But Mrs. Wiggins, who always looked on the bright side of things, said: “We have got all winter in Florida to think about how to carry them. If we can’t think of some scheme by spring, we aren’t very bright animals. I for one don’t intend to worry about it any more.”
By this time the travellers had got used to being stared at by the people they met, and so almost always when they came to a village, they walked straight through it instead of going round. When they did this, Jack, the black dog, would go to the butcher shop and sit up on his hind legs and beg in the doorway, and usually the butcher would give him a piece of meat or a bone, which he shared with Robert.
A good many of the people had heard of them, too, and knew that they had come hundreds of miles down from the cold north to spend the winter in Florida, and these people would come out to meet them when they came to the edge of the town, and bring them things to eat, and make a great fuss over them. In one town a band came out to meet them, just as in Washington, and there were carriages for them, too, and all the animals but Hank and Mrs. Wiggins rode through the town in the carriages.
But, of course, there were bad people, too, who had heard about them, and thought it a good chance to get some fine animals without paying for them. One day, as they were going along by the bank of a muddy, sluggish river, two men with guns jumped out from behind some bushes. As soon as they saw the guns, the animals started to run, but they were not quick enough, and before they knew what had happened to them, Hank and Mrs. Wiggins had ropes around their necks and were being led off down the road.
The other animals knew that the men would shoot at them with the guns if they tried to help their friends; so they hid in the bushes, and then followed along, keeping out of sight.
Pretty soon the men came to a gate, and they led the cow and the horse through the gate and past a small, white house, and locked them up in a big, red barn. Then they walked back to the house, whistling, with their guns over their shoulders, to get their supper, for it was six o’clock.
“I guess there’s two animals that won’t do any more migratin’,” said one.
And the other laughed a loud, coarse laugh and said: “They’ll do a little work now, instead of loafing round the country.”
And they opened the door and went into the house without wiping their muddy boots on the door-mat.
As soon as they had gone in, Jinx, the cat, sneaked up to the barn through the long grass. He crept along so very carefully that the tops of the grass hardly moved. He climbed up and looked in through the little, dusty window, and saw Hank and Mrs. Wiggins standing on the barn floor. Their heads drooped, and they looked very miserable and unhappy. Then he tapped cautiously on the window with his claw, and called in a low voice: “Hey! Hank!”
The horse jumped and raised his head. “Is that you, Jinx?” he said.
“Yes,” said the cat. “I came to see if you were all right. The others are hiding in the bushes down by the river. We’re going to try to rescue you.”
“Well, I don’t see how you’re going to do it,” said Hank. “We are both tied up, and the barn-door is locked. It’s very discouraging, to come all this distance and get almost to Florida, and then be stolen. I’m sure I don’t know what Mr. Bean will say.”
“Now don’t talk like that,” said Jinx. “You’ll escape somehow. We won’t desert you. Do you suppose you could kick a couple of boards out of the side of the barn if you could get loose?”
“I won’t say I couldn’t,” said Hank. “I’ve got my heavy shoes on. But it would take some time, and before I had made an opening big enough to get out of, the men would hear the racket and come out and tie me up again.”
“We’ll attend to that,” said Jinx. “You just have patience, now, and I’ll send the mice in to get you loose. They’ll gnaw those ropes and straps off you in no time. Then I’ll come and tell you when it’s time to break out.”
So Jinx went and told the mice, and they got into the barn through a crack in the floor, and gnawed at the ropes with their little, sharp teeth until they had cut them in two.
By this time it was dark, and Jinx and Freddy, the pig, and Charles and Henrietta and the two dogs and Alice and Emma came up to the house and peeked in the window. The two men had cleared off the supper table and were playing parchesi. They played four games, and between times they laughed and talked about how smart they were to have got two good animals without paying for them, and wondered how much money they would get for them when they sold them.
The big man was a very poor player, and he lost every game. He would study and study over his moves, but he always made them wrong. Now Freddy was a very good parchesi player, and it was all the other animals could do to keep him still when he saw the big man starting to make a wrong move. He would jump up and down in his excitement and mutter under his breath: “Oh, what a stupid move! Oh, what a stupid move!” And at last, when the big man had made a specially bad move and lost the fifth game, Freddy could stand it no longer, and he shouted out: “Oh, you big silly! Why didn’t you move your other man? Now he’s beat you again.”
The men jumped up so quickly that they knocked over the parchesi board and spilled the men all over the floor.
“What was that?” said the big man.
“It sounded like a pig,” said the other. “Up and after him!”
And they rushed out without even stopping to get their hats. But they grabbed up their guns as they went through the doorway.
The animals ran in all directions, but it was bright enough outside so that the men could see Freddy as he dashed out through the gate and down the road, and so they dashed after him. Now, Freddy was a very clever pig, but he wasn’t much of a runner, and the smack, smack, smack of heavy boots on the hard road sounded louder and louder behind him, as the men caught up.
“They’re going to catch me,” he thought. “Oh dear! I do hope they don’t like pork! The great stupid creatures! I could beat them at parchesi, and I could beat them at eating, and I’m ever so much brighter than they are. But they’re going to catch me. And I’ve got more legs than they have, too!”
He didn’t dare turn off the road because his legs were so short that he knew he would very quickly get tangled up in the bushes, but the road was close to the river at this place, and just as the big man reached out to grab him by the tail, Freddy dodged and jumped with a splash into the water. Most pigs don’t like water any too well, but Freddy had been taught swimming by Emma, the duck, and he could do all sorts of fancy strokes, and could even swim on his back, which is something hardly any pigs ever learn to do. So he struck out bravely for the other shore.
The men stopped short, and the big one raised his gun to shoot. But the other said: “No, no! Don’t shoot! We want to capture him alive and sell him.” And he pulled off his coat and shoes and jumped in after Freddy.
The big man waited a minute; then he too laid down his gun and took off his coat and shoes and jumped in.
Freddy heard them puffing and blowing behind him like sea-lions, but he put his snout down into the water and swam the Australian crawl, the way Emma had showed him, and pretty soon he came to the other bank. There was no use climbing out and trying to run away, because the men would catch him; so he turned around and swam back again.
For quite a long time the men chased him, up and down and across the river, and once or twice they nearly had him, but he was very wet and slippery, so that there was nothing for them to get hold of, and every time he got away. And then at last he heard a dog bark.
The sound came from the place on the bank where the men had left their guns, and Freddy swam toward it. And there, close down by the edge of the water, were all the animals, and Hank and Mrs. Wiggins were there too, because they had broken out of the barn while the men were chasing Freddy.
Robert and Jack helped the exhausted Freddy out of the water, but when the two men started to follow him, they growled and barked and showed their teeth. Then the men swam down-stream a way, but the
dogs followed along the bank and growled at them every time they tried to land. And at last they swam across the river and went home another way.
It was not a very pleasant way, because there was no road on the other side of the river, and to walk across fields in your stocking-feet is very painful. The sticks and stones hurt like anything. And they were wet through, and had lost their guns, and when they got down opposite their house, they had to jump in and swim across the river again. And then they found the horse and the cow gone, and a big hole in the side of their barn.
And when they got in the house, they were angrier still, for there was the parchesi board on the floor, and the parchesi men had rolled off into corners and under the stove and behind things. If the floor had been clean, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but it was terribly dirty because they never wiped their boots on the mat when they came in, and so it was almost impossible to find the men. Indeed, there were three that they never did find. And so they could never play parchesi any more at all.
X
Now as they went along, the weather got warmer and warmer, and so they got up very early in the mornings and did most of their travelling while it was still cool. About eleven o’clock they would stop under the shade of a big tree by the road-side, and lie about in the grass and talk until late in the afternoon. And then they would go on for a while until they found a good camping-place. When they came to a river or a pond, they would all go in swimming. It was the pleasantest life you can imagine.
One day, about noon, they were all sitting in the shade beside the road at the top of a steep hill. On the other side of the road was a house, but nobody was in sight but a little girl, who was wheeling her dolls up and down in a doll baby carriage.
Most of the animals were asleep, because Jinx, the cat, had been talking, and nobody paid any attention when he talked. That didn’t make any difference to Jinx, though. He went right on telling how smart he was and bragging about what he could do.
That was the worst of Jinx: he always talked about himself. If the animals talked about automobiles, he told how much he knew about them, and how well he could run one; and if they said: “Let’s go in swimming,” he told what a fine swimmer he was, although they all knew he hated the water and couldn’t swim two strokes.
To-day he was talking about bicycles.
“’Tisn’t anything to ride a bicycle,” he said. “I’ve ridden ’em—all kinds—bicycles and tricycles and velocipedes and——”
“Oh, you’re a wonder!” said Freddy crossly, and all the other animals who were awake said: “Oh, please keep still, Jinx.”
Alice and Emma, the two white ducks, didn’t say anything, however, because they were always very polite, and were afraid of hurting Jinx’s feelings. They were almost too polite, if such a thing is possible. But they were just as tired of hearing Jinx talk as the others were; so Alice said: “Come on, Emma; let’s go play with the little girl.” And they got up and ruffled out their feathers and waddled sedately across the road and up the path to the house.
The little girl was delighted to have someone to play with, and she put the ducks in the carriage with the two dolls and pretended that they were the neighbour’s children, and that she had to look after them while their mother was out shopping. And she pretended that they might catch cold and wrapped them up in a little blanket, and Alice and Emma were so polite that they let her do it, although it was so hot that they nearly boiled.
Then the little girl said: “Are you comfortable, darlings?”
And Emma said: “Quack, quack!”
“Oh!” said the little girl. “She can say: ‘Mamma!’” And Emma had to keep on quacking for quite a long time while the little girl hopped up and down and clapped her hands.
By and by the little girl got tired of this and said she would take them for a ride, so she wheeled them down the path and out into the road. Then she saw a bright blue butterfly and ran off across the field after it, leaving the dolls’ baby carriage standing in the road at the top of the hill, near where the animals were resting.
Jinx was still talking about bicycles.
“I can ride backwards, and with both paws off the handle bars, and I can ride up and down stairs——”
“Oh, stop talking such foolishness!” said Henrietta. “You couldn’t ride a bicycle. Your legs aren’t long enough to reach the pedals.”
“They wouldn’t have to be,” said Jinx. “I could do all that going down hill. Just start at the top, and whizzz!—down you go at sixty miles an hour! And——”
“Oh, stop talking!” exclaimed Henrietta. “I never heard such an animal! Brag, brag, brag! That’s all there is to you! You wouldn’t dare ride down that hill in that doll carriage there!”
“Ho!” said Jinx. “That’s nothing! That’s so easy it isn’t worth bothering about.”
“All right,” said Henrietta. “Let’s see you do it, then.”
“I suppose you think I can’t?” said Jinx.
“I think you won’t,” said Henrietta bluntly.
Jinx got up and walked over to the doll carriage and climbed into it beside Alice and Emma and the two dolls.
“Why, it isn’t anything,” he said. “It isn’t anything at all! Just slide down that hill? Pooh!” But he didn’t seem very anxious to start.
“Please get out of the carriage, Jinx,” said Emma. “There isn’t room for all of us in here.”
“Are you really going to slide down the hill, Jinx?” asked Alice. “Because if you are, I’m going to get out.”
“Slide down that hill?” said Jinx. “And climb all the way back up again in the hot sun, just to prove I can do it? Huh! I should say not! If they don’t believe me—well, they needn’t, that’s all!”
All the animals had waked up by now and had come out into the road.
“You don’t dare slide down the hill,” they shouted. “’Fraid cat! Coward!” And Freddy made up a verse and sang it while he danced around the carriage on his hind legs.
“’Fraid cat Jinx,
His tail’s full of kinks!
He doesn’t dare slide down the hill!
See how he shrinks!”
Now Jinx had no intention of sliding down the hill, which was a good mile long, with a curve at the bottom, and he was thinking hard for some good excuse. But while he was hesitating, Freddy bumped against the wheel of the carriage and gave it just enough of a push to start it slowly down the hill.
“Hey! What are you doing?” yelled Jinx, too frightened to jump.
The animals stopped shouting and stood with their mouths open as the doll carriage gathered speed and shot away from them down the steep hill. They heard the scared quacking of Alice and Emma, and saw their little white heads peering fearfully out; they saw Jinx holding on for dear life with all his twenty claws as the carriage jumped and bounded from side to side of the road. And then it grew smaller and smaller and disappeared round the curve.
The animals were very much frightened, and they started down the hill as fast as they could go. Half-way down they heard a great noise behind them, and it was the little girl, who was coming after them, crying and sobbing at the loss of her dolls.
“That bad cat!” she wailed. “That bad, wicked cat! He stole my doll carriage and ran off with my dollies!”
The animals waited until she caught up, and Hank knelt down and let her climb up on his back. Then they went on.
Pretty soon they got to the curve at the foot of the hill. They went round it, and there was a bridge crossing a wide stream, and half-way across the bridge lay the doll carriage, upside down, and a very wet Jinx, with a bruise over one eye, was crawling up on to the bank out of the water. And out in the middle of the stream Alice and Emma were swimming about and quacking as if nothing had happened.
A very wet Jinx was crawling up onto the bank.
When the carriage had turned over, it had been going so fast that the ducks and the dolls and the cat had been thrown way up over the top of the bridge into the w
ater. The dolls had sunk, and the cat had sunk, too, for a few minutes and had had a hard time getting ashore, for he wasn’t much of a swimmer in spite of his bragging. But Alice and Emma hadn’t minded a bit.
As soon as Jinx saw his friends, he tried to look as if he had done it on purpose.
“There!” he said. “I guess you won’t dare me to do anything again! I guess I did it, didn’t I? I guess you haven’t got much to say!”
But the little girl jumped down from Hank’s back and went over to him and began slapping him good and hard.
“You bad cat!” she cried. “You bad, bad cat! Where are my dollies?”
Jinx made himself as small as possible and put his head down between his paws and let her spank him. It didn’t hurt as much as she thought it did, and as he said afterwards to Freddy—“it knocked all the water out of my fur.”
But Alice and Emma dived for the dolls and brought them up and laid them on the bank to dry. And after a while, when the little girl was tired of spanking Jinx, she put them into the carriage again and Mrs. Wiggins pushed it back up the hill for her. But the little girl rode up on Hank’s back.
After that, Jinx didn’t talk so much. And if he did begin to boast, all the animals had to do was to say: “Kidnapper! Doll-stealer! Who got spanked by a girl?” And he would curl up and pretend to go to sleep.
XI
And now at last one day when the animals had been walking all morning through wild and swampy woods, they came out at the top of a long slope that, went down to a wide valley in which were many green trees and comfortable-looking, white houses. A soft wind blew over the valley, and puffed into their faces a sweet delicious perfume, that none of them had ever smelt before. They sniffed the air delightedly.
“Mmmmmm!” said Mrs. Wiggins. “Isn’t that good? It’s better than clover. I wonder what it is.”
“I know,” said Jack. “I’ve smelt it at weddings. See all those little green trees down there? They’re orange-trees, and that smell is orange-blossoms.”
Freddy Goes to Florida Page 5