CONTENTS
- I. [Songs of the Hunt]
- II. [Tad Coon’s Tricks and His Troubles]
- III. [Grandpop’s Bite that Never Let Go]
- IV. [Tad’s Tricks Come Home to Roost]
- V. [The Time Tad Coon Was Trickier Than He Knew]
- VI. [Tad Makes a Compact with Watch and Tommy Peele]
- VII. [Black Crime in the Hen House]
- VIII. [How Nibble Turned Detective]
- IX. [Stripes Skunk Learns How to Behave]
- X. [Stripes Skunk Begins to be Good]
- XI. [Stripes Continues His Good Works]
- XII. [Doctor Muskrat Tells Why Skunks Are So]
- XIII. [In Defense of a Lady]
ILLUSTRATIONS
- [Tad sent a big rock rushing down]
- [Snap! went Grandpop Snapping Turtle’s mouth on Tad Coon’s playful tail]
- [Tad Coon hits Trailer on the head with a hornet’s nest]
- [Tad Coon needs Doctor Muskrat]
- [At the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s Pond]
- [The Bad Little Owl comes flipping by]
- [Nibble accuses Stripes of stealing]
- [Bob White was caught in Tommy Peele’s snare]
TAD COON’S TRICKS
CHAPTER I
SONGS OF THE HUNT
You’d have thought every wing and paw in the Woods and Fields (except the Bad Little Owls, of course) would have been glad to know that Silvertip the Fox was caught. ’Specially Nibble Rabbit, who started the hunt, and wise old Doctor Muskrat, who planned it, and Tommy Peele’s good dog, Watch, and Trailer the Hound, who were still barking on his trail way out in the middle of the Deep Woods. For Silvertip was just as clever as he was wicked; the very last thing he’d done was to fool those two dogs again.
I s’pose old Grandpop Snapping Turtle, who did the catching was—glad, I mean. But Doctor Muskrat just looked very, very sober, and Nibble felt the shivers run from the puff on his tufty tail to the tips of his tickly whiskers whenever he thought about it. They didn’t have a word to say while they waited for the two hunters to come back to the meeting-place by the flat stone at the edge of the Pond.
But they thought of course the dogs would bark the good news so loud that Tommy could hear it way down the road at the schoolhouse. Instead, Trailer just gasped, “How awful!” in a very awed voice. And Watch looked as if somebody’d rubbed him the wrong way.
“Awful!” repeated Trailer. “Poor Silvertip! Think of his being caught by a stupid old mud-grubber like that!” He drooped his tail and ears.