Freddy and Simon the Dictator (2 page)

“I not only didn't try to stop them, I told them to take the lettuce. And what are you going to do about that, Mr. Smarty Pig?”

“Well, I'll be darned!” Jinx muttered. He and Freddy stared at each other, hardly able to believe their ears. That a responsible mother of a family would actually urge her child to steal was incredible.

Jinx was the first to recover himself. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “You're the one Mr. Bean ought to have spanked. By gosh, I'll do it for him.” His paw shot out and caught Mrs. 6 by the shoulder.

But Freddy stopped him. “Wait a minute,” he said. “We must get to the bottom of this. Mrs. 6, will you tell me why you turned against Mr. Bean, who has always been kind and considerate to all the animals on the farm?”

“Tell you?” said Mrs. 6 angrily, “indeed and I'll tell you! It's the same reason why I'm left a poor widow woman with eight fatherless children. It's your fine Mr. Bean that's responsible for that.”

“Oh, come,” said Freddy. “I was on that case, when your husband disappeared two years ago. There wasn't a clue—certainly nothing to connect his disappearance with Mr. Bean. He just walked out one night and vanished.”

“And who's to blame him?” said Jinx, looking distastefully at Mrs. 6. “Got sick of being nagged at, and just up and went over the hill. Smart guy, if you ask me.”

“Oh, sure,” said the rabbit. “I know that's what some people said. But Mr. 6 wasn't nagged; we never had a cross word. And why was nothing ever seen or heard of him again? Why didn't you, Freddy, find any trace of him? I'll tell you why. You wait here.” She hopped into her front door.

In a minute, she was back. She held out a piece of paper to Freddy. It was a leaf torn out of a cookbook. “Rabbit stew,” Freddy read. “Cut up your rabbit and place him in a saucepan …”

“Sure,” said the rabbit. “Cut up Mr. 6—that's what your kind, sweet Mrs. Bean did. Fried him and had him for supper. How do I know? Because that's a page out of Mrs. Bean's cookbook, that's howl”

“Where'd you get this?” Freddy asked. “Even if it
was
out of Mrs. Bean's cookbook, I wouldn't believe that the Beans had your husband for supper. I don't know anybody but Jinx, or the mice, or probably the two dogs, who could get into Mrs. Bean's kitchen to tear a page out of her cookbook. Where'd you get it?”

“I'm not at liberty to say,” Mrs. 6 replied.

“I thought so,” said Freddy. “Somebody has done this to set you—and if they can, all the other rabbits—against the Beans.” He thought a minute. “Well,” he said finally, “I'm not going to argue with you. If you're silly enough to believe that, you're too silly to argue with. Come on, Jinx.”

CHAPTER

2

Two years earlier, Freddy had driven the rats out of the Grimby house cellar, where they had dug themselves in, by dumping a lot of spoiled onions in the cellar hole. Rats don't even like fresh onions, and spoiled ones make them very sick. Shortly after this, as has been related elsewhere, all but one of the rats had been shipped out to a ranch in Montana. Freddy was sure that that time he had got rid of them for good.

Since then, he hadn't visited the Grimby house. As he and Jinx crept up towards it through the woods that evening, there was no taint of spoiled onions in the air. Two years of rain and snow and sunshine had taken it all away.

Jinx was all black, and even in the daytime could have slipped through the woods without being noticed. But though Freddy was a skilled woodsman, and could move as silently as a shadow, he knew that he was too pale in color to escape attention, and so he had put on one of the many disguises he used in his detective work: a black morning coat, gray striped trousers, and a derby hat. With this, and a dark false beard to hide his face, he was nearly invisible.

They sneaked up as close to the ruined house as they dared. It was not very close. For they sensed, rather than heard, the presence of a large gathering of animals. There was no talk; everyone was keeping very quiet; but there were rustlings, whisperings—and then suddenly a great voice came roaring out of the cellar hole.

“Attention, friends! At our last meeting, you learned something of the true nature of the human race, and particularly of your masters, Bean and Witherspoon, Macy and Schermerhorn, the farmers on whose land you live and whose slaves you are. For make no mistake, friends, slaves you are, ruled by whip and gun. This very afternoon, one of the most brutal punishments ever suffered by any animal was inflicted upon two helpless young rabbits by Mr. William Bean. Beaten within an inch of their lives, they were left moaning and half dead beside the vegetable garden where they had been innocently nibbling at a wilted lettuce leaf.

“But enough of this, friends. I am not here tonight to tell you of these things. Every one of you knows of the wrongs and cruelties he himself has suffered at the hands of these men. Every one of you bitterly resents the oppression which he is powerless to overcome.”

A small shrill voice cut across the speaker's roaring tones. “Mr. Bean is kind to his animals.”

“I know that he has that reputation,” came the reply. “I know that he
says
he is kind to them. And no doubt to some of them he does show kindness at times. A horse or a dog will work harder for a kind master than for an unkind one. But is it kindness to beat young rabbits into insensibility? Is it kindness to make a stew of the father of a large family and serve him up for supper? No, friends, such kindness is not what we have a right to expect.”

Jinx put his mouth close to Freddy's ear. “Something familiar about that voice,” he muttered.

“Is to me, too,” said the pig. “But only one of the cows would have as big a one. Like Mrs. Wiggins when she gets to laughing.”

“'Tisn't a cow,” said Jinx. “Look, I'm going to climb a tree and see if I can get a squint at the guy. I want to see who's here, too. This business could be serious.”

How serious it could be, Freddy was to learn later. Now he listened as the big voice went on. “I said a moment ago that we animals were powerless. As long as we are each of us acting alone, that is true. One animal by himself can do nothing. But suppose ten thousand animals, on the farms about Centerboro, banded together in the cause of freedom! Suppose ten million animals in New York State! Friends, in one night we could cast off our chains! We could take over these farms—yes, and the villages, too, and later, even the cities. We could run them for ourselves, for the workers who are today deprived of the fruit of their labors by their masters, the farmers.

“Many of you, I know, will find it hard to think of humans as your enemies. You have lived beside them in peace for generations. But there was peace only because you submitted to their rule. What happened when you rebelled? What happened to the rats, the one group of animals who never submitted to the Beans and their like? You are told that rats are hateful, sly, and vicious; that they are thieves and outlaws. But who tells you that? The farmers. And why? Because the rats chose to be free, to take orders from no human. For what is their crime? To take a little grain from the farmers' store—grain which grows on the land, and which should be free to all. And for that they were chased and shot at, driven out into the woods like criminals, and finally exiled to Montana.

“But enough of this. I have shown you what we must do. If we wish to live free lives, in a free country—to do as we please, rather than as Mr. Bean or Mr. Witherspoon pleases—then we must organize. That is a matter which I will take up at our next meeting. In the meanwhile, think over what I have said, consider carefully what you wish to do. If you wish to continue living as slaves, then I am wasting my time here. But if you have the will to burst your shackles and enter into the glorious life of free animals, then I will show you the way.

“Now, are there any questions?”

For a moment there was silence. Then the small voice which had spoken before—it was a rabbit's, and Freddy thought it was 12's—said: “Why don't you tell us who you are?”

“Who I am,” was the reply, “will be revealed in due course. This, I will tell you: I am not a human.”

“You a bug?” the little voice asked.

There were a few faint snickers, but it is a measure of the seriousness with which the listeners took the speaker that there was no laughter. This, as much as anything that had been said, worried Freddy. If the farm animals were taking this creature, whoever he was, seriously, there was big trouble ahead.

Freddy decided that he had learned all he needed to, and he thought he had better leave before the meeting broke up. He backed out of the bush where he had taken cover and sneaked off down through the woods.

When he got to the pig pen, Freddy didn't go straight to bed. He didn't even take off the derby and the morning coat, but sat down in his big chair and put his feet up on the desk beside the old typewriter on which he composed his poems and prepared the copy for his weekly animal newspaper, the Bean Home News. He wanted to think.

He was still thinking, to the accompaniment of good hearty snores, an hour later when Jinx tapped at the door, then pushed it open, and came in. Seeing his friend asleep, the cat grinned, tiptoed up close to him, and suddenly screeched: “Arise, pig! Cast off your chains! The revolution has dawned! The animals have taken over!”

Freddy arose all right. He went right up out of the chair as if he were on springs, and before his eyes were open, grabbed a stick from the corner, dashed to the door, and throwing it open, assumed an attitude of defense. Then his eyes opened and he began to relax. “Dawn?” he muttered. “ 'Tisn't dawn yet. Black as your hat out.”

He stood there for a second or two, then turned and saw Jinx. “Darn you, cat,” he said crossly, “I wish you'd quit these silly jokes.” He picked up the derby, which had fallen to the floor, and brushed the dust off it tenderly. “I was just thinking—” he began.

“Boy, I'll say you were—thinking on all twelve cylinders,” said Jinx. “Could hear you all the way down from the woods.”

“Yeah,” Freddy said. “Very comical. But suppose you tell me what you saw.”

“I didn't see much,” said the cat seriously. “I know we're supposed to see in the dark, and we can, better than most animals. But not in the pitch-black, the way it was there. Matter of fact, owls can see better in the dark than cats can.—Hey, how about that screech owl pal of yours, the one that swallowed the dictionary—Uncle Solomon? I bet he knows what's going on.”

“Probably Old Whibley does, too,” said Freddy. Whibley was a big owl who lived with his niece, Vera, in a tree not far from the Grimby house. “We'd better see him tomorrow.”

“I didn't see the speaker,” Jinx went on, “though I waited nearly an hour after they all left. Nobody came out of the cellar. There were some big animals in the audience, though. I saw a couple of horses, and at least one cow; and I gathered that there were some skunks there—I don't know whether it was Sniffy Wilson and his family or not. Mostly, though, they were just small animals. Lots of rabbits.”