Freddy and the Popinjay

During the next few days it certainly looked as if the animals had made a lot of trouble for themselves by throwing Jimmy Witherspoon into the duck pond. The boundary between the two farms was partly fence and partly stone wall, and it ran from the road, on the east of Mr. Bean’s land, right up into the woods. And now it was as much as any animal’s life was worth to go near that fence. Jimmy had always been a nuisance, but now he had declared open war, and although he was afraid of getting into trouble with Mr. Bean, and so never crossed the fence, he spent most of his time in hiding behind it, with a pocket full of stones. And he was a pretty good shot.

In the first two days, Mrs. Wogus and Mrs. Wurzburger had each been hit twice, and Mrs. Wiggins, seven times. Bill, the goat, had a nick taken out of one of his horns, and a large number of the smaller animals had been hit. Rabbit No. 13, who had been one of Freddy’s ablest assistants in the detective business, was quite badly bruised, and had to be brought down to the barn on a stretcher. The situation was pretty serious, and so on the evening of the second day of hostilities, the animals held a meeting in the barn to consider what should be done.

The meeting was a stormy one. Mrs. Wiggins made the opening address, but in the middle of it, Charles, the rooster, flew up to the seat of the old phaeton and called for the animals to rise in their might and march upon the enemy. “How long,” he shouted, “are we to put up with these vicious attacks upon our homes, our liberty—yes, upon our very lives? I, for one, refuse to cower before these powerful assaults, to squeal beneath the heel of the oppressor. Let us not waste time in idle talk. Let us march this very moment. And I, Charles, will lead you. Let us, beneath the banner of Bean, descend upon the stronghold of the Witherspoons and destroy it utterly, so that not one stone shall remain upon another. Let us—”

It was perhaps fortunate that at this moment Henrietta, Charles’ wife, flew up beside him and gave him a jab with her beak, which knocked him squawking to the barn floor. For some of the animals were beginning to cheer and act very warlike, and Charles’ rousing words might well have persuaded them to a course which could only have ended disastrously.

“Destroy the Witherspoon house, eh?” she said angrily. “You noisy bunch of feathers, you couldn’t destroy a paper bag. Unless you blew in it. You’ve got wind enough. Now shut up, and let somebody with a little sense talk.”

“Henrietta’s right,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “We mustn’t do anything foolish. We can’t do much to that boy without getting Mr. Bean into trouble with Mr. Witherspoon. Anyway, we animals always settle our own quarrels without dragging Mr. Bean into it. Now if Peter were here, he could take that boy in hand without any fuss. A bear is about the only animal that his stones wouldn’t hurt. But as you know, Peter is spending some weeks with relatives in Herkimer County.

“Now of course we can keep out of trouble by staying away from the side of the farm by the Witherspoon property—”

Mrs. Wiggins nodded. “Quite right,” she said. “It’s Mr. Bean’s land, and we have a right there. Besides, there are a lot of you rabbits and woodchucks that live near the fence, and you aren’t to be driven from your homes. But I must say, I don’t know what we can do. Has anybody any suggestions?”

Well of course every animal there had a suggestion, and they all began talking at once. And at last Mrs. Wiggins rapped for order.

“Good grief,” she said, “we’ll never get anywhere this way! If we could drive that boy away with talk, he’d be in China by now. Now I’ll take you in order, and you’ll each have a minute to talk; we don’t want to be here all night. You first, young chipmunk—yes, you in the front row.”

Even in this way, it took quite a while. And although some of the plans offered weren’t bad, the meeting ended just where it had begun, for as soon as an animal had finished, his plan was voted on; and as no animal liked the plan of any other animal, each plan was immediately voted down.

This would have stumped almost anyone but Mrs. Wiggins. But she had been to Washington and seen how Congress worked, and she knew that if you can’t get action from a big meeting, the thing to do is make the meeting smaller. And the way to do that is to appoint a committee. So she said: “Since we don’t seem to be getting anywhere, I will appoint Freddy and Jinx and myself as a committee of three to decide on what course to take. The committee will now adjourn upstairs for an hour, and when we have reached a decision we will come down and tell you about it.”

So the committee went up the steep narrow stairs into the loft. Jinx bounded up easily, and Freddy climbed up after him, but Mrs. Wiggins was so big that although all the animals got behind her and pushed, she only got halfway up, and there she stuck. So she backed down slowly.

“I find,” she said in such a dignified way that all the others stopped laughing at once, “that I am unable to attend the committee meeting. I therefore appoint Henrietta in my place.”

The loft had been turned into a workroom for Mr. Bean’s Uncle Ben, who sometimes came to visit, and his workbench and all his tools were there, as well as thirty or forty clocks—for Uncle Ben was an expert on clocks. Jinx turned on the light over the workbench, and the committee all started to talk at once. For of course, each of them had a different plan, too.

But since there were only three plans, instead of a hundred, they were at last able to agree on a sort of combination of the three. “And I think,” said Freddy, “that we ought to keep what we’re doing secret. Of course nobody would tell Jimmy on purpose, but some of those squirrels and rabbits are pretty gossipy, and it might get out.”

“We’ll have to tell them something when we go down,” said Jinx, “or they’ll tear us to pieces.”

“Leave it to me,” said Freddy. “You stay up here a minute.” He went to the head of the stairs and shouted: “Your attention, ladies and gentlemen!”

The animals, who had been passing the time by playing Twenty Questions, all stopped talking and turned their faces up towards him.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Freddy, “your committee has decided upon a plan, but has not yet settled all the details. It is necessary for us first to ask for three volunteers for a dangerous duty—a mission so perilous that I shudder to think of it.” He shuddered.

“But wait!” he continued, as several animals seemed about to step forward. “You will not only be in great danger, you will also appear very foolish. I must warn you that if you survive the perils, you will not be acclaimed as heroes—you will just be laughed at. For no one will know about the danger but yourselves; no one will see in you anything but three animals making monkeys of themselves. Personally, I have refused to volunteer. As President of the First Animal Bank, I cannot afford to act in a silly and undignified manner. But if there are three among you who are willing to sacrifice their dignity—and perhaps their lives, of course—for the good of all, kindly come up and join the committee.” And he turned away.

Through knotholes in the floor the committee watched the proceedings below. The animals were all talking at once, as they had been before Freddy’s announcement. But now, instead of keeping their places, they were moving around, each one weaving in and out of the crowd until he got close to the door—and then disappearing quietly into the night. In ten minutes the committee went down, and the barn was empty, except for Hank, who lived there.

“Well, I dunno,” said Hank. “Bein’ a hero’s one thing and bein’ a monkey’s another. Lots of folks wouldn’t mind dying a hero’s death in a good cause—no, you needn’t look at me; I ain’t one of ’em—but to perish looking like a silly fool ain’t got anything grand about it. At least that’s my idea. I’d rather die than do anything like that.” He looked puzzled. “That wouldn’t fix it, either,” he said. “There ain’t much difference, is there?”

Hank shook his head. “No I ain’t. Not as much so. Not near as much.” He looked at them triumphantly. “I said something pretty good there, didn’t I? Explain it to me, will you?”

“You’re going to talk yourself into volunteering before you get through,” Henrietta said, and winked at the others. Hank always got mixed up when he tried to think. He was like a kitten with a ball of yarn. He could take a few tag ends of ideas and get so snarled up in them that it took his friends several days to untangle him.

But this time he managed to get untangled himself. “No, sir,” he said, “I ain’t volunteering. Why should I volunteer to make a fool of myself? I can do that all by myself, without makin’ any ceremony of it.” He looked at them thoughtfully for a minute, then said: “Well, goodnight,” and clumped off into his stall. And the animals turned out the light and left.

But the committee didn’t go to bed. They went up to where, just below the woods, a stone wall separated the two farms. Trees and bushes grew close along the wall, but at one place there was a gap through which went a seldom used path. This they examined carefully.

“I guess it will do all right,” Freddy said. “I’ll get Raymond.” And he went back to where a large rock stuck up out of the pasture, and rapped on it.

There was a scrabbling underground, and then in the faint starlight Freddy saw a blunt head poke up out of a hole under the rock, and a husky voice said: “What’s wanted?”

“It’s me, Raymond,” said Freddy. “Get the boys together, will you? I’ve got a digging job for them.”

Raymond was the head woodchuck on the Bean farm. It was a pretty responsible position. He had charge of all digging, and of the location of all new homes. He had had so much experience that he could tell by just looking over a piece of ground exactly how the rocks lay under the surface, and just how the underground rooms should be arranged.

“Well, I don’t know, Freddy,” he said. “The boys don’t like night work. Everybody’s in bed and asleep. Can’t it wait?”

Freddy said no, it couldn’t. And when he had explained why it couldn’t, Raymond got up on the rock and sounded the general alarm—three long whistles.

Considering what a sleepy lot woodchucks are, it was surprising how quickly they gathered. In ten minutes, forty-two of them had reported, and then Freddy led them over and showed them where they were to dig. The place selected was in the path, just on the Bean side of the wall. Raymond looked the ground over. Then he spit on his paws. “O.K., boys,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Freddy showed them where they were to dig.

They didn’t start digging from the top as a man with a spade would have done. On four sides of the place where the big hole was to be, they drove slanting shafts downward to meet six feet underground. Pretty soon the dirt began to come flying out of the holes, and one gang of woodchucks carried it away and spread it out so that it wouldn’t mound up into heaps. After half an hour or so, the ground in the middle began to cave in, but the workers below kept right on, and by the time they had been working two hours they had finished, and there was a pit in the path some six feet deep and three feet across.

Freddy in the meantime had gone down to the barn and dragged up an old mattress that had been stored in the loft. He put it in the bottom of the hole, and then they laid small branches across the top of the pit and covered them with leaves and grass and rubbish so that it looked no different from the ground around it. And then Freddy thanked the woodchucks, and they all went home to bed.