Well, no amount of meadowlarks and kingbirds, both together, could have stopped Stripes Skunk. Coquillicot’s wife had been so friendly and kind to him! Now he dashed past the guards and down the hedgerow where her nest was hidden. And he got there just in time to see the crooked, hawk-bitten tail of the very blacksnake she had said she was afraid of. And maybe he didn’t pounce on it!
What followed was a battle. It was the battle the birds mean when you hear them singing about it—the Battle of Stripes Skunk and the Crook Tailed Snake! For Stripes doesn’t have the wide jaws of Silvertip the Fox to fight with. But he had the courage of three Silvertips. Time and again that snake got away from his teeth and coiled about his throat; time and again Stripes clawed away its hold and got his teeth in it! He had a dim notion that the trees were full of birds, anxiously watching, but not a feather fluttered, not a cheep sounded.
Not a cheep sounded—but far off from the top of the pickery acacia tree he heard the captain of the Kingbird Guard whistling like a policeman. “Whee-oo-wheet! Whee-oo-wheet!”
And at that the snake bit viciously right at his pink mouth. Snap! he closed his jaws, right on its ugly head. He felt his long tooth drive through it.
CHAPTER IX
THE SECRET OF THE SNAKE GUARD
The coils that were wound about Stripes’ throat loosened. The snake dropped and lay still. Only its crooked tail kept wriggling.
“It’s dead,” thought Stripes. “It will never hurt another bird. But it’s bitten me. Now I’ll die, too.” And he licked his bite, wondering how soon that would happen.
He felt terribly hurt, because you know he didn’t fight on his own account; he was fighting for the kind little mate of Coquillicot, the Thrasher. You wouldn’t think the birds would forget a thing like that, would you? Well, they didn’t. Even the meadowlarks, who had been chasing him just a few minutes before, felt terribly ashamed of themselves. Still, nobody went to help him.
They had a reason. I told you that when the fight began the captain of the Kingbird Guard flew up into the very top of the tallest tree and began to whistle, “Whee-oo-wheet!” over and over again. It was a shrill, exciting noise, like fire engines make, or patrol wagons—a sort of clear-the-track-for-help whistle. He was calling the bird’s own Snake Guard, and he was calling her in the biggest sort of a hurry. And of course everyone else had to keep under cover so she’d see right off where she was wanted.
She was called in a hurry, and that’s the way she came. The kingbird captain saw a wee black speck, far up in the clouds, begin to drop. Down it flew. But before ever it reached Stripes Skunk that wee black speck was a big brown bird.