by Bob Brewer
“Grandpa!” Susan’s voice rang out from the hole in the ground. Rutherford took another step towards the tyrants. “Do you hear that?” he asked as loudly as he could. “That’s Susan. She fell into a hole and she might be hurt and she needs our help. Now, if you want trouble you can just wait your turn.”
J.J. stopped. He dropped his wings to his side and turned to look at Muffin. “Quack, quack-quack,” he said. Muffin cocked his head and stared at Rutherford and the others with his good eye for a second before answering his boss. “Quack-quack, quack-quack, quack-quack-quack!” he answered, flapping his wings furiously. In turn J.J. snapped at the air in front of the duck. “Quackity-quack-quack,” he answered his upset partner, at which Muffin folded his wings, hung his head, and slowly padded off in the direction of the pond. “How can I help?” J.J. asked.
The fact that J.J. could talk like a regular creature didn’t seem to register in the heat of worrying about Susan’s predicament. His unaggressive attitude, however, was welcomed by every other creature gathered around the hole in the ground. Rutherford turned his attention back to the problem of getting Susan out. “Can you fly down there and get her?” he asked.
J.J. swung his huge head back and forth. “I can’t fly. And even if I could, that hole’s too little for me to get through. Muffin can fly, but he’s not as strong as he lets on. He couldn’t carry her.”
Rutherford scratched his head as he mentally sized up the big goose. “Do you think you could stick your neck down there far enough to grab her in your mouth?” He didn’t know a goose’s mouth is called a bill, and he didn’t know how big Susan really was, but he was on the right track. J.J.’s neck was very long.
“That’s a smart idea,” Fritz said before J.J. could answer Rutherford. “You poke your head through the hole and we’ll all hold on to your legs. That way Susan can hang onto your bill and we can pull you both out.”
Susan called out for her grandpa again, and J.J. backed up. “Huh-uh, I’m not putting my head in there. She’s probably got her walking stick with her.” Normally she would have, she never went anywhere near the stock pond without the lamb-staff she used to keep J.J. and Muffin away from her. Today, though, when she fell, the staff went flying through the air and landed in the tall grass several feet away. If he had known the staff wasn’t in Susan’s hand, J.J. may have tried Fritz’s plan, but he didn’t know.
So Fritz’s idea wouldn’t work, but it sparked another plan in Rutherford’s mind.
Gitter was back at his post barking and dancing when Rutherford shouted at him to be quiet for a minute. “I’ve got it!” Rutherford exclaimed. “Fritz, you go try to find Mister Tinkerman. Lucky, you go get Carlisle and bring him over here, and bring Curls, too, if she’s learned how to walk yet. And Charlie, you stay here with Gitter and let Susan know she’s not alone. Come on J.J. we’ve got work to do.”
“Can we stop and check on Muffin?” asked J.J. as Rutherford scrambled over his tail feathers and onto his back. J.J .was full of surprises, he seemed truly concerned about the frustrated little duck.
“How about you just wave to him when we pass by?” Rutherford offered. “Look at the sky. The weather’s coming and we really need to hurry.”
With a nod and a sigh, J.J. spread his wings and off they waddled as fast as he could put one foot in front of the other. Through the tall grass, down the garden fence, onto the gravel road and past the strawberry barrel he waddled. All the while chattering to himself in a garble that amused Rutherford although he could not understand any of it. Waddle, waddle, chatter, chatter, down the road they went. As they neared the pond, J.J. raised his head and sent out a couple of loud quacks. Rutherford could see Muffin out in the pond dipping his head in and out of the water not paying a bit of attention to J.J.’s attempt to talk to him. “Quack-quack, honk, quack!” J.J. said again, this time even louder, and this time the little duck answered back with a single quack and started gliding towards the bank. “He’s not mad anymore,” J.J. told Rutherford, and with one last message to Muffin, they padded along.
CHAPTER 7
The rope that hung from the haymow a couple of days before was Rutherford’s objective. He laid out his plan to J.J. on their way to the barn. He thought they could drop one end down to Susan, tie the other end around one of Carlisle’s stout back legs and then, with the might of everyone else, they could pull Susan safely out of the well. But first they would have to get the rope down from the top of the barn. “I can climb up it,” Rutherford explained. “I’ll chew the rope in two then I can get back down using the scarecrow like Charlie does. I can do that, but I’ll need your help to get the rope back to the hole in the ground.” He thought J.J. might be big enough to clamp his mouth around the rope and pull it back to Susan. “Think you can do that?” he asked. J.J. agreed that it was a better plan than risking getting his head thumped by Susan’s staff. “I’ll try,” he said as they rushed past the horse coral.
“It’s not there!” Rutherford squeaked when they reached the front of the barn. “The rope’s gone!”
J.J. stumbled to a stop and Rutherford dismounted. He scurried around looking for the rope but it was definitely gone, and with it so was his plan to save Susan. “What am I going to do, J.J.?” he said, almost in tears. The big goose simply shrugged his wings. He had no idea of what to do. Nor did either of them know that Mister Tinkerman had decided just the evening before to take down the old frayed rope and buy a new one. He was afraid that Susan might get hurt if it broke when she was swinging on it. Right now the old rope lay only a few feet away on the bed of the hay wagon, but it may as well have been in the next county.
The rope’s disappearance was a huge disappointment but Rutherford wasn’t one to give up. After checking one last time for the rope, he sat down in the barn’s doorway to put his mind to work on a new plan. Just inside the barn, he spied the scarecrow standing in its usual spot. The scarecrow was very tall. Maybe, he thought, even tall enough that if it were standing in the well Susan might be able to climb up it and get out. Getting it to the well, though, was another problem. Maybe there was something else in the barn they could use. “J.J.?” he asked for the goose’s attention.
J.J. was focused on Muffin who had caught up with them and was now on his landing approach just above them. Rutherford looked up in time to see the duck fly through the barn door opening and crash-land in the hay wagon. “Quack! Quack-quack-quack!” said Muffin, ruffling his feathers to get them back in the right order as he wobbled over to the tail gate. “Quack, quack,” J.J. returned. Rutherford strained to make out what they were saying to each other but it was a lost cause. Only the two of them knew. Muffin twisted his head to train his good eye on the middle of the wagon. “Quackity-quack, quack, quack,” he said, at which J.J. chuckled his little garbled noise.
“He says it was the rope that caused him to crash, not his landing ability,” J.J. said as an interpretation of Muffin’s excuse for such a poor showing of airmanship.
“The rope?” Rutherford questioned as if it were impossible. When J.J. nodded, Rutherford bounded off the door’s roller-track and raced to the hay wagon. “Lift me up, J.J. Maybe that’s our rope.” J.J. dipped his head and Rutherford jumped onto his bill for the ride. “Whoopee!” he cried when he saw the old frayed rope with some of Muffin’s feathers stuck to it. “Can you pull it off the wagon, J.J.?” J.J. could and did, and so began the struggle to get the long length of rope back to the well. J.J. was a strong creature but his bill was more fitted to nipping others than to clamping down and tugging a heavy load. Both Rutherford and Muffin tried their best to help, but it was proving too much even for the three of them. They needed reinforcements.
“Can anybody hear me?” Rutherford stopped twice and called out for help in case any other creature was within hearing range, but no one answered. Finally, and nearly out of breath, he turned to J.J. “Do you think if you asked hi
m nicely, Muffin would go get us some help?” J.J., who was getting tired himself, turned to Muffin and the two of them quacked back and forth at each other a few times. It sounded to Rutherford like an argument, but after a couple more quacks, the little duck took flight. Over the barn, over the horse coral, over the gravel road, past the pond and beyond the garden gate Muffin flew. He flew in his haphazard way keeping his good eye peeled for the group gathered at the well site. When he spotted them he lowered his tail flaps, raised his front section and dived in for the final approach. It was a perfect three-point landing, his two feet and one bill plowing into Lucky’s churned-up pile of dirt.
The abrupt entrance of the belligerent duck caught Fritz and the others off guard. Since they didn’t know he was on a mission for Rutherford, they all jumped on him before he could get out of the dirt and try to explain why he had come back. All the hissing, barking, quacking and squealing going on above her caused Susan to yell out, “Stop it! You guys just stop it! You’re driving me crazy and I’m too busy for that right now. I wish you could talk and go get my grandpa instead of acting like a bunch of spoiled brats. Now, stop it!” She didn’t know that Fritz had tried to find her grandpa earlier but had no luck. His truck was gone.
All this time Susan had been trying to figure out how she could climb up the rock wall. She could see through the opening that the possibility of rain was getting very close. If she were still down there when the rains came, she feared the whole roof of the well might come falling down on her. She had to get out, but the well was just a little bit too wide to allow it. She could get her feet on one wall and her back on the other but she couldn’t bend her knees. Every time she tried to inch upwards, she actually inched back down. If she hadn’t lost her lamb-staff when she fell, she thought that maybe she could have hooked it over the board that remained and use it like a rope. But the staff was gone, and all the racket from above wasn’t allowing her think of an alternative. “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” she yelled again.
Susan’s voice carried out of the well and overran the ruckus created by the sudden appearance of the biting duck, although Muffin wasn’t intending to bite anyone on this trip. When the noise quieted, Muffin backed away from the group and held his wings high over his head like he was surrendering to the bigger army. He didn’t even cock his head like he normally did to get a better picture, he simply quacked once very softly. Two more muted quacks and he turned and pointed a wing in the direction of the barn.
Fritz caught on. “He’s telling us something,” he said, turning to Charlie and giving it some thought. A moment later, he asked, “Do you know where Rutherford and J.J. were going?”
“Quack! Quack!” Muffin shouted, then waddled over to Gitter, cocked his head and stared directly into the dog’s eyes. Gitter barked once, gazed towards the barnyard and stood with his tail straight back and his ears in the listening position. It seemed a strange thing to most of the farm dwellers, but from puppy onward, the beagle refused to talk in regular animal talk. In that way he was sort of like the duck, who was now getting noticeably angry. “Quack, quack, quack!” Muffin said in rapid succession and very loudly. With that, Gitter whimpered like he may have understood and ran up behind the irritated fowl who promptly took off in a low flight. He circled once then headed toward the barn. The beagle eyed him for a moment then took off at a run, watching the clouds and following the duck.
“I think Rutherford’s over at the barn,” Charlie answered Fritz’s earlier question as the beagle ran out of sight. “Let’s go see if he’s in trouble, too. Will you stay with Susan, Lucky?” Lucky had returned with Carlisle and Curls, a bouncing little ball of wool whose wobbly legs from the day before had now turned into unstoppable springs. A menagerie of other farm denizens including a weary momma hen and all of her rowdy offspring marched behind them. Bringing up the rear was a couple of wild cottontail rabbits who tagged along to see what was going on down at their carrot patch. “Yep, I’ll stay with her,” the little piglet answered. “Come on you guys and say hi to Susan. She’s down in the ground over here.”
Once Muffin saw that the dog was really going to follow him, he took a direct path to the horse corral where J.J. and Rutherford had stopped for a break and a drink from the watering trough. It had been tough going getting the heavy hunk of rope this far and Rutherford was beginning to think it wasn’t such a good idea after all. It might have been easier to drag the scarecrow. That notion was shuttling through his mind when he heard the familiar and welcomed sound of Gitter’s baying. The beagle had caught their scent and was drawing near.
Muffin flew a circular pattern above the coral then splash-landed in the watering trough and reported to J.J. that the dog he loved to chase was on his way at this very moment. “Just in case you want to change your mind about being Mister Nice Guy,” were his exact words in duck talk. Of course the only part of the duck’s message J.J. passed on was that Gitter was just around the corner of the corral. Rutherford had already figured that fact out on his own. A few seconds later Gitter arrived, panting but playful, and right behind him, running full out, were Fritz and Charlie, all coming to help however they could.
Rutherford zeroed in on the dog. “We need to get this rope to Susan as quick as we can,” he explained to the beagle, thinking he would understand. Gitter, however, showed no sign of interest in what Rutherford was saying until Muffin stepped up onto the rim of the trough and quacked at him. Gitter woofed, Muffin quacked and Rutherford stood back in amazement as the two of them carried on an apparently intelligent conversation. In the end, Gitter grabbed up a loop of rope in his mouth and headed toward the gravel road. Muffin took to the air, and the rest of the group set out at a run trying to keep up. It was now a race to save Susan.
CHAPTER 8
Mister Tinkerman braked his truck to a sudden stop as he neared the tractor shed. His tires had no sooner quit skidding on the gravel road than he jumped out and put a hand up to shield his eyes from the last remaining shaft of sunlight. What he saw upset him terribly. So much of his livestock gathered together by the garden fence could mean only one thing in his mind--the fence had been broken down and all his hard work of cultivating, planting and caring for this year’s crop was being trampled and eaten into oblivion.
“No, no, no!” he shouted. He ran around the front of the truck and raced toward the garden to see if there was anything left to save. Cool droplets of rain had begun to sprinkle down splattering his glasses and making it difficult to see. With each step his vision got worse. It wasn’t until he stumbled over Susan’s lamb-staff that he realized there was more to worry about than the loss of his garden. He knew Susan would never leave her staff out in the field unattended. “Susan? Susan?” he called over the racket of the noisy bunch of animals. He didn’t hear her answer and he wasn’t really paying any attention to all the activity that was taking place just behind Charlie’s churned up pile of dirt. He was much more concerned with the whereabouts of Susan.
Gitter and the others in the rope brigade had made it back to the well before Mister Tinkerman’s arrival and were busy putting Rutherford’s plan into action. Rutherford, acting as field supervisor, lined all the others up then scurried back and forth from Carlisle to the well directing the activity. “Take this end of the rope, Muffin, and wrap it around and around one of Carlisle’s back legs.” He pointed at the end of the rope nearest the calf. Muffin cocked his head to one side but didn’t make a move. “Oh, come on,” Rutherford said with a sigh. He turned to J.J. and shrugged. “Okay, Muff,” J.J. said in his quack-quack talk, “take the rope and tie it around the cow’s legs.”
Poor Carlisle. Even after they got the other end of the rope into the well, there was no way he could do any pulling, all of his legs being bound together by the industrious little duck. “No, no, no! Just one leg, J.J.” corrected Rutherford. J.J. quacked a few more times and Muffin redid his work the right way. “Good,” said
Rutherford. “Okay. Fritz?...Where’s Fritz?” He threw his hands in the air. “Has anybody seen the cat?”
Fritz jumped over the pile of dirt. “I’m here,” he answered, shaking some of the loose dirt off his paws. Rutherford pointed to the other end of the rope. “You’ll need to be really, really careful, Fritz. That board you’ve been walking on when you check on Susan is broken. It could fall on her.”
Fritz let his head droop. “I didn’t know that. I won’t go over there anymore.”
Rutherford patted his paw. “No. I didn’t mean that. I need you to go back and drop the rope down to her. Just walk very softly, okay?” Fritz bobbed his head few times then bit down on the rope and began his belly-crawl back through the dirt which was quickly becoming wet with the sprinkle of raindrops. A cat in the rain, in the mud! Only for Susan would he subject himself to such punishment.
“We’re almost ready,” said Rutherford as Fritz disappeared over the mound of dirt. “Everybody get set to pull Susan out of the well.” Charlie, Lucky, J.J. and Muffin lined up along the rope between Carlisle and the well. Even the momma hen found room for all her chicks. And after a message from Muffin, Gitter joined them as well. They all stood still, ready to go into action. “Wait for my signal,” Rutherford instructed as he got in line to do his share of pulling. In position, they all waited to feel Susan tugging on the rope. And they waited. And they waited some more. “What’s going on?” Rutherford shouted, followed by all the other creature’s shouts of the same question. All of a sudden the place became a riot of mixed animal noises all wanting to know was happening at the other end of the rope.