“Watch,” said Doctor Muskrat, “who made you executioner of all the woods and fields? Killing Stripes won’t give back those chicks to Tommy Peele. But if you put Stripes to work instead, he can pay back for them. He can keep down the mice who steal Tommy’s grain; he can kill snakes, and locusts, and beetles, and all manner of grubs. If he just picks bugs off Tommy’s potatoes he’ll pay for all the harm he’s done.”
Watch put his head to one side. He could remember how Tommy hated to pick the bugs off those potatoes. “Wurff,” he growled at last. “I wish I knew what Tommy would think about it. I’ll wait until I know.”
As soon as Doctor Muskrat had finished speaking, Watch went rambling up to the old house with his ears laid back. He wanted to get a nice comfortable bone in a quiet corner and think about it. Doctor Muskrat was right; no one, not even Tommy Peele, had appointed him executioner of the woods and fields, and he’d been pretty quick about wanting to kill every one who did any harm, instead of letting them learn better—if they would. You see, a dog is so big and strong he has to be careful not to bully the other beasts. No decent dog can be happy if he does that. But he couldn’t make up his mind that Stripes Skunk deserved to be trusted.
Neither did Nibble Rabbit. He wanted to know what every other one of the Woodsfolk thought about it. Right now he knew that Stripes was waiting to find out what Watch had decided to do to him, and yet he couldn’t help shaking at the idea of going to talk with him. For the first thing every mother rabbit teaches the fluffy bunny babies, as soon as they open their eyes, is to run from anything that has the strange and scary scent of the Things-from-under-the-Earth, whether they wear scales or fur. Snakes have it just the same as Stripes the Skunk, or Slyfoot the Mink, or the weasel whom the Woodsfolk usually mean when they speak of the Killer. He’s so terribly bloodthirsty and cruel that they never give him any other name.
But when Nibble found Stripes waiting patiently beside his Pickery Things, right where the faithful thorns had warned him to stop when he came begging for help that morning, even a scarier rabbit than Nibble wouldn’t have been afraid. Stripes was trembling and trying his best not to cry. “What did he say?” he begged anxiously. “Please, Nibble, quick! What did that big dog say? It’s too late for me to try to run away from him. He could trail me anywhere, and I’m so slow he’d overtake me in just a little while.”
“He’s gone off to make up his mind,” said Nibble. “Doctor Muskrat put in a word for you. He said that if you hunted the mice in Tommy Peele’s grain and kept the potato bugs off his vines, you could pay Tommy back for those chicks you killed, if you didn’t do any more harm.”
“I will! I will!” chattered Stripes. “I just love mice and potato bugs, too. Only I thought those chicks belonged to a hen. Who’s Tommy Peele?”
Nibble accuses Stripes of stealing.
“Why, Tommy Peele is a boy. He owns all these woods and fields, and the hen as well. That’s why Watch, his dog, takes care of them all,” Nibble began.