Chapter 13

From their hiding place outside the high iron fence that surrounded the Underdunk estate, the animals watched the hunt for Freddy. Mr. Garble and the chauffeur had searched the house, and now were turning the beams of their flashlights behind every bush and tree. Freddy had disappeared, but presently came back dragging a long heavy rope which he had found in Judge Willey’s garage, down the street.

A flashlight beam swept along the fence and the animals all ducked. “I wish they’d go in,” said Freddy. “Now’s the time, while the party’s still going on, to get that deer.”

“Oh, if that’s all you want!” said Sniffy Wilson, and got up and went to the gate. He strolled across the open lawn towards the house. Pretty soon the chauffeur said: “Mr. Garble, I think there’s a skunk out here. I’m going in.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Garble. “Your orders were to search the grounds, Smith. You’d better do as Mrs. Underdunk tells you.”

“Yes, sir,” said the chauffeur. “But my orders don’t include skunks. I’m a chauffeur, not a wild animal tamer. I ain’t got any ambition to bring ’em back alive; I’d rather get back alive myself.”

“Oh, don’t talk so much,” snapped Mr. Garble. “Get on with the job.”

But the chauffeur had gone into the house.

“Darned coward!” said Mr. Garble, and just then his flashlight picked up Sniffy Wilson. He stopped still, and Sniffy looked at the light a moment and then started walking towards it, as unconcerned as if he was in his own parlor. Mr. Garble dropped the flashlight and ran.

Sniffy went over to it and turned off the light. “No use wasting the battery,” he said. Sniffy was always very careful of other people’s things.

The animals hurried in across the lawn. But they had hardly got the rope looped around the deer’s neck when Mrs. Underdunk, followed by her brother, came out on to the lawn. “Back to the hedge,” whispered Freddy. “They can’t see us until their eyes get used to the dark.”

“It’s all that wretched pig,” Mrs. Underdunk was saying. “It was he that made that announcement about the deer; not the senator.”

“He wants it for their scrap pile,” said Mr. Garble. He peered nervously out into the darkness. “It is still there.”

“And it’s going to stay there,” said Mrs. Underdunk. “I have no objection to giving any old iron that we have no use for, but I certainly don’t intend to give up that deer, whether the government needs it or not.”

“You shouldn’t have offered to give it up, then,” said Mr. Garble.

“How could I help myself after that announcement, and everybody praising me for being so patriotic!”

“Well,” said Mr. Garble, “they won’t praise you if you don’t give it up now.”

“You’ve got to get it, Herbert, before anybody else does,” said Mrs. Underdunk, “and hide it in the barn. You can say you sold it to the junk man. When the war’s over I can bring it out again. I’d like to kill that pig!”

“I intend to kill that pig,” said Mr. Garble.

“Well, go ahead and kill him,” said Mrs. Underdunk. “You talk a lot about it, but people are beginning to laugh at us. Even Judge Willey says now that he guesses you wouldn’t make a very good sheriff if you can’t get the best of a pig.”

“You can’t get the best of him yourself,” said Mr. Garble. “He’s got your iron deer away from you.”

“He hasn’t got it yet,” said Mrs. Underdunk, and turned and went back into the house, and after a minute Mr. Garble followed her.

“All right, animals,” said Freddy, and they rushed back to the deer. Mrs. Wiggins and her two sisters, Mrs. Wurzburger and Mrs. Wogus, hooked the rope around their horns and the deer went over with a crash.

“We ought to have waited till the music starts again,” said Jinx. “I bet they heard that. Pull, girls! Out through the gate.”

Mrs. Underdunk had indeed heard it, for she came to the window and looked out, then turned and called: “Herbert! Herbert!”

There was a pile of small branches at one side of the lawn where someone had been trimming the trees. Freddy rushed over to it and pulled out several small ones. “Here, Hank,” he said. “You’ve got to be the deer. We’ll tie these on for antlers. No, no time to tie them. Take ’em in your mouth.”

The cows, assisted by all the smaller animals who could get their teeth on the rope, were dragging the deer out of the gate. Hank took some of the branches in his mouth and Freddy arranged them so that they did indeed seem to sprout out above the horse’s head like a pair of antlers.

“Now, hold your head up,” said Freddy. “And stand perfectly still.” He giggled. “You make a wonderful deer, Hank. You look just like that picture in the Beans’ dining room, of the Monarch of the Glen.”

“Looks more like the Monarch of the Milk Wagon,” whispered Sniffy Wilson. “Psssst! Here they are.”

Looks more like the Monarch of the Milk Wagon.

Mrs. Underdunk and Mr. Garble came hurrying out on to the lawn. They stopped, peering through the darkness at Hank.

“Why … it’s there!” exclaimed Mrs. Underdunk. “But when I looked out the window I was sure it had gone.”

“Well, it’s there now,” said Mr. Garble crossly. “I keep telling you: Those animals couldn’t possibly take it away.”

“But it looks—different, somehow,” she said. “It looks white, instead of brown. And—surely it never had a long tail! No deer has a tail like that. Where’s your flashlight?”

“I lost it. But why do you worry so? It’s there, whatever kind of tail it’s got. Look at it in the morning.”

“I’m going to look at it now,” said Mrs. Underdunk, and started across the lawn.

“Well, I’m not,” said Mr. Garble. “There are skunks around tonight.”

“Don’t be vulgar, Herbert,” said Mrs. Underdunk. “There are no animals of that nature in my grounds.” And she went on.

Sniffy Wilson started out from behind the bush where he and Freddy were crouching. He looked over his shoulder at the pig. “Shall I, Freddy?”

“No, no, Sniffy,” whispered Freddy. “Better not.”

“Oh, rats!” said Sniffy. “What’s the good of being a skunk anyway?” But he went out into the middle of the lawn.

Even at night it is easy to see a skunk because of the broad white stripe down his back, and as soon as Mrs. Underdunk saw Sniffy she stopped. “Shoo!” she said.

But Sniffy kept right on coming.

“Well, dear me!” said Mrs. Underdunk, and stepped to one side to go around him. But Sniffy moved to the same side and blocked her. Several times they did this, and Freddy saw that Sniffy was doing the dance step that the senator had tried to teach Mrs. Underdunk: two to the right, kick, two to the left—he began to giggle.

Up to that moment Hank had been standing perfectly motionless, and it hadn’t been easy, either, with Mrs. Underdunk and Sniffy dancing a minuet right in front of him. But when Freddy giggled, Hank broke down and laughed. And when he laughed he opened his mouth and the branches fell out of it, and then he wasn’t a deer any more, he was just an old white horse, and Mrs. Underdunk turned and ran back to the house.

“Herbert!” she cried. “Get the station wagon. They’ve got the deer!”

In three minutes the station wagon swung out of the gate with the chauffeur driving and Mr. Garble sitting beside him with a shotgun in his hands.

The cows had dragged the deer a little way down the road, and when they saw the lights of the station wagon behind them they tried to pull it off into the ditch and out of sight. But they were overtaken before they succeeded. They dropped the rope and galloped off across the fields. And Mr. Garble got out and tied the rope to the rear bumper.

When the station wagon got back to the gate, dragging the deer behind it, it stopped, and the two men got out and tried to lift the deer into it. They heaved and tugged and panted, but it was a big deer and they could only get one end of it an inch or two off the ground.

Freddy had been watching from behind a gate post. He saw that they had left the engine running; and he knew that this would be the last chance to get the deer. He had never driven a car, but he had ridden in one often enough. “Just push a few levers around and step on the gas,” he said to himself, “and off you go. Nothing to it.” So he rushed out and made a flying leap into the driver’s seat. And then I don’t know what happened, but I guess he must have pushed the wrong levers around, for the station wagon gave a sort of jerk forward as if someone had stuck a pin in it, and let out a roar like a wounded lion. The jerk threw Freddy on the floor, and the next thing he knew the chauffeur was sitting on his head and Mr. Garble was tying his legs together with a piece of cord.

“There!” said Mr. Garble, getting up. He smiled wolfishly at Freddy. “I guess that finishes the Bean Home News!”