“You think they’d chew them up instead?”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Freddy. He drew up to Mr. Weezer’s desk and took a sheet of paper and a pencil and began lettering a sign. It read:
ATTENTION MICE!!
These newspapers are provided by the management for your convenience. Use them freely, but please do not disturb any other papers. Free cheese will be distributed every Thursday as long as you comply with this request.
by HENRY WEEZER, President.
Mr. Weezer read it, said: “Good!” and passed it to Mr. Barclay. “See that this is taken care of at once,” he said. “And while you’re at it go out and buy a couple pounds of cheese.”
Mr. Barclay hesitated. “That’ll look sort of funny on the quarterly statement,” he said. “Under ‘Expenses’—two pounds of cheese.”
“Nobody ever reads our quarterly statement anyway,” said Mr. Weezer. “But I’ll explain it to the Board at our next meeting.” And then when Mr. Barclay had gone he thanked the two animals warmly. “You come and see me again in three or four days,” he said. “If this works, maybe I can figure out something that will help Mr. Boomschmidt more than lending him a few dollars on an old rhinoceros.”
From the bank, the two animals walked over to the jail. The prisoners were having a snowball fight in the jail yard. They were all bundled up warm except the sheriff, who was refereeing. He was dressed as he always was, winter and summer, in his shirtsleeves, with his silver star pinned on his vest. When he saw Freddy he left the game and went over and invited the animals into his office.
“Glad you came,” he said. “I was getting pretty chilly.” He shivered and broke a small icicle off the end of his moustache. “Pull chairs up to the stove and tell us the news.”
“I should think you’d be frozen,” said Freddy. “Why don’t you wear a coat?”
“Well, I tell you,” said the sheriff. “Folks in this town expect their sheriff to be a pretty tough character. If they thought I was a sissy they wouldn’t vote for me. But when they see me out there in the cold in my shirtsleeves, they say: ‘My land, our sheriff’s a pretty tough customer! He’s the kind of man we want.’ And next election I get their votes. It’s just politics.” He shivered. “It ain’t much fun and it don’t make sense, but you got to give folks what they expect.”
“Is that why you carry that pistol sticking out of your hip pocket?” Jinx asked.
The sheriff laughed. “I carried a pistol my first term in office,” he said. “Though it wasn’t ever loaded. But it was pretty heavy, so I sawed off the butt and had it just sewed into the pocket so it sticks out. Now when I get me a new pair of pants, I have ’em made complete with a pistol butt in the hip pocket.”
“I know a way you could make people think you were even tougher,” said Freddy. And when the sheriff appeared interested, he said: “Well, you know if anybody owns a big fierce dog, they always think he’s a pretty tough man. Well, suppose you had a pet rhinoceros?”
“Well, suppose you had a pet rhinoceros?”
“A pet rhinoceros, eh?” said the sheriff. “Why yes; yes, that would be—” He stopped suddenly. “Hey, what are you trying to put over on me?” He demanded. “You got a rhinoceros you’re trying to get rid of or something?”
“We’re not trying to put anything over,” Freddy protested. “Wait, I’ll tell you.” And he told the sheriff about Jerry’s visit, and Mr. Boomschmidt’s trouble. “You see,” he said, “we want to get the circus started again, and we want to keep Jerry until we do. But we can’t ask Mr. Bean to feed him all the rest of the winter. He eats an awful lot of hay, and the hay crop wasn’t very good last summer; Mr. Bean has only got about enough in the barn to take care of his own animals. I know you’ve got a lot of hay in the barn back of the jail that the prisoners cut last July—”
“That hay belongs to the county,” said the sheriff. “I can’t just use it to feed stray rhinoceroses. What would the taxpayers say?”
“I see,” said Freddy. “Well, you feed the prisoners out of county money. Suppose the rhinoceros was a prisoner. Suppose you arrested him and put him in jail. You’d have to feed him then.”
“What can I arrest him for?” the sheriff asked. “He ain’t broke any laws. There ain’t any law against being a rhinoceros. Though I don’t know,” he added thoughtfully, “when you look at one of the critters you wonder sometimes why there isn’t.”
“Couldn’t you keep him as a sort of watchdog?” Jinx asked.
“Wait a minute,” said the sheriff. “I got an idea. I’d like to help you boys out if I can, and I just thought: I’m allowed a certain amount of money for recreation and entertainment for the prisoners. Suppose I took him as a pet for the boys, eh? Is he broke to harness? Some of ’em’s been after me to get ’em a pony—maybe this would do.”
Freddy said: “He’s not broken to harness. But he’s goodnatured. He isn’t very bright, though.”
“That would be all right,” the sheriff said. “Most of the prisoners ain’t any too bright, either. He’d fit right in. I wouldn’t want to bring in an animal that was brighter than the prisoners are; they might think I was trying to teach ’em something, and prisoners and school kids are a lot alike: there ain’t anything that makes ’em madder than to think you’re trying to teach ’em something.” He smiled at the two animals. “Well, that’s settled. You bring Jerry down. I’ll keep him for you for a while, anyway.”
Chapter 4
Next day Freddy took Jerry down to the jail. The rhinoceros was feeling much better, and before they went Freddy had him plow out a path to the pigpen. He just took Jerry out into the barnyard and pointed him up the slope towards the pigpen and said: “Go!” and Jerry put his head down and shut his eyes and went. He went through the deep snow like a baby tank, and it was lucky that Freddy hadn’t pointed him directly at the pigpen, but a little to one side, for even if he’d had his eyes open, they were so weak that he probably wouldn’t have seen it, and if he’d hit it he would have knocked it into smithereens. Indeed, he went on quite a distance beyond it before he heard Freddy yelling to him to stop. But now Freddy had his path open, and he hadn’t shoveled it himself either.
Freddy and Jinx spent the rest of the day trying to find out if any of the birds in the neighborhood had heard or seen anything of Leo. For they were worried about the lion. He had started north the same time Jerry had, “and he must have got into trouble,” Freddy said, “or he’d have been here by this time.” But the birds hadn’t heard anything—or rather, they had heard too much. For the sky is always full of gossip; everything that happens is seen and noted by some bird or other, and is passed on from beak to beak in the continual chatter of the birds, so that if a boy gets spanked in Texas it is known twenty-four hours later in Maine. But the trouble is that the story changes a good deal in the telling. Each bird adds a little as he passes it on, just as people do when they repeat a bit of gossip, so that after it has been repeated half a dozen times it isn’t very much like what originally happened. And so Freddy and Jinx got a lot of interesting stories about strange animals that had been seen here and there, but none of them sounded much like Leo.
“The only thing to do,” said Freddy, “is to paint a picture of Leo and show it to the birds. You can do that, Jinx.”
“I can’t paint from memory,” said the cat. “If you had Leo here, so he could pose for me—”
“Well, he isn’t here,” said Freddy. “Look, I’ll pose for you—as Leo.” He went up to the pigpen and found a wig of long yellow curls that he had used as one of his disguises when he was doing detective work, and a piece of rope with a frayed-out end. He put the wig on for a mane, and tied the rope on for a tail, and then he came down into Jinx’s studio and stretched out in as lion like a pose as he could assume, with his head held proudly high and a very noble and snooty expression on his usually kindly face. “How’s that?” he said.
“You don’t look much like a lion,” said Jinx. “Golly, I don
’t know what you do look like!” Then he began to laugh. “Yes, I do, too. You look like a pig dressed up as a little girl. A nice little girl.” And he laughed harder than ever.
“Oh, shut up!” said Freddy crossly. “Little girls don’t have long tails.”
“Lions don’t have long snouts, either,” said Jinx. “Look, can’t you sort of snarl?”
Freddy curled his lip up. It wasn’t a very good snarl. It just made him look sort of half-witted, but the cat didn’t want to make him mad, so he said: “OK,” and picked up his brush and went to work. He didn’t want to laugh any more, but of course he had to keep looking at Freddy, and every time he looked at him his whiskers twitched and he sort of shook inside. Until at last Freddy said: “What’s the matter—are you trying not to sneeze?”
Freddy curled his lip up.
“Nose itches,” said Jinx, and he took a paint rag and scrubbed his nose to hide the grin that kept pulling the corners of his mouth up towards his ears. When he took the rag down he had smeared yellow paint all over his nose, and that made Freddy laugh, so then Jinx was able to laugh too, and they both laughed hard for quite a long time. And then Jinx went to work with his brush and slapped on the yellow paint—swish, swish, swish—with quick sweeps, and in a very short time he had his picture finished. It really did look a little like a lion.
They hung the picture up on the outside of the cow barn and then invited all the birds to come and look at it. Dozens came, and they chattered and twittered and giggled and made bad jokes about it the way birds do, but none of them could say that they had seen any animal that looked like that—indeed several of them said they didn’t believe there ever was such an animal. Freddy said: “I guess we’ll have to wait till the bluebirds and robins begin coming up from the south next month. They’re more likely to have seen Leo than the birds that stay around here all winter.”
But at last three chickadees came; they were from the southern part of the state and were visiting friends in Centerboro, and their names were Mr. and Mrs. Lemuel Spriggs and their daughter, Deedee. And when Deedee saw the picture she gave a weak little chirp and her eyes turned up and she fell right off her branch into the snow.
Mrs. Spriggs screamed and carried on like everything, and Mr. Spriggs tried to quiet her, but neither of them tried to help Deedee, and it was Jinx who waded out into the snow and picked her up in his mouth and carried her over to the back porch. He miaouwed and Mrs. Bean came and let him in, and he took the chickadee and put her in the cigar box under the stove where the mice slept. Mrs. Bean fed her milk with a medicine dropper, and by and by Deedee opened her eyes and said weakly: “Where am I?”
Well, Deedee came around all right and pretty soon she was hopping about the kitchen floor and picking up some crumbs that were left over from dinner, and the four mice watched her sharply with their beady little black eyes because the crumbs really belonged to them, but they didn’t like to say anything because she was a guest. Freddy tried to ask her what it was that had scared her so, but Mrs. Spriggs said: “Oh, no questions, please! The child has had a dreadful shock. She must have complete rest.”
Freddy said: “Well,” doubtfully, but Jinx said: “Nonsense! What scared you, Deedee?”
So then Deedee told them. She and some of her little friends had been playing tag around through the back yards of the town where they lived—it was a place called Tallmanville, in the southern part of the state. And they saw a piece of suet hanging outside a back window of one of the houses. Naturally they supposed it had been put there for them, since a good many people put out suet for birds in the wintertime, and they all gathered around and began pecking at it. And all of a sudden, out of the open window beside which it hung came a big paw which scooped up three of the chickadees and pulled them into the house. The others shrieked and flew off, but as she went, Deedee caught a glimpse of a large yellow animal which looked a good deal like this picture. That, said Deedee, was why the picture had scared her so.
“Why, Deedee,” said Mrs. Spriggs, “you never told me about this!” And she began to scold her daughter.
“I was afraid you’d tell papa,” said Deedee, “and he’s so brave—he’d have gone around there to beat up that animal and maybe got caught too. I didn’t want that.”
“Child’s making it all up,” said Mr. Spriggs. “Really, Deedee, a big yellow animal! No animal ever looked like that picture.”
“I’m not so sure,” Freddy said. “Tell me, Deedee; do you know who lived in that house?”
Deedee said sure she did; it was a Mrs. Guffin; she kept a pet shop.
“I know the place,” said Mr. Spriggs. “The front part of the house is the shop, with a show window with some dogs and cats and canaries in it.” He laughed. “You saw Mrs. Guffin, Deedee. She’s a big woman with yellow hair; looks a lot like this—what did you call him, Freddy—a lion?”
Freddy said: “Yes.” He looked thoughtfully at Deedee. “I think your father’s right, Deedee,” he said. “It could hardly have been a lion that you saw.”
“I should think not!” said Mrs. Spriggs crossly. “The child has just made the story up. She ought to be spanked.”
But Freddy said he thought that Deedee had been honestly mistaken, and shouldn’t be punished for that, and Mrs. Spriggs agreed with him; and they comforted Deedee, who had begun to cry because she thought she was going to get spanked, and gave her some bird seed from a can that Mrs. Bean kept handy for just such emergencies.
But when the Spriggs had gone, Freddy said: “I don’t know. It’s best to let them think that she really didn’t see a lion, because we don’t want a lot of talk. But suppose that was Leo she saw?”
“Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that,” said Jinx.
“We’ll just have to go down to that Tallmanville place and find out,” Freddy said. “Maybe it isn’t Leo but something’s happened to him or he’d be here by this time. We can’t take a chance. Why, he might be a prisoner in that house.”
“Sure, sure,” said Jinx. “But how are we going to get there? It’s two hundred miles.”
Freddy said: “We’ll hitchhike. I’ll wear one of my disguises—let’s see, I guess that old dress and Mrs. Bean’s big shawl over my head. I’ll be a poor old Irishwoman. Nobody would refuse to give a poor old Irishwoman a lift.”
It didn’t sound very good to Jinx, setting out on such a trip in the dead of winter. But though, like most cats, he liked the comforts of home, he was a good deal of an adventurer, too, and—well, this trip looked as if it might turn into a first class adventure. So he just said: “OK. When do we start?”
They started early next morning, and sure enough, as Freddy had predicted, they had not trudged along more than half a mile through the snow before a truck came rumbling up behind them and stopped, and the driver said: “Want a lift?”
“Ah, the blessings of the saints on ye, kind man,” said Freddy as he climbed in. “Would ye be drivin’ south, now?”
“Only to Centerboro,” said the man. “Is that your cat?”
“Sure and whose else would it be? Come, kitty; hop in, me little darlin’.”
Jinx jumped in and sat on Freddy’s lap and the truck went on.
“That’s a fine cat,” said the man. “Is he a good mouser?”
“Och, ‘mouser’ is it?” said Freddy. “Sure there’s not a mouse within ten miles dares show a whisker inside my house. You’d not think he was so ferocious to look at him, would you now?”
“You can’t tell to look at ’em,” said the man.
“Ain’t that the true word! Meek as Moses he looks, but a roarin’ lion he is when wid mice!” Freddy gave Jinx an affectionate hug. “Ah, but it’s a sweet ickle sing he is. He’s his mama’s ickle cutums, he is.”
Jinx, who disliked being made fun of, and specially when he couldn’t hit back, unsheathed his claws and dug them quietly into his friend’s shoulder. Freddy started violently, but the man didn’t notice.
“How far you going, ma’am?�
�� he asked.
“To Tallmanville.”
“That’s a long ways,” said the man, and he thought for a while and then said: “It’s a terrible year for mice. I expect it’s because there’s so much snow they’ve all come indoors, and they’re educated mice, too—they kick the traps over and spring them and then eat the bait. Last night they ate all the soap out of the soap dishes. And of course you can’t get a cat anywheres. All the kittens in the county are spoken for before they get their eyes open. So I tell you what I’ll do, ma’am; I’ll drive you right through to Tallmanville myself if you’ll let me have the loan of that cat. Just for a couple of weeks.”
Well, it would have been an easy way to get down to Tallmanville, but Freddy knew that Jinx would never consent. So he said: “That’s a fine generous offer and sorry I am that I can’t be takin’ it. For sure, what would I be doin’ without pantry protection those two weeks? It’s eatin’ me little house right out from under me the mice would be.”
The driver was a reasonable man and he agreed that that was probably true. So he dropped them on the outskirts of Centerboro, where the road into the town crossed the main road going south. Freddy thanked him, and they went on southward. There weren’t many cars on the road, and they walked several miles before one finally drove up behind them and stopped, and a woman’s voice said: “Want a lift?”
Freddy recognized that voice, and he recognized the hand, glittering and flashing with many rings, that came out of the car window and beckoned. It belonged to his old friend Mrs. Winfield Church. He thought he would see if he could fool Mrs. Church with his disguise, so he pulled the shawl closer around his face and when the chauffeur stepped out and opened the door, he climbed in and said: “Oh, ma’am, sure you’re very kind to a poor old widow woman. Hop in, kitty-my-love, and don’t be messin’ up the beautiful upholstery with your great clumsy wet paws.”
Freddy the Pied Piper Page 3
