in the meantime, while watch the dog was busy in the barn, stripes skunk’s kittens came dashing up calling, “come! quick, quick! come!” and what do you suppose they’d found? an oil-can that fell off the mowing machine and got raked up in the hay. its spout was broken off so it didn’t hold any more oil, but it wasn’t empty. great grass-seeds, no!
it held a mouse. and she was squealing away inside, making the funniest, tinniest sound, like talking into a teapot. “i’m nibble rabbit’s friend! i’ve got something dreadfully important to tell him. call nibble rabbit!”
they did call nibble. he came a-hopping. he squeezed in as close as ever he could get to that oil-can. “well!” he exclaimed, “if it isn’t the lady mouse who saved my life when ouphe the rat was after me! you needn’t worry, ma’am. my hunting friends won’t hurt you.”
“they can’t,” chuckled the mouse. “even ouphe’s wicked grandsons couldn’t. they gnawed my front door till their teeth ached but they couldn’t make it any bigger, and even their grabby paws wouldn’t reach to the bottom of it. but i’ve sat here listening and listening and squirming in my skin because they were listening, too, so i couldn’t get out to warn you. this is what i heard:
“all the mice from the woods and fields are living in the stack of grain tommy peele’s father grew to feed the cows in the winter time. not just a few of us, like other years, but hundreds and hundreds all nibbling and destroying it. before long there won’t be anything left. then, the rats say, the cows will go wild and the men will starve, and the mice will have all these houses and barns and everything else that’s in them. but the rats will rule over them. you know what that means. i’d rather have men.”
nibble rabbit’s face was as long as his ears when he backed out of the haystack. and he repeated every word the lady mouse had just been telling him.
“hm!” remarked stripes skunk who had been listening with his head on one side. “looks to me as if it was time for us woodsfolk to do something. let’s call a meeting. doctor muskrat, chaik jay, and tad coon are still to be heard from. here, sons,” he waved a paw, “go bring them.” and off scuttled his three kittens.
well, to make a long story short, a meeting they had. but little good did it do them. the mice were in the stack; they didn’t have to leave it for any reason, and unless they did, none of the woodsfolk could catch them.
“urr-wrr!” growled watch uneasily after the fiftieth time they’d been over the question. “we might do something if we could make the cat talk with us.”
you ought to have seen the woodsfolk prick up their ears when watch the dog spoke of the cat. nobody else knew a single thing about her, but instead of listening to what watch had to say they all began to talk at once—isn’t that always the way?
“what good can that cat do? she’s a sneak and a liar,” said nibble rabbit.
“a cat has no friends—she always hunts alone,” put in stripes skunk.
“she’s a lazy, greedy, ill-mannered brute,” said tad.
“dear me,” grinned watch, “what an awful creature she must be, to hear you tell about her. let’s have doctor muskrat’s opinion.”
“i don’t know anything,” answered the wise old beast, “but i suspect she’s like these white ducks i’ve been hunting with the last few days. they’d be dreadful fools to a wild duck’s way of thinking, but they’ve taught me a lot. maybe that cat would teach us a lot more. eh, watch? what about her?”
“you’re all of you right,” sniffed watch, thoughtfully cocking one ear. “for the first three months i spent on this farm i don’t think i was ever without one of her claw-marks on me. so i used to hate her. and you’re all of you wrong, too.” he cocked the other ear. “once she taught me to chase my own rats and gnaw my own bones i learned there isn’t a creature in fur honester or with better manners. she’s friends with nobody, yet i feel mighty friendly toward her. man-ways or beast-ways, she knows more than all of us put together. she could teach us a lot, but she won’t. yet if she chose to advise us, without giving a single reason, i’d do exactly what she said and trust her for the rest. she’s clever!”
“well, watch,” came a purring voice from nowhere in particular (it was pretty dark by now), “if that’s the way you feel, i’ll tell you this. be on foot here tomorrow night and you’ll see the last mouse blow to the woods on the sunset wind.” the voice stopped. it certainly was mrs. tabitha puss-cat who had been talking, but crane their necks as they would, nobody could see a sign of her.
nibble sat down and scratched his collar with his hind foot, he was that puzzled about it. “well,” he gasped, “what do you s’pose she meant?”
“i don’t know,” watch answered, “but she must have had a reason of her own.”
“i did,” said the puss-cat voice, and there mrs. tabitha stood right beside him, purring. “until we get these mice cleaned off this farm i want to make a compact with your friends. if they won’t hunt me i won’t hunt them.” she looked specially at tad coon.
“by the curl in the bull-frog’s tail.” tad exclaimed admiringly. “you are a clever one. oh, mice, what a lot of claws you’ll find a-waiting for you.” of course the woodsfolk were willing to be friends.
but the cat hadn’t told all her reason. she knew killer the weasel had just crawled into that mouse’s straw-stack. she didn’t want to be the one to fight him when he came out again. and she knew just when and why he was coming. that was a secret, too.
how did mrs. tabitha puss-cat know the mice were going to leave their straw-stack at sundown the very next evening? because she knew there wouldn’t be any stack left for them to stay in, or any grain left to eat. up at the house tommy peele’s father had just been saying: “better go to bed early, young fellow, if you’re going to stay home from school tomorrow to help me with the thrashing.”
you know what thrashing is. a great big engine comes puffing into the barnyard with a great big machine that shakes all the fat little grains out of their thin little chaff overcoats. tommy peele’s father thrashed at the very last, latest end of the season, because he knew those fat little grains would keep on getting fatter even after their stems were cut off, if he just piled them up into a nice stack and let them go quietly off to sleep for the winter. they hide a lot of good food in their hollow stems; the furry folk aren’t the only ones who get ready for the hungry season.
“toot-toot!” whistled the engine. “fsssh!” it sent up a cloud of steam. “clank, clank, squeak, squeak, cough!” went the thrashing machine. then “wurr-wurr-wurr,” its tongue began to lick up the bundles of straw with the grains all wrapped up on the ends of their stalks. it licked so fast that the men who were feeding it could hardly keep up with its appetite. “whish,” came the straw tumbling out of a long hollow arm with a crook on the end of it that spread the straw into a new pile.
and you ought to have seen the little overcoats go sailing off in the wind. but the sleepy little grains didn’t know anything about it. they came pouring out of the side of that machine, all nice and warm, and snuggled together in a comfortable sack, ready to be stored away—where the mice couldn’t get them—for tommy’s own hungry season.
watch wanted to shake himself by the scruff of his own furry neck for not thinking about it. now he knew what that cat meant. the new strawpile grew bigger and bigger; the old stack, where the mice were hidden, grew smaller and smaller. those foolish mice soon wouldn’t have any stack left to hide in. pretty soon they’d have to begin coming out—but he didn’t know who else was coming! the cat didn’t tell him.
