Mother West Wind Where Stories | Page 7

Old Man Coyote. "Yap-Yap never has
forgotten what his great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather learned when
he first took to living on the open prairie."
"What did he learn? Tell me about it, Mr. Coyote," begged Peter.
"He learned to use his wits," replied Old Man Coyote, with a provoking
grin. "He learned to use his wits, that's all."
"Please tell me about it, Mr. Coyote. Please," begged Peter.
"Once upon a time," began Old Man Coyote, "so my grandfather told

me, and he got it from his grandfather, who got it from his grandfather,
who--"
"I know," interrupted Peter. "It happened in the days when the world
was young."
Old Man Coyote looked at Peter very hard as if he had half a mind not
to tell the story, but Peter looked so innocent and so eager that he began
again. "Once upon a time lived the
great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather of Yap-Yap, the very first of all
the Prairie Dogs, and his name was Yap-Yap too. He was own cousin
to old Mr. Woodchuck, who of course wasn't old then, and the two
cousins looked much alike, save that Yap-Yap was a little smaller than
Mr. Woodchuck and perhaps a little smarter looking.
"From the very beginning Yap-Yap was a keen lover of the great open
spaces. Trees were all very well for those who liked them, but he
preferred to have nothing above him but the blue, blue sky. It seemed
to him that he never could find a big enough open space, so he never
stayed very long in any one place, but kept pushing on and on, looking
for a spot in the Great World that would just suit him. At last he came
to the edge of the Green Forest, and before him, as far as he could see,
stretched the Green Meadows. At least it was like the Green Meadows,
only a million thousand times as big as the Green Meadows we are on
now, Peter, and was really the Great Prairie.
"Yap-Yap looked and looked, then he drew a long breath of pure joy
and started out across the green grass. On and on he went, until when
he sat up and looked this way or that way or the other way he could see
nothing but grass and flowers, and over him was naught but the blue,
blue sky. He had found the great open space of which he had dreamed,
and he was happy. So he ate and slept and played with the Merry Little
Breezes and grew fat.
"Then one day came Skimmer the Swallow and brought him news of
the hard times which had come to the rest of the Great World and how
as a result the big and the strong were hunting the small and the weak
in order that they themselves might live. When Skimmer had gone,

Yap-Yap grew uneasy. What if some of the big and strong people he
had known should come out there in quest of food and should find him?
There was no place in which to hide. There was no cave or hollow log.
"Yap-Yap looked at the strong claws Old Mother Nature had given him
and an idea came to him. He would dig a hole in the ground. So he dug
a hole on a long slant very much like the hole of Johnny Chuck; but
when it was finished a little doubt crept into his head and grew and
grew. What was to prevent some one who was very hungry from
digging him out? So he moved on a little way and started another hole,
and this time he made it almost straight down. Every day he made that
hole deeper until it was many feet deep. Then he made a turn in it and
dug a long tunnel, at the end of which he hollowed out a comfortable
bedroom and lined it with grass. When it was finished he was quite
satisfied.
"'I don't believe,' said he, 'that any one will have the patience to dig to
the bottom of this.'
"So at night he slept in his bed at the end of his long hall far below the
surface, but all day he spent above ground, for he dearly loved the
sunshine. All went well until there came a time of heavy rains. Then
Yap-Yap discovered that the water ran down his hole, and if he didn't
do something, he was likely to be drowned out. Right away he set his
sharp wits to work. He noticed that when the water on the surface
reached the little piles of sand he had made, it ran around them. So he
made a great mound of sand around his hole with the entrance in the
middle and pressed it firm on the inside so that the