky, because he was lying very still in the quail’s thicket with those screech owls perched right above him.
