Freddy Rides Again (7 page)

“What ails you?” said Mr. Bean. “You laugh before you know what the joke is, and when I tell it to you, you stop.”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Bean, “because Freddy will think we're laughing at him!” And she went right in and made a chocolate cake and took it up to the pig pen herself, so that Freddy wouldn't feel bad.

But of course he didn't feel bad. He had laughed as hard as anybody. But he was glad to get the chocolate cake just the same.

Chapter 6

The next morning Freddy went into the First Animal Bank, of which he was President, and drew out four dollars. He rode down to Centerboro and spent it all for gum, and then he came home and put up a sign on the cow barn, “Free Gum. Chew all day. Nothing to pay.”

Even animals that can afford it seldom chew gum. Most of the Bean animals had tried it at one time or another, but said they couldn't see much in it. But of course when it was offered free, they saw no reason why they shouldn't take a stick or two. As a matter of fact, some of them were rather greedy, and took more than they could handle. Rabbit No. 74 got such a mouthful that he couldn't chew any more, and they had to hold him down and pry his jaws apart with a spoon to get the gum out.

Freddy didn't care how much they took. All he asked was that when they had chewed all the flavor out of the gum, they would give it back. Then they could have some more. So when the four dollars' worth was all chewed up, he and Jinx took it up in the loft over the stable and went to work. They shaped it into the form of a duck, and then rolled it around in a lot of feathers out of an old pillow and painted the bill and feet yellow. It looked quite a lot like a real duck. “Uncle Wesley to the life!” said Jinx. “Only it's got more brains.”

“Doesn't it seem awful quiet around here?” Freddy said, when they brought their chewing gum duck downstairs. “Don't you notice it?”

“Sure,” said Jinx. “It's all those jaws that have been chumping and chawing away for the past two hours. Now they've stopped. Hey, here comes Arthur!” He quickly covered the duck with an old sack as the big tortoise-shell strolled up.

“I'm obliged to you, Jinx,” Arthur said. “And to Bill. I just couldn't take it if that awful name got out for all these animals to giggle over.”

“It won't get out from us,” said Jinx. “Not as long as you let the mice and birds alone.”

“My dear Jinx!” Arthur protested. “It pains me deeply that you still distrust me. Ah, well, I shall hope to convince you in time.” And he went on.

“Too blamed sanctimonious,” Jinx said. “Well, I'll guard this duck and you go cut us out a couple of hosses.”

Freddy had sent out several wasps as advance scouts to locate their enemy. Now as they rode up towards the duck pond Jacob came buzzing along and lit on the pig's nose. “Got him, Freddy,” he said. “Cousin Izzy is keeping an eye on him. He's asleep on the top of the wall—right where that beech overhangs it—see?”

“Swell,” Freddy said. “Couldn't be better for us. Cy, you and Bill go up along this side of the wall, and when you're opposite the beech, get into a quarrel and yell at each other. That will cover any sounds we make creeping up along the other side of the wall.”

So Freddy and Jinx dismounted and circled around and crossed the wall into the woods some distance up. Then they crept cautiously down towards where Jacob had said the snake was sleeping.

Freddy could move pretty silently when he had to; Jinx of course made no noise at all. As they came closer they could hear their two friends on the other side of the wall.

“Yeah?” said Cy. “Well, all I can say is that anybody that could chew up and swallow an old pair of galoshes, buckles and all, hasn't got any very refined taste in food.”

“Oh, is that so!” Bill retorted. “Well, let me tell you that there's more flavor in a good, well-aged galosh or boot than in a ton of that flat, prickly hay you smack your lips over.”

The two friends had brought a bamboo fishpole with them. To the end of it they had fastened their chewing-gum duck. When they were six or eight feet from the part of the wall where the rattler was asleep, they crouched behind some bushes and slowly pushed the duck towards the wall. As they did so, Jinx, with as much of a quack in his voice as he could manage, said, “Oh, come on, Emma. There isn't any snake around here.”

Freddy who was behind Jinx, said: “Oh, do be careful, sister! He'll hypnotize you. Oh, oh! How can I ever face Uncle Wesley if I let my dear sister get swallowed.” His voice didn't sound much like Emma's.

Jinx's whiskers twitched with amusement. He said: “Pooh, just let him try—that's all; just let him try!”

Then they saw the rattler. He raised his head from his coils and looked at the duck.

Jinx pushed it nearer. “Ha, ha!” he said. “I betcha he beats it the minute he sees me. Ah, there you are, old slither and snoop! Come on, do your stuff!”

Freddy crawled up carefully beside Jinx and whispered in his ear. “Alice doesn't talk like that, you dope. Quit using slang or he'll get on to you. She wouldn't say ‘Betcha,' and ‘do your stuff'!”

Jinx grinned. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Guess I wasn't very ladylike. How's this?” And then he gave a silly giggle, and said: “Oh, sister, I do believe the horrid creature winked at me! Why, Mr. Snake! Tee-hee! I bet you're a terrible tease!”

“Oh, my goodness!” said Freddy under his breath.

But the snake didn't seem to suspect anything. He perhaps had not had much experience with ducks, and may, like many other people, have thought them much sillier than they are. He raised his head higher and his forked tongue flickered out angrily. Then he just swayed there, staring at the duck.

Jinx managed to give a couple of little frightened quacks as he pushed the pole forward. “You better not touch me!” he quavered. “If you bother me, my Uncle Wesley will tear your scales off!”

The snake gave a mean little snicker. “We don't want to bother your uncle, so we won't tell him, will we? Not now. Maybe I'll tell him later when I get hungry again.” And as Jinx pushed the pole closer, the snake opened his jaws and lunged at the duck.

A snake's jaws can stretch pretty wide. Half of the duck disappeared into the rattler's mouth. But as he closed his jaws and tried to swallow the rest of it, his long fangs stuck fast in the gum.

For a second or two he didn't move, then he lifted his head and shook the duck hard. A few feathers flew off, and the gum just stuck tighter than ever. And then he flew into a rage, and he whipped and twisted and wriggled and thrashed about until he was exhausted. “O.K.,” said Freddy, and he and Jinx came out and tied the rattler to their fishpole. They wound wire around him in a spiral and fastened it tight at the ends, and then they crossed the wall and got into their saddles and started home.

When they got there, they untied the snake and dumped him into a wooden box, covered with a piece of heavy window glass that Freddy had found in the loft. Before they put the cover on, Jinx held him down, and Freddy worked most of the gum out with a stick. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we'll take him down to Centerboro and see if we can sell him.”

“Who'd buy a rattlesnake?” Jinx said.

“Fred Whimper had two coons at his garage,” Freddy said. “He said a lot of folks bought gas there just so they could look at the coons. I was thinking of Dixon's Diner. Folks that came in to look at him would have to at least buy a cup of coffee.”

So next morning they hitched up Hank to the phaeton and loaded the box in and went down to Centerboro. But Mr. Dixon wasn't enthusiastic, even after Freddy offered to charge him only for the box, and throw the snake in free. “Folks don't want to look at snakes when they're eating,” he said. “Makes their stomachs feel funny.” Freddy tried a couple more places, and then drove home again.

He had to keep the snake in his study—which was the room in the pig pen where he had his typewriter and his easy chair and his books and papers. For Hank wouldn't have him in the stable, and Mrs. Wiggins said she and her sisters wouldn't get a wink of sleep if she knew he was in the cow barn. Freddy didn't mind, for the snake had had an interesting life, and he seemed eager to please—probably in the hope of being let go. He told Freddy in his harsh whispering voice tales of his exploits—some of them pretty hair-raising, for he was really a tough customer. Freddy enjoyed having him as a guest.

So Theodore didn't have to go live in Hank's watering trough after all. Before he started back to his pool in the woods, he came up to the pig pen. He hopped up onto the snake's box, and put his nose down on the glass cover and stared so long and so hard with his bulging eyes that the snake got mad. “Go on away, will you?” he said. “It makes me nervous to be stared at.”

“Oh, yeah?” said the frog. “And how abub—bout me? I suppose you weren't trying to make me nervous up in the woods?” And he kept right on.

The snake got more and more nervous; he tried striking at the glass, and he tried calling Theodore names, and he tried appealing to the frog's better nature—none of them had the slightest effect; there were those bulging eyes staring down at him without any expression at all in them. I guess you'd have been nervous yourself.

Finally the rattler got so jumpy and jittery that Freddy made Theodore stop. So the frog went home. But on the way he told everybody he met that he had hypnotized a rattlesnake. He made such a good story of it that for a week or so there was a crowd of small animals at the pool every day, wanting to hear about it, and hanging open-mouthed on his words.

Freddy wrote, offering the snake to his friend, Mr. Boomschmidt, who ran a circus. The circus was now in winter quarters in North Carolina. Mr. Boomschmidt replied that he'd be very happy to have a rattlesnake who would be company for Willy, the boa constrictor—at present the only snake in the show.

“And of course,” Mr. Boomschmidt wrote, “any friend of yours, Freddy, is always welcome. But I think we'd better wait till the show comes north, for you can't ship him—the express company doesn't take rattlesnakes.”

A good many animals dropped in at the pig pen to have a look at the rattler. Jinx wanted to charge them a nickel apiece just to look, and ten cents to bang on the box until he got mad and struck up at the glass. But Freddy said no, there was to be no teasing him. “It's never fair to pick on somebody that's helpless and can't fight back,” he said. “Anyway, it's interesting to meet the animals that call. Those two sheep yesterday—do you realize they'd come all the way from Seneca Falls?”

John came in nearly every day to report progress in stirring up the farmers against the hunters. He had tried the same trick at the Macy's—getting the hounds to chase him through a window; at Schermerhorns he had run through the milk house and managed to tip over two cans of milk; and at several other farms he had led the hunt across lawns and flowerbeds. “But it doesn't work, Freddy,” he said. “Old Margarine pulls out his pocketbook and hands 'em enough to pay for the damage ten times over. And what happens? They tell him he's free to hunt over their land any time he wants to. We'll never put a stop to the hunting that way. I hate to bother Mr. Bean, but—what do you think, Freddy?—should I get 'em to chase me through here some morning? You could manage to have a window open, couldn't you? Get those four hounds in the parlor, and they'd stir it up, but good! I bet Margarine wouldn't get anywhere trying to pay Mr. Bean money.”

“Mr. Bean wouldn't take his money,” Freddy said. “He'd throw him off the place. But we mustn't bring Mr. Bean into it. Anyway, John, you get such a kick out of getting these people to chase you, why do you want to get rid of 'em?”

“I get a kick out of it—sure,” said the fox. “Mainly, I guess, I want to get rid of 'em because instead of settling down nice and quiet, they want to run everything. It's like somebody joins a club, and he's a new member and ought to do things the way the rest of the club wants to. But instead, he starts right in telling them how
he
wants everything done and trying to boss them around.”