The Sins of Silvertip the Fox

Never before, in the early, early spring, had there been so much excitement down at Doctor Muskrat’s Pond. Of course, spring’s the season for visitors. They were always on the lookout for old friends winging up from the south. The Beautiful Duck and his mate, who’d warned Nibble Rabbit about the Terrible Storm, stopped in to wish everyone a happy summer. Then they laughingly beaked their way northward through a flurry of late snow. Bad weather couldn’t scare them now.

They kept a lookout for old enemies, too, as wise Woodsfolk always must. But there was one visitor who puzzled them. Was he an enemy, or was he a friend? Doctor Muskrat himself couldn’t say. Or rather, he wouldn’t. But that wasn’t what started all the discussion.

The visitor was Tommy Peele. And his old dog Watch said he owned the Woods and Fields. Now did that mean he owned the Woodsfolk who lived in them? That’s what everyone wanted to know. For the Woodsfolk were wild. Could a wild beast ever belong to any one? Doctor Muskrat had never heard of such a thing.

“I certainly wouldn’t mind,” chirped Chewee the Chickadee. “I get a full crop ’most every time I see him.”

“I guess you’d mind if he locked you up like he did Nibble,” remarked Chaik Jay. “That’s what it means to belong to him.”

“No, it doesn’t,” contradicted Nibble. (He really knew more about the little boy than any one else. He hadn’t liked being locked up, but he did like Tommy.) “Watch says I belong to him just the same out of my cage as I did in it. And he feeds me just the same, too.”

“Hmm!” sniffed Doctor Muskrat. He was wondering if it was that way with traps. ’Cause you remember Tommy’d caught him in one, and then let him go again. And Tommy’d fed him, too.

“You know,” said Nibble, “all the beasts up at the barn say——” And then for the first time he heard the swishing in the bulrushes behind him.

“Ow!” he squealed. And he jumped. For the starey eyes of the cross Red Cow came peering through them.

“Swish!” went Doctor Muskrat through his hole in the ice. “Flutter!” went the scary wings of Chewee the Chickadee, and even Chaik the Bluejay, who isn’t afraid of many things, went off with a startled “squawk,” while Nibble Rabbit dashed through a tunnel he knew in the Quail’s Thicket. But you know Nibble. First he’s scared—and then he’s curious. As soon as he was safely hidden he stopped to listen. “Stupid beast,” he said to himself. “Why couldn’t she have waited until we got done talking?”

“M-m-moo!” lowed the Red Cow in a troubled voice.

Nibble came creeping back again. Pretty soon he sat up and stretched his neck to get a good look at her. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Is anything the matter?”

“M-m-m-yes,” moaned the Red Cow, swinging her head restlessly from side to side and looking terribly troubled. “I don’t know just what it is, but I’m all afraid! Isn’t there any place where wolves don’t come? Or Men?”

“No Man comes here,” said Nibble, “’cepting only Tommy Peele—and he’s just a little one.” Then, because the Red Cow looked so unhappy, he burst out cheerfully, “Come on. I’ll show you where you can hide, even, from him.”

But she looked at him very doubtfully with her near-sighted eyes. “M-m-no-no,” she hesitated. “You haven’t forgotten that I tried to kill you when you hung that flapping thing on my horn.” She meant the door of his cage that she jerked off to get at the carrot Tommy Peele had given Nibble for breakfast. But she insisted on thinking that he had fastened the door to her. She was a very stupid thing.

“That’s all right,” he explained.

“You let me out of the cage, so we’re all fair and square.”

By this time she was so puzzled she couldn’t remember anything. But she could tell that Nibble wasn’t angry, so she followed him. And he showed her a fine dry spot on the top of a little hillock, all shut in by clustering thorns. For Nibble wouldn’t trust anything but the Pickery Things for even a cow to hide in.

There she stayed and there she slept very comfortably. Even the cold wind that came up with the sunset couldn’t reach her. And Nibble dug down a little way into the mud and ate the top off a mallow root and a couple of plantains for his supper. And then he had to lick himself very dry and clean before he popped into his own comfortable hole.

He slept late next morning because he’d stayed awake puzzling over that Red Cow’s doings the night before. But as soon as he had washed his face he set out to find her, for he’d thought of a lot more questions to ask. And there she was, crouched down close in her hiding-place, with her eyes bigger and starier than ever. “Hssh!” she snorted through her wide, windy nostrils. “There was a Man! But he didn’t see me at all!”

CHAPTER II WHY TOMMY ’MOST LOST HIS TEMPER

“Nonsense!” said Nibble Rabbit. “There wasn’t any Man. They don’t come here. You must have had a bad dream.”

“No, I didn’t,” she insisted. “I was wide awake and I saw him as plain as plain.”

Nibble sniffed the air, but the wind had blown all the scent away, so he didn’t believe her. When he turned to her again she was trying to eat the twigs that she could reach with her long tongue. “Hey! Don’t you know better than that?” he demanded. “You’ll get pickers in your mouth, and, what’s much worse, you’ll feel awfully queer and sick inside of you. Doctor Muskrat says you should only eat that tree for medicine.”

Nibble felt very wise and grown-up beside this foolish cow. She wasn’t really wild and she wasn’t really tame. Poor beast! No wonder she was scary. She didn’t know enough to be either thing properly. “Come along!” he ordered. “I’ll take you down for a drink and then you can eat the willows. If you’re like the partridge you can nip the tips off a cottonwood that your long neck will reach up to.”

So the Red Cow hove herself up to her feet, tail first, as is the custom of cows, and followed him obediently. And he showed her the way to the warm spring that was Doctor Muskrat’s front door.

It was a good thing he was polite and let her drink first. For as soon as she began dragging her clumsy toes in the muck to spread them far enough apart so she could get her nose into the water—“Clang!” went the cold steely jaws of another trap.

She jumped back, snorting and waving her tassely tail, while she cocked her eyes to try and see it. But Nibble wasn’t paying any attention to her. He was thumping and bumping as hard as ever he could with his soft furry feet and calling “Doctor Muskrat! Doctor Muskrat! Doctor Muskrat!”

“Eh?” said the old doctor as his nose came up out of the water (and the cow snorted at him harder than ever), “what’s all this?” He sniffed at her inquiringly.

“Oh, Doctor Muskrat,” Nibble almost cried. “Look! It’s more jaws!”

“Ah!” The old beast examined them wisely and shook his head. “What did I tell you? You can’t trust even Tommy Peele! He was just pretending to make friends with us so we’d forget to be afraid and he could catch us again!”

“I guess you’re right,” murmured Nibble. But he felt very badly about it—for he really liked Tommy.

Just then the Red Cow spoke up. She didn’t understand Doctor Muskrat, but she caught Tommy’s name. And although she didn’t like Tommy herself, even a stupid cow knows enough to be honest. “I told you I saw that Man,” she said to Nibble. “Well, it surely wasn’t Tommy!”

“It wasn’t, eh?” snapped Doctor Muskrat. “We’ll just see about that.” He dove again. He came up looking very puzzled. “Tommy’s jaws are still biting the mud, just where he threw them.” he reported. “We’ll watch what he does when he finds these.”

It was Saturday, so as soon as Tommy had finished his chores up at the barn, he whistled to his old dog, Watch, and came tramping down the fields with his tall rubber boots. He had a cap full of meal and an ear of corn in his pocket. Yes! And he had a nice lump of fat for Chewee the Chickadee and a string to tie it to a branch with.

But Nibble didn’t come running to meet him. He was crouching back in the reeds with Doctor Muskrat. And the Red Cow had lumbered off to her own hiding-place in the thicket that Nibble had showed her.

“Come, Bunny, Bunny,” called Tommy, in his nice voice that fairly made Nibble’s feet itch to run to him. He crept up softly near the warm spring so as not to scare his muskrat. Then he saw the footprints—the big ones of the Red Cow, and the little ones of Nibble Rabbit, and the paws of Doctor Muskrat with his toe gone, for now it was healed so he could step on it. And there was the trap, sticking right straight up where the cow’s clumsy foot had jerked it.

And wasn’t he angry! Just wasn’t he? He was the crossest little boy in all the woods and fields, and the houses, too. Because someone was trying to catch his very own wild things that he was trying to make friends with!

The trap was chained to a bulrush stalk and he yanked it right off, stalk and all, he was so angry. And then he did something that showed he was really learning to think quite like a wild thing. It was just what wise old Doctor Muskrat would have done if he hadn’t been so troubled, deep down inside, that he forgot about everything but Tommy. He trailed the footsteps of that other man and he found two other traps. Right in his own woods!

“Clang! clang!” He had given each of those cold steel jaws a stick to bite on. Then he rooted up their chains and tied them all together. “Crash!” They went plump down into the mud beside his own. “Yah! Yah! Hooray!” barked Watch. He thought that anything Tommy did was perfect. And he wagged his big wavy tail so very hard that at last his tail wagged him and he waltzed around and around.