The Tale of Solomon Owl | Page 7

Fox he
would have drawn nearer.
"Do you know that stranger?" Solomon Owl asked him, pointing out
the horrible head to Jimmy.
"I haven't the pleasure," said Jimmy Rabbit, after he had taken a good
look.
"Well," said Solomon, "won't you kindly speak to him; and ask him to
go away?"
"Certainly!" answered Jimmy Rabbit, who always tried to be obliging.
"I hope the stranger won't eat him," remarked Tommy Fox, "because I
hope to do that some day, myself."
It was queer--but Jimmy Rabbit was the only one of the four that wasn't
afraid of those glaring features. He hopped straight up to the big round
head, which was just a bit higher than one of the fence posts, against
which the stranger seemed to be leaning. And after a moment or two
Jimmy Rabbit called to Solomon and Fatty and Tommy Fox:
"He won't go away! He's going to stay right where he is!"
"Come here a minute!" said Tommy.
Jimmy Rabbit shook his head.
"You come over here!" he answered. And he did not stir from the side
of the stranger. He knew very well that Tommy Fox was afraid of the
man with the head with the glaring eyes.
As for Tommy Fox, he did not even reply--that is, to Jimmy Rabbit.
But he spoke his mind freely enough to his two friends in the tree.

"It seems to me one of you ought to do something," said he. "We'll eat
no pullets to-night if we can't get rid of this meddlesome stranger."
Fatty Coon quite agreed with him.
"The one who was here first is the one to act!" Fatty declared. "That's
you!" he told Solomon Owl.
So Solomon Owl felt most uncomfortable.
"I don't know what I can do," he said. "I spoke to the stranger--asked
him who he was. And he wouldn't answer me."
"Can't you frighten him away?" Tommy Fox inquired. "Fly right over
his head and give him a blow with your wing as you pass!"
Solomon Owl coughed. He was embarrassed, to say the least.
"He's afraid!" Fatty Coon cried. And both he and Tommy Fox kept
repeating, over and over again, "He's afraid! He's afraid! He's afraid!"
It was really more than Solomon Owl could stand.
"I'm not!" he retorted angrily. "Watch me and you'll see!" And without
another word he darted out of the tree and swooped down upon the
stranger, just brushing the top of his head. Solomon Owl knew at once
that he had knocked something off the top of that dreadful
head--something that fell to the ground and made Jimmy Rabbit jump
nervously.
Then Solomon returned to his perch in the tree.
"He hasn't moved," he said. "But I knocked off his hat."
"You took off the top of his head!" cried Fatty Coon in great
excitement. "Look! The inside of his head is afire."
And peering down from the tree-top, Solomon Owl saw that Fatty
Coon had told the truth.

IX HALLOWE'EN
Solomon Owl was afraid of fire. And when he looked down from his
perch in the tree and saw, through the hole in the stranger's crown, that
all was aglow inside his big, round head, Solomon couldn't help
voicing his horror. He "whoo-whooed" so loudly that Tommy Fox, at
the foot of the tree, asked him what on earth was the matter.
"His head's all afire!" Solomon Owl told him. "That's what makes his
eyes glare so. And that's why the fire shines through his mouth and his
nose, too. It's no wonder he didn't answer my question--for, of course,
his tongue must certainly be burned to a cinder."
"Then it ought to be safe for anybody to enter the chicken house,"
Tommy Fox observed. "What could the stranger do, when he's in such
a fix?"
"He could set the chicken house afire, if he followed you inside,"
replied Solomon Owl wisely. "And I, for one, am not going near the
pullets to-night."
"Nor I!" Fatty Coon echoed. "I'm going straight to the cornfield. The
corn is still standing there in shocks; and I ought to find enough ears to
make a good meal."
But Solomon Owl and Tommy Fox were not interested in corn. They
never ate it. And so it is not surprising that they should be greatly
disappointed. After a person has his mouth all made up for chicken it is
hard to think of anything that would taste even half as good.
"It's queer he doesn't go and hold his head under the pump," said
Solomon Owl. "That's what I should do, if I were he."
"Jimmy Rabbit had better not go too near him, or he'll get singed," said
Tommy Fox, anxiously. "I don't want anything to happen to him."
"Jimmy Rabbit is very careless," Solomon declared. "I don't