Freddy the Cowboy (5 page)

“H'm,” said Jinx to himself, “a box trap. Some boy trying to trap skunks, I suppose. That squirrel sent me in here on purpose. Now I wonder—” He peered cautiously out of the hole. The squirrel was sitting on a fence post, looking expectantly towards the barn. Jinx grinned to himself and then went back and with a swipe of his paw knocked out the stick. Down came the crate with a bang. Jinx let out a good loud screech, and then he called: “Help! Help!” There was no reply, but there was a rustling of small animals in the hay, and a little squeaky voice said: “Hold it, mister. If you want to catch Taffy, keep out of sight. He'll be in to make a deal with you in a few minutes.”

“Who's Taffy?” Jinx asked.

“That squirrel that got you to come in here. I hope you give him a good licking, mister. He's given us a lot of trouble around here.”

“Ain't you Beans' cat?” another voice asked. And when Jinx said he was, a mouse hopped out of the hay and came towards him. “Come on, boys,” he said. “This guy is O.K.. Remember?—we went down and voted at an election they had on his farm a couple years ago.”

“That's right,” said Jinx. “That was when Mrs. Wiggins was elected President of the First Animal Republic. My, my, that seems a long time ago! So you boys came down and voted, eh? Well, come on out and tell me what this Taffy's racket is.”

Five or six mice came rather timidly out of the hay. One of them said: “The boy up at the house made this trap. He wanted to catch a skunk. Well, he caught two or three, but he never knew it, because Taffy let them out. He made them pay to get out, of course. I know one skunk's family that had to bring Taffy three hundred butternuts before he'd let their uncle go. He's one of the wealthiest squirrels in the county; they say he has twenty or thirty bushels of nuts hidden around different places.”

“He does the same thing with us,” said another mouse. “He's got some traps the boy had—those little cages that you go in and touch the bait and the door smacks shut on you. Of course the older mice don't get caught much, but some of the children, they always think they're smart enough to eat the cheese without springing the trap. There's one of my boys I've had to pay for five times. Keeps me poor, I tell you.”

“There's ways I could show you of beating traps,” said Jinx. “But this big box trap—no squirrel can lift this up to let anybody out.”

“Ten squirrels can,” said the mouse. “Taffy doesn't work alone; he's got a gang—Look out, here he comes, mister.”

A shadow fell across the hole in the barn wall, and the squirrel's voice said: “Hello! What's the matter in there?”

“I'm trapped,” Jinx wailed. “Oh help me, good kind squirrel!”

“Oh my dear friend,” said the squirrel in an oily voice, “how gladly would I rush to your assistance. But what can one poor squirrel do? But wait; it is just possible that if we had enough squirrels … though the squirrels in this neighborhood—I am sorry to have to say it, but they'll never help anybody unless they get paid for it. Of course if you had something you could pay them with—”

“I might be able to scrape together a little something,” said Jinx. “I am not a cat of wealth. I have no vast possessions, no embroidered cushions, no herds of fat mice. (Excuse me, boys,” he whispered to the mice. “My imagination sometimes runs away with me.) But possibly a few bags of acorns—”

“No acorns,” said Taffy sharply. “We—that is, these squirrels I spoke of don't care for acorns. Black walnuts are in great demand. If you could manage say half a bushel of them—”

“Oh, yes,” said Jinx eagerly. “I can do that. Mr. Bean has two or three bushels stored in the attic.”

Evidently Taffy's gang had been waiting outside with him, for now they all trooped in, a dozen or more of them. Their eyes were not yet used to the darkness, but under their leader's direction they lined up on one end of the crate and started to lift. Jinx was standing beside the crate. He could see Taffy peering through the slats, trying to see him. But the squirrel was not suspicious. A black cat in a dark barn is almost invisible.

Taffy didn't do any of the lifting, but stood back and bossed the job. “All right, boys; now
heave!. ho!
…
heave!
… Come out, cat, when it's high enough.
Heave!
”

The squirrels had to get under the end of the crate to lift it high enough, and when they were well under, Jinx leaped. He leaped high and landed hard on the edge of the crate, which came down with a bang, knocking the squirrels every which way and pinning several under it. Then he leaped again and caught Taffy just as he was making a dash for the outside.

The crate came down with a bang!

The squirrel didn't put up a fight. He just lay quietly on his back with Jinx's paw on his chest. “Oh, come, come, my friend,” he said reproachfully, “no violence, I beg! You were not in the trap at all, eh? Very clever of you. But of course you will understand this was all just a joke. Now just let me up, my dear fellow, and we'll go outside and talk it over. We'll have a good laugh over it together.”

“Yeah?” said Jinx. “I'm having a good laugh right now.” He had half expected that Taffy's friends would rally round and put up a fight to rescue their leader, but a glance over his shoulder assured him that those who were not caught under the crate had run away. It told him too that of the three who were pinned down none was badly hurt, though they were yelling and making a good deal of noise. “I suppose,” he said, “that you swallowed all that stuff about my not eating squirrels. Well, that was
my
little joke. Ha, ha! Come on, Taffy, where's that good laugh we were going to have together?” And he held Taffy down with one paw and tickled him with the other until the squirrel shrieked with laughter.

“Well, well,” he said after a time, “you're kind of overdoing it, aren't you? 'Tisn't as funny as all that.” He called to the mice and asked them if they had any string, and when after a few minutes half a dozen of them came rolling along a ball of baling twine, he had them gnaw off a few lengths and then tied Taffy up. “Now,” he said, “I want a piece of wood—a shingle would do—to drag him home on. I can't carry him. And I don't want to eat him here. Just had lunch an hour ago.”

The mice found a shingle and gnawed a hole in it to put the twine through so that Jinx could pull it after him like a sled.

“What you really going to do with him, mister?” one of them asked.

Jinx winked at him. He hadn't as a matter of fact, any idea what to do with Taffy, except to get him far enough away from his traps so that he could never get back. He had thought that if he could get to the Beans', his friends could help maybe to take him to Centerboro and load him onto a freight car down by the railroad station. By the time he gnawed the cords off and got free, the train would be moving, and he might be out in Iowa or Kansas before it stopped and he could get off.

Cats aren't exactly lazy animals, but they don't really enjoy hard work; and it was going to be good hard work to drag Taffy all the way back to the Beans' on that shingle. “You got any ideas?” he asked the mice.

The mice had plenty of ideas, most of them pretty ferocious.

But Jinx shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don't blame you, boys, but this guy hasn't been guilty of murder or anything like that. He's just a cheap racketeer. I tell you what. You drag him down to the Bean farm for me. It's only four miles. I'll take care of him after that.”

But mice don't like hard work any more than cats do. They said it would be easier to drag him down to the creek and throw him in. Jinx argued and the mice argued. Finally they struck a bargain. Jinx had remarked that he could teach them how to beat traps, and they said that if he would stay a day or two and give them and their children instruction in this difficult subject, they would haul Taffy down for him.

There were eighteen grown-up mice in the barn, and about as many children. They were all field mice. House mice are taught all about traps in the second grade, but field mice get no such instruction; indeed many field mice who live up in the hills get no schooling at all. So Jinx agreed, and as soon as he had released the three squirrels who were caught under the crate and boxed their ears and chased them away, he untied Taffy and shut him up in one of those mousetraps that are like little cages. And then he gathered the mice around him and gave them their first lesson.

Chapter 5

Jinx liked teaching so well that he stayed four days in the barn. There were several kinds of mousetraps around, and he showed the mice how they could spring some of them by poking at the bait with a twig, and then eat the bait in safety; and how those that were like cages could be entered safely if before you sprung them you put something large like a potato in the doorway, so the door wouldn't shut. He showed them how to escape from owls and hawks if they were caught in the open. Most mice, he said, tried to get away by running. But that was silly. The thing to do was to stand still; then, when the hawk made his pounce, dodge quickly to one side. The bird would get a clawful of grass, and while he was calling you names and flapping about, getting altitude for another dive, you had time to run ten or fifteen yards towards shelter. Then when he dove again, work the same trick.

“A bird can't change the direction of his pounce in the last half second,” Jinx told them. “I know it's hard to stand still and watch those big claws coming down at you. But if you'll wait till that last half second, you'll always get away.”

One of the mice suggested that they would also like to know how to escape from cats.

“I'm afraid I can't help you much there,” Jinx said. “Cats—well, that's something else again. Being a cat myself, it ill becomes me to praise their cleverness and resourcefulness, but you have asked me, and I shall not conceal the truth from you. The cat is the most accomplished animal ever created. If he wants to catch you—well, you're just caught, that's all.”

“I got away from a cat once,” said a small mouse with large ears.

Jinx's whiskers twitched, but he said politely: “I congratulate you. I was just going on to say that while it is almost a complete waste of time to try to escape from a cat, there are a few dodges which I think I can teach you. Perhaps you, sir, will assist me. What is your name?”

The mouse said his name was Howard.

“Very well, Howard,” said Jinx. “You stand over there against the wall. If you can reach either corner of the barn before I can catch you—well, you're pretty smart. Start whenever you like.”

So Howard started. But he didn't run. He crept an inch or so, then he stopped, then he crept another inch.

“Don't be scared,” said Jinx kindly, “I won't use my claws.”

“I'm not scared,” said Howard. And suddenly he turned and darted back the way he had come.

Jinx crouched, lashing his tail. “Now I'll show you,” he said and leaped.

But instead of running away, Howard ran straight for the cat. He dashed under him while he was in the air, and then while Jinx was wildly looking for him he ran over to the corner of the barn. “Did I do all right?” he asked eagerly.

Jinx had some trouble concealing his vexation. He began to wish he hadn't talked so big about cats. “Fine!” he said heartily. “Fine! Let's try it again.”

Howard started the same way. He crept a little, stood still, then crept on. And Jinx crept too. He went forward fast and close to the ground. No mouse was going to run under him again. When he made his final pounce he was only three feet from Howard. But Howard wasn't there this time either. He ran straight up the wall, across on a beam, and dropped down into a corner.

Jinx sat down and looked around fiercely at the other mice, but none of them laughed. “Well, well,” he said, trying to sound as if everything was going just as he had expected, “that's fine, Howard. You seem to know two of the simpler dodges, so I won't have to teach you those, and we can go on to the more complicated ones. But first I would like to give you a little talk on another subject.”