The Tale of Grumpy Weasel Part 6

"Why--there isn't one here, is there?" Grumpy asked.

"There is an old one," she admitted. "It hasn't been used in my time."

"If I could see it I'd know at once whether Pete could crawl through it," Grumpy Weasel said, talking to himself--or so it seemed to Mrs.

Hen.

"I'll show it to you gladly!" she cried. "Do come right in and look at our rat hole, Mr. Weasel!"

As she spoke, Mrs. Hen started for the henhouse. And after her crept Grumpy Weasel, hoping that n.o.body else would see him. So far as he could tell, the hens were all out of doors, scratching in the dirt. But suddenly Mrs. Hen's jealous neighbor began to set up a great squawking, calling upon Mrs. Hen to be careful, for she was in great danger.

Fat Mrs. Hen turned about with a vexed look upon her handsome but somewhat stupid face.

"Walk right in!" she said to Grumpy. "I must stop and settle with her.

She has gone too far." And leaving Grumpy to find the rat hole without her help, Mrs. Hen fluttered across the henyard with her head thrust forward, to give her meddlesome neighbor a number of hard pecks and so teach her to mind her own affairs.

With a low chuckle Grumpy Weasel slipped inside the henhouse, where he found himself quite alone. It took him but a few moments to discover in one corner of the building the old rat hole of which Mrs. Hen had spoken.

And then he went to the door and looked out, for Mrs. Hen and her neighbor were making a terrific racket. He saw the end of the squabble.

And soon Mrs. Hen came running back, with her feathers sadly rumpled, and her comb awry.

"I settled with her," she gasped. "And now tell me about the rat hole.

Could Peter Mink get through it?"

"No, he couldn't!" Grumpy Weasel said. Then he dodged strangely back into the henhouse. And though Mrs. Hen hopped in after him she couldn't find him anywhere.

She couldn't understand it.

XV

THE GREAT MYSTERY

The story soon spread all around the farmyard, how fat Mrs. Hen had been seen talking with no less a rascal than Grumpy Weasel.

Everybody told her that it was a dangerous thing to do and that it was a wonder she had escaped, until Mrs. Hen began to feel that she was quite the most important person in the neighborhood. Even old dog Spot asked her some questions one day--some of which she could answer, and some of which she could not.

For one thing, she couldn't (or wouldn't) tell what way Grumpy left the farmyard. "He just jumped back and was gone before I knew it," she said.

"That's what they all say," said Spot. "He's so quick you never can see him go."

Now, Mrs. Hen ought to have explained that Grumpy Weasel disappeared from inside the henhouse. But she was not a person of much sense. By that time she began to think that perhaps Grumpy Weasel was as bad as the neighbors had said. And she was afraid that her relations might find fault with her if they learned that she had invited Grumpy to enter their house. Silly Mrs. Hen decided that she wouldn't tell what she had done. But she never tired of talking about what she called "the great mystery"--meaning "Where did Grumpy Weasel go?"

It was simple enough. To escape meeting old dog Spot, Grumpy Weasel had crawled into the old rat hole. It suited him quite well to do that, for more than one reason. Not only did he avoid trouble, but he found the other end of the rat hole. Silly Mrs. Hen had done exactly as he had hoped. She had shown him a way to get into the henhouse at night in spite of locks and bolts and doors. And Grumpy Weasel went off to the woods well pleased with himself.

"Perhaps, after all, it pays to be pleasant," he said--just as if that was a reason! But he stopped short all at once. "There's that stupid Mrs. Hen," he cried aloud. "She was pleasant; but it won't pay her, in the end!" So he decided on the spot that he would keep on being surly.

It would be much easier for him, anyhow.

That very night Grumpy Weasel stole back to the henhouse. And he was just about to creep up to the old rat hole, pausing first to take a searching look all around, when he saw a motionless figure sitting on a low-hanging limb of a tree near-by. It was Solomon Owl. And Grumpy could see that he was staring at the rat hole as if he were waiting for somebody.

Grumpy Weasel knew at once that that rat hole was no safe place for him.

Very gingerly he drew back into a deep shadow. And as he pondered silently he saw a huge rat step out of the hole. Solomon Owl swooped down and grabbed the fellow before he knew what was happening.

Well, Grumpy Weasel saw that all his trouble had gone for nothing. Silly Mrs. Hen hadn't known what she was talking about. If Solomon Owl was in the habit of watching that hole Grumpy certainly didn't mean to go near it.

Of course he was angry. But Mrs. Hen never learned what he said about her. No matter what remarks her neighbors made, she always insisted afterward that Grumpy Weasel was one of the most pleasant and polite gentlemen she had ever met.

XVI

GUARDING THE CORNCRIB

Grumpy Weasel never seemed to have anything but bad luck whenever he went near the farmyard. Perhaps that was the reason why he kept going back there, for he was nothing if not determined. Anyhow, he had found the hunting poor along his stone wall in the woods. And there was so much "game," as he called it, about the farm buildings that he thought it was silly to leave it for such scamps as Peter Mink and Tommy Fox and Fatty c.o.o.n.

So he took to loitering near Farmer Green's corncrib. And he was not at all pleased to find Fatty c.o.o.n there one evening. He wouldn't have spoken to Fatty at all had not that plump young chap hurled a cutting remark directly at him: "There are no chickens in this building. This is a corncrib."

"Don't you suppose I know that?" Grumpy retorted. "I've come here to guard the corn from mice and squirrels."

"There's no need of your doing that," Fatty c.o.o.n told him. "Have you never noticed those tin pans, upside down, on top of the posts on which the corncrib rests? How could a mouse or a squirrel ever climb past one of those?"

"There are ways," Grumpy Weasel said wisely.

"I doubt it," Fatty replied. "I don't believe the trick can be done."

Then, not to oblige Fatty, but to show him he was mistaken, Grumpy climbed a tree near-by, dropped from one of its branches to the roof of the corncrib, and quickly found a crack in the side of the building through which he slipped with no trouble at all.

Suddenly there was a great scurrying and scrambling inside. And soon Fatty c.o.o.n saw Frisky Squirrel and several of his friends--not to mention three frightened mice--come tumbling out and tear off in every direction.

Presently Grumpy Weasel stuck his head through a crack between two boards.

"Did you catch the robbers?" he called to Fatty c.o.o.n.

"They were too spry for me," Fatty told him. He wouldn't have stopped one anyhow, for Grumpy Weasel.

"Which way did they go, old Slow Poke?" Grumpy cried as he jumped down in great haste.

"Everywhere!" Fatty told him.

"Can't you be a little more exact? You don't think--do you?--that I can run more than one way at a time?"

"Why don't you run round and round in a circle?" Fatty suggested. "In that way you might catch at least half those youngsters--and perhaps all of them."

"That's the first real idea you ever had in your life!" Grumpy exclaimed--which was as near to thanking a person as he was ever known to come.