Freddy and the Ignormus

by Walter R. Brooks

  “You don’t have to tell me,” said the frog. “Your tail’s come uncurled. Well, I’m scared too. C-come on.”

  If the race into the woods had been to decide which of them was the braver, the race out was to decide which was the scareder. And it too was a tie. They both reached the road at the same moment. And almost fell over a large grey rat who was plodding along the middle of it.

  “Simon!” exclaimed Freddy. “What are you doing here? See here, you’re not living in the neighborhood again, are you?” And he frowned, or at least tried to, for it is pretty hard to frown if you haven’t any eyebrows.

  The rat, who had looked startled to see Freddy, recovered himself and smiled an oily smile.

  “My old friend, Freddy!” he said. “Dear, dear; what a pleasure to be sure! And how are all those other funny animals? And the good Beans?”

  “Dear, dear; what a pleasure!”

  “It’s no pleasure to me,” said Freddy shortly. “And I may say that the other animals, and the good Beans, are quite ready to chase you out of the county again, as they did before, if they catch you up to any of your old thieving tricks.”

  Simon’s long yellow teeth gleamed wickedly under his twitching whiskers. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, Freddy,” he said, “but hard words cannot hurt me. You always were a big talker, but I can’t remember that you ever did much.” He snickered. “Remember up in the barn that night when you broke your tooth on the toy locomotive?” He turned to Theodore. “Freddy thought it was me he had hold of. Snapped one of his beautiful white teeth right off. We made up a song about it:

  Freddy the sleuth,

  He busted a tooth—

  “That’ll do for you, Simon,” said the pig angrily. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d left the country.”

  “I don’t see that it’s any of your business, pig,” said the rat. “This is a public road. I’ve got as good a right here as you. But I don’t mind telling you. I’ve been visiting my relatives out in Iowa. That’s a great place, Freddy. Lots of pigs in Iowa. But they don’t make poetry. No, no. Out in Iowa the pigs make pork. Pork, not poetry, Freddy. You ought to take a little trip out there. Hey, quit!” he squealed, as Freddy made a sudden rush for him.

  But Freddy was too exhausted by his gallop through the woods to chase Simon very far. He gave up, and the rat, who had dived into the ditch, climbed back on the road. “Smarty!” he grinned.

  “All right, Simon,” said Freddy. “I’ve warned you.”

  “Why, so you have, pig,” replied the rat. “So it’s only fair that I should warn you in turn. I judge by the speed with which you came out of the Big Woods, that something was after you. A bit foolhardy to venture in there, weren’t you? When I lived in this neighborhood, I found out some things about the Big Woods that you smart farm animals don’t know. I don’t like you, Freddy, as you may have gathered, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t want to see you eaten up. And so I’m warning you—don’t go into the Big Woods again. The next time he’ll get you.”

  “He?” said Theodore. “Who?”

  Simon lowered his voice. “Come over here,” he said, crossing to the Beans’ side of the road. “He’s probably listening now, and it’s just as well if he doesn’t hear us talking about him. I can’t tell you much about him, except his name, and that he’s very big and ferocious, and walks very, very quietly. And then, from be hind a tree—pounce! Snip-snap! No more Freddy!”

  “Nonsense!” said Freddy. “There’s nothing in there. We didn’t see anything. We-we were just having a race.”

  “That’s what I gathered,” said the rat with a snicker. “You were racing him, and you won—this time. Well, I shan’t be able to say, ‘I told you so,’ because when the Ignormus gets you, there won’t be any Freddy to say it to.”

  “The what?” asked Theodore.

  “The Ignormus,” said Simon. “Well, now I’ve warned you. Good-bye, gentlemen.”

  “I don’t like the s-sound of that much,” said Theodore when Simon had gone off down the road.

  “Pshaw,” said Freddy, “don’t let that upset you. Simon is the worst liar in three counties. If he tells you anything, you can be pretty sure that the truth is something different. Anyway, Theodore, we have explored the Big Woods.”

  “And got g-good and scared,” said the frog. “I guess I was wrong to say that you couldn’t be brave and cowardly at the same tut-tut, I mean time. Because we were brave too, to go in at all.”

  “I guess,” said Freddy, “that all brave deeds are like that. Only later, when the people who did them tell about them, they forget the cowardly part. Maybe it would be just as well if we did the same thing. After all, we did go in.—But, my goodness, I must get down to the farm and tell the animals that Simon and his gang are back in the country again. We’ll have to do something about that. Come along, Theodore.”

  Chapter 3

  Jinx, the cat, had company. His sister, Minx, had come to pay him a visit. All the animals had been very anxious to meet her, for Jinx had talked about her a good deal, and if what he said was so, she was the smartest animal that ever lived. According to Jinx, she was almost as smart as he was. She had belonged for several years to a purser on a steamship and she had been to Europe and to South America and to a lot of countries that the animals had never even-heard of.

  That afternoon Mrs. Wiggins, the cow, and her two sisters, Mrs. Wogus and Mrs. Wurzburger, had given a party for Minx in the cow barn. It had been a nice party, for Mrs. Bean had baked a cake for it, and the cows had been able to use the new paper napkins the Beans had given them for Christmas. They were very handsome napkins; Some were blue and some were pink, and they all had a big W in one corner, surrounded with a wreath of flowers. The W was nice, because it stood for all three of their names.

  But Minx hadn’t made as big a hit at the party as Jinx hoped she would. The animals liked her all right, but they agreed that she was pretty irritating. For there wasn’t anything you could mention that she didn’t know all about, and if you’d seen a big something, she’d seen a bigger on her travels. And she’d really quite hurt Mrs. Wiggins’ feelings. For when the napkins were brought out, everybody praised them and said how handsome they were, and Minx said they were indeed the most superior paper napkins she had ever seen. But she didn’t have the sense to leave it at that. She went on to say that on the last cruise she had taken, the napkins on the boat were pure linen, with the name of the ship woven right in them.

  Even Jinx got a little mad at this, and he said: “Oh, what’s the matter with you, Sis? You’ll wipe your whiskers on these paper napkins, and like it.”

  So Minx saw what she had done, and she apologized very prettily. But a minute later, when Alice, one of the ducks, began telling how she had once ridden on a baby elephant at the circus, Minx interrupted before Alice had finished to tell how one time in Africa, she had taken a long trip through the jungle on the back of an elephant, eight feet high.

  When the cake had all been eaten up, the animals went out to try the swing that Mr. Bean had just put up for them on the apple tree by the side of the cow barn. A lot of Mr. Bean’s neighbors laughed at him for doing things like that for his animals. They said it was silly for a farmer to put muslin curtains in the windows of the cow barn, and electric lights and a revolving door in the henhouse, and to encourage his animals to play games, and learn to read, and take vacations. But Mr. Bean didn’t bother to argue. When people said things like that to him, he just grunted and said: “Whose animals are they?” They didn’t get much satisfaction out of him.

  None of the animals had tried the swing yet, and at first they all stood around and looked at it and said: “You try it, Robert.” “Why don’t you get in it, Alice?” “Go on, Jinx, you show ’em.” But nobody got in, until at last Charles, the rooster, said he’d take a swing if Mrs. Wiggins would push him.

  Charles tried to make out that he was pretty brave to be the first one, but of course he had wings, and if he fell out
, all he’d have to do was spread his wings and fly down to the ground. He stood on the seat and Mrs. Wiggins pushed him—back and forth, back and forth, higher and higher. Charles was so excited that he crowed all the time, and Mrs. Bean heard him and came to the kitchen door to see what was going on. “My land,” she said, “that looks like fun. I haven’t done that since I was twelve years old.” And she sat down to watch.

  Charles liked swinging so much that they had a hard time getting him to give the other animals a chance at it. But finally he got down, and Jinx jumped on the seat. So Mrs. Wiggins swung him, and she swung Robert and Georgie, the two dogs, and Henrietta, Charles’s wife, and Minx—who said that in South America they used to swing on the long trailing creepers that hung from the trees, a hundred feet long or more. And then Mrs. Wiggins said she guessed she’d try it herself if Hank, the old white horse, would swing her.

  Mrs. Wiggins had some trouble getting into the swing, partly because she was so big, and partly because she got to laughing. But Robert and Georgie held the seat and she got in finally, and Hank started to push her. Everybody thought she’d get scared when the swing began to go, but she didn’t. “Land sakes, it’s just like flying,” she said. “Swing me higher, Hank.” And then as the swing swooped down: “Whee!” she yelled.

  Well it certainly was quite a sight to see, a cow flying through the air and up among the green apple boughs—although of course Minx said she’d seen cows performing on a trapeze many times in Holland. But it came to a very sudden end. For just as Mrs. Wiggins was coming down on the highest swing yet, and had started to shout “Whee!” again, around the corner of the cowbarn dashed Freddy. He hadn’t seen what was going on, and without knowing it he ran right across the path of the swing, and Mrs. Wiggins hit him squarely. Her hind legs shot under him and he was scooped up as a ball is scooped up by a golf club, and tossed right over the ring of animals who were looking on, into a very large and very thick and very prickly barberry bush.

  … he was scooped up

  Everybody said, “Oh, my goodness!” and ran over to the bush, and Minx began telling about a pig she knew in Mexico who had jumped into a hedge of prickly pear, which had much longer thorns than barberry and which—

  “Oh, keep still, Sis,” said Jinx. “Nobody cares about your old pig. We’ve got to see if Freddy’s hurt.”

  And just then Freddy’s head poked up out of the middle of the bush. He looked mad and scared and surprised and worried and determined, and so the animals knew he wasn’t hurt, because if he had felt any pain he couldn’t have had all those other feelings too. But Jinx asked him if he was hurt, because that is the natural thing to ask in such circumstances.

  “No, I’m not hurt,” said Freddy. “But somebody else is going to be, when I get out of here. Playing a trick like that on me!”

  “Nobody played any trick,” said Mrs. Wogus. “You got in my sister’s way when she was swinging. And—oh, my goodness—that reminds me. Did anybody stop her?”

  They all turned and looked. Sure enough, nobody had stopped the swing, and as Mrs. Wiggins didn’t know how to stop it herself, there she was still swinging back and forth and trying, as she swooped up and down, to see what had happened to Freddy.

  When they had stopped the swing and got Mrs. Wiggins out of it—and that wasn’t an easy job either—they looked around for Freddy. But Freddy hadn’t moved. His head was still sticking out of the bush, in the same place.

  “For goodness sake,” said Jinx, “are you going to stay there all night? You look like the last peach on the tree, with all those leaves around you. What are you doing—writing a poem?”

  “I can’t get out,” said Freddy crossly. “Every time I move a thorn sticks into me in a new place. You might help me a little.”

  Jinx shook his head. “I don’t know, Freddy,” he said. “We’d have to tear the bush all apart, and you know how fond Mrs. Bean is of it. I guess you’ll just have to stay there. If you just stay still it won’t be so bad. We’ll bring your meals to you.”

  “You wait till I get out of here, cat,” said Freddy furiously. “I’ll fix you.”

  “That’s just it,” said Jinx. “I guess I’ll just have to wait. I guess—”

  “Oh, come along, Jinx,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “Let’s get him out. You’ve had your fun.” And she began pulling at the long thorny stems.

  The other animals helped her, and so of course did Jinx. Freddy yelled a bit, but they got him out finally, and then looked him over carefully.

  “If any of the scratches are very deep,” said Alice, “you ought to have Mrs. Bean put iodine on them.”

  Freddy said quickly that they didn’t hurt a bit.

  “You ought to get a few more,” said Jinx. “That kind of criss-cross marking looks well on your skin. I always say a pattern’s prettier than just a plain color.”

  “I’ll put some marks on you!” exclaimed Freddy, and went after the cat, who ran up the apple tree.

  So then Mrs. Wiggins explained what had happened, and said how sorry she was, and showed Freddy the swing, and he got into it to try it. And he was just getting going good, with Hank to push him, when he suddenly remembered that he hadn’t told them about Simon. “Oh, I meant to tell you,” he called, and in his eagerness he let go of the ropes, and the swing swooped up and tossed him right back into the barberry bush again.

  Jinx laughed until he almost fell out of the apple tree. “My goodness,” he said, when Freddy’s head appeared again in the middle of the bush, “you certainly are persistent! I suppose you’re where the word pig-headed comes from. If you wanted to stay in that bush, why didn’t you say so, and we wouldn’t have got you out.”

  Some of the other animals seemed inclined to agree with the cat, for they had all got more or less scratched helping Freddy out the first time. But when Jinx came down from the tree and started tugging at the spiny branches, they went to work and got him out. “And now if you go back in there again,” said Mrs. Wurzburger, who had pulled at a branch with her mouth and got some prickers in her tongue, “you can just stay there.”

  But Freddy had had enough. He thanked the animals and trotted off home. It wasn’t until he was back in his study in the pigpen, and had put some camphor ice on the scratches to make them stop smarting, that it occurred to him that he hadn’t told them about Simon. And what was even more important, he hadn’t told them that he had been in the Big Woods.

  “I guess I’d better call a meeting tonight,” he thought. “I’ll get busy and write out my petition and then prepare my speech.”

  Chapter 4

  The summer that Mr. and Mrs. Bean went abroad, they left the animals in charge of the farm. And in order to run things properly, the animals formed the First Animal Republic and elected Mrs. Wiggins President. Of course after the Beans got back and took charge again, there was no special need for a government of this kind, but sometimes things came up that the animals didn’t want to bother Mr. Bean with, and so they kept the F.A.R. as a going concern, with Mrs. Wiggins in office, and a small standing army of rabbits to run errands and so on. Besides, the animals were pretty proud of being citizens of the only republic of animals, by animals, and for animals in the world. It was, as Charles had said in one of his many speeches, an honor and a privilege which he, for one, would not lightly forego.

  So when Freddy wanted to call a general meeting, he had first of all to send a petition to the President. So he wrote it out on the dusty old typewriter that he had in his study.

  Hon. Mrs. Wiggins,

  President, First Animal Republic,

  Bean Farm, N. Y.

  Your Excellency:

  It having come to my attention that a notorious robber, to wit, one Simon, a rat, has been seen in this vicinity; and it being my firm conviction that the presence of said Simon is a danger and a menace to the peace of our beloved state; and it being further my hunch that said Simon is up to mischief: therefore I do most humbly petition Your Excellency to call this same evening a
general meeting of citizens, to debate and take counsel upon such measures as may be necessary to preserve the peace and security of our glorious republic.

  (Signed) Freddy

  When he had written this out, he went to the door and called a passing sparrow, and asked him to take it at once to Mrs. Wiggins.

  Of course Freddy could just have gone over to the cowbarn and said: “Simon’s back. How about a meeting tonight?” But affairs of state are not conducted in such an offhand manner. Mrs. Wiggins as a friend who had just knocked him into a barberry bush, and Mrs. Wiggins as President of the F.A.R. were two very different people. Freddy might, and probably would, talk the matter over with her as between friends later, but now he was addressing her as president of a sovereign state of which he was a citizen. He had to put on a lot of dignity, because if he didn’t, none of the others would either, and pretty soon when Mrs. Wiggins gave an official order, nobody would pay any attention to it.

  As soon as Mrs. Wiggins got the petition, she sent for Jinx and Robert, and had them hoist the flag of the F.A.R. This was a good deal like the American flag, with two stars for Mr. and Mrs. Bean, and thirteen stripes, for the thirteen animals who had gone on that first historic trip to Florida. Usually it was only flown on holidays, like the Fourth of July, and Washington’s and Lincoln’s Birthdays, and May Third, which was the anniversary of the founding of the F.A.R. But when it was flown on any other day, it was a signal to all the animals that there was to be a general meeting that night.

  When the flag was up, Mrs. Wiggins called out the standing army. Twenty-eight rabbits responded, and after putting them through a short drill, she sent them out into the woods and pastures, and along by the creek, to tell any animals who didn’t notice that the flag was up, about the meeting.

  When Freddy climbed up into the front seat of the old phaeton beside Mrs. Wiggins that night to address the meeting, the big barn was crowded to the doors.