Chapter 7

Freddy stood in the middle of the barnyard and all the other animals stood around and watched while Jinx tied a handkerchief securely over his eyes. Then they all closed in on him and whirled him around four or five times so he would lose his sense of direction, and they changed their positions too, so their voices wouldn’t come from the places where he had seen them standing. And then Jinx said: “Go!”

But Freddy was not a detective for nothing. To reach that pond he had to go out of the gate, cross the road and climb the fence on the other side, then across a shallow valley and up to another road. When he had crossed this road, he would be on the Macy farm. And although he didn’t know exactly where the pond was, if he kept on in the same direction he was sure he would pass near it, and since like most animals he could smell water, he knew he wouldn’t have much trouble finding it. As for starting out in the right direction, and holding to it all the way, there was nothing much to that. For what breeze there was came in light puffs always from the west; he had only to keep it on his right cheek and he couldn’t go wrong.

He waited a moment until the breeze came stronger. It was on his left cheek. He turned around and started out, and there was a whispering of applause from the animals. But Jinx put a stop to that. “Hey, shut up, will you?” he said. “Of course he can find the pond if you’re going to keep telling him when he’s going right. You can follow along if you want to, but you keep your traps shut or we’ll call the whole thing off.” After that they kept still.

So Freddy went out of the gate. He crossed the road, and the ditch beyond it, and struggled through the wire fence, and then started down the gentle slope, stopping now and then until another puff of wind came against his right cheek and assured him that he was still going south. All the floor of this shallow valley was one big hayfield, so there were no gullies or trees or fences for him to run into, and he would have reached the Macy farm all right, and would probably have found the pond, too,—only just before he got to the bottom of the slope, the wind began to shift.

It shifted gradually around towards the south, each puff a little weaker and a little farther around, and so Freddy, as he went along, steering by the feel of it on his right cheek, shifted too. Pretty soon he was headed east, up the valley, instead of south, across it. He was at the bottom now, on level ground, so he didn’t notice anything. And then for a few minutes the breeze died entirely and the air was perfectly still.

Freddy stood perfectly still, too, waiting. He could hear the other animals breathing and moving around a little behind him, but that didn’t tell him anything. Then a puff of wind came. It was from dead ahead—from the east, though of course he didn’t know that. So he turned till it was on his right cheek and went on. And in a minute, sure enough, the ground began to slope up, just as he had expected. And he plodded along right back the way he had come.

Some of the animals who were following him began to giggle and poke each other, but Jinx flattened his ears and glared so ferociously that they quieted down. And Freddy went on, felt his way through the fence and across the road, and then across the Bean fence, a little way up from the gate. Up the hill past the farmyard he went, missing his own home, the pigpen, by only a few yards. Then he put his nose up in the air and sniffed. “I smell water,” he said. “Better haul out that cushion, cat—it’ll be mine in another few minutes.”

Freddy smelt water all right, but it wasn’t the Macy pond—it was the duck pond on his own farm. Alice and Emma, Mr. Bean’s two white ducks, were swimming around on it, occasionally tipping up to stand on their heads in the water and search the rich mud for the kind of delicacies nobody but a duck would care to sample. Their Uncle Wesley, a pompous little duck who had come to live with them, was snoozing in the shade of a burdock leaf on the bank. He didn’t hear Freddy coming, and when the blindfolded pig walked slowly up to the edge of the water and stopped, he stepped squarely on the duck’s large flat left foot.

Uncle Wesley woke with a strangled and outraged quack. “Ouch!” he yelled. “You great clumsy lummox!”

“Ouch!” he yelled. “You great clumsy lummox!”

Freddy snatched off the handkerchief. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Very careless of me.” He looked around. “I didn’t know that Mr. Macy kept ducks down here. Very nice place. Looks very much like our own duck pond, over on the Bean farm.” Then he stared hard at Uncle Wesley. “Why you—you’re Uncle Wesley! What on earth are you doing down here?”

“Sir,” said the duck, who was trying to recover his dignity while hopping around on one foot—not an easy thing to do; “sir, I am minding my own business, and I would recommend that you do the same.”

“Well,” said Freddy, “that’s what I …”

“Pardon me,” Uncle Wesley continued; “your business, whatever it is, does not include blundering up here with a silly handkerchief over your eyes and tramping all over a private citizen, who is sitting quietly in his own front yard, contemplating the beauties of nature.”

“But …” Freddy began.

“As a private citizen,” the duck went on, still hopping about, “I have my rights and I intend to stand on them.”

“Well, all right,” said Freddy; “go on, do it, and quit jumping around; I can’t talk to anybody who won’t stand still. What did you have for lunch—grasshoppers?” He turned to Jinx. “How’d these ducks get over here anyway? How …” He stopped at the roar of laughter that went up from the other animals.

It took some time to explain to Freddy what had happened. And even after he realized how, guided by the shifting wind, he had walked right around in a half circle and come back to the place he had started from, he felt pretty confused. “I can’t understand it,” he said, looking out across the valley towards the Macy farm. “I can’t be two places at once, and yet I know this is Macy’s pond, and yet—yet I can see I’m here …”

“OK, pig,” said Jinx. “You can take it from us you’re here. And I can tell you where you’ll be a few nights from now, too—you’ll be in front of the ticket window at the Centerboro movie theatre, asking for two good seats.”

Alice and Emma had swum over and were fussing around their uncle. They supported him while he hobbled down and held his injured foot in the cool water. Freddy apologized again, but the duck closed his eyes and turned his head away with as much of an expression of intense suffering as a duck can get on his face.

“Come on, Freddy,” said Jinx. “That chipmunk is waiting for you. Try finding the pond with your eyes open this time. I’ll go along and set you right in case you get going round in circles again.” He grinned at the pig, but after that he didn’t say any more about it. He was smart enough to know that you don’t gain anything by crowing over your victories.

The chipmunk came out of his hole when they finally reached the pond. “About time,” he said grumpily. “You’d think it was you doing me a favor, instead of vice versa and otherwise.” He scowled at Freddy. “You know anybody named Mr. Eha?”

“Mr. what?” said the pig.

“Eha! Eha!” the chipmunk snapped. “Can’t you understand English?”

“Maybe I could if you’d stop hiccuping,” Freddy retorted. “Well, so somebody’s name is Eha. What of it?”

“If you’ll sit down and keep still maybe I can tell you,” said the chipmunk irritably. Like all chipmunks, he spoke jerkily, stamping his feet, flicking his tail, and giving continual little jumps as if he felt pins being stuck in him. This sort of thing makes chipmunks very difficult to hold an orderly conversation with. “Day before yesterday I was up at my brother-in-law’s. That road above the Bean farm—runs between Bean woods and the Big Woods. He lives there. Invited me up for his birthday. Had to take him a present, too. Cause talk if I didn’t, I suppose.

“Well, I was just starting home when I saw two rats coming up the road. Don’t like rats, so I hid in the stone wall. They sat down to rest under the wall, and one of them says: ‘This is old Bean’s property, ain’t it?’

“‘Sure is,’ says the other. ‘He’s next but one on the list, I understand.’

“‘When do we move in on old Camphor?’ says the first, and the other says: ‘Soon as Mr. Eha gets that hotel property. Simon wants him to take the Bean farm next, but Eha says no, we got to get Camphor’s place first.’

“‘Be funny being back at Bean’s,’ says the first. ‘Boy, won’t old Simon be happy! He sure hates those Bean animals—specially that smart aleck of a pig. He says he’s going to have him stuffed and set up in the front yard, as soon as Mr. Eha gets the Bean place.’

“They both snickered quite a while over that, and then they talked some more about how smart this Eha is. Seems like he’s planning to get hold of all the farm property in this part of the county. But I didn’t quite get how he expects to do it.”

“I do,” said Freddy. “This is more serious than I thought.” He told the chipmunk what had happened at Lakeside. “You see, he wrecks the property and scares out the owner, and then I suppose he plans to buy it in cheap. Mrs. Filmore is broke; she’ll have to sell the hotel and take what she can get for it. But look—did you get any idea about who this Eha is, or where he lives?”

“I sort of gathered that none of ’em knew. Even Simon. They only see him at night. He always wears a mask. He meets ’em somewheres, every night. And they’re scared of him. Seems if they don’t obey his orders he cuts off their tails. Don’t suppose it hurts ’em much, but it’s a terrible blow to their pride. Makes ’em look foolish—little stub of a tail.” He stopped and looked startled. “Sorry,” he said. “I forgot.”

“No offense,” said Freddy. “I never had a long tail and wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did. My tail’s OK. It may not impress others much, but I like it.”

“H’mph,” said the chipmunk. “Well, I daresay it isn’t much bother.” He glanced at his own elegant tail, then at Freddy’s. “Well,” he said, “good afternoon.” And darted into his hole.