“I don’t agree,” said Freddy stiffly. “I see nothing silly about ‘Yippee!’ or about the cowboy costume.”
“You put your foot in it, mister,” said Jinx. “Freddy here is the head cowboy on this range. And don’t try to be funny about it, because he’s powerful quick on the draw.”
Arthur apologized. “I really don’t know anything about cowboys,” he said. “It’s a bad habit of mine, to make fun of things I don’t know anything about.”
“Oh, I guess we all do that,” Freddy said. “It’s easier than to admit we’re ignorant. But about this fox-hunting—I’m still not worried about John. He’s smart enough to fool a pack of hounds.”
“Maybe he is. But he’s not smart enough to keep these hunters from riding through your fields and trampling the hay down.”
“They won’t do it more than once,” said Jinx. “Not if Mr. Bean sees them. They’ll be too busy picking birdshot out of their hides.”
“Oh, Mr. Margarine will offer to pay for the hay he’s knocked down. But if your Mr. Bean starts any shooting—Well, we’ll wait and see.”
When they reached the farmhouse, Jinx mewed at the back door until Mrs. Bean opened it. Then he and Arthur walked in.
“Good gracious me!” said Mrs. Bean. “Who is this? You can’t bring strange cats into my kitchen, Jinx.”
“He’s Margarines’ cat,” said Jinx. “Or was. They won’t feed him, so I said maybe you’d let him stay here a few days.”
“Well, he can have something to eat here,” she said. “But he can’t come into the house. Good grief, how do you think the mice would like that?”
“Oh, ma’am, I wouldn’t lift a paw against your mice,” said Arthur earnestly. “To tell you the truth—I suppose it’s very weak and un-cat-like of me but I never catch mice. Why, I look at it from the mice’s point of view: how would I like being chased and eaten up by animals ten times my size? No, ma’am; I’ve got a very sympathetic nature; why, some of my best friends are mice.”
The mice, under the stove, had been very quiet. To have a strange cat come into the kitchen was what it would be like for you or me to have a thirty-foot alligator push open our bedroom door. But realizing that both Mrs. Bean and Jinx were there to protect them, they became bolder. And Eek came right out on to the floor and said: “Aw, lay off that brotherly love stuff, cat. You’re not fooling anybody.”
Arthur shook his head sadly. “It’s natural that you should feel that way, mouse,” he said. “But I have no wish to intrude where I am not trusted.” He turned to Mrs. Bean and Jinx. “Madam and cat,” he said, “I thank you for your kindness. And now I will go.”
“Where are you going?” Jinx asked. “Back to the Margarines’?”
“No! No! For I would rather starve than to earn my keep by persecuting my little fellow animals. No, I shall take to the road. Perhaps somewhere I may find some kind person who will trust me and take me in.”
“Oh, my goodness; what’s all the fuss about?” Mrs. Bean said. “I didn’t say you couldn’t stay here; I just said you couldn’t stay in the kitchen. Plenty of space to sleep in the barn. Go out on the porch and I’ll get you some milk.”
As she opened the door for them, Eeny said: “So we’re stuck with a cannibal around the place now, hey? What are we going to do?”
“Nothing, now,” said Quik. “I wish Mrs. Bean wasn’t so easily taken in by good manners and a pleasant smile. Anybody that knows anything about cats ought to know better than to trust one that wears as saintly as expression as that Arthur.”
“That’s right,” Cousin Augustus said. “I always remember what my Aunt Minnie said about cats. ‘Never trust a cat that has a saintly expression,’ she said. ‘Because no cat is saintly, and if he looks that way, it means he’s putting on an act. And that act is probably going to end up with you inside him.’ Poor Aunt Minnie! She was awful smart about cats, but she outsmarted herself in the end. Tried to talk a cat out of eating Uncle Wilfred; she did and he ate her instead.”
The other mice had heard this sad story many times, so they just said: “Yeah. Too bad,” and went on talking over what they could do about Arthur.
But during the next few days they began to think that they had no cause for worry. Arthur was certainly a perfect gentleman. He set up housekeeping in the box stall in the stable where Hank, the old white horse, lived. He was most polite to all the animals, and never even chased the chipmunks who called him names, or the red squirrels who threw things at him when he walked under the trees where they lived. After a day or two he invited the mice to call, sending the invitation by Jinx.
“Will you be there, Jinx?” Eek asked.
The cat grinned. “Boy, will I!” he exclaimed. “Quite a party, I understand. And first class refreshments! He’s ordered ’em already.”
“Ordered refreshments?” Quik asked. “I didn’t hear anything about that.”
“Sure you did,” said Jinx. “He invited you four mice, didn’t he? Two for him and two for me.”
“Aw, quit trying to be funny, cat,” said Eek. “Tell us what you think, will you? Do you think we should go call on this Arthur?”
Jinx looked sober and shook his head. “This Arthur,” he said. “He may be OR. I don’t know. But any mouse that goes to a cat party is out of his mind, if you ask me. No, if the guy wants company, let him ask someone his size.”
So the mice sent regrets.
Chapter 3
It was six in the morning when several heavy thumps on the pig pen door woke Freddy up. He opened one eye, said sleepily, “Oh, go away!” then burrowed down and pulled the covers over his head.
But the thumps continued.
“Oh … my … goodness!” he growled angrily, and got up and threw the door open. Cy, his buckskin pony, was standing outside.
“Boots and saddles, pig; boots and saddles!” Cy shouted and then began singing: “A-hunting we will go! A-hunting we will go! …”
“Oh, shut up, will you?” said Freddy crossly. “What on earth’s the matter with you, waking me up in the middle of the night? I’m not going a-hunting or anywhere else until I’ve had my breakfast.”
“That’s what you think,” said Cy. “Look, Freddy; these new neighbors we’ve got, these Margarines, they’re out on horseback with four foxhounds. Personally, I haven’t any feeling about foxes, one way or another. But this John—he’s a friend of yours—”
“John?” Freddy exclaimed. “You don’t mean—?”
“No, they aren’t hunting John, as far as I know. But if they run on to him—well, what chance would one fox have against four hounds?”
“O.K.,” said Freddy, “be right with you,” and dashed inside. A couple of minutes later he came out, lugging his saddle. He had on his cowboy costume—jeans, boots, thunder-and-lightning shirt, gun belt and ten gallon hat,—and with the two guns in his holsters, he looked like a pretty dangerous character. Of course, one of the guns was loaded with blanks, and the other was just a water pistol, but they had been more than a match for at least one fully armed Westerner, Cal Flint, whom the animals had driven out of the county a month or two ago.
John had been spending the summer, as usual, in a hollow tree on the Bean farm; but with the approach of fall he had moved up into a den on the edge of the woods. He was at home and came out when Freddy knocked.
“I thought I heard those hounds this morning,” he said, when Freddy had told him about the hunters. “I scouted around the Margarine place the other night. Quite a joint. Found a big bowl of milk by the back door. Guess they must have known I was going to call, eh?” He laughed. “But pshaw, Freddy, you don’t need to worry about me, though it’s nice that you do. But if I can’t fool a pack of silly hounds, I deserve to get chewed up. Which way did they go? I think I’ll go over and give ’em a little fun.”
Cy said: “That robin friend of yours, J. J. Pomeroy—is that his name?—he says they rode up north and then swung east around the Big Woods on to Mr. Witherspoon’s farm. He’s
flown up to keep an eye on ’em.” He pricked up his ears. “Hey, somebody coming. Maybe one of the hunters.”
John’s ears had gone up too. “’Tisn’t a horse,” he said. “Not heavy enough. They waited and presently they saw the newcomer, moving slowly up along the edge of the woods.
It was Bill, the goat, and astride him, on a saddle made of some old burlap bags tied around him with rope, sat Jinx, in his cat-size cowboy hat, and with his gun belt strapped around his middle.
“Well, will you look at that!” said Freddy with a grin. “He said he was going to get him a horse, but I didn’t believe him.”
“Hi, pardner,” John called. “If you come in, come in a-shootin’.”
Jinx rode in towards them. “Hi, fox,” he said. “Oh, hello, Freddy. Have you warned John about the hunters?”
“He doesn’t want to be warned,” Freddy said. “He wants to go play with the hounds.”
“Say, look, dope,” Jinx addressed himself to the fox. “These aren’t just any old dogs … they’re foxhounds. When they chase you, boy! you stay chased until they catch you. But who am I to argue with a dunderhead? Go on up and get your ears chewed off. See if I care!”
But John just grinned at them. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll fix these Margarines. I should think you’d be glad to get the laugh on them. You specially, Freddy. After the way that boy was laughing at you yesterday.”
“Oh, I didn’t mind that,” Freddy said. “Maybe he really hadn’t ever seen a pig before. Why I suppose if you and I had never seen a boy before, we’d laugh ourselves sick the first time we saw one.”
“Yeah,” said John, “or a cat.”
“Hoh!” said Jinx contemptuously. “If there’s anything funnier than a fox, dragging a tail around that’s bigger than he is—”
“What are you going to do, John?” Freddy asked. “Follow me and see,” the fox said. “But don’t get too close. Maybe you’d better ride along with the hunters. Come on.”
He went out between the trees. Once in the open he began to run. He didn’t run as a dog does, high on his legs; he seemed to flow along the ground, almost like a snake. He went over a wall, up through the Bean pastures, and then over another wall on to Mr. Witherspoon’s farm. And there ahead of them, moving along beside a fence, they saw the hunters—five of them on tall sleek horses, and with them four black and white spotted hounds.
Jinx and Freddy rode up towards them, while John made a circle and ran down close to them, but on the other side of the fence. There he kept moving around until the hounds saw him and came over to investigate. And then as they began excitedly baying and climbed the fence, he set off at full speed across the field.
And the riders followed. They backed off to get a good start, and then put their horses at the fence and sailed gracefully over. “Yippee!” Freddy yelled. “Go on, Cy!” But the pony didn’t move.
“Look, pig,” he said, “I’m no jumper. I don’t say I couldn’t make that fence, if you weren’t on my back. But you’re thirty pounds overweight. You lift down that top rail and then climb over; I’ll join you on the other side.”
So Freddy dismounted. While he was taking down the rail, Bill, with Jinx on his back, went over the fence a little farther down. Bill didn’t really jump it; he jumped to the top rail, changed feet and down on the other side. Freddy was a hundred yards behind when they went on.
The chase swept on, over fields of stubble where corn and hay had been cut, over walls and fences, up a long low hill, then down and across a wide valley and up another hill. Jinx was not far behind the hunters, but Freddy kept falling farther and farther back; Cy could jump low walls and ditches, but he said he wasn’t going to get tangled up with any wire fences, so in several places they had to go a long way around to get from one field to the next.
John may have noticed this; at any rate he doubled back, just when they came within sight of Otesaraga Lake; and the entire hunt came pouring down on Freddy. The fox grinned at the pig as he flashed past. “See you at Witherspoon’s,” he said. Then the hounds streamed by, and Freddy reined Cy around to ride along with the hunters.
But one of the men cut at Cy with his whip. He was a small man with thin lips and hard eyes, and Freddy knew he was Mr. Margarine. “Get out of here!” he said. “Go on—beat it!” And Freddy pulled back.
“Say, what’s the matter with you!” said Cy disgustedly. “What you got those guns for? If you’d fired a blank that nervous thoroughbred of his would have turned a cartwheel and spread him all over the scenery.”
“Sure, sure,” Freddy said. “But I want to see what John is up to. You heard what he said. We’ll take a short cut.—Hey, Jinx!” he called, as Bill and the cat came up. “John’s making for Witherspoon’s. Come this way.”
So while John led the hounds and hunters by a roundabout route, they rode back to Witherspoon’s by the road and so they got there first and saw the whole thing.
Mrs. Witherspoon was sitting on her back porch peeling potatoes. Back of her was the open kitchen window. There was no screen on the window, because Mr. Witherspoon was too stingy to buy a screen for her. Folks said that he wouldn’t have bought a window for her to look out if there hadn’t been one there when he got the house. She looked up and nodded when Freddy and Jinx rode through the yard. “Mr. Witherspoon’s in the barn,” she said, and went on peeling.
They raised their hats to her and rode on towards the barn, but they didn’t go in. They pulled up behind some bushes where they could see without being seen. The voices of the hounds were coming nearer. They sounded like bells tolling. And then the hunt swept over the hill and down towards the house.
“Boy, can that fox run!” said Freddy admiringly. John streaked down and slipped through the fence that surrounded the barnyard, not more than a stone’s throw ahead of the hounds, who scrambled through after him. The riders checked, then turned aside to find a gate. But John made straight for the house. He made one bound to the edge of the porch, a second to the arm of Mrs. Witherspoon’s chair, and a third straight through the kitchen window.
Everything had happened so fast that Mrs. Witherspoon hadn’t had time to jump up. She gave a thin scream as John brushed past her, and then the hounds, baying excitedly, crowded after the fox and piled all over her as they scrambled through the window. The chair went over, and for a minute the air was full of hounds and potatoes and Mrs. Witherspoon’s frantic yells. And then suddenly everything was quiet again, with Mrs. Witherspoon lying on the porch floor and a few potatoes rolling slowly away from the overturned chair.
The air was full of hounds and potatoes.
Mr. Witherspoon came hustling out of the barn door, “What’s going on here?” he shouted, and ran up to the porch just as Mrs. Witherspoon got to her feet.
“Land sakes, Zenas, you must be deaf,” she said. “Didn’t you hear me calling for help? You better get those dogs out of the house.”
But he didn’t pay any attention to her, for he had caught sight of one of the potatoes, which was rolling to the edge of the porch. He grabbed it just as it dropped to the ground. “Consarn it, woman,” he said angrily, “ain’t you got anything to do but throw these good potatoes around? You might at least pick ’em up.”
She seized his arm and shook it. “The dogs, Zenas! The dogs!” she shouted. “Listen!” And she pointed to the window, from which came a mixture of barks and yelps, and an occasional crash, as some piece of furniture went over.
“Dogs!” he exclaimed. “How’d they get in there? You let ’em in?”
“Chasing a fox,” she said. “He went through the window.”
“I’ll get a pitchfork,” he said. But as he turned to go back to the barn, the huntsmen rode up.
“I’ll get the hounds out for you,” said Mr. Margarine, dismounting. “Sorry for this, but I’ll make good any damage.”
“Who are you?” Mr. Witherspoon demanded. And as Mr. Margarine came up the steps: “You keep out of there. I’ll tend to this.” He dashed
off to the barn, but paused a moment to shout back to his wife: “You pick up those potatoes!”
“If they’re your dogs, mister,” said Mrs. Witherspoon, “you get ’em out of there quick.” And Mr. Margarine went in the door.
“I hope they didn’t catch John,” Jinx said.
“You leave it to John,” said Freddy. “A fox never lets himself get cornered.”
“Hey, look,” said Bill. “Here comes Old Man Trouble himself.”
Mr. Witherspoon came out of the barn with a double-barreled shotgun in the crook of his arm. Mr. Margarine was still inside; Billy and Mrs. Margarine and their two friends had reined their horses up close to the porch and sat there looking on. None of them offered to help Mrs. Witherspoon pick up the potatoes. Mr. Witherspoon pointed the gun at them. “Get out of my yard,” he said.
“Oh, come, my good man,” said Mrs. Margarine. “We’re very sorry about this, but we’ll pay for any damage our hounds may have done.”
“You bet you’ll pay, and plenty!” he said. “Sickin’ your dogs on my wife!—Get that one!” he said to Mrs. Witherspoon, pointing to a potato which had rolled into a corner of the porch.
Mrs. Margarine laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she said. “The hounds went through the window after a fox.”
Mr. Witherspoon gave a contemptuous snort. “Likely story!” he said. “You’d better think up a better one before you tell the judge about it. Foxes jumpin’ through windows! I’m too old to listen to bedtime stories. Now git—all of you!”
The row in the house had quieted down, and as Mr. Witherspoon again lifted his gun menacingly, Mr. Margarine came out of the kitchen door, dragging the four hounds after him. He had snapped leashes on their collars, and though they yelped and struggled, he pulled them off the porch. “Get down, Billy!” he said, “and take Belle and Caroline. I’ll take the other two. The fox must be in there yet; we’ll have to keep them on leash or they’ll go back in.”
Freddy Rides Again Page 2