It was true, there wasn’t a single bit of fur for Killer to put his teeth into when he woke up from his daytime sleep and went hunting. But Chaik was determined Killer wouldn’t make his supper off a bird, either. Every time one lit to drink at Doctor Muskrat’s Pond Chaik would send it away.
He told some one reason for leaving and some another, just whatever he thought would scare them the most. Once a whole flock of gorgeous little fellows swooped down and he was puzzled. They were warblers from the far-away south; they come up north every summer, but they live all by themselves and speak their own language, so none of the northern birds can talk to them at all. “Now, how in the world can I frighten those silly little spiggoty birds?� he mused with his head on one side, most discouraged. “They won’t listen to reason.�
Suddenly he began chuckling to himself. “If they can’t talk my talk they can’t talk the marsh hawk’s, either.� He practised quietly for a minute or two. Then he began to shout the hawk’s hunting call. “Kee-yah!� he squawked. “Kee-yah!� And you should have heard those warblers flutter their wings. They flew off without even stopping to look behind them.
It was really a fine imitation. It fooled more than the scary little spiggoty birds. It fooled the marsh hawk himself. He woke up on his perch down in the bulrushes where he dozes until the mice begin to stir for their suppers. He thought surely it was one of his sons who was hunting with his mother over in the Big Marsh, on the far-away side of the Deep Woods, where the Woodsfolk think the sun goes to sleep. “What’s he doing here?� wondered the old bird. “Surely his mother never sent him to tell me we were going to start south ahead of the storm.� And up he flew, craning his neck all around and calling.
Of course Chaik knew better than to answer. He dropped down under the leaves of the pickery thorn tree of the Quail’s Thicket and hid from the hawk by scrambling around its trunk, keeping always on the opposite side of it. “Lucky thing for me Killer the Weasel isn’t on the prowl for me right now,� he thought. “I believe this is a poor place to sleep. These leaves will let in ever so much rain, and if the owls should take to hunting me from above and Killer from below they wouldn’t be very long about catching me.�
Just then his heart ’most stopped beating; he heard a rustling beneath him—right at the very foot of the tree he was hiding on. He squinched himself flat tight against the bark so he looked like nothing more than a bumpy knothole and peeked—into the smiling face of Tad Coon.
Chaik dropped from the tree and told Tad all about everything
CHAPTER VIII
KILLER FINDS THE POND MIGHTY LONESOME
“Tad Coon!� gasped Chaik Jay. “What are you doing here? My, but I’m glad you came.� And he dropped down from the trunk of the pickery thorn tree.