“Well, if you put it that way,” said Freddy. He felt a little ashamed. For he really hadn’t done much. He had turned the weighing of scrap over to Ernest, Jr., and that was really about all he’d done. “How are you going to collect it?” he asked, as he climbed into the back seat beside Robert and Georgie.
“Wait and see,” said Jinx; and the dogs, and Sniffy Wilson, the skunk, who was sitting beside Jinx on the front seat, all giggled.
Freddy knew that there is no use trying to get anything out of a cat if he doesn’t want to tell you, so he didn’t say any more.
They drove into town through streets which were now silent and empty, for it was nearly midnight. At the corner of the first alley they came to, Hank stopped. “You wait here with the phaeton, Hank,” said Jinx. “Come on, gang. Quietly, now. Freddy, you’d better stay here too, this first stop. You can help load the stuff when we bring it out.”
“Look, Jinx,” said Freddy, “I don’t think you ought to take stuff that doesn’t belong to us, even if it is just junk. That’s stealing.”
“Stealing, nothing!” said the cat. “We can have anything that’s given to us—you said so yourself. Well, this stuff is going to be given to us, all right.” And Sniffy and the dogs giggled again.
Freddy went back and sat down in the phaeton, as the others melted into the darkness of the alley. There was no sound for perhaps five minutes. Then, high and clear through the stillness of the night, came the wail of a cat.
On and on went Jinx’s song, up and down the scale, from low gurgling yowls through anguished caterwaulings to a piercing screech that made Freddy’s tail uncurl. Jinx was giving it all he had.
Jinx was giving it all he had.
Hank shook his head. “I heard a lot of them opry singers on Mrs. Bean’s radio,” he said, “but I ain’t ever heard anything to equal that. There ain’t a one of ’em ever made my back teeth ache before. Lordy, they ache like—well, like the toothache, I guess.”
Freddy heard windows going up, and there were angry shouts, and then, as Jinx started on the second verse of his song, the thumps and rattles and crashes of an assortment of household goods that were being thrown down into the backyard where the yelling came from. But as Jinx stopped abruptly, presently the sound of the barrage died down, and after a few minutes of silence Freddy heard movements in the alley, and the animals came out.
Each of them was carrying something, and they piled their booty by the curb and went back for more, while Freddy got out and began loading it into the phaeton. When they had all made three or four trips, they scrambled aboard and Hank went on.
“You see, Freddy,” said Jinx, “people are pretty patriotic about this scrap iron drive. All I had to do was get out there and make an appeal for scrap, and you see how they came through. They gave me all I asked for. How much did we get?”
“There’s two small frying pans,” said Freddy, “an iron spider, and a flatiron, and two hammers, and an old brass lamp, and two rubber balls—we save rubber, don’t we?—and five or six pounds of small stuff—I don’t know what they are. But I don’t know, Jinx; it doesn’t seem quite right to me, to get people to throw things at you and then run off with them.”
“Well, for Pete’s sake!” exclaimed Jinx. “That’s the thanks I get for risking my life to bring in a little scrap. If those people had wanted all this junk, do you suppose they’d have thrown it at me? You act as if you thought I enjoyed having things thrown at me!”
“You do,” said Freddy.
“Well,” said Jinx with a grin, “to tell you the truth, I do. Always have, from a kitten. Ha, ho, those were the days. What moonlight sings we used to have, father and mother and all my brothers and sisters, lined up on the back fence. And what applause we got! Old bottles, shoes—I’ve seen old Mrs. McLanihan heave the whole contents of her kitchen, including the stove, at father when he was in good form. And how he could dodge! Jump over a skillet that was coming right at him without missing a note. Us kittens used to get hit now and then, but not father—not until that last terrible night.” Jinx shook his head sadly. “Father made a mistake that night. He picked out Joe Frawley’s back fence. Joe was pitcher on the Centerboro ball team. He let go with a potato masher, and it caught father just as he was hitting the G above high C. He never spoke again.”
“Who, Mr. Frawley?” asked Sniffy.
“No, you dope; father,” said Jinx disgustedly. “Well, Hank, draw up here. We’ll try this alley.”
So Jinx went through his act again, and they collected two old clocks, and some more kitchen utensils, and a horseshoe, and a sash weight and an electric toaster.
“The thing to do,” said Jinx, as they started off again, “is to stop after the first round of applause. If you give too many encores, you might get a few more things, but some of ’em might really get mad and get out their guns. Move on before they bring up the heavy artillery, is my motto.”
They made several more stops, in different parts of the town, and then Hank said if they piled any more iron in the carriage he wouldn’t be able to get it up the hills. So they started home.
“Don’t people ever throw anything but iron?” asked Georgie.
“Oh, sure,” said Jinx. “Shoes, hunks of wood, all sorts of things. But no use taking those things home. I’d have taken some of those old shoes tonight for Bill. Nothing he likes better to chew on between meals than an old shoe. But Bill hasn’t done a tap of work on this drive. Just moons around reading fairy tales. You hadn’t ever ought to have taught him to read, Freddy. I finally got him to go look over that rubbish pile back of the Grimby house to see if there was any iron. When I went up there what do you suppose he was doing? Lying in the grass, reading an old copy of the Arabian Nights he’d dug out. All about somebody that had a lamp, and you rub it, and a big giant comes and brings you a lot of things to eat.”
“The story of Aladdin,” said Georgie. “I read it last fall.”
“Yeah?” said Jinx. “Well, I asked him why he wasn’t working, and he said: ‘You know, Jinx, I used to eat old books before I got an education. To think,’ he said, ‘of all the books I can’t ever read now because I ate ’em!’ He said: ‘I don’t know why I ate ’em, either, because there isn’t much flavor to ’em. But I knew they must be some good, and in my ignorance I supposed they must be good to eat.’
“Well, I told him to get up in his ignorance and go to work looking for iron, but he just shook his head kind of dreamily, and said: ‘Later, Jinx, later. This story is too absorbing; it grips me.’
“You get up,” I said, “or I’ll grip you,” but he just grinned and started to tell me the story, so what could I do? He said he was going to see if he couldn’t find that lamp of what’s-his-name’s. He said why worry and get a little scrap together when if we could just find this lamp, the giant would bring us a thousand tons in the twinkling of an eye. Twinkling of an eye! What kind of talk is that? Twinkling of a pollywog’s whiskers! You hadn’t ought to have taught him to read, Freddy.”
“Ain’t any harm in reading,” said Hank, “long’s you don’t believe any of it. I read a lot of fairy tales last winter, nights when my rheumatism wouldn’t let me sleep. Liked ’em too. But you don’t see me goin’ off with my sword at my side, looking for the Sleeping Princess, or jumpin’ off the barn, thinkin’ I can fly, like Pegasus. Though maybe I could fly—I dunno. I never tried it.”
That night when he got home, Freddy sat up until nearly daylight, changing Paul Revere’s Ride into a poem for animals.
“Listen, my children, while I discourse
Of the midnight ride of Hank, the horse.
’Twas in April, nineteen forty and three.
Robert and Sniffy and Georgie and me,
With Jinx, our leader, to set the course.
It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Centerb’ro town.
Then some of the folks got an awful shock
When Jinx climbed up on the back fen
ce rail
And let out a terrible piercing wail
That shook the leaves of the maples down.
You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the wakened townsfolk jumped from bed,
How they fired their skillets and pans and pots
At the voice that came from their garden plots,
A cry of defiance and not of fear
Although the barrage was pretty severe.
And the scrap brought home from that ride of Hank’s
Was received by Mr. Bean with thanks.
Chapter 8
In the next issue of the Bean Home News Freddy printed the whole story of his disagreement with Mrs. Humphrey Underdunk, as the sheriff had suggested. He also printed a spirited defense of the sheriff, and of the management of the jail. The result was better than he had hoped. A hundred and fifty of the Centerboro people subscribed to the paper the following day, and for a week it was the talk of the town.
But the sheriff pointed out to Freddy that he mustn’t count too much on that. “Lots of people don’t like Mrs. Underdunk,” he said, “but not likin’ her and not doin’ what she wants ’em to are different. You can get ’em to agree that’s she’s mean and unfair, but they’ll keep right on doin’ what she asks ’em to because they’re afraid of her. Take Henry Weezer, president of the bank. He don’t like her a little bit. But she has a big account at his bank, and he’ll try to please her so she’ll keep her money there. Same with Lieber & Wingus at the hardware store, and Harry Ketcham at the grocery, and Dr. Winterpool. They don’t want to lose her trade.”
“You mean you don’t think it did any good?” asked Freddy.
“I don’t mean that at all,” said the sheriff. “You gave ’em your side of it, and it’s funny, Freddy, but they believe you instead of her. I don’t mean it’s funny to laugh, I mean it’s funny-queer. And maybe not so queer, either. Because they like you, and you’d always rather believe people you like. No, you keep right on. And thanks for that piece about me. The boys at the jail have had it framed and hung up in the music room.”
The Guardian came right back the following week with another attack on the sheriff, criticizing his management of the jail, and also his failure to enforce the laws against animals which ran wild and made nuisances of themselves. “Not only are we continually subjected to the attacks of wild pigs,” Mr. Garble wrote, “but recently our nights have been made hideous by a plague of howling cats. We have frequently taken occasion to suggest that a sheriff whose bosom friends are pigs and other of the lower animals is a disgrace to a thriving town like Centerboro, the garden spot of Oneida County. But are we to have no protection, Mr. Sheriff, from these animal friends of yours? Beware, Mr. Sheriff! If such conditions are permitted to continue, an enraged citizenry will some day rise and drive you and your four-footed accomplices from the sacred soil of our community.”
At a meeting in the barn when these developments were discussed, Jinx said that he guessed they’d better not make any more midnight trips into town for scrap. “We’ve skimmed off the cream, anyway,” he said. “Five trips, and more than half a ton of stuff we’ve brought in. Guess we’ll have to think of something else. Gosh, I wish we could get that iron deer Mrs. Underdunk has on her lawn. It must weigh an awful lot.”
“She and her brother hate animals so much,” said Robert, “I’m surprised she’d even have an iron animal on her lawn.”
“She’s an iron woman,” said Freddy, and Mrs. Wiggins said: “My land, what does that Garble man mean, talking about that nice sheriff being a disgrace because he’s friends with animals? Lower animals, indeed! I’ll lower him if he ever comes around here!”
“I think,” said Jinx slowly, “that I’m going to have me some fun with Mr. Herbert Garble. I think some of these dark nights I’m going to pay him a little call.”
“You’d better lay off him, cat,” said Freddy. “Keep this a newspaper fight. We’re ahead now, and so long as we can fight him with printed words we’ll stay ahead, because we’re smarter than he is. But once we get down to a real rough-house—”
“I completely disagree,” said Charles in a loud voice. He hopped up on the dashboard of the phaeton. “My friends, lower animals all,” he said, “you will agree, I think, that we have been grossly insulted. My friend, Freddy, counsels us to reply to these insults—but with what? With blows? No, with further insults. As an editor, as a master of insult and invective, I respect his advice. But I, as a rooster, as a bird of spirit, beneath whose feathered bosom beats the stout heart of a long line of warriors—I reject his counsel. For my friends, it is a counsel of appeasement. No, no—rather let us perish nobly on a stricken field, than sit back and reply to these foul insinuations only with words. Let us strike! Who will follow me?” And he jumped down and strutted towards the door.
There was some applause, but it was rather for the fine words than for the sentiments expressed.
“Where do you want us to follow you to?” said Jinx, and Freddy said: “Come back here, Charles. We can’t tackle Mr. Garble, and you know it.”
Charles turned upon them contemptuously. “Cowards!” he exclaimed witheringly. “Very well then, I will go alone,” and he left the barn.
“Hey, come back here!” shouted Freddy, but Jinx said: “Oh, let him go. He won’t get any further than the henhouse.”
“I’m not so sure,” said the pig. “Ever since he licked that rat in fair fight, he’s had these spells of thinking he can lick the whole world. And another thing; he thinks he’s pretty ferocious looking ever since he saw the ant’s picture in the bottom of the frying pan. He thinks he can scare Mr. Garble. I wish Henrietta was here. He may do something foolish.”
Unfortunately Henrietta had gone over to the Schermerhorn farm to see her married daughter that afternoon, and before they could think of any way to stop him, Charles was nearly out of sight down the Centerboro road.
What happened the animals later learned from Jinx, who was chosen to follow the rooster and see that he came to no harm. Charles, still inspired by his own warlike words, trotted along steadily, up hill and down dale, until he reached town. He perched for a few minutes on the watering trough in front of the bank to get his breath and arrange his feathers, and then he walked straight up the stairs to the Guardian office, and tapped on the door with his beak.
“Come in!” shouted an irritable voice, but of course Charles couldn’t open the door, so he tapped again.
There was the grate of a chair being pushed back and then the door was flung open.
“Well, who—” said Mr. Garble, looking around; then he glanced down. “Great jumping peacocks, a chicken!” he exclaimed. “Shoo! Scat! Get out of here!”
He made shooing motions with his hands, but Charles slid past him into the office and perched on the desk. Jinx said afterwards that he thought Charles’s nerve was just about to give out, and that in another moment he would have turned and flown squawking down the stairs. But the word “chicken” was a fighting word with the rooster. Like most big talkers, he usually backed down more or less gracefully before the first blow. But the word “chicken” made him see red.
“‘Chicken,’ is it?” he squawked. “I’ll show you who’s a chicken.” And he flew at Mr. Garble, who was reaching for his ruler, and pecked him sharply on the hand, so that the editor dropped the ruler with a yell and put his finger in his mouth. And while he was sucking his finger, Charles went for him again. Jinx said Mr. Garble never had a chance. With one arm across his face, to protect his eyes, he stumbled about the office, reaching for something to strike the rooster with. But Charles’s claws were in his hair, and Charles’s wings beat across his eyes and blinded him, and Charles’s sharp beak was pinching his ears and his nose till he yelled with pain. “Chicken, hey?” Charles yelled. “Lower animals, hey? I’ll teach you to call respectable people names in your paper. I’ll give you a lesson you won’t forget!” And he seized Mr. Garble’s nose, which was large and so offered
an excellent hold, and gave it a half twist. And yelling for help, Mr. Garble blundered out of the office and went stumbling down stairs.
Jinx said Mr. Garble never had a chance.
Charles would have followed, but Jinx caught him by the wing. “Hold it, old boy,” he said. “You’ve won. But don’t go out in the street, or he’ll get you. Out the window, now, quick, before he comes back with a gun. I’ll meet you on the edge of town.”
Charles leaned against the desk panting. “Why … I did win, Jinx!” he exclaimed. Then a look of horror came over his face. “Good gracious, what will Henrietta say? What on earth got into me?”
“One of your brave fits, I guess,” said the cat. “But come on, get going. Great Scott, don’t faint away now!” he said, as the rooster began to tremble at the thought of the danger that he had faced. “Come on, will you?”
“Golly, yes,” said Charles, and hopped up on the windowsill and fluttered down into the back yard.
They got away safely after that. Charles was a good deal worried on the way home about what Henrietta would think. But as frequently happens in such cases, Henrietta, when she learned of it, was pretty proud of him. Of course she gave him a good scolding, but Charles wasn’t upset about that, because she always scolded him three times a day whether he had done anything or not.
Chapter 9
Things were pretty quiet for the next few days, but Freddy felt that it was the quiet before the storm, and he was not mistaken. The Guardian and the Bean Home News both came out on Saturday, and on Saturday afternoon, after he had washed up and while he was waiting for his supper, Mr. Bean used to go through both papers and mark with a pencil articles that he wanted to read out loud to Mrs. Bean after supper. Freddy had noticed that he marked almost everything in the Bean Home News, while in the Guardian he marked only a few pieces. So on this Saturday he sat down in the rocker and picked up the Bean Home News.
Freddy and the Bean Home News Page 6
