But he was only half right. Stripes did know what had happened to Bob White, but he wasn’t to blame for it. Instead he was doing his best to help the poor bird. He was waddling back to the Quail’s Thicket with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth and his long hairy tail waggling because he was too winded to gallop.
Nibble ran right straight into him. The first thing he said was, “What are you doing here?” and the next was “What about Bob White Quail?”
And wasn’t Stripes s’prised? “How ever did you hear?” he gasped. “I haven’t seen a single wing I could send for help, so I’ve ’most burst my sides coming after you my own self. He’s hanging upside down from a little tree. He’ll die if you don’t get him down soon. Hurry! Hurry!”
Hurry! You just better believe Nibble did. He knew what that meant. Bob was caught in exactly the same kind of a snare that Tommy Peele had set for Nibble. You remember he fastened a wire noose to the tip end of a springy sapling, and then he bent it over and pegged it down. The minute anything touched it, swish went the sapling and swish went whatever was caught in that wicked wire. This one had tight hold of Bob White’s foot, and there he hung with his head limp and his wings just weakly fluttering.
Bob White was caught in Tommy Peele’s snare.
“I guess I’ll have to try to gnaw through this tree,” said Nibble anxiously. “I simply can’t climb.” And he looked at his furry feet that are made to run.
Stripes looked at them, too, and then he looked at his own. You remember the queer tracks he left up by the barn. His front feet were like a dog’s but his hind ones were something like Tad Coon’s, and you know how Tad could climb! “I never tried it,” he murmured doubtfully, “but maybe I can.”
Nibble almost squealed. “If you can get up there and bend that top down——” And right then Stripes clambered up on a log and sprang. He caught in the lower branches, and then he began—well, Tad Coon or Chatter Squirrel would never have called it climbing! It was scratch and scramble and grunt and whine, but he kept right on. And the higher he went the lower the sapling leaned. Down, down came Bob White till he lay on the ground. Nibble had hardly touched his teeth to that wicked wire when it let go its hold and Bob White was free. And just about then Stripes Skunk let go, too, and came tumbling down on top of them.
There lay Bob White, too weak to fly, his eyes closed, and his poor little thirsty beak half open. “Now,” thought Nibble, “that skunk is going to try and eat him.” Of course that’s what any bad Thing-from-under-the-Earth would do.