Freddy and the Men from Mars

by Walter R. Brooks

  “Oh, come on, sheriff,” Mike said. “Suppose it ain’t legal; you can arrest yourself afterwards, can’t you, and put yourself in jail? If you want to be real strict about it, you can lock yourself in.”

  “Well,” said the sheriff, who didn’t want to miss the fun, “if you put it that way … Hey, Herc! Come on. Stick those chickens in your pocket. I’ll carry this Mrs. What’s-your-name.”

  “Hapgood,” snapped the hen. “Mrs. C. Ogden Hapgood. Madame Gloriana Hapgood, on the stage.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” said the sheriff.

  “Don’t mention it, I’m sure,” the hen replied graciously.

  CHAPTER

  17

  As they marched off down the street they could still see Mr. Garble perched in the pine tree, watching them. As soon as they were gone, Freddy felt sure that he would return to the house to get the pistol he had dropped; and probably he had enough affection for his sister to make sure that the Martians hadn’t done her any harm. What would he do then? Well, he would want to recover the talented hen. And he would want to take revenge on Freddy. Most likely he would go out to the Grimby house and get the rats. He might even openly attack the farm.

  The first part of Freddy’s plan, therefore, was to ambush Mr. Garble and capture him. The simplest way to do this would be to lie in wait inside the house, but it wouldn’t be easy for them to get into the house, if he was watching. So when they had gone several blocks he sent Mr. Hercules on to the circus with Mrs. Hapgood and the two chickens, and the rest of the party doubled back through gardens and behind hedges and hid themselves in a big clump of shrubbery which divided the Underdunk garden from the front lawn. One of the Martians climbed a tree and kept watch.

  After five minutes or so the sentinel began click-squeaking at a great rate, and Mr. Webb, who was on Freddy’s ear, said: “It’s Garble. He’s creeping up through that back yard next door.” So Freddy nodded to the sheriff, who pursed up his lips and whistled the first bars of “Dixie.”

  Nothing happened for a minute, then a head popped up over the hedge at one side of the lawn. And the sheriff whistled: “I wish I was in Dixie. Away! Away!”

  Mr. Garble pushed through the hedge and ran, crouching low, towards the bushes. “Here chick!” he called. “Here chick, chick, chick!”

  Mike and the sheriff were hanging onto each other, for they had both been overcome by a fit of the giggles. Freddy glowered at them and shook his head. The sheriff, with both hands over his mouth, nodded, and then managed to control himself. Mike did, too. He wiped the grin off his face and turned his back for a minute. And then, as Mr. Garble crept closer to the bush, the burglar imitated a cackling hen. “A-a-awk, quk-wuk-wuk-wuk!”

  It was a pretty good imitation, but it didn’t quite fool Mr. Garble. He stopped short, a look of suspicion came over his face, and he started to back cautiously away. Freddy was sure that in a second or two he would whirl and make a break. They would never catch him again.

  “Stop him!” Freddy shouted, and dashed out.

  Mr. Garble turned and ran. But Freddy was a skilled football player, and he was fast. He caught up with the man, then when he was even with him, swerved and threw his shoulder into him and knocked him off his feet. Before Garble could get up, Mike and the sheriff and the Martians were on him. They led him into the house, and down into the cellar, and they shoved him into the crate and nailed it fast.

  “Well, Mike,” said Freddy, “you pretty near wrecked us. I wish you’d stick to burgling and not try animal imitations.” He looked with satisfaction at the crate. “It’s got the labels on it and everything,” he said. “All we’ve got to do is get him to the express office. Wonder where Uncle Ben is.”

  “You can’t ship him express,” said the sheriff. “I mean, you can ship him, all right, but will he stay shipped? Some busybody will let him out.”

  “You’re darn right he will,” said Mr. Garble. “See here, pig: you let me out of here and we’ll call it square. I won’t make any complaint against you. But you’ll get yourself in a peck of trouble sending me to Montana. Even if I got there, I’d just come right back.”

  “Sure,” said Freddy. “But we think it would be kind of fun to give you the trip. Still, come to think of it, it’s no kind of revenge for me. You were going to have me sent out there to be turned into chops and bacon. Well, I can do that right here. I’ll just turn you over to these Martians; they’ll have a real feast tonight.”

  Mr. Webb had taken refuge in Freddy’s ear when the pig started after Mr. Garble. Now he said: “My goodness, Freddy, the Martians would be horrified if I told ’em what you just said. They aren’t savages. They just eat cereals and stuff.”

  “Sure, I know that,” Freddy said. “Come out of my ear, Webb; you tickle.”

  Mr. Garble had begun to yell for help at the top of his lungs. Under cover of the noise, Freddy said to Mr. Webb: “I want to scare him, make him think he’s going to be eaten. Good gracious, Webb, don’t you know what he and his rats are trying to do? They want to drive the Beans away from the farm—want to get it for themselves. So look, get the Martians to play up—you know, pretend they’re fattening him up like the witch did Hansel and Gretel. If we give him a good scare, maybe we can keep him from trying anything against the Beans. Then we’ll let him go.”

  The sheriff was worried. If someone heard the yells for help, and came in and found him aiding and abetting a kidnapping, he might lose his job as sheriff. So he dragged an old carpet out of a corner and pulled it over the crate. Now the muffled yells that came from under it couldn’t be heard even up in the kitchen.

  Mr. Webb hopped over to Two-clicks’s shoulder. In a minute there was a lot of clicking and squeaking and fizzing Martian laughter, and then the carpet was pulled off the crate and several seven-fingered hands reached in and felt of Mr. Garble’s arms and legs.

  “They think you aren’t quite fat enough yet, Mr. Garble,” Freddy said.

  Mr. Webb had come back to Freddy’s shoulder. “They say they’ll deliver Garble in Montana for you, if you want them to. Funny thing, they seem to know that Hansel and Gretel story, and they say why not let him think they’re taking him to Mars to be fattened up for the stew pot?”

  Freddy began to be a little sorry for Mr. Garble. But he remembered all the attempts that Garble had made on his life, and he decided that a good scare would do such a cruel and dishonest person no harm. It might at least make him think twice before he started to cause the Beans any trouble. So he said: “All right. But their saucer’s over at the circus grounds. We’ll have to send one of them for it, but if they start walking through the street, they’ll be mobbed.”

  “Garble’s car is out in the garage,” said the sheriff. “I’ll drive one of ’em over.” So he did, and when the saucer had been brought down in the Underdunk driveway, and the sheriff had returned, he and Mike and the Martians hauled the crate upstairs and hoisted it into the saucer. Mr. Garble was by this time so hoarse from yelling for help that he could hardly speak above a whisper, so none of the neighbors noticed that anything unusual was going on. Jinx, who had decided to go along for the ride, hopped in, the hatch was closed, the saucer began to whirl slowly, then with a whoosh! like a giant rocket, shot up and vanished almost instantly in the western sky.

  “I hope we haven’t made a mistake,” Freddy said. “But Webb says they’ll be back here in an hour or less.”

  “From Montana?” said the sheriff. “You’re crazy!”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if I was,” said the pig. “But there wasn’t much of anything else we could do. They’ll deliver him to his uncle’s ranch, and I suppose his uncle will pay his fare back to Centerboro. But he won’t be anxious to try to get even with us.” He sighed. “Oh, well, while we’re waiting I think I’d better run up and see that Mrs. Underdunk is all right.”

  “You might better run up and jump off the roof,” said the sheriff. “My guess is she ain’t feelin’ real sociable right now. And Garble’s
pistol is in the house. She probably ain’t a very good shot, but if you’ll excuse me sayin’ so, you’re a pretty sizable target … Oh, well, if you insist on it, I’ll go up with you.”

  Mrs. Underdunk was nowhere on the ground floor. They scouted cautiously. The pistol wasn’t where Mr. Garble had dropped it. This was not reassuring, and the sheriff urged Freddy to get out while he was still unpunctured. But, though Freddy realized that Mrs. Underdunk would be only too happy to shoot him, he remembered those screams. Anybody that screamed like that was pretty scared, and he had a lot of sympathy with scared people. He had often been badly scared himself, and he knew what it was like. So he crept up the front stairs, followed at a safe distance by the reluctant sheriff.

  The door to the large room at the head of the stairs was closed. He tapped lightly on it, then stood to one side. The sheriff dropped on the stairs; his eyes came just above the top step. “Mrs. Underdunk?” Freddy called. “Are you all right?”

  “Who is there?” quavered Mrs. Underdunk’s voice.

  “It’s me, Freddy,” said the pig. “I just wanted to—”

  Bang! went the big pistol, and splinters flew outward from the middle of the door.

  BANG! went the big pistol, and splinters few outside from the middle of the door.

  “She’s all right,” said the sheriff. He didn’t get up, but slithered backwards down the stairs on his stomach. He made remarkable speed, but Freddy was ahead of him at the bottom step.

  “Yeah,” said the pig. “She seems to be.”

  It was a little over an hour later that the saucer returned. Jinx hopped out.

  “Boy, what an experience!” he said.

  “Did you really go to Montana?” Mike asked, and Freddy said: “What was it like?”

  “Yeah, we went there all right,” said the cat. “Delivered our livestock at the Twin Buttes railroad station. Like?” he said. “Gosh, I don’t know what it was like. Spider-boy, he just sat there and twisted dials and things for half an hour, and we were there. Same coming back. Boy, what an experience!”

  “Yeah,” said the sheriff dryly. “Must have been. Like sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, only with no old magazines.”

  “Did you see when you crossed the Mississippi?” Freddy asked.

  “How could I at that speed?” Jinx said. “Everything was just a blur.”

  “Sure must have been stimulating,” Mike remarked.

  “But what an experience!” Jinx repeated. That was all they could get out of him. Still, there are lots of people who travel all over Europe and haven’t much more to say about it.

  So then they all got into the saucer and went back to the circus grounds.

  CHAPTER

  18

  The Horribles were still in their cage, and people were filing through and looking at them at fifty cents a head. Mr. Hercules had taken the Beans and Uncle Ben home, but Bill Wonks had had to go help Mr. Boomschmidt get things ready for the big show, and Mrs. Peppercorn had agreed to stay for a while and take in the fifty-cent pieces.

  “Well, sheriff,” she said as they came up, “I hope you’ve got young Herbert locked up and out of harm’s way.”

  “He’s out of harm’s way all right,” said the sheriff. “Takin’ a little trip for his health.”

  “Hope it’s a long one,” she replied.

  “Not that I have ever felt

  Very much interest in Garble’s healt’.”

  The sheriff said: “Yeah,” in a tired voice, and Freddy said: “I’m glad you’re here, Mrs. Peppercorn, instead of anybody else. The Martians have agreed to take the place of the Horribles for a while, and we want to sneak ’em in and sneak the Horribles out without telling Mr. Boom. Because if he knows he’s been showing fake Martians, he’s so darned honest that he’ll tell everybody, and apologize in the newspapers, and I don’t know what all. It might very well ruin his reputation. We’ve got to protect him. So we’ll tell him, and we’ll tell the people that visit the show, that now that warm weather has come, the Martians have taken off their red suits.”

  “And shaved off those red whiskers,” put in Jinx.

  Freddy said: “Yes.”

  “And cut off their long noses,” said Mike.

  “Well,” said Freddy, “the rabbits had shorter noses than the rats, and nobody noticed. I bet nobody says a word. Because mostly these people that come haven’t been here before.”

  So they had the rabbits take off the red suits and hang them up on the pegs with the nightshirts, and then sneaked them out and the real Martians in. And as Freddy had guessed, nobody noticed the difference. Only one woman said anything. She had been in before, and she said: “I don’t remember that they was so dark complected. And I guess I missed that third eye the time I saw ’em before.” But she didn’t complain.

  When everything seemed to be going smoothly, Freddy got Two-clicks to drive him and the Horribles back to the farm in the saucer. Jinx wasn’t going to go at first, but then he decided to. “I like this here vehicle, darned if I don’t,” he said. “Think I’ll get me one when the new models come out. Home, James,” he said to Two-clicks as he climbed in.

  There was bad news at the farm. Simon had escaped from the parrot cage; he had managed to break or gnaw two of the wires and then bend them apart so that he could slip through. And in the early morning hours—presumably under Simon’s leadership—the rats had come down from the Grimby house and raided Mr. Bean’s vegetable garden. It was pure vandalism; none of the vegetables were ready to eat yet, except a few radishes. They had cut all the plants off close to the ground.

  A year or so earlier the animals had formed the First Animal Republic, and had elected Mrs. Wiggins President. They had raised an army and had fought a serious and successful campaign against the rats, who had had their headquarters in that same Grimby house, deserted then, but still standing, where they now again had taken up residence. After this the F.A.R. had demobilized its army, keeping only a small standing honor-guard of rabbits to handle emergencies, and to guard the President when she made her annual speech on May 3rd, the date on which the F.A.R. had been founded. The official flag was raised only on this date, and on a few special holidays.

  To this rule there was one exception. When a national emergency arose and it was desired to call a full meeting of all the citizens, the flag was raised over the barn. This could only be done by executive order—that is, by the command of Mrs. Wiggins. And there was a good deal of ceremony about it. It wasn’t enough just to tell Mrs. Wiggins that a national emergency existed; Freddy had to write it all out in proper form and send it by messenger. Then the honor-guard had to assemble and stand at attention while the flag was being raised. And Mrs. Wiggins made a formal speech.

  Some animals felt that all this ceremony was just a waste of time. They called it red tape, and said it was nonsense. But Mrs. Wiggins, though not brilliant, had great common sense, and she knew that her presidential orders had to be issued with a whole lot of ceremony. Otherwise the animals would say: “Oh, it’s just Mrs. Wiggins. We don’t have to do what she says.”

  So the flag went up. And within half an hour every animal and bird on the farm knew about it. For those who had seen the flag told those who had not, and at half past seven that evening they began streaming towards the barn, which was soon packed to the doors. It would take too long to list the distinguished members of that gathering. Besides all the animals who lived around the barnyard, there were among those present Old Whibley and his niece, Vera, the owls; Uncle Solomon, the screech owl; Peter, the bear; and Mac, the wildcat, from the Big Woods; Theodore, the frog; a lot of backwoods characters from outlying burrows; and several small delegations from neighboring farms. Birds sat wing to wing on every rafter, and there were hundreds of small animals—mice and rabbits and squirrels and skunks—even Cecil, the porcupine, came. But of course Cecil liked to go to meetings, because the other animals always gave him plenty of room. And Leo was there; Two-clicks had flown him up to the fa
rm in the saucer.

  The meeting opened as usual with the singing of the animals’ marching song. The words of this are today so familiar to every school child that they are not set down here. Then, since there was plenty of time, Charles was called upon to open the proceedings with a speech.

  Charles’s speeches were so magnificent and noble sounding, he used so many long and high-flown words, that very few animals could listen to one of them without becoming wildly enthusiastic. Just what they were enthusiastic about they were never quite certain, since, when you thought about the speech afterwards, you were never sure what it meant. But the animals always enjoyed them, and they were indeed very useful, for when Charles sat down—or was pulled down, as sometimes happened—Freddy or Mrs. Wiggins would tell what action was proposed, and the enthusiasm was right there to carry it through. This is the real purpose of most speeches.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Charles began. “You have been called together tonight, under the glorious banner of the F.A.R., because a grave crisis exists, a crisis which menaces not only our very existence as a nation of freeborn animals, birds, and bugs, but the entire future of the great Bean farm, and its noble owners, Mr. and Mrs. Bean.

  “Pledged as we are to maintain and defend this great republic of ours; obligated by every tie of duty, affection, and gratitude to build with our bodies a living shield between that ancient stronghold of the Beans and the advance of a cruel and determined enemy, we must rise, my friends—I call upon you to rise in your might and smite that enemy hip and thigh, squash that enemy to a grease spot.”

  At this point there was prolonged cheering. When it had finally died down, Charles lowered his voice to a conversational tone. “We are indeed fortunate,” he went on, “to have with us tonight representatives of two of the most powerful groups in—and I think I may say this without fear of contradiction—in the whole solar system. The first of these is our old friend, Leo, king of the beasts, and our ally on many a hard-fought field, representing Boomschmidt’s Stupendous and Unexcelled Circus.”