Up wind to meet a stranger.’
So here is our road.” He turned his old back to the breeze and began to hump himself along, though even a mouse wouldn’t have called it running. He was lucky, too, for the wind blew him right into the straw-stack where all the rest of the mice had settled the night they ran away from Doctor Muskrat’s pond. They thought they had found mouse-heaven because the stack wasn’t thrashed yet. But the mice who tried to do something different, right out of their foolish heads—you can guess what happened to them!
It was in the middle of the night when Killer the Weasel woke up. The stone-pile was a whole lot quieter than it had been that evening when he flopped into it, and for a minute he thought he was back in his own snug home between two stones on the bank of Doctor Muskrat’s pond.
Just then one of the little mice, who belonged to the fat old mamma mouse who was too stubborn to leave, began to squall. “Eh? What’s that?” Killer pricked up his ears. “Where am I, anyhow?” He began to look himself over. He was bumps and lumps from head to foot, his fur was torn—and when he moved he snubbed his nose on all sorts of rolly little stones.
“This isn’t my home,” said he.
But he did find that foolish mother mouse and fished her children out of their nest with his slinky paw. And he did find that greedy mouse, who wouldn’t leave his stores. He was sticking in a crack too small for his fat middle, with his feet kicking in the air. Killer felt quite full and rested after he’d eaten them all. “Mice are very nice,” he said to himself as he picked the last of their bones. “Very nice and juicy! Hunting these Woodsfolk has got me into a clawful of trouble. I believe I’ll live on mice for a while.”
Out he climbed and went sniffing all the trails until he found the big clear wide one where the mice ran away from him. “So-ho,” said he. “Now I wonder where these fellows went to.” Sniff, sniff, he went gliding off into the darkness, down the wind, hiding in every grass-clump to be sure nobody was after him, until he crawled into the very bottom of the straw-stack where the mice were living. How rich and mousy it smelled! If the fat grains seemed like heaven to the mice, the fat mice all around him seemed like heaven to him.
CHAPTER IX
MRS. TABITHA PUSS-CAT’S SECRET
In the meantime, while Watch the Dog was busy in the barn, Stripes Skunk’s kittens came dashing up calling, “Come! Quick, quick! Come!” And what do you suppose they’d found? An oil-can that fell off the mowing machine and got raked up in the hay. Its spout was broken off so it didn’t hold any more oil, but it wasn’t empty. Great Grass-seeds, no!
It held a mouse. And she was squealing away inside, making the funniest, tinniest sound, like talking into a teapot. “I’m Nibble Rabbit’s friend! I’ve got something dreadfully important to tell him. Call Nibble Rabbit!”