Freddy and the Dragon (7 page)

CHAPTER 6

After leaving Percy, Freddy went upstairs to see Uncle Ben, and told him about Jimmy Wiggs's problem. Uncle Ben thought for a minute, then he said: “Atomic merry-go-round?”

Freddy shook his head. “They'd be afraid of it. They'd be afraid it would get going so fast that they'd be all thrown out of it. Like your station wagon.”

Uncle Ben nodded. “Might, too,” he said.

Then he drew a sheet of paper toward him and began to draw. As Freddy watched, a long shape began to appear—something between a lizard and a snake. “A dragon!” Freddy exclaimed. “That sure would draw a crowd. But there aren't any dragons any more, Uncle Ben.”

“Make one,” said Uncle Ben. He began to draw the dragon's feet. There seemed to be four feet up near his head, and they were pig's trotters, and there were four halfway down, and they were dog's feet, and there were four more close to the tail—cat's feet.

“Twelve feet?” Freddy asked. “Did dragons have twelve feet?”

“This one will,” said Uncle Ben. He sometimes talked more freely to Freddy than to other people.

“But you mean … you're going to make him for us? And I suppose you mean that I'll be inside him, and maybe Robert in the middle, and Jinx at the tail. But what's this fire and smoke coming out of his nostrils? You can't make that, can you?”

“Sure.”

“But our feet will show. People'll know who we are inside him.”

Uncle Ben shook his head and sketched a dragon's claw with three long scaly talons. “Tie 'em on your feet,” he said.

Freddy would have liked to ask a lot more questions, but he knew that Uncle Ben didn't like to make explanations. So he said: “Oh, that will be wonderful, Uncle Ben. When will it be ready? We'll have to practice a lot with it before the show.”

“Ready next Saturday,” said Uncle Ben, and Freddy thanked him again and left.

He went down and talked to the bull again, but could get nothing out of him. “I have nothing to say,” the bull said. And he added: “I'm gettin' to kind of like this smell.” He laughed.

Freddy was just leaving the barn when Hank walked in. “Walked up from Centerboro,” the horse said. “They asked me a lot of questions but they couldn't get nothin' out of me. You know, I can act pretty dumb when I want to.”

“Don't think you needed to much,” said the pig. “Seeing you didn't know anything about the burglary anyway.”

“Mebbe,” said Hank. “But I was kinda special dumb. One of the cops, he said: ‘If those Bean animals are all as stupid as this one, they haven't got the brains to be a gang.' So maybe if we just all act terrible dumb …”

Freddy shook his head. “Lots of people know you aren't dumb, Hank.”

The horse went over to the water trough and took a drink. Then he lifted his nose and sniffed. “Why, Freddy, you been fixin' the place up for my homecoming? Got it all smelling so nice with that perfumery you know I like. That's right nice of you.”

“H'm,” said Freddy, “I forgot you liked that terrible stuff. But 'twasn't for you. You got company.” He jerked his head toward the box stall.

Hank went and peered in. “Too dark—can't see,” he said. Then at a low bass grumble he started back. “Land sakes, what is it—a lion?”

So Freddy told him all about Percy, and that he was the long-lost father of the three cows. Hank was outraged to hear of Percy's lack of interest in his children.

“Well, of all things!” he said. “Whoever heard of such a father. Three of the nicest girls in the county. He ought to be proud of 'em!”

“Well, he isn't. But he must have some decent feelings. Maybe you can work on him.”

That night Jinx went up to the back road and hid on the stone wall where Mr. Rohr was to leave the money. He lay right on the wall, in a crevice between two stones, and he was so black that even in the twilight you could have come right up to him and thought he was just a soft velvety shadow. He kept his eyes just a hairs-breadth open, so they wouldn't shine.

Cats like lying perfectly still. Jinx never twitched a whisker from the time he got there at eight o'clock until nine-thirty, when he heard the clump of approaching horse hoofs.

They came closer, closer, then stopped, and the cat heard the rustle of paper as the envelope was picked up. Then he opened his eyes. And what he saw made every hair on his back stand up, and his tail got as big as a bottle brush, and with a screech he leaped three feet in the air and tore off through the woods toward home.

For what he saw was a high-shouldered man in a cloak, mounted on a horse. But the man had no head. At least he had one, but it wasn't on his shoulders; it was carried on the horn of the saddle in front of him.

Unknown to Jinx, Freddy had come up and was hiding in the woods below the road, and although he was some distance off, he saw the whole thing, for it was not yet entirely dark. He saw the headless horseman stop at the corner of the wall and reach for the envelope. Then there was the screech as Jinx exploded from the wall, and startled the horseman so that he jerked sideways and dropped his head. It fell with a thump to the ground.

Freddy was terrified of this apparition. There was a tradition of a headless horseman up on the back road. Mr. Bean sometimes told the story on winter nights when they were sitting round the fire, cracking nuts and drinking cider. Yet nobody alive had ever seen it. It was always somebody's grandfather, eighty years ago. Though Zenas Witherspoon claimed to have seen it when he was a boy, returning from a dance. Still, nobody thought of the back road any more as being haunted. It was used very little, but Freddy had been up there many times at night and had never thought anything about it.

But he thought about it now all right. He shivered until the bush he was hiding behind shivered with him, as he watched the creature climb stiffly down from the saddle and fumble on the ground for his head. “How can you see to find your head if it has fallen off?” he wondered. But the apparition managed it somehow, and he climbed back on the horse, tucked Mr. Rohr's envelope somewhere inside his cloak, balanced the head again on the saddle horn, and rode off.

Now what seemed strange to Freddy was that he did not turn and ride back toward Centerboro; he rode on toward the west. And that road didn't go anywhere specially. Follow it far enough and it just petered out into a grass track. But before that, a mile or so after passing Mr. Margarine's land, it crossed another road, a dirt road that ran north around the west end of Otesaraga Lake and up to an Indian village. These were Otesaraga Indians, and good friends of Freddy's. The pig was sure that they would not be involved in any racket to sell to house-owners protection from damage to their property.

But where was this ghost going? Freddy knew that he ought to follow it. He had seen it take the money, and he didn't really think that any spook would be mixed up in that kind of a racket. It must be a man. But how could a man without a head ride a horse, holding his head balanced on the pommel before him? Freddy's common sense told him that there must be some reasonable explanation. But there was the evidence of his eyes, the apparition itself, urging his horse from a walk into a trot as he went on up the road.

All Freddy had to do was trot on after him. He struggled out to the road and really did try to follow. But his legs wouldn't obey him. At sight of that figure on horseback, with nothing above the shoulders—Freddy gave a groan and slumped down into the grass at the side of the road.

Jinx was waiting for him when he got back to the pig pen. They just looked at each other. There didn't seem to be much to say. After a minute they went in and lay down and went to sleep.

In the morning, of course, they had to consult with Mr. Pomeroy, and it wasn't long before the story of how they had seen the money carried off by a ghost was all over the farm. Along about noon two rabbits came in to see Freddy. They were rabbits Numbers 17 and 41, who lived up above the duck pond in the Bean woods. They said they had seen the headless horseman on the back road several times, once on a bicycle. Also, they had seen other animals who were strangers to them. They had seen a very tough-looking pig several times.

“The ducks have seen that man, too,” said No. 41. “My mother heard them talking about it.”

So Freddy and Jinx went up to the duck pond. Alice and Emma, like two white powder puffs on a looking-glass, moved slowly toward them, quacking greetings. But before they could reach the bank, their Uncle Wesley, a pompous old duck, stepped out from under a dock leaf, where he had been sitting in the shade, and held up a warning foot. “If you please,” he said haughtily, “my nieces are not at home to you gentlemen.”

“Not at home!” Jinx exclaimed. “Well, they're right there on their home pond. What's the matter with you, Wes—you need glasses or something?”

“By ‘not at home,'” said the duck, “I mean that they will not hold any communication with you. If you will have it,” he added snippily, “I have instructed them to have nothing to do with either of you. Is that quite plain?”

Freddy and Jinx stared at each other. Jinx winked, and Freddy said meekly: “May we ask, respected sir, what has brought you to this decision?”

“Your own criminal actions,” Uncle Wesley replied. “I understand that even now they have warrants out for your arrest in Centerboro.”

At this Jinx sprang. He pounced on Uncle Wesley and held him down with his fore paws. “In that case,” he said, “one more criminal action, like a small murder, won't make much difference, hey, Freddy? What'll I do—wrap that long yellow bill of his around his neck?”

“Alice! Emma!” Uncle Wesley quacked excitedly. “Retire to the other side of the pond!”

But his nieces no longer felt the awe of him that they once had, and also they were a little worried at what Jinx might do. They swam to the bank and climbed out. “Oh, please don't, Jinx! … Remember, he's our uncle and we love him.… He doesn't really think you're guilty.…”

“Do too!” muttered Wesley.

Freddy grinned. “Good for you, Wes,” he said. “First time I ever knew you to stick to your guns.”

“Well, I think maybe you are,” said the duck.

“Let him up, Jinx,” said Freddy. “Look, Wes; you don't really think we've joined up with a lot of gangsters, do you?”

“Some pig has. I've seen him at night on the back road.”

“That's the trouble with being a pig,” Freddy said. He meant that to most people and other animals, one pig looks very like another. “Well,” he went on, “I assure you that we have had nothing to do with this trouble. We've got to find the real criminals. We came up here to get some information. I understand you've seen a headless horseman, or a headless bicyclist. Was it on the back road?”

“A horseman,” said Alice. “Not on the back road—we never go up there. It was twice we saw him—wasn't it, sister?—riding down along the brook.”

“He had no head on his shoulders,” said Emma. “We thought it very odd.”

“Odd! “Jinx exclaimed.

“Well, unusual anyway,” said Emma. “We were quite puzzled.”

“But he did have a head, sister,” said Alice; “we decided afterwards—remember? But he had it sort of in front of him on the saddle.”

Freddy and Jinx looked at each other. “And you—you weren't frightened?” the pig asked.

“Frightened? Why, no, there was nothing frightening about him,” said Emma. “Dear me, he seemed most well behaved. It just struck us that it was—well, as I said, an unusual way to wear a head.”

“Unhandy,” said Alice.

Jinx let out a long sigh. “That's one way of looking at it,” he said. “Well, what do you say, pig?” They looked silently at each other and then turned back home.