He didn't finish. Instead his tongue seemed to stick to the roof of his mouth and his little black eyes looked as if they would pop out of his head. Sitting on a post close to the hollow rail was a straight, black form watching him with cruel, hungry-looking eyes. It was Roughleg the Hawk! Chatterer gave a little gasp of fright. He whirled around and started back along the fence as fast as he could make his legs go. Instantly Roughleg spread his great wings and sailed after him. Chatterer hadn't gone the length of two rails before Roughleg was over him. With his great, cruel claws spread wide, he suddenly swooped down. Chatterer dodged to the under side of the rail just in time, the very nick of time. Roughleg screamed with disappointment, and that scream had such a fierce sound that Chatterer shivered all over.
Chatterer gave a little gasp of fright.
How he ever got back to the Old Orchard he hardly knew himself. Ever so many times he just managed to dodge those great claws. But he did get there at last, out of breath and tired and frightened. There sat Sammy Jay, waiting for his corn. He pretended to be very angry because Chatterer had none and threatened to go straight to the Green Forest and tell Shadow the Weasel where Chatterer was living. There was nothing for Chatterer to do but to go over to the corn-crib as soon as he had rested a little.
"It's been a dreadful day, a perfectly dreadful day," said Chatterer to himself, as he curled up in bed for the night. "I wonder—I wonder how old Roughleg happened to be sitting on that fence-post this morning."
But Sammy Jay didn't wonder; he knew.
XXIII
CHATTERER HITS ON A PLAN AT LAST
Each time that Chatterer thought himself smarter than Sammy Jay, he found that he wasn't as smart as he thought he was, and this always made him feel mortified. He just couldn't admit even to himself that Sammy was the smartest, and yet here he was every day bringing corn for Sammy from Farmer Brown's corn-crib whenever Sammy told him to, and running the risk of being seen by Farmer Brown's boy, all because he hadn't been able to think of some way to outwit Sammy. Once more after he had such a narrow escape from old Roughleg the Hawk, he had tried going down to his store-house at the edge of the cornfield, but he had found Roughleg on watch and had turned back. From the way Sammy Jay had grinned when he saw Chatterer coming back, Chatterer had made up his mind that Sammy knew something about how old Roughleg happened to have found out about that store-house and so been on the watch.
Now all this time, Sammy Jay was having a great deal of fun out of Chatterer's trouble. Each time that Chatterer thought of a plan to outwit Sammy, he would find that Sammy had already thought of it and a way to make the plan quite useless. You see, Sammy used to spend a great deal of his time when he was alone in the Green Forest pretending that he was in the same fix as Chatterer and then trying to think of some way out of it. So it was that Chatterer never could think of a plan that Sammy hadn't already thought of. And yet there was a way to cheat Sammy out of his fun, though not out of his corn, and it really was the fun of seeing Chatterer so worried that Sammy cared most about. Sammy had thought of it almost at once, and it seemed to him that Chatterer was very, very stupid not to think of it, too.