How did Mrs. Tabitha Puss-Cat know the mice were going to leave their straw-stack at sundown the very next evening? Because she knew there wouldn’t be any stack left for them to stay in, or any grain left to eat. Up at the house Tommy Peele’s father had just been saying: “Better go to bed early, young fellow, if you’re going to stay home from school tomorrow to help me with the thrashing.”
You know what thrashing is. A great big engine comes puffing into the barnyard with a great big machine that shakes all the fat little grains out of their thin little chaff overcoats. Tommy Peele’s father thrashed at the very last, latest end of the season, because he knew those fat little grains would keep on getting fatter even after their stems were cut off, if he just piled them up into a nice stack and let them go quietly off to sleep for the winter. They hide a lot of good food in their hollow stems; the furry folk aren’t the only ones who get ready for the hungry season.
“Toot-toot!” whistled the engine. “Fsssh!” it sent up a cloud of steam. “Clank, clank, squeak, squeak, cough!” went the thrashing machine. Then “Wurr-wurr-wurr,” its tongue began to lick up the bundles of straw with the grains all wrapped up on the ends of their stalks. It licked so fast that the men who were feeding it could hardly keep up with its appetite. “Whish,” came the straw tumbling out of a long hollow arm with a crook on the end of it that spread the straw into a new pile.
And you ought to have seen the little overcoats go sailing off in the wind. But the sleepy little grains didn’t know anything about it. They came pouring out of the side of that machine, all nice and warm, and snuggled together in a comfortable sack, ready to be stored away—where the mice couldn’t get them—for Tommy’s own hungry season.
Watch wanted to shake himself by the scruff of his own furry neck for not thinking about it. Now he knew what that cat meant. The new strawpile grew bigger and bigger; the old stack, where the mice were hidden, grew smaller and smaller. Those foolish mice soon wouldn’t have any stack left to hide in. Pretty soon they’d have to begin coming out—but he didn’t know who else was coming! The cat didn’t tell him.
CHAPTER X
MANY THINGS THRASHED OUT
Tommy Peele was mighty busy the day of the thrashing. He had to run for oil, and monkey wrenches, and drinks for the men, and I don’t know what else, all day long. So were the men. So was that noisy, hungry old thrashing machine that kept eat, eat, eating up the mouse’s stack, shaking out the grain for Tommy’s winter food, and the pigs’ and cows’ and the chickens’. But none of them was any busier than Watch.
The mouse’s stack grew smaller and smaller. Every time a man lifted off any straw, the mice beneath it dived deep down into the little low heap there was left, until it really held more mice than grain. And something else. For Killer was hiding down in the very deepest bottom of it.
He couldn’t think what was going on. The noise outside frightened him. When he put out his nose to see what was happening, there was a man standing right in front of him; so he pulled back in a great hurry. The next time he tried it, he found the big green eyes of the cat staring right at him. They made shivers run up his spine and took away his appetite. How he wished he’d never come away from home! But all he could do now was to sit still and listen.
Awful things began to happen. Whole families of baby mice, too little to run, went into the maw of that machine, and nobody knew what became of them. Mice began bursting out of the crowded stack. Some of them ran any which way. Some of them saw the new strawpile and scuttled over there. Then——