THE WAVY TAILED WARRIOR

The hive had sent out a cloud of fighting bees to stand guard

CHAPTER ISTRIPES TURNS A TRICK ON TAD COON

“Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch,” went a noise in the woods not very far away from the pond where Doctor Muskrat was telling a story to Nibble Rabbit and Stripes Skunk. Nibble’s ears flew up; the doctor got ready to dive; Stripes hunched himself up and peered anxiously over his shoulder because the sound came from the only direction where he knew of a hole to hide in. The willows, where he first lived, were over on the far side of the pond—and Stripes simply hates to swim. His tail gets all soggy, so it’s just as if you tried swimming with all your clothes on.

Scritch—r-r-rip! went the noise. Patter, patter, patter, came footsteps of somebody running. Then Nibble laughed. “Ho! It’s only old Tad Coon,” he said. “He’s in kind of a hurry.”

But when Tad Coon came out into the grassy space between the trees and the sand he was just strolling along as dignified as a duck in a puddle. “Morning, Doctor Muskrat,” he said politely. “Hello, Nibble. Who’s the visitor?” He knew all the time, but he was just pretending, to see what Stripes would do.

“This is Stripes Skunk,” said Nibble. “He wants to stay here and clean up the potato-bugs for Tommy Peele.”

“He does, does he?” Tad straddled his hind legs wide apart and sat back to stare at him in a most insulting way.

“Well, I hope you’ve warned all the birds. He’s the fellow who can keep their nests cleaned up for them.”

That made Stripes pretty angry. He turned half-way round and stamped his feet. “You’re mighty worried about them all of a sudden,” he snarled. “But I notice when the folks found those little dead chicks, they knew who to lay it to.”

“And I notice you were the one who killed them,” growled Tad with a crooked smile that showed all his teeth. He was getting ready to fight about it.

But wise old Doctor Muskrat just drawled in a sleepy, soothing voice, “As the grubby carp-fish said to the snapping-turtle, ‘My, but your nose is muddy!’”

That set Nibble Rabbit to giggling. “Hadn’t I better call the little owls?” he asked. “Then you can all throw mud at each other.”

“It’s mighty funny for you,” protested Tad Coon, “but as long as he stays here, that Skunk will be getting me into trouble.”

“No, I won’t. I did it in the first place because I was jealous. You could stay here and I couldn’t. But if I can stay, too, I won’t have anything to be jealous about, will I?” One thing about Stripes—he always tells the truth, you know.

“That’s so,” agreed Tad. “I’ll think about it.” Then he smiled the smile he has when he thinks about a joke. “Say, Stripes, do you like honey? I know where there is some.”

“Like honey?” You ought to have seen Stripes’ little pink tongue hang out at the very idea.

“Doctor Muskrat,” whispered Nibble when Tad and Stripes marched off, tail to tail, as companionable as though they’d never thought of fighting, “I’ve guessed Tad’s joke. He’s got those bees all angry—that was why he was running before he saw us. Now he’s going to set them on Stripes Skunk and have them chase him away, just as he set the striped buzzers with hot tails (paper-wasps he meant) on Trailer the Hound. Hadn’t I better warn him?”

“Now don’t you get to meddling, Nibble,” the doctor answered. “Those two will have to settle their own troubles. If Watch the Dog isn’t executioner of these woods and fields, neither are you their hen, to brood over them. You’re getting as bad as Jenny Wren in nesting season.” He said that because Jenny Wren is the fussiest thing in feathers, and she’s always scolding other people for not doing what she thinks is the proper way to do things. She nearly drives the meadowlarks wild by saying, “I told you so” every time someone finds their eggs that they hide in the long grass, just because she can’t make them take to nesting in her little squinchy dark knotholes.

“Just the same,” Nibble insisted, “I’m going to see what they’re doing,” And off he hopped.

But he didn’t hop so very far. For the bees had hung up their shelves upon shelves of little wax honey-bottles in the upper limb of the oak that was blown down in the Terrible Storm. Tad Coon had clawed off all the bark around their hole trying to reach his handy-paw into it. But he wasn’t going near it now—oh, no! He’d had one taste of their stings. And now the hive had sent out a swarm of fighting bees to stand guard. They were hanging in a noisy black cloud just above it.

Up went Stripes Skunk, balancing on the wide branch as nicely as you please, and he walked right into the middle of them. And then you should have heard them. They were fairly shrieking their sting song:

And bees always use it to work themselves up when they have a fight on so they’ll forget that as soon as they use their stings they’ll die.

“Oh!” cried Nibble. “He must be blinded. See what you’ve done with your jokes, you careless coon! This is worse than the one you played on Trailer.”

Even Tad Coon was shocked. He called, “Stripes, Stripes! come this way! Follow me! If you run through the brush they’ll leave you.”

But of course the bees were making such a noise Stripes Skunk couldn’t hear what he was saying. So he just called back, “I can’t reach in here—my paw’s too fat—but I have another idea.” Down he came. They could see him batting at the bees with his paddy paws until he popped into the big hollow in the oak’s trunk.

CHAPTER IITHE SWEETNESS OF HARMONY AND HONEY

Tad Coon burst into tears when he saw the white tip-end of Stripes’ long wavy tail go into the hole. For a great big cloud of angry bees was pouring in after him. “He’s gone crazy. He’s gone crazy,” sobbed Tad. “This is the awfulest joke I ever played. Now he’ll be stung to death in that smelly black hole. It’s all my fault—why did I ever think of sending him up to meddle with their nest? Honest, I never meant to hurt him.”

Tad did truly feel so sorry for what he’d done that Nibble didn’t have the heart to scold him. “It isn’t entirely your fault,” he consoled. “Skunks do go crazy like quails and chickadees. Only he didn’t know what you did to Trailer the Hound, and I did. I ought to have warned him.”

“I—I just tho—thought it would be f—funny to see him run,” said poor Tad, gulping and choking.

But Tad Coon and Nibble Rabbit were wasting a lot of sympathy. For Stripes Skunk was perfectly happy. He just tucked his little pointy ears flat down against the sides of his head and took good care of his little black nose, and no bee could possibly hurt him. When Tad and Nibble saw him batting at the bees with his paws, as though he were trying to drive them away, he was only catching them. For Stripes knows more about the folks who wear two pairs of wings (that’s woods talk for most any kind of an insect) than any furry thing except the bats. Grab! He’d have a bee in his paddy paw that has a skin so thick her sting won’t go through it. Nip! and he’d munch the little bag of honey right out of her body. But the big luscious lumps of honeycomb were what he was really after.

And he knew right how he’d find them. You remember he was sleeping in that very hole in the bottom of the oak when he first met the little owls. But he hadn’t done any exploring. Now he said to himself, “If that limb is hollow way up to the hole where the bees come out I’ll go up inside and get the honey.” The tree was leaning because it had been blown down and was just raised a little on its branches, so he didn’t really have to climb—it was only walking up hill. Well——

The first thing Tad Coon knew, out walked Stripes Skunk, proud and pleased, with a great big comb of honey. And the bees were so busy inside, eating the drops he’d spilled, that they had forgotten all about him. Stripes dropped it down in front of Tad Coon. “Eat that,” he said. “There’s plenty more where it came from.”

Maybe you think Tad Coon didn’t? He just gorged on it and licked his whiskers.

All of a sudden Nibble thought of something. “Tad,” he chuckled, “this joke’s on you, too. Stripes asked you to be friends. Now he’s given you a present and you’ve eaten it. You’ve made a compact.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t make a compact with a nice smart beast like Stripes Skunk?” demanded Tad. “Of course we’re friends.”

“Tastes like more, doesn’t it?” grinned Stripes, watching him lick the last drops off his handy-paw. So he went in after another chunk of sweet, dripping honeycomb. And by this time their furry skins were feeling pretty tight. “There’s this about honey,” Stripes drawled, “you never know when you’ve had enough until you’ve had too much. Seems like we’d better stop off awhile.”

“Uh-huh,” mumbled Tad Coon, just a little bit doubtfully, because he’d never had enough to find out. The most he ever dares to do is to snoop out a mouthful and run. But he followed Stripes down to Doctor Muskrat’s pond, and they took a good drink and cleaned up their paws and their whiskers. Stripes sponged off his shiny black fur with his tongue, just as your cat does, but Tad splashed and splattered like a duck in a puddle.

First thing they knew, up popped Doctor Muskrat himself. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. Then he sniffed and tasted the water that was running off his nose. “What’s that funny smell?” he wanted to know. That’s how much honey was washing off Tad Coon.

“It’s honey,” Stripes explained. “Tad Coon showed me where it was and I got it for him, so now we’re friends. Wouldn’t you like some, too?”

“Me!” exclaimed the doctor. “Great Whiskered Catfish! Whatever would I do with it? Wash myself, like Tad Coon? Or give the mussels a treat so they’d keep their shelly mouths open? I wouldn’t eat it, you know; plants and fish are enough for me.”

“But this is plants,” Tad explained eagerly. He wanted an excuse to send Stripes Skunk back for some more. “The flowers make it and the bees suck it out of them and store it away to eat in the wintertime. Flowers are plants, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” grinned the doctor. “Every one of those big white waterlily flowers tells me that she has a perfectly delicious root down in the bottom of the pond. But I’ve never found any honey in them.”

Stripes looked over and saw the bees buzzing among the lilypads. “That’s just because you never looked,” he protested. “It’s down beneath their fuzzy yellow collars.” He meant their stamens, you know.

Plop went the old muskrat. Back he came, making the pool dance in the ripples behind his busy paddle-paws, and towing a waterlily. “Where’s the honey in that, Tad Coon?” he demanded. “You’re too much of a joker for me to believe any of your fairy tales.” And sure enough, there wasn’t a single drop.

Maybe you think Stripes and Tad weren’t puzzled! They’d always heard that the bees got their honey out of flowers.

“You needn’t think you can fool me like that, you smarty coon,” chuckled the wise old muskrat.

“But I’ve always believed it,” pleaded Tad. He thought it was because he was always playing jokes that when he tried to tell the truth no one would listen.

“Ho, ho! You did, did you?” teased the doctor. “Some bee must have been buzzing around your ears, then. They’ll tell you most any kind of a tale to keep you from learning the truth about their secret. They’re so afraid someone will listen that they never sing the words of their honey song. They only hum it. And half of the hives don’t even know them. They come to my waterlily patch for the same thing the wasps do. A wasp once told me that the yellow dust you got on your nose when you went to smell for the honey was the best food in the world for growing youngsters.”

“That’s so,” agreed Stripes Skunk with his funny little three-cornered ears pricked right straight up. “I find it on their legs most every time I catch them. Just the same, I do taste honey in most every bee I eat.”

“Eat bees!” sniffed Doctor Muskrat, turning up his whiskery nose. “Eat bees? You’re as poor a story teller as Tad Coon.”

Of course Stripes had to scramble around and catch one. Tad ate one, too, and he solemnly insisted he could taste the honey as plain as plain.

“What does that prove?” argued the doctor. “If it proves anything it goes to show that honey is a sort of milk from a well-fed bee.”

“That’s so!” agreed Tad. “It’s certainly much more sensible than that old fairy tale about the flowers. I believe we’ve guessed their secret. Let’s get some more, Stripes, and make sure.”

So off they went. And back they came. Stripes had such a mouthful of honeycomb he couldn’t run, and Tad’s piece was so luscious and crumbly he had to carry it in both of his handy-paws and walk on his hind feet like a little bear. They laid it down on Doctor Muskrat’s flat stone, and just as they were about to gorge on it again, along came Nibble Rabbit, lippity-lippity, all out of breath.

“Hello, Nibble. You’re just in time to eat,” said Tad Coon.

“No, thanks,” gasped Nibble, shaking his floppy ears. “I guess I’ll take mine straight out of the clover blossoms, the way I always do.”

“From clover blossoms?” squealed Tad. “Do they have honey? Waterlillies don’t. We looked to see.”

“Well, that’s the first flower ever I heard of that didn’t,” said Nibble, looking quite surprised, because he thought that was something everybody knew.

“Bees’ milk!” whooped Doctor Muskrat. And he let go that laugh he’d been holding in for so long. “Tad Coon believed honey was milk from a bee! O Tad Coon!”

CHAPTER IIITOMMY WOULD A-FISHING GO

I tell you what, Nibble Rabbit and Doctor Muskrat had a lot of fun teasing Tad Coon because he didn’t really know where honey came from.

All the woods and fields knew perfectly well that the little furry bat is the only thing in the world with both milk and wings. But Tad didn’t stop to think. He wouldn’t even stop to eat, he was so busy chasing Doctor Muskrat into the pond. And Doctor Muskrat laughed so hard he got water into his throat and had to climb out on his last winter’s house to cough. And when he couldn’t talk he kept splashing water at them with his scaly tail.

Well, they made so much noise that they didn’t hear who was coming. And Nibble Rabbit was so taken up with the joke on Tad Coon that he forgot to tell them. The first thing they knew, “Woof!” went a voice, and there was Watch the Dog and Tommy Peele.

You remember Tad Coon tried to get the bees after Stripes Skunk because he wanted to see him run? Well, Stripes certainly did run then. He’d been licking up little crumbs of tasty honeycomb and little trickles of honey from Doctor Muskrat’s flat stone, just getting ready for the time when he’d plunge his nose, sqush! right into the delicious middle of his piece. But he didn’t wait for that. He left it for Tommy Peele to find.

And Tommy found it. He found the crummy, broken piece that Tad Coon carried hugged against his furry body with his little handy-paws until it was all hairs, and he found the nice neat lump that belonged to Stripes Skunk lying right beside it. Of course that was the one he’d choose—Tommy liked honey quite as well as any one else. So he ate it—before Watch even thought to take a sniff.

Out of the bushes tiptoed Stripes Skunk, sort of timid, but hopeful.

The minute Watch saw him he knew something was wrong. “Yah! Get away, you, or I’ll chase you away!” he growled. You know he’d never made friends with Stripes and he didn’t intend to, either.

“But that Man took my honey,” said Stripes in his scary, whiney voice. “And Tad says that’s the way he makes friends.”

“Wah! What if he did? He didn’t know that.” Watch was snarling, snapping angry. “Do you ’spose for a minute I’d have let him if I’d known it was yours? We thought it was Tad Coon’s.”

Tommy fished and fished, but at first he did not get a single bite

Poor Stripes was shaking to the very end of his long wavy tail. He looked hopefully at Tommy Peele, but Tommy hadn’t even looked up. He was too busy digging for something. So there was nothing for Stripes to do but slink back into his bushes again and cock his eye through a little opening in the leaves to see what he was doing. And Watch didn’t try to follow because he had to dig, too.

Tommy was so interested in his digging, that all the beasts started to help him. Tommy grubbed a bit with his fingers and then he took a stick to get on faster. That’s because his hands aren’t any better for burrowing than Tad Coon’s handy-paws. Watch was making fine scratchy holes every here and there and snorting into them, trying to see what Tommy wanted to find.

Doctor Muskrat dug up a sweet flag root, and Nibble Rabbit unearthed a butterfly weed, but those weren’t what Tommy wanted. Tad Coon found a fine fat grub, but Tommy didn’t want that either, so Tad ate it himself. Then Tommy shook the earth off of a long, squirmy worm.

“Oh, oh,” laughed Nibble Rabbit. “Everybody’s here to help except the one we need. We must have Tommy make friends with Bobby Robin. He eats those all the time.”

But Tommy didn’t eat it. He put it on something on the end of a string and threw it into Doctor Muskrat’s pond. He was going to go fishing. He didn’t bother about a fishpole because he’d rather perch on the trunk of a tree that was leaning over the water and watch the fish come up to nibble. And the tree was right on the edge of the very bushes which were hiding Stripes Skunk.

Tommy fished and fished, but at first he didn’t get a single bite. By and by who should guess what he was trying to do but that smarty coon? “Watch,” he said to the dog, “he’s trying to snare something, isn’t he? Is it shellbacks or flicker-tails?” That’s woods slang for turtles or fish.

“Oh, yes,” squealed Nibble Rabbit, thumping his feet with excitement. “He’s going to catch them on that wire, like he caught me—like Bob White Quail.”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” commented Doctor Muskrat. “Which does he want to catch, then?”

“I don’t know,” answered Watch. “Does it make any difference?”

“Difference?” exclaimed Doctor Muskrat, who’s an expert at any kind of fishing. “It makes all the difference in the world. The shellbacks don’t care who’s above them so long as there’s water enough to swim in, but the finny folks won’t come where there’s a moving shadow until they know the meaning of it. Tell Tommy to move farther out so that branch reaches over him.”

This seemed so sensible that Watch nudged Tommy a little farther along on the tree trunk. And it wasn’t more than a minute before the fish came nosing around, peering up to be sure he had left them. First a school of little shiny minnows came nibbling. Suddenly they scattered. A big pickery back-fin had jogged by in the eel grass and it wasn’t quite hidden.

“Hssh!” breathed Doctor Muskrat, craning his neck. “It’s that big bass. Nibble Rabbit, if you dare to thump again, I’ll—I’ll——”

CHAPTER IVA COMPACT BETWEEN FISHERMEN