Tad was out in the woodshed, by the pussycat’s dish, snubbing his shiny black nose against the screen. He was sniffing the hot Johnnycake he could smell baking in the oven. You know Louie promised him some—with syrup on it, too. Pretty soon Chaik had his beak pointed at the stove; he knew what Johnny cake was, because he’d had a taste of the piece Louie brought to the pond. He was ’most as interested as Tad Coon.
Then Louie’s mother smelled it. “Heavens!” she exclaimed. “I clean forgot my oven!” She opened the door and took the Johnnycake out, hot and steaming. Louie took a nice crusty corner, right away quick. Of course Chaik thought that this was the signal for him, so he picked up a crumb—and his eyes fairly popped because he wasn’t used to eating hot things. Then didn’t she laugh! “The smart thing!” said she. “He’s just like folks. But your pa’ll be here in a minute and he won’t think this kitchen’s any place for birds—not if I know him. Quick, Louie! Put him down cellar in the cage so the cats can’t get at him. Here’s enough for him and the coon.”
Down cellar they went, but Louie was careful to leave the door open so Tad could run down and see him. And Chaik didn’t mind the cage so very much.
In fact, he was as comfortable as though he’d been at home. More comfortable, maybe, because it was pretty scary sleeping in the woods with Killer the Weasel sniffing about to find his hiding holes. Anyway, he was too full and too sleepy to think about it.
But Tad Coon wasn’t sleepy a bit.
He licked the last crumb of Johnnycake, and the last drop of syrup Louie had put on it, out of his whiskers, and was just cleaning the stickiness off his little handy paws when he heard something that pricked his ears straight up. “Huh! That’s a funny noise in the henhouse,” he said to himself. “It isn’t Louie, and it isn’t his father—I believe I’ll take a look.” So off he marched, stepping most carefully in the hard middle of the path where the men walk so he wouldn’t make his tracks plain for any one to follow.
He thought about it because the evening was so dark he couldn’t see very far ahead of him, but he could smell plain as plain. It was so fresh and cool all his own fur wanted to puff out, but he wouldn’t let it; he didn’t want anybody to get a smell of him. Snf, snf, snf! “What’s that in the woodpile?” Over he jumped, so softly he didn’t make even the scritch of a claw, then——
“Hey! If this happened to our quail folk out by the pond there would be a fine goings on!” For it was the remains of a chicken. He craned his neck to see who had put it there, but he couldn’t notice anything but the feather smell. “That bird wasn’t killed to-night,” thought he. “That was last night’s work. It wasn’t any owl. It wasn’t a cat—they’re horrid, spitty creatures, but they don’t steal. Hist! I’ll know who it was in about two whisks of a mouse’s tail—he’s doing it again!”
Pit, pit, pit, he tiptoed over to the henhouse. All the birds were shrieking and cackling. “Help! Murder-r! Thieves!” The ones on the far-up back perches were squawking. “Spur him! Peck him!” But the ones who were down in front were only fluttering hard to keep high off the floor on their clumsy wings.
Tad squinted through a crack. He could just make out a limp white heap of feathers being dragged. He couldn’t see who was doing the dragging, but—sniff! He went galloping around and around the house whining: “Where did he get in; oh, wherever DID he get in?”