But he didn’t go straight to Doctor Muskrat’s Pool. He ran around the lower end of the Prickly Ash Thicket, where his hole was, and jumped across the brook. Then he came up on the far side of the pool and hid in a clump of willows. Deep in the woods he could hear Trailer, still baying. Everything else was very still. He thumped softly.
“M—m! Eh? Is that you, Nibble?” came the startled voice of the old doctor. “Watch sent me over here and I fell asleep. We sat up all night watching Silvertip, Whippoorwill and I. He slept curled up on that rotten log just behind your hole.”
“Then the little owls did find a fieldmouse,” said Nibble. “They said they’d make one show it to them and then eat him so he couldn’t tell me.”
“Well, that’s just what they tried to do,” and the doctor’s eyes twinkled, “but he managed to wriggle away when he got there and pop right into it. And he dug along the big root that runs up into the mouse tunnels and was down here for me to put a moss-seed poultice on his claw wounds while they were still watching your doorway. A doctor knows pretty much everything that goes on, I can tell you.”
“And Silvertip?” asked Nibble.
“Oh, that hound all but caught him!” the doctor exclaimed. “He came sneaking out when Watch called me, and he was so busy trying to hear what one dog had to say that he forgot all about the other. He squeaked like a frightened mouse.”
“How exciting!” Nibble flicked his tufty little tail at the thought of it. “I had Watch tell you not to go back to that flat stone because the little owls know about it. Those bad little birds will do anything to help Silvertip. They bargained with Foul Fang the Rattlesnake, and they bargained with the grandson of Ouphe the Rat. They might bargain with Slyfoot the Mink to watch it.”
“There’s someone watching it this very minute that the little owls didn’t bargain with,” answered Doctor Muskrat. “It’s Grandpop Snapping Turtle. He moves just a little closer every day, and then he settles down in the mud so exactly like a stone himself, that even I can hardly tell the difference. He’s very polite—but we’ll keep a safe distance away from him. What’s that?”
For a shadow was floating over the old doctor’s pool.
Nibble and Doctor Muskrat crouched very low among the willow stems as it sailed silently above them. It was just daybreak, when mice scuttle down to drink and crayfish are stiff with the night’s chill—the best hunting time of the day for the marsh hawk. The woods were very still; they couldn’t hear even the distant barking of the dogs.