Freddy and the Dragon

by Walter R. Brooks

  “Their mothers wouldn’t let them when they find out that this kind of hay fever is catching,” Freddy said, “or if they think it’s a cold.”

  “You seem to have thought of everything,” Mrs. Peppercorn said. “But hiding out like this isn’t going to solve your problem. If the police won’t believe in the animals in the cave, you’ve got to capture them yourself.”

  “I’ve got an idea about that,” said the pig. And this time he really did have one. “If I can stay out of jail for a few days, I think I can work it.”

  So for the next few days he worked hard at being Mrs. Talcum’s grandson, Peppercorn Talcum. He rode his bicycle around town, and went to the movies, and bought ice cream sodas, keeping his handkerchief up to his nose all the time, and after a while people didn’t notice him specially any more. That is, they didn’t look at him carefully, as they would at a stranger. He was just one of them, Peppy Talcum. He could have left the handkerchief at home and probably nobody would have looked at him much.

  In the meantime more gardens were torn up and more houses burglarized and windows smashed, and six more people had received letters telling them to leave money on the stone wall on the back road. The troopers had hidden out there one night, hoping to catch the gangsters, but when the headless horseman came riding along, they had left in almost as much of a hurry as Jinx had. They had also gone up to the cave, but they hadn’t taken a ball of string along and had gotten hopelessly lost five minutes after entering the big hall. It had taken them three hours to get out, and they had seen nothing of the rooms the Webbs had seen. Naturally they reported that Freddy had made up the whole story about the cave being headquarters of a gang.

  The troopers hunted all over for Freddy. They searched the houses of all his friends in Centerboro. They even searched Mrs. Peppercorn’s house from cellar to attic. While they were searching the cellar, Freddy sat on the top of the cellar stairs, making suggestions. They didn’t pay any attention to him and kept away from him as much as possible, because he sneezed a lot and they didn’t want to catch his cold.

  Freddy rode out to the farm several times and had long talks with the Webbs. They drew a map for him of the big hall in the cave, and of the rooms off it—there were many passages and rooms that they had not been able to explore. But of course the route a spider takes in exploring can’t be followed by an animal as big as a pig. However, they were able to draw in the main path by which the horse and his rider reached the rooms they used, and, also, from the back entrance they had discovered, a winding route by which the same rooms could be reached. This route was apparently not used by or even known to the gang.

  Freddy didn’t know just what use the map would be. At a general meeting of all the animals, a number, led by Charles, had been for an immediate attack on the cave. But the clearer heads among them were against it. The Webbs had seen a shotgun, and the man who had been grooming the horse had a pistol sticking in his pocket. “If we can’t get rid of them any other way,” Mrs. Wiggin said, “we’ll have to go in and fight ’em. But with those guns, and in those narrow passages, the guns would have the advantage. They must come out pretty often. Let’s try first picking them off one by one. And let’s start with this headless horseman. I know I haven’t seen him, and I know he’s pretty scary, but Alice and Emma weren’t afraid of him. Good land, I’m not going to be scared of a ghost that can’t even scare a duck!”

  “He’s collecting all this money,” Hank said. “What use would a ghost have for money?”

  “There ain’t any such thing as ghosts,” said Samuel Jackson. “He’s a fake. I say he’s a fake.”

  “You didn’t see him,” Jinx said.

  “That’s right,” said Freddy. “He scared me good. But look at it this way: either he’s a ghost or he isn’t. If he is, all he can do is scare people; he can’t hit ’em or shoot ’em or anything. So if a ghost can scare me, why can’t I put on a false face and scare a ghost?

  “Or say he isn’t a ghost. Then he’s a man. And if we can’t scare him, we can rush him and maybe capture him. My dragon will be ready tomorrow. Robert and Jinx and I can practice and get used to working it in the afternoon, and then we’ll take it up on the back road and try it out on the headless horseman. Hank and the cows and Cy and Bill and the bigger animals can hide near by in the woods in case there’s trouble. Percy says he’ll come; he doesn’t want anything more to do with Jack, he says, and the sooner he’s driven out of the neighborhood, the better he’ll be pleased.”

  Having made his arrangements, Freddy rode his bicycle back to Centerboro. He spent the evening talking about poetry with Mrs. Peppercorn. He recited for her some of his longer and more elegant poems, particularly the new one about the eyebrows.

  “Upon the face the eyebrows sit,

  They really add a lot to it,

  Giving expression to the eyes.

  When lifted, they express surprise;

  When lowered, anger’s the expression;

  But halfway lowered, the impression

  Is doubt, unsureness, or depression.

  A snooty look, full of disdain

  You can most easily obtain

  By lifting one brow very high

  Leaving the other close to the eye.

  With such expressions, though, the fact is

  It’s wise to keep in constant practice

  Before a mirror, or some friend

  Upon whom you feel you can depend

  Not to get a fit of giggling

  When your eyebrows start to wiggling.

  A well-trained eyebrow is a treasure

  Giving its owner joy and pleasure.

  Whether middle, low, or highbrows,

  You can’t exist without your eyebrows;

  Whether lower or upper crust,

  You see that eyebrows are a must.

  The eyebrows too deserve our praise

  For helping us in other ways.

  When perspiration beads the forehead

  Without the eyebrows ’twould be horrid,

  Like eavestroughs they protect the eyes

  Which smarting drops would otherwise

  Run into; you’d see nothing plain

  And jump around and yell with pain.

  I guess they’ve other uses, too,

  But I don’t really care. Do you?”

  Mrs. Peppercorn also wrote poetry, but her poetry was different. She said: “What is there so smart about using words that have been used as rhymes a thousand times, like ‘love’ and ‘dove’ and ‘eyes’ and ‘sighs’? I make my poems out of rhymes that have never been used before.” And she rewrote old familiar poems, like this one, which began:

  “Beneath the spreading chestnut tree

  There stands the village smithy.

  The smith’s a mighty man, b’gee;

  He comes from New York Cithy.”

  She had written several versions of this famous old poem, which was her favorite. Freddy enjoyed her ingenuity, but he said that if she’d write straight rhymes she’d probably become a successful poet. Even the Centerboro Guardian refused to print her things.

  That evening Freddy proposed a contest: that they should both compose a short poem to Mrs. Talcum. His own ran:

  “Mrs. Talcum has a red red nose

  She begins to blow in June

  But though she blows and blows and blows,

  She cannot blow a tune.”

  “Pooh!” said Mrs. Peppercorn. “That’s just a poor parody of:

  ‘My love is like a red red rose

  That sweetly blows in June.’

  “Now I’d do it this way:

  My Aunt Min sneezes through her nose

  Both morning, night, and noon.

  Even when back in Syracose

  I know just what she’s doon.”

  Mrs. Talcum cackled and sneezed at their efforts, and then said she’d try one. After some time, and leaving out the sneezes, it was this:

  “Though a very good fre’d is Freddy the p
ig,

  As a poet I caddot ha’d hib a thi’g.

  I dod’t dare say buch agaidst Bissis Peppercord

  Because she’s providig bed ad board.”

  Mrs. Peppercorn said that was very good for a first try, and went out and brought in some ginger ale. The prickly bubbles rising under her nose made Mrs. Talcum sneeze worse than ever. Freddy suspected that she made the sneezes louder and more explosive than was called for.

  Then Freddy rose and proposed a toast.

  “Hip hooray for Mrs. Talcum.

  In our homes she’s always walcum.”

  This inspired Mrs. Talcum to renewed poetic effort. She said:

  “Though I ab dot a clever pig,

  Ad cad write poebs ordadce or si’g,

  There’s wud thig I cad do with ease:

  I cad sdeeze ad sdeeze ad sdeeze ad sdeeze.”

  And then she sneezed fourteen times in a row, which, as far as I know, constitutes a record.

  So they passed a very pleasant evening, and all went to bed at ten o’clock.

  CHAPTER 11

  Uncle Ben had certainly done a fine job on the dragon. Except for the head, it consisted of a collapsible wire framework, covered with cloth, on which Mrs. Bean had helped by sewing hundreds and hundreds of green scales, cut out of some kind of plastic. The head was something like an alligator’s, only much more ferocious, with horns and a very evil grin. Inside it Uncle Ben had built a small stove in which a fire could be kept with a handful of charcoal. When Freddy wanted smoke and flames to come out of the dragon’s nostrils, which were really the stove’s chimney, he had a supply of grass and leaves and waste paper, and he could throw a little of this on the fire and blow on it through a little tube, and the dragon would breathe smoke and flame. For special effects, there were some small pieces of inner tube cut up. Rubber burns with thick black smoke and a terrible smell; Uncle Ben thought this would be extremely pleasing.

  Uncle Ben backed the station wagon into the stable, and he and Freddy and Robert brought the dragon downstairs and loaded it in. Hank was out taking a walk, so there was no one to see them. Jinx got in, and they took Samuel Jackson along, as he wandered into the stable while they were loading, and they didn’t want him talking. Of course, they swore him to secrecy.

  They went up in the back pasture where no one could see them, and there practiced being a dragon. It was really quite easy. Freddy could see out through slits in the head, and the other two had nothing to do but watch the ground and follow the leader. By jumping from side to side, Jinx could make the dragon lash his tail. They lit a fire in the little stove, and Freddy threw on some dry grass and blew through the tube. Uncle Ben was very pleased with the effect, which was really quite dreadful.

  There was a place in the framework of the dragon between Freddy and Robert which made a comfortable seat for Samuel, so they let him ride along. Freddy thought he might be useful.

  They practiced until they could handle the dragon very well even on rough ground, and by then it was getting toward sundown, so they packed up again and drove out the back road and turned right up along the west end of the lake until they had passed the mouth of the cave. They hid the station wagon behind some bushes, and posted Jinx where he could watch whoever entered or left the cave. Then they got the dragon out and lit the fire in his head.

  Two people were to leave money on the stone wall on the back road that evening: Mrs. Church and Mr. Muszkiski, who ran the movie theatre. The troopers were supposed to go up there and hide and try to catch the headless horseman, but they had seen the apparition once, and when it came time to go they all had bad headaches and had to go lie down.

  Lieutenant Sparrow couldn’t go; he had to stay on duty. I don’t suppose you can blame any of them; a headless man on horseback isn’t anything one wants to see twice.

  But the sheriff went. He and Percy and Hank and the three cows and Bill and Cy were all hidden in the woods on the south side of the road opposite the stone wall. He didn’t believe in the ghost theory very much. “Anyway,” he said, “I’ve never seen a ghost. This may be the only chance I’ll ever get to see one.” He called up Mrs. Win-field Church and asked her if she didn’t want to go along.

  Mrs. Church had a lot of money. She lived in a big rambling house on the best street in Centerboro, and was a great friend of Freddy’s, and particularly of Mrs. Wiggins. You could often see her big car with the chauffeur sitting in the front seat drawn up before the cow barn while she was inside chatting with Mrs. Wiggins.

  Mrs. Church said she’d go. “I’ve never seen a ghost either,” she said. “I suppose it would scare me. But I enjoy being scared—that’s why I read detective stories. This headless gentleman ought to be good for a real bone-shaking shudder. It’ll be worth the money.”

  Up by the cave nothing happened for some time. The sun began to go down and the light among the trees got dimmer and dimmer. Jinx, lying out along the branch of a spruce tree, saw a pig come trotting up the road. Nobody, Jinx thought, could possibly take him for Freddy. He was a tough-looking, rangy animal, and his mouth curled up at the sides in a sly, mean grin. Freddy’s face, on the contrary, always wore an amiable expression.

  He turned up the hill to the cave mouth, which was about fifty yards above the road, and went in. “He didn’t have the envelopes in his mouth,” Jinx thought, “so he maybe was just scouting to see if the road is clear for the headless horseman.”

  Freddy, who had caught a glimpse of the pig through the slits in the dragon’s head, slipped out of his place and crawled up toward the road to get a closer view. And just then the horse and his terrible rider appeared in the door of the cave.

  The horse was big—more like a farm horse than a saddle horse, and on his back sat the tall headless rider, wrapped in a long blue cloak. The right hand balanced his head on the saddle horn; the left one held the rein. Jinx’s fur rose all along his back and his tail puffed up to three times its size as he scrambled down the tree and ran to get into the tail of the dragon.

  The rider started down the slope. Freddy, trying to make himself invisible as he crawled toward the dragon, tripped over a branch and came down heavily with his long nose in the dirt. “Get in the head, you lunatic!” Jinx whispered as he passed him. “What are you doing out here?”

  Freddy wasn’t doing anything. He couldn’t, for the apparition was almost on the road now and Freddy was in plain sight if he moved. But Uncle Ben had been standing by. He saw that there was only one thing to be done. He ducked under and took Freddy’s place in the dragon’s head. “Come on,” he said. And then the creature crawled out from the bushes to meet the horseman.

  The horse didn’t notice the dragon as it crawled out on to the road. But the rider did—at least Freddy, from behind his tree, thought that his head must have—for he pulled up sharply. Uncle Ben blew up his fire, and threw in some dry grass and a few pieces of old inner tube. Then he blew it up again, and sparks and flames and black evil-smelling smoke puffed out of the dragon’s nostrils. For a moment the horse stood trembling. Then he reared, bucked, and plunged. The horseman’s head fell with a thump to the ground. He pulled at the rein, but by this time the horse was unmanageable. And when the dragon crawled close and again blew twin jets of fire and smoke at him, he swung round and bolted off down the road. The rider clung tight, but his cloak flapped out behind him and finally blew off—and there was no longer a tall headless horseman, but a very short one with a perfectly visible head.

  “He’ll go by the back road,” Freddy said. “The gang will be waiting for him.” He picked up the head and looked at it. “Look,” he said. “It’s a bowling ball with a wig glued to it and features painted on.” He ran down the road and looked at the cloak. “He’s got a sort of framework built up to bring his shoulders even with the top of his head,” he said.

  “I wonder if he had a gun,” said Robert. “He might have shot Uncle Ben.”

  “I suppose he might have suspected the dragon,” said Freddy, “but I
knew we’d scare the horse, and he’d be too busy with him to shoot anything. Come on; let’s load up and see what happened on the back road.”

  The horse reared…

  So they collapsed the dragon and loaded him into the station wagon, and Uncle Ben drove them bounding down around into the back road. At the stone wall he braked with screeching tires. They could make out in the dusk Mrs. Church and the sheriff and the animals, all standing looking down at a horse who was lying in the ditch.

  “What happened?” Freddy asked.

  “My gracious,” said Mrs. Church, “you should have seen it! This man comes tearing down the road on his horse, and Percy here charged him. Regular football tackle. Sent the horse into the ditch and knocked the rider thirty feet into the air. When he came down he was running, and we couldn’t catch him in the dark under the trees. He got away.” She patted the bull on the shoulder. She didn’t seem at all afraid of him. “That certainly was a fine tackle,” she said. “Didn’t hurt him, either; didn’t use your horns.”

  “Wouldn’t want to hurt an old comrade,” said Percy.

  “You did, though,” said the horse in a weak voice. “I’m wounded.”

  “Nonsense!” said Mrs. Church. “We’ve looked you all over, and there’s not even a scratch.”

  The horse made no effort to get up. “I think I sprained something,” he said in a weak voice.

  “You sprained your luck, old boy,” said the bull. “Come on, get up. You going to take him down to the farm, Freddy?”

  “Down to troop headquarters in Centerboro,” said the pig. “I promised to bring them the headless horseman’s head, and now, by golly, I’ve got it.”

  They all went to Centerboro. The troopers locked up the horse in the stable where Hank had been confined. Then they had Jinx tell his story. Freddy didn’t go in because of the warrants out for his arrest. They looked the head and the cloak over and said “Yeah” and “Uh-huh,” but it was plain they didn’t believe much of it. “Dragon, hey?” said Lieutenant Sparrow, and he laughed the roaring laugh which was so much like Percy’s, except that the lieutenant got as red in the face as a tomato. They wouldn’t even go out and look at the dragon.