“Hm. So that’s the story you’re telling now, is it?” snapped Killer. “I thought you said he was hunting duck in the Big Marsh over on the other side of the Deep Woods. Didn’t you?”
“Ye-es,” sniffed the owl. (She did, you know.) “But——”
Now if Killer had let her say another word she would have told him why she lied and she’d have explained that Grandpop Snappingturtle was gone, and things might have been very different whether he believed her or not. But he didn’t. He began crouching, creeping toward the very darkest end of the long log where he could hear the scared little birds squirming in terror. His eyes gleamed red in the blackness, with green flashes, as he peered for them.
But you surely haven’t forgotten that this was the very tree where Stripes Skunk found the honey that helped him make friends with Tad Coon and Tommy Peele.
The bees were fast asleep. They woke up all right enough when those scared little owls began scratching scared little claws into their nice neat home. “Brzz?” they began to call. “What’s happening? Call out the guard. Shake a wing, there! See who’s attacking us!”
Did the little Screecher Owls pay any attention? They did not. Killer the Weasel was gnashing his teeth at them and glaring his eyes in the black dark. “Whe-e-e!” moaned the owl’s wife as she climbed up the soft comb until she bumped her head against the top of the log, right by the little hole. “Who-o-o,” shivered her mate, scrambling after her. “Ur-r-rk!” she squawked as the first of the bee guards got his sting between her feathers.
She gave a flounce—and the honeycomb broke away. She could see the sky through the hole! Scuttle, scramble, scratch, and flutter—my, but it was a tight fit! All the same she did just manage to squeeze through, and her mate grabbed hold of her tight new tailfeathers and dragged through behind her. But Killer didn’t!
Killer couldn’t even see to try. He was a regular ball of angry bees, and he hadn’t bee-proof fur like Stripes Skunk, even if he did claim to be Stripes’ cousin. He went bouncing down that long hollow trunk, bumping into every jagged splinter on the whole inside of it. He went racing for Doctor Muskrat’s pond, just like any other Wild Thing, and plunged in. Because he knew no bee would dare plunge in after him. Only the very few whose stings were tangled in his fur wet their wings.
But he hadn’t more than got his head under water than he was in just as much of a hurry to get out again. What if the owl had told the truth for once? What if Silvertip the Fox was eaten by Grandpop Snappingturtle?
When he came out his nose was beginning to swell, but it wasn’t so swelled that he couldn’t smell Tommy and Louie, hunting for him. His eyes were beginning to close, but they weren’t shut so tight he couldn’t see them. He turned his head to look and ran right spang into Tad Coon’s tree. Up it he climbed and out across the limb where Chatter Squirrel comes over from his hickory when he wants a drink from the pond. Up that he climbed—high up. He wanted to squint across the bare limbs to see where the squirrel roads ran so he could follow them through the tree-tops.