Freddy Rides Again

by Walter R. Brooks

  We are the Horrible Ten,

  Neither animals nor men—

  that doesn’t go any more. It has to be: We are the Horrible Twenty.”

  “H’m,” said Freddy. “Not near as good. But let me see. Twenty, plenty—guess there’s only one rhyme.

  “Let me see.”

  We are the Horrible Twenty,

  Of ferocity, boy! we’ve got plenty!

  Plenty, sufficient and lots!

  H’m; lots, knots, plots—” He went on slowly.

  “We weave diabolical plots

  To capture our victims alive.

  And when we have caught four or five

  We sing and we yell and we dance and we haul

  Them down to the kitchen and chop them up small,

  Add lemon and pepper and salt, and a dash

  Of Worcestershire sauce. For enemy hash

  Is the dish of all dishes that crowns all our wishes,

  We eat it for breakfast and dinner and lunch,

  We munch and we crunch, we gobble and scrunch,

  We—”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” said 23. “This isn’t any war song; it’s a description of you eating dinner.”

  “Oh, come, come!” said Freddy. “Is that polite?” Then he sighed. “I wish though I didn’t think about food so much. Gracious! and now I’m smacking my lips over eating up my enemies! That’s pretty bad.” He sighed again. Talking about eating, even such an unappetizing dish, had made him hungry. “Look boys,” he said, “you go along. I’ll work out something for you. Come up tomorrow and I’ll have it ready.”

  So the Horrible Twenty trudged off down the hill, and Freddy went in and he and Georgie had some cookies and milk.

  Over this snack—if you can call it a snack when you eat three dozen cookies at a sitting—they chatted about local affairs, but as both of them had their mouths full most of the time, neither understood much of what the other said. They were licking up the last crumbs when Mr. J. J. Pomeroy, the robin, flew in. He and his wife and children usually dropped in every few days and did a little cleaning for Freddy—that is, they ate up the crumbs, which owing to his habit of working at his typewriter with a cookie or a sandwich in one hand, were pretty well strewn all over everything.

  But Mr. Pomeroy hadn’t yet found his glasses, and couldn’t tell a crumb from a carpet tack. He had come to warn Freddy that Mr. Margarine and Billy had just ridden into the yard.

  Freddy jumped up, and a shower of crumbs flew off his lap. “Thanks, J. J. Come on, Georgie. Let’s go down.”

  In the barnyard Mr. Margarine, on his tall horse, was looking down at Mr. Bean, who stood beside him. Billy was walking his horse slowly around, inspecting the cowbarn and the henhouse, and not listening to what the men were saying.

  “I’m sorry you take it that way, Bean,” Margarine was saying. “From our terrace that red barn of yours sticks up like a sore thumb. Spoils the view entirely. Mrs. Margarine is quite sick about it. And I’m not asking you to tear it down. If you’d just consent to have it repainted a nice green—naturally I’ll have the job done myself—”

  “Sorry I can’t do it,” Mr. Bean interrupted. “Like to oblige you. But the barn’s always been red. Red it’ll stay.”

  “But what’s the difference?” said Mr. Margarine, and his thin mouth drew down at the corners. “A green barn is—”

  “’Tain’t a barn any more,” put in Mr. Bean. “Red’s a natural color for barns. Paint it green, it’d mix me all up. Like as not I’d think it was the chicken coop, think somebody’d stole the barn, waste a lot of time hunting for it.”

  It was dark in the barnyard; Freddy couldn’t see Mr. Bean’s face, but he would have bet there was a good strong twinkle in his eye.

  “Well, if you want to be stubborn,” Mr. Margarine said.

  “I do,” said Mr. Bean. “One of the few pleasures I can afford.”

  “I’m not so sure you can afford it,” replied the other. His voice was threatening. “I’ve made you a perfectly fair proposition. If you don’t choose to accept it you needn’t be surprised if you have to take the consequences.”

  Mr. Bean nodded. “One of ’em bein’ that the barn stays red. And now that that’s settled—”

  “You old fool!” Mr. Margarine snapped. “Don’t you realize who I am? Don’t you—”

  “Stop right there!” Mr. Bean did not raise his voice, but it was suddenly as cold as ice. “We’re kind of old-fashioned in these parts. You’ve come in here and tried to change a lot of things. We’ve put up with it—some of us because we want to be friendly and helpful, and others because you handed out money so free. We hoped we could get along with you. But I guess you can only get along with folks that stand up to attention and say ‘sir.’ We don’t do that up here much—”

  “No?” said Mr. Margarine with a sneer. “Your friends, Witherspoon and Macy and the rest of them seem willing enough to do as I want them to. And they’re paid well for it. They’re smart; they know which side their bread is buttered on.”

  “They’re smarter than you think,” said Mr. Bean. “Sure, they like your money. But they don’t like being pushed around. And before long they’re going to decide that no money is big enough to put up with it any longer—” He stopped, as a sudden great cackling and laughing broke out over by the henhouse.

  While his father talked, Billy had been exploring the barnyard. The henhouse had what was rather an unusual feature, a revolving door. With twenty-seven children running in and out all day long, and often forgetting to close the door after them, it isn’t surprising that it had been hard to keep the place warm; and when Henrietta had complained of the cold, Mr. Bean had had the door put in. It was this door that had caught Billy’s eye. And as he watched the door whirl and the chickens run in and out, he began to laugh.

  It was a perfectly natural thing for him to laugh at, but the animals had had about enough of Billy’s laughter. And now they knew how to stop it. Charles, who was sitting on the henhouse roof, and Jinx and Bill, who were standing nearby, watching Mr. Margarine, started it. They began to laugh. Then the chickens rushed out and Freddy and Georgie and Robert, the collie, came up and they all joined in. They stood around Billy and laughed at him, and their laughter was three times as loud as his.

  Billy couldn’t take it. He turned and rode over to his father and, pointing his finger back at the henhouse, evidently accused the animals of making fun of him. But nobody could hear what he said, for the animals had followed him, and the cows and Cy and Hank had come out, and even Sniffy Wilson, the skunk, and his family, who had come down to call, joined the crowd, and they formed a circle about Billy and his father and just laughed.

  The animals closed in slowly, keeping one eye on Mr. Bean, who was inside the circle too, of course. If he had shown even the faintest sign of disapproval, they would at once have stopped and gone away. But he didn’t move a finger—just stood there in the deepening twilight looking up at Mr. Margarine.

  The animals laughed for a full minute—and a minute is a long time when you’re being laughed at. And if Billy couldn’t take it, neither could Mr. Margarine. Probably nobody had ever dared to laugh at him before. He raised his whip threateningly as if to cut at Mr. Bean. “Drive these animals away!” he shouted.

  Probably he didn’t really intend to strike Mr. Bean. But the animals weren’t taking any chances with him. The laughs turned into growls, and they moved in quickly. Hank and Cy and the cows shoved against the horses and the dogs nipped their heels and herded them towards the gate. The smaller animals crowded to get a bite or a scratch if they had a chance. Mr. Margarine and Billy tried to use their whips, but they were pushed around so violently that it was all they could do to stick to their saddles.

  They were herded through the gate, and it was there that Charles performed probably the most spectacularly heroic act of his entire career. The rooster always talked very big, but when the time came to act he was usually somewhere else. Once in a while, thou
gh, when he was good and mad, he would become completely reckless. And now, as the Margarines turned out into the road, Charles took off from the henhouse roof, sailed across the barnyard, and flew straight into Mr. Margarine’s face. Squawking angrily, he beat at the man with his wings, pecked him twice on the nose, and ended by knocking off his elegant derby hat, which fell into the dirt and was trampled by the horses.

  And then to complete their defeat, as they started up the road towards home, Freddy pulled out his pistol and fired two of his blank cartridges in the air.

  As the sound of galloping hoofs died away, the animals fell back. Mr. Bean was still standing in the middle of the barnyard. And then as they watched to see what he would do, he walked across and picked up the battered derby hat and set it carefully on the gatepost. He looked at it a moment critically, then they saw him bend over and slap first one knee and then the other, and they heard the sound of his creaking laughter.

  Chapter 8

  Mr. Margarine wasted no time. Late the next morning Sheriff Higgins came rattling out from Centerboro in his old car. As he shut off the engine and climbed out, Freddy came running down from the pig pen, for the sheriff was an old friend.

  “Hi, sheriff,” said the pig. “How’s everything at the jail?”

  But the sheriff just peered blankly at Freddy, then pulled out a paper and held it close to his nose, glancing every now and then at the pig as if comparing him with a written description.

  After a minute he looked up. “Is your name Charles?” he asked, and as Freddy grinned and started to say something: “Charles,” he said. “A rooster. With a sharp beak and blue and green tailfeathers.” He looked Freddy over as if he had never seen him before. “You’ve got the beak all right. But no tailfeathers. Turn around—no, no tailfeathers at all.”

  Freddy thought it was some kind of a joke at first, but the sheriff’s manner made him think that there was something serious back of it. He decided not to laugh, but to play up for a minute or two.

  “No, sir,” he said. “You wish to see this Charles?”

  “I got a warrant for his arrest,” said the sheriff. “Also for some queer kind of animal—half pig and half cowboy, according to this description here. Ever see any such critter around here?”

  Freddy said no, he hadn’t.

  “I have to do my duty,” the sheriff said. “If I was to see—and recognize—either of these animals, I’d have to take ’em down to the jail. Hold ’em for trial. Seems they attacked this here rich Mr. Margarine last night. Tried to scalp him, shot at him, pecked his nose and damaged his nervous system.”

  “I heard something about it,” said Freddy cautiously. “But how could he prove that they attacked him?”

  “Man’s got as much money as he has can prove most anything,” said the sheriff. “But I guess there ain’t any trouble to prove it. Seems Mr. Bean saw it all, and he wouldn’t lie about it, even to keep his animals out of jail.”

  “No, I suppose not,” said Freddy. “What do you think will happen to them—if you catch them, that is?”

  “Why, they’ll be tried before Judge Willey, likely. Tried and convicted and sentenced to—oh, probably they’ll get off with a couple years at hard labor. Peckin’ a rich man’s nose—that’s a pretty serious crime in this state. And shootin’ at a rich man—why for shootin’ at a poor man I’ve seen ’em get six months. As for attemptin’ scalpin’—well, we ain’t had a scalpin’ case as long as I’ve been sheriff. Hard to tell how a jury’ll feel about it.” He peered at the paper again. “Forgot my readin’ glasses, I can’t make out the descriptions of these criminals. Maybe you’d like to read ’em to me.” He held the paper out.

  Freddy said: “I’m afraid I haven’t got time just now. There’s something I have to do.”

  The sheriff nodded. “Good thing to do things quick if they have to be done. Folks that fiddle around and put things off, they sometimes end up in jail.” He looked hard at Freddy and nodded again. “Like these criminals. If they’re smart, they’ll take to the woods for a while. They’ll know that if I don’t catch ’em today, I’m too busy a man to go chasing them. Well, good day to you. I’ll go in and see if Mr. Bean knows where they are.” And he started for the house.

  Ten minutes later he was still inside the house, helping Mr. Bean with a large pot of coffee and a jar of doughnuts, and he didn’t see Freddy mount Cy and ride across the barnyard and up towards the woods. The pig had on his cowboy outfit, his guitar was slung at his back, and on the saddle before him perched Charles.

  The two fugitives from justice rode up through Mr. Bean’s woods, across the back road and into the Big Woods. There was an old abandoned house, the Grimby house, in the Big Woods, where Freddy had hidden out once before. That night he slept on a pile of old burlap bags in the attic, while Charles perched in a tree outside, and Cy trotted back to the farm with messages for Freddy’s friends which there hadn’t been time to deliver before leaving home.

  Cy spent the night at the farm, but was back at the Grimby house by sun-up, to report that the sheriff had gone back to Centerboro after assuring himself that neither Charles nor Freddy was anywhere on the place. Freddy was pleased at the news, for he felt sure that the sheriff wouldn’t make much of an effort to arrest him; but a report brought by Mr. J. J. Pomeroy later in the morning was disturbing. The Pomeroys had flown down to Centerboro and hung around the jail on the chance of picking up some bits of news that would be of use to Freddy. They had been sitting on the windowsill of the sheriff’s office when Mr. Margarine had come in. “Are you going to sit here twiddling your thumbs,” he had demanded, “while these ruffians who attacked me are still at liberty?”

  “That question falls into two parts,” the sheriff had replied. “As to twiddling my thumbs, I don’t know how to twiddle ’em, and that’s the truth. So the answer to that is no. As to whether I’m going to sit here—yes, I am. I’ve got work to do and I’m going to sit here and do it.”

  Mr. Margarine got mad and accused him of not doing his duty, but he only answered mildly that there was a great deal more duty around the place than there was sheriff. “If you want all that duty attended to, you got to provide me with about a dozen deputies,” he said.

  “Very well,” said Mr. Margarine. “Swear me in as deputy. I’ll bring in those two myself.”

  “I guess the sheriff didn’t want to do it much,” said Mr. Pomeroy, “but he couldn’t get out of it. He’d seen us there on the sill and knew who we were, I guess. For when old Margarine had gone he came over and looked out the window and sort of talked to himself. ‘I’d like to warn that pig,’ he said, ‘bein’ he’s a friend of mine. But I’m the sheriff—I can’t do it.’ So we flew right out to tell you.”

  This was not the first time Freddy had had to go into hiding. Twice before not only the sheriff but the state troopers, had been after him; but on both those occasions he had been innocent. “This time,” he said, “I’m guilty, because I really did fire off my pistol. And so are you, Charles. You really pecked his nose and knocked off his hat. If they catch us—Hey!” he said suddenly. “That hat! We can use it. J.J., tell Georgie if he can find it, to bring it up tonight after dark.”

  Later in the day Mr. Pomeroy returned to report that Georgie would bring the hat. But other information which he brought was more disquieting. Mr. Margarine had called on Mr. Bean’s neighbors—the Macys, the Schermerhorns, the Witherspoons, the Halls—and had offered a large reward for Freddy’s capture. All had agreed to help.

  “You can’t exactly blame them, Freddy,” said Mr. Pomeroy. “I heard Mr. Schermerhorn talking about it. ‘I don’t like to go against Bean and his animals,’ he said. ‘But that Freddy’s awful smart. He’s got out of it before all right when they were after him, and he’ll get out of it this time. So what’s the harm in our getting a chunk of old Margarine’s money? I don’t specially like the man, but I do like the crackle of those fifty dollar bills.’”

  “The trouble is, they’re not mad
at Margarine,” Freddy said. “If we could get ’em really good and sore.… H’m, I wonder. Look, J. J.; tell Robert to come up with Georgie tonight. And Hank. And Jinx on that wild bucking broncho of his. We’ll meet here at nine o’clock.”

  So that evening when they had all come, Freddy got up on the porch of the Grimby house and addressed them.

  Freddy got up … and addressed them.

  “I’ve asked you to come up because I need your help,” he said, “but it is not just help for me—it’s help for Mr. Bean, too. Because he’s the only farmer in this neighborhood who won’t knuckle down to Mr. Margarine. Margarine couldn’t do much if all the farmers stood together against him. So one thing we can do is to get all the farmers mad at him. And this is how to do it.”

  Freddy told them his plan, and they agreed that it was a good one. But Hank said: “I dunno, Freddy: I’m pretty old to go careerin’ around the country in the middle of the night. Step in a woodchuck hole, likely, and bust a leg.”

  Freddy started to speak, but Charles, always ready on the slightest excuse to deliver an oration, fluttered up on the porch railing.

  “My friends,” he said. “You know, I know, we all know that danger threatens our friend and protector, William F. Bean. Does that name mean nothing to you, gentlemen? Are we to stand idly by while that rich and vicious scoundrel, Elihu P. Margarine, brings the ancient and honorable house of Bean crashing down in ruin about our heads? What is a leg, what are a dozen legs, when the honor of Bean is at stake?”

  “I ain’t got a dozen,” Hank put in. “I only got four.”

  “Only four!” Charles exclaimed. “Only four! I have only two, yet how willingly I would sacrifice both for our noble benefactor! Ah, yes, would that I had a dozen, nay, a hundred legs to risk in this desperate venture! My friends, the clarion call to battle has sounded, the—”

  “Oh, be quiet!” Henrietta had appeared at the edge of the clearing. “I guess it’s a good thing I came up here,” she said as she came forward. “Charles, get down off that railing! And Freddy—you see here: if there’s going to be any fighting, I want it distinctly understood that Charles is to have no part in it. You!” she exclaimed, turning upon her husband. “A fine mess you’ve got yourself into, and the sheriff hunting for you like a common criminal! You know where you’ll end up, don’t you?—on a platter with a lot of dumplings, that’s where!”