The three tugging, biting, squealing and pulling each other this way and that until they burst from under the barn and had it out on the flat ground
When what seemed to him the right moment had come, the rat poked his battle scarred gray nose out of the hidden hole, saw that the way seemed clear and made a rush, but Striped Coat had been waiting for just this move and made a rush too. He and the rat bumped into each other amid furious squeals, and the rat was thrown off his feet. In that moment the other wood pussy reached him and landed on top with both front paws and all her weight, but without so much as knocking the breath out of the powerful, big fellow who rolled over and would have escaped had not Striped Coat caught him suddenly by the skin on the back of his head.
Then the fight became furious. The three tugging, biting, squealing and pulling each other this way and that until they burst from under the barn and had it out on the flat ground directly in front of the Farmer’s house. Here the moon shone on the battle and helped the mother wood pussy to see her chance to get the death grip on the rat’s thick neck and finish him.
They did not hear a window open over their heads nor see the Farmer’s face appear; in the heat of the fighting they had forgotten all else. But now Striped Coat, who still had his grip on the rat’s head, began to drag him under the fence and then to the bushes and then to a dark thicket where they seemed safe.
Striped Coat lay down to lick a badly bitten paw and to free his wonderful fur from dirt, which he did by carefully shaking, scratching and much work with his mouth. But his mate began at the left hind leg of the rat and ate as long as she could find anything tender enough to chew. It was not as tasty a meal as she would have liked, but it all went to keep her strong and so to help the six little ones to get all the milk they needed.
CHAPTER XIV
MASTER OF THE WOODS
It was early morning. Under the cabin, Striped Coat was in his big bed curled up asleep but twitching occasionally as he dreamed of battles with old warrior rats. In the woodchuck’s burrow under the uprooted pine, Striped Coat’s mate was giving all the little “striped coats” their morning bath, using her wet tongue as the wash rag. And in the old den under the holly tree Striped Coat’s mother was doing much the same with four little ones which made up her new family; pretty youngsters, but all showing signs of having as much white as black in their markings, when they grew up.
Over their heads the woods was now a mass of green. Birds were singing, bees were buzzing around numberless flowers, far and wide there was the hum of the insect army now come again to feed on the plant life. How this army would spread and grow and ravage the land, if birds by day were not constantly after it on the ground, in the trees and in the air, and if at night its ranks were not attacked by the active little shrews, the swift flying bat, and the wood pussies, not to mention other woodsfolk like the fox, the mole, old Possum and even Screech Owl, who all helped! In the water the fish did their part. Yes, everything must eat to live.
And the farmers were cultivating their crops and raising chickens and other live stock, for man too must eat; and they were fighting everywhere the insects and the other vermin which would like to take all these things for themselves. One of these farmers was Ben Slown of Goose Creek. Upon him on this beautiful morning Mr. Henry made a call.