The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse | Page 6

strange squeaking?" Mr. Crow asked Jasper Jay.
"To me it sounded a good deal like a rusty hinge on Farmer Green's
barn door," Jasper Jay answered.
But Mr. Crow shook his head. "It couldn't have been that," he said.
"Maybe Mrs. Green is rocking on a loose board on the porch," Jasper
suggested.
Still Mr. Crow couldn't agree with him.
"Don't be silly!" he snapped. "We're half a mile from the farmhouse."
"Well, what do you think the noise was?" Jasper Jay inquired.
Old Mr. Crow cocked an eye upward into the tree-top above him. "I'd
think it was a Squirrel if it was louder," he replied. Jasper Jay laughed
in a most disagreeable fashion.

"I'd think it was thunder if it was loud enough," he sneered.
And at that the two cousins began to quarrel violently. To tell the truth,
they never could be together long without having a dispute.
For a short time Dickie Deer Mouse listened to their rude remarks,
hoping that they would stop wrangling long enough to hear his question
about Fatty Coon.
But they talked louder and louder. And since Dickie Deer Mouse never
quarreled with anybody, and hated to hear such language as the two
cousins used, he slipped out of his house without their seeing him and
went over to the cornfield.
For he was hungry.
[Illustration]

[Illustration]
VIII
IN THE CORNFIELD
In one way, especially, Fatty Coon and Dickie Deer Mouse were alike:
They were night-prowlers. When they slept it was usually broad
daylight outside, and the birds--except for a few odd fellows like Willie
Whip-poor-will and Mr. Night Hawk--were abroad, and singing, and
twittering. And when most of the birds went to sleep Dickie and Fatty
Coon began to feel quite wide awake.
It was not strange, therefore, that Dickie Deer Mouse was surprised
when he found himself face to face with Fatty Coon in the cornfield at
midday.
Dickie tried to slip out of sight under a pumpkin vine that grew
between the rows; but Fatty Coon saw him before he could hide. And

Fatty began to make the queerest noise, as if he were almost choking.
Dickie Deer Mouse stopped. And he trembled the least bit; for Fatty
looked terribly fierce. Perhaps (Dickie thought) he was choking with
rage.
"Can I help you?" Dickie asked him. "Would you like me to thump you
on the back?"
Fatty Coon shook his head. There was nothing the matter with him,
except that he had stuffed his mouth so full that he couldn't speak. After
swallowing several times he wiped his mouth on the back of his paw--a
habit of which his mother had never been able to break him. It was no
wonder that dainty Dickie Deer Mouse shuddered again, when Fatty
did that.
"May I go and get you a napkin?" Dickie asked, as he edged away.
"No!" Fatty Coon growled. "I've been wanting to have a talk with you.
And now that I've found you, you needn't run off."
Then, to Dickie's horror, Fatty stopped talking and licked both his
paws.
"May I get you a finger bowl?" Dickie inquired.
Fatty Coon actually didn't know what he meant.
"Is that something to eat?" he asked. And he looked much interested,
and seemed quite downcast when Dickie said "No!"
"Then you needn't trouble yourself," Fatty Coon told him with a sigh.
"Can't you find corn enough for a good meal?" Dickie asked him
wonderingly.
"I could," said Fatty Coon, "if other people didn't take so much of it....
Now, there's Mr. Crow," he complained. "I had to get out of bed and
come over here to-day, in the sunlight, because I was afraid he wouldn't

leave any corn for me.
"There's no use saying anything to him," Fatty continued, "because he
thinks this is his cornfield.... But little chaps like you will have to keep
away from this place.... Now I've warned you," he added. "And if I hear
of your eating any more corn I'll come straight to your house--when I
find out where it is--and I'll----"
He did not finish his threat. But he looked so darkly at Dickie that what
he didn't say made Dickie Deer Mouse shiver all over, though the warm
midday sun fell upon the cornfield.
Now, Dickie Deer Mouse hadn't eaten a single kernel of corn all that
day. But he suddenly lost his appetite for it; and murmuring a faint
good-bye he turned and ran for the woods as fast as he could go.
"Stop! Stop!" Fatty Coon called after him. "There's something more I
want to say to you."
But whatever it may have been, Dickie Deer Mouse did not wait to hear
it.
[Illustration]

[Illustration]
IX
FATTY COON NEEDS HELP
The moment he plunged into the woods beyond the cornfield