“That’s as bad as taking them all. Do you suppose she’ll go back to them now that she knows you’ve found them?” Nibble began to suspect that Stripes really didn’t know any better after all, but this was no time to teach him.
“Wouldn’t she if I promised never to do it again?” he asked hopefully.
“She wouldn’t believe you,” snapped Nibble decidedly. “Watch the Dog gave you one chance even after you killed Tommy Peele’s little chicks. Now you’ve been bad right over again. No one here ever will trust you. You’d better go back where you came from as fast as you can travel—Watch will certainly rage about this.”
“But I don’t wa-a-ant to go,” sniffed Stripes. “I want to stay right here and learn how to behave. Way back in the Deep Woods I heard about it. It’s the peacefulest place in the world——”
“So you came to see if you couldn’t make us a little trouble!” Nibble was in a terrible temper. “Tried to lay all on poor Tad Coon, didn’t you? You’d better foot it if you want to save your skin. That dog will most certainly kill you.”
So off trudged Stripes with his head hanging. And Nibble hopped over to the Quail’s Thicket just in time to hear them asking each other, “Where’s Bob? Where IS Bob?”
CHAPTER X
STRIPES SKUNK BEGINS TO BE GOOD
You know quail live together in the winter but separate when they nest in the spring. They mostly settle near enough together so that when anything goes wrong the covey call can bring them all in. They help each other if they can; if they can’t at least they learn about the danger to those precious nests of their own.
But when Bob White’s wife gave that horrified “Prr-whit!” that a quail’s ears can hear so far, her own husband did not come. The other birds might scatter all over the woods and fields calling anxiously, “Bob White, Bob White, Oh, Bob White!” but he did not answer.
Nibble was the only one who knew for sure who had taken the eggs. He didn’t tell on Stripes Skunk—not yet, for fear the little owls would hear of it. He called Chaik Jay and whispered, “Tell Watch the Dog to find my trail and follow it.” Then he set out after Stripes. “That bad killer knows what happened to Bob,” he said to himself. “I’m glad I didn’t let him fool me a second time. He wanted me to persuade Bob’s wife to go back to her nest and trust him—then he’d have caught her, and maybe I wouldn’t be in trouble! Just maybe!” And he ran as fast as ever he could.