“Aha! You needn’t pretend to me!” sniffed Killer. “We weasels know a lot of things. We know that no real owl can stand the sunlight. The Ghost Owl can. Many a mink has seen it diving for fish like a kingfisher in the daytime. Many a weasel has felt its claws in his ribs in the dead of night. Yet whose tooth has ever found its magic throat? Can you name me one who has ever picked its bones? No! Nor will there ever be such a one. For the Ghost Owl has no mate, it builds no nest, it hatches no young. It is born in a fox’s skin until the magic shedding when feathers instead of fur prick through its hide. It never dies. It lives on us who are strongest, swiftest, cleverest of hunters—we Folk from under-the-Earth whom Mother Nature herself cannot govern.”
You just ought to have seen Croaker Hop-toad’s side shake at the idea. He didn’t know a thing about the Ghost Owl, except that there was one, but he knew more than to believe what Killer was telling him. It’s what we call a “tall story” and the Woodsfolk a “tail-ruffler.” Only an ignorant creature like the weasel could pretend it was true. He hadn’t told Killer what really did kill Silvertip because he knew Killer would be a lot more frightened at what he didn’t know than at what really did happen. But he hadn’t dreamed of scaring him as hard as all this. It was great fun. He wanted Killer to go on talking about it. So he said, “It’s very good of you to explain all these things to me. I wouldn’t see them for myself, living as I do under my stone. But if the Ghost Owl never dies, what becomes of it?”
“Ah,” said Killer. “Nobody knows but the crazy loon. But sometimes, when there’s a fearful storm, you hear it squawking and its feathers come fluttering down. They aren’t real feathers, you know; they’re only frozen. That’s why it only comes in ice-time. So we think—Ssh! Who’s coming?”
CHAPTER VII
KILLER THE WEASEL IN A WEARY ROUND OF TROUBLES
But Killer never finished. He’d scared himself ’most to death telling about the Ghost Owl; so when he did hear a sound he made a frantic scratching to squeeze into the crack in the Hop-toad’s stone, where he’d been talking, and then he bounced off at full speed for his own safe crack between the two stones on the bank of Doctor Muskrat’s pond. “Ah-h-h!” he breathed. “Safe at last! Even the Ghost Owl’s claw cannot find me here. Tooth cannot bite, and paw cannot dig to disturb me. If only I weren’t so desperate, starvation hungry. I do wish I’d caught the Hop-toad. I do wish I’d eaten those owls—but I’ll do it next summer when it’s safe to hunt here. To-night I’ll go back to the Deep Woods and stay—if I have to live on acorns.”
As soon as the Hop-toad was perfectly sure Killer had gone, he hopped to the narrow crack that was the door of his cave and squeezed out again. He cocked his deaf ears and felt with his little gloved paws on the ground. Then he began to laugh himself right out of his skin. “Ho, ho! It’s only those harmless man-tadpoles.” That’s what Croaker Toad calls Tommy Peele and Louie Thomson.
Croaker could feel them tramping along the lane. Killer had heard them whistling. They were calling Watch to help them find out who it was that had chased Nibble Rabbit and Tad Coon and Stripes Skunk and Doctor Muskrat, and all the rest of them out of Tommy’s Woods and Fields. Watch was busy about something else, way far off, when he heard them. Mighty busy, too.
But they didn’t need him. Killer had gone padding up and down the banks of Doctor Muskrat’s pond looking for tracks of someone he could eat, and he’d left his own. He’d left a clear trail from the Hop-toad’s home to his own. “Lessee who’s here!” said Tommy Peele. He tried to lift one of Killer’s big stones.
“Try this,” said Louie Thomson. He picked up a big stick and poked it into the crack between them. Then both little boys began to shove on the stick. Slowly it pried the crack apart. One of the big stones reared up on end and fell over backward. And there sat snaky-slim, bristly whiskered, snarly toothed Killer, with his wicked eyes rage-red and his wicked claws set to spring at them!
Why didn’t he do it? Well, it was the same reason Stripes Skunk explained to Nibble Rabbit and Nibble tried on the cat. They weren’t afraid of him.