“Just a minute, Henrietta,” said Freddy. “In the first place, Charles isn’t going with us tonight. And in the second place, what we’re doing, we’re doing for Mr. Bean.” And he told her the plan.
Since Charles was not in any danger, Henrietta had no further objections. Hank had as usual been greatly moved by Charles’ stirring speech, and he said that he guessed he’d be willing to sacrifice a leg if it was for Mr. Bean. “Only I hope it’s my left hind one,” he said. “That one’s so rheumatic it ain’t much use anyway.”
Charles and Henrietta stayed at the house, in case any messages came up from the farm, and the rest of the animals cut down to the back road, and along it until they could see the Schermerhorn farmhouse. There were no lights; the Schermerhorns had gone to bed; but Freddy said that it wasn’t quite late enough, so they waited another hour. Then Freddy got up. “O.K.,” he said; “Let’s go.” And he swung himself into the saddle.
Jinx leaped on to the sacks that were tied to Bill’s back, and Hank ranged alongside.
“All right, Robert,” said Freddy. “You and Georgie know the course we’re going to take. Don’t get too far ahead. And don’t bark; try to bay like hounds.”
“I’m a collie,” said Robert. “I can’t sound like a hound.”
“How about you, Georgie?” Freddy asked. “You claim to be part wolfhound; can’t you bay?”
“We’re quiet when we hunt,” said Georgie. “Silent and sinister, that’s the family motto. But I can howl, if that’ll help.”
“Both of you better howl some,” said Freddy. “We want to make as much of a disturbance as possible. Go ahead, we’re right with you. Yoicks!” he shouted. “Yippee!”
“Orooloooloooooo!” howled Georgie, and he and Robert dashed down the slope towards the Schermerhorn farm, with Bill and Cy and Hank thundering along behind them.
Chapter 9
If it hadn’t been a dark night Freddy’s scheme would have had small chance of success. Freddy, mounted on Cy, might at some distance have been taken for Billy Margarine, but no one could have seen any resemblance to Mr. and Mrs. Margarine in Jinx, riding goat-back, or the riderless Hank. Nor were Georgie and Robert, in their role of foxhounds, very convincing, either to the eye or the ear.
But as the yelling hunt poured through their gate, the Schermerhorns, roused from their first sleep to run to the window, made out only a troop of dim figures which circled the house twice, trampling flower beds, cutting up the lawn, and kicking over whatever stood in their way, and then galloping off across the fields towards Witherspoons’.
“Good heavens,” said Mrs. Schermerhorn, “I think we’ve had about enough of these Margarines. Don’t they ever sleep? I miss my guess if that crash we heard wasn’t that pink soup tureen Louella gave us for a wedding present. I left it out for you to transplant those geraniums into it. If you’d done as I asked you it wouldn’t have got broken.”
“Oh, Margarine’ll be around in the morning to pay for the damage,” said Mr. Schermerhorn. “I guess we can put up with losing a little sleep for what he’ll pay.”
“There isn’t any money he could pay would make me put up with losing that tureen,” said Mrs. Schermerhorn. “And if you hadn’t shilly-shallied and put off.…” She went on for some time.
In the meantime the hunt swept on towards the Witherspoon farm. It is fun to gallop through the night, yelling at the top of your lungs, and even Hank had forgotten his rheumatism, and snorted and pranced like a colt. Though where he had got the idea that such cries as “Thar she blows!” or “Forward, the light brigade!” were the sort of thing that fox-hunters should shout, nobody could figure out.
Freddy, galloping alongside him, said, “I’m glad you’ve entered into the spirit of the chase, Hank.”
“Pike’s Peak or bust!” shouted Hank. “Yeah, I guess I have. Only what are we chasing?—On to Richmond!” he roared.
Twice around the Witherspoon house they went, then down to Macy’s where they drove through the big barn with yells and a series of crashes that brought the entire Macy family out of their beds as if they had been touched off like rockets. Then on to the Halls’, where they tore yelling three times around the house like Indians attacking a wagon train.
It was always hard to get Hank started, but once you had him started it was just as hard to stop him again. The Halls were the last call Freddy had planned to make, but Hank would have gone right on through Centerboro, waking up everybody from Mr. Muszkiski to the Reverend Dr. Wintersip. Freddy managed at last to calm him down, although as on the way home they passed Mrs. McMinickle’s little house, Hank went up on the porch and banged on the front door with a big hoof. “Get up! Get up!” he shouted. “The British are coming!” Fortunately Mrs. McMinickle was not at home, but her little dog, Prinny, came to the window and barked furiously. “There’s one who’ll stand off the redcoats if they get funny with him,” said Hank with a grin. But after that he quieted down and went on home, while Freddy rode back to the Grimby house.
Things moved slowly for the next few days, but they moved in Freddy’s favor. The farmers supposed of course it was the Margarines with their hounds who had made such a racket, and they waited expectantly for Mr. Margarine to show up with a fist full of crisp bills. When after two days he didn’t appear, they began to get mad. And when on the third night the hunt came roaring down and lifted them out of their beds again shortly after midnight, they called up Mr. Margarine and demanded to know what he was going to do about it.
Of course Mr. Margarine denied that he and his hounds had been out on either of the nights in question. But his hat had been found on the Macy porch—and after all, who else kept hounds and chased foxes on horseback all over their fields? They didn’t believe him.
Mr. Margarine was no fool. He was pretty sure that Freddy was back of these disturbances. Where he was wrong was in thinking that Mr. Bean was back of Freddy. He went to see the Macys and the Witherspoons and the rest of them and said flatly that he was certain it was Mr. Bean who had led the midnight hunt, and who was trying to discredit him. But they just laughed. Mr. Bean wasn’t that kind of man, they said. Freddy now—yes, it could very well be Freddy. And they laughed and said that Freddy had a great sense of fun. Mr. Margarine got madder and madder.
After that he and Billy rode out nearly every night, looking for Freddy, hoping to intercept the hunt. They left the hounds at home, and carried shotguns across their saddles. But Freddy was in no danger, for Old Whibley kept him informed which way they were riding. But though he rode a good deal at night, he didn’t lead any more midnight hunts to the different farms, for the farmers had shotguns handy now, too, and would use them.
Late one afternoon the Horrible Twenty came up to the Grimby house. Freddy was sitting on the porch thinking. They squatted around him in a circle and began to chant over and over: “We are the Horrible Twenty. We are the Horrible Twenty. We are the Horrible Twenty.”
Pretty soon Freddy opened his eyes. “All right, all right,” he said irritably. “I know who you are.”
“We are the Horrible Twenty. We are the—”
“Oh, shut up!” Freddy said. “Can’t you think of anything else to say?”
Rabbit No. 23 stepped out in front of them and held up his paw, and when they had stopped, he said: “No, we can’t. Because you promised to make up something for us, but you never did it.”
“Ah,” said Freddy, “I see. And you’re going to keep on repeating that one line until I either go crazy or write you a new chant?”
“Yes!” said all the Horribles together.
“O.K.,” he said. “But there are more than twenty of you here now. Twenty-six, is it?—if you’d only stand still a minute.”
“We are standing still,” said 23. “And there are twenty-five of us now.”
“Well, that won’t do! We are the Horrible Twenty-five. Hardly a man is now alive … No, no; can’t make anything of that. Let’s make it thirty. There’ll probably be thirty members soon.
Let’s see. We are the Horrible Thirty. Wild eyed, ferocious and dirty. That’s not bad. Go play tag out there for a while, will you?—I can’t write with fifty eyeballs rolling around at me.”
So they went down the steps and played games, and after a little while Freddy came down to them. “How’s this?” he asked and recited:
“We are the Horrible Thirty,
Wild-eyed, blood-thirsty and dirty!
Our manners are simply atrocious—
Impudent, rude and ferocious.
At home, disobedient creatures;
In school, we throw things at teachers.
Punished, we stick out our tongues,
Scream at the top of our lungs.
Folks we don’t like, we attack ’em,
Out come our knives and we hack ’em.
Even the bravest are nervous
When in the gloom they observe us.
As through the trees we come creeping
Even the boldest start weeping.
Even the calmest will bellow,
Shake like a bowlful of jello.
Oh, how we laugh when they holler!
Sometimes they offer a dollar
Not to be hashed up and fried.
Often we’ve laughed till we’ve cried,
Keeping—of course—right on hashing,
Paying no heed to their thrashing.
All we want’s enemy hash;
Don’t give a hoot for their cash.”
There was a lot more, but as it was even more bloodthirsty, it is not set down here.
The Horribles liked the chant, and they tramped around the clearing for some time practicing it. Then they decided that they would go down and try it out on Mr. Margarine, but Freddy put a stop to that. “Too dangerous,” he said. “You wait; I know you’d like to help Mr. Bean, and maybe later we can figure out some way. Stick around.”
Freddy went back up on the porch and picked up his guitar. He sang Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Pigs, and he sang The Old Pigs at Home, and then he struck a minor chord and swung into a very mournful cowboy song of his own composition.
O gimme my boots, and gimme my saddle, For back to the range I’m goin’ to skedaddle.
“O gimme my boots and gimme my saddle.”
Yip, yip, yippee! O my! O my!
O saddle up the pinto and saddle up the grey, For I ain’t goin’ to stay here—no, I ain’t goin’
to stay
Where the skies are dreary and the folks ain’t
gay.
O my!
Yip, yip!
O my!
I’m goin’ back home now: I’m going back home,
Where I never use a toothbrush, never use a
comb.
Yip, yip, yippee! O my! O my!
Goin’ back to the prairie, for the only sound
that’ll
Make me happy again is the rattlesnake’s rattle
As he sidewinds along, a-chasin’ of the cattle.
O my!
Yip, yip!
O my!
The Horribles, who had come up to listen, were much affected and some of them broke right down and cried. Freddy realized that this was a great compliment to his singing, and so he put as much sadness into his voice as he could. He put so much in that he began to feel the tears coming to his own eyes, and a lump get into his throat, and then all at once a big sob cut the song short and he had to stop.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This song—it always makes me want to cry. I’m sure I don’t know why it should. I don’t know why I should get so sad longing to get back to somewhere I’ve never been. Funny how you can cry about wanting something that you don’t want at all.”
No. Eleven said: “It was your voice—it was so sorrowful it made us all cry.”
“Yeah,” said Freddy, “and then I saw you crying and that made me even sadder. My goodness, it’s a good thing I stopped—we’d have all ended up crying ourselves into fits. I better sing something lively.”
He took up the guitar again, but before he could begin, Bill, with Jinx on his back, came galloping into the clearing. The cat leaped from the saddle and bounded up the sagging porch steps. “Bad news, Freddy,” he said. “Last night that Margarine rode over and told Mr. Bean that if any of us animals were found on his land, we’d be shot, and then he and the boys, they went up to the pig pen and searched it. Guess maybe they thought you were hiding there. Anyway they threw things around quite a lot. Mr. Bean couldn’t stop ’em. Margarine had a deputy’s badge or star or something.”
“Oh, golly!” said Freddy. “I hope they didn’t lose any of my papers. My poems—all my poems; I’ve been selecting the best ones to be published in a book. The Poetical Works of Frederick Bean, Esq. I must go down there right away.”
“You can’t, you dope,” said Jinx. “Margarine’s watching the place day and night. And he’s advertised for a detective. Look here.” And he handed Freddy an advertisement clipped from the Centerboro Guardian.
WANTED—Man for light detective work. Able to ride horse. Good pay. Must provide own disguises. Phone Margarine, Centerboro 884.
“Well, he hasn’t got his detective yet, if that was just in this morning’s paper. Hey, Cy!” he shouted. And as the pony came up, he leaped into the saddle and in spite of the protests of Charles and Bill and Jinx and all twenty-five Horribles, he galloped off through the trees.
Chapter 10
Freddy knew that he was running into danger, but the thought that his precious poems might be strewn about and trampled into the dirt made him reckless. He rode straight down to the pig pen. He saw nobody, but for safety’s sake he had Cy come inside with him, although when both of them had crowded into the little room they couldn’t look around much or see anything but each other. Finally Freddy had Cy go outside again.
As far as he could see, his papers hadn’t been disturbed. He was looking them over when the four mice came out from under the desk. “Hi, Freddy,” said Eek. “We came to kind of look after things for you. We thought we’d better when we heard the Margarines had been here. We sort of picked up after ’em. Your papers were all over the floor.”
“Crumbs, too,” said Eeny. “Peanut butter cookie crumbs. When did you sweep last? Mrs. Bean hasn’t made any peanut butter cookies since last spring.”
“We wouldn’t have dared come up if the snake had been here,” said Quik. “But when we heard—”
“The snake? What do you mean?” Freddy exclaimed. He dashed into the other room where he kept the disguises he used in his detective work. The box was there, but the glass was pushed aside and the rattlesnake was gone.
The mice had followed him in. “The Margarines let him out,” said Quik. “They thought you were in the box I guess, and they shoved the glass off and poked a flashlight in to look. You ought to have heard ’em yell! Mrs. Wiggins came to the barn door and saw ’em galloping off as fast as they could lick.”
“Where’d the rattler go?” Freddy asked. “That’s the important thing.”
“Nobody saw him go. But we had the Pomeroys scout ahead of us when we came up, and the wasps had been in here and said he wasn’t inside, so we knew we were safe coming up.”
Freddy thanked them warmly, and then went through his poems. One was missing. It was one of a series on “The Features” and it was about the eyes. Freddy couldn’t find it anywhere.
He was looking for it under the bed when Cousin Augustus who had been posted as a sentinel at the window, gave a loud shout of warning. At least it was loud for a mouse. Freddy looked out and saw Mr. Margarine and Billy on their tall horses, cantering down across the pasture. They were headed straight for the pig pen.
Escape was cut off; there was no time for changing into any of the disguises. But there was one chance and Freddy took it. There was a wig of black hair that reached to his shoulders, and there was a thin rattail moustache; he had bought them earlier in the year to disguise himself as a Western bad man. He stuck them on hurriedly,
pulled his hat over his eyes, and went to the door where he lounged in plain sight against the doorpost.
The Margarines separated and rode up to him, one on each side, covering him with their shotguns. “Keep your hands away from that gun,” Mr. Margarine said. “You’re under arrest.”
Freddy looked up and stroked his long moustache with a fore trotter. “Shucks, pardner,” he said lazily, “you want to be careful with them popguns. I could ’a knocked you both out of your saddles with this little old six-gun while you was makin’ up your minds to pull the trigger.”
The Margarines looked at him doubtfully. This tough-looking character, facing them so boldly, couldn’t be Freddy, Mr. Margarine thought. Like most people who are very sure of themselves, he was rather dumb. He said to Billy: “This isn’t the pig we’re after.”
“What’s that?” said Freddy sharply. “Don’t try none of your smart cracks on the Comanche Kid, friend, if you don’t want your ears blowed off.”
“No offense,” said Mr. Margarine. “We’re looking for a pig named Freddy. And that certainly looks like his horse.” He pointed to Cy who stood near them.
“Meanin’ to imply that it ain’t mine?” Freddy said, trying to make his voice as menacing as possible. He moved his right hand down towards his gun butt. “Those are fightin’ words, mister.”
“Don’t be so touchy,” said Mr. Margarine. “This Freddy rides a buckskin pony, too. Finding you here, where he lives, and wearing the same kind of Western outfit—well, naturally, we thought we’d found him. We’ve got a warrant for his arrest.” And he flashed his deputy’s badge.
“You’re the law, hey?” said Freddy sourly. “I don’t have no truck with the law. I got a score to settle with this here Freddy myself, but I’ll settle it in my own way.” He patted his holster. “I come all the way from Spavin Creek, Texas, to settle it. Can’t no lally gaggin’ long-nosed Eastern rhymeslinger compare himself with the Comanche Kid.”
Freddy Rides Again Page 7
