“Sic him! S-s-s-sic him!” called Tommy Peele. My, but he was the angry one.
“No,” barked Watch. “Beg pardon, Tad. It wasn’t your smell, either.”
“Whoever it was,” said Nibble, “I’m coming up to the barn to help find him.”
Maybe you think Tommy Peele wasn’t puzzled! “S-s-s-sic him!” he ordered impatiently. “Whatever is the matter with you, anyway? You aren’t scared of him, are you? Yesterday you wanted to kill him for nothing at all, and to-day you won’t touch him. But if he didn’t kill all poor Topknot’s little chicks, who did? It’s a regular coon trick—dad says so. S-s-sic him! Go on!”
“A-aour-r!” Watch whined unhappily. “If I only could tell you that it wasn’t Tad Coon!”
“We’ve just got to find out for ourselves and show him,” said Nibble Rabbit. “The sooner we start the fresher the scent,” he quoted from an old dog-song. “Come along.”
“I’m coming, too,” announced Tad Coon. “This is some of my business.”
“No, you’re not,” said Nibble. “We don’t want another paw-mark until we examine every trail up by the barn.”
“That’s right,” said Watch. “That kind of a thief doesn’t fly. I didn’t stop to look because I was so sure I knew who did it.”
“But you couldn’t make any mistake about mine,” protested Tad, holding up his handy-paw. “No one, not even my cousin Gurf Bear, who has hind feet like mine, has one anything like it.”