Freddy and the Ignormus Page 4

  “No,” said the pig firmly. “I said I’d go, and I’m going. If you’re afraid, go on home.”

  “Afraid!” said Charles. “Pooh! Little do you know me, pig, if you think the heart that beats in this bosom—” and he whacked his chest with his claw—“has ever known fear. No, no, my young friend, this roosterly heart has never quailed before peril. But since Freddy is not here, I ask myself—what is to be gained? What will it prove?”

  But Weedly was not listening. He had started on up through the woods. “I’ll tell ’em you didn’t want to go,” he called back over his shoulder. And Charles, after a moment of hesitation, gave a sigh and followed.

  Just about this time Freddy got tired of waiting, too. He had been sitting under his tree, putting the finishing touches on the A verse of his alphabet book. It went like this:

  ANTS, ALTHOUGH ADMIRABLE, ARE

  AWFULLY AGGRAVATING

  The busy ant works hard all day

  And never stops to rest or play.

  He carries things ten times his size,

  And never grumbles, whines or cries.

  And even climbing flower stalks,

  He always runs, he never walks.

  He loves his work, he never tires,

  And never puff’s, pants or perspires.

  Yet though I praise his boundless vim

  I am not really fond of him.

  Freddy was pretty pleased with the verse, and I think he had a right to be. But where were Charles and Weedly? “Guess they couldn’t get Charles started,” he said to himself. “Well, that lets me out.” He started to go back home, and then he stopped. “Ho,” he said, “if Charles didn’t go, and if I don’t go either, everybody will say we fixed it up between us not to go. They’ll say we agreed to stay home, because we were scared. But if I go and Charles doesn’t, then it will be Charles who will have to do the explaining. Goodness knows I don’t want to, but after all, nothing happened to me before.” And he turned around and went on.

  When he got to the road that separated Mr. Bean’s woods from the Big Woods, he hesitated a minute, and then he crossed it and dove into the shadow of the trees on the other side. He didn’t know that about two minutes earlier Weedly and Charles had crossed it in almost the same place. “There’s no point,” he said to himself, “in going very far in. It’s all alike; it’s all just—woods. So it’s just as brave to be in it out here at the edge as it would be to go right into the middle.

  “And anyway,” he said, “there isn’t anything here.”

  Freddy knew that nothing Simon said was to be relied on, and he didn’t believe that any such creature as the Ignormus existed. At least he didn’t believe it when he was sitting at home in his comfortable study. But up here in the queer gloomy silence of the Big Woods it was easy to believe almost anything. He began to wonder what the Ignormus could be like. It would be big, and it would be ferocious, he thought, and it would have sharp claws and narrow yellow eyes. The longer he imagined it, the more awful it got. He added horns and tails and wings until he had an animal beside which a Bengal tiger would look as gentle and harmless as a pussy cat. And of course he got more and more scared. He tiptoed along, being very careful to make as little noise and to keep as well hid as possible, for undoubtedly the Ignormus, besides being very sharp of hearing, would have a very short temper. And he was thinking that perhaps he had gone far enough for one day when a little distance off to the right a twig snapped sharply.

  Now twigs don’t snap all by themselves. They snap when somebody steps on them. And if you’re in woods where there are certainly no other animals, but where there may be Ignormuses, then the chances are that an Ignormus is not far away. At least that’s how Freddy figured it out. He dropped flat on the ground—or at least as flat as a rather fat pig could get—and lay there trembling. How was he to know that it was his Cousin Weedly who had stepped on that twig—and who was now cowering with Charles behind a bush not twenty yards away?

  For quite a while Freddy lay there. Then very quietly he got up and started to tiptoe back the way he had come. In his detective work he had learned to move very quietly, and so Charles and Weedly didn’t hear him, and they started to move along at about the same time. And Freddy, peering cautiously through the leaves, saw them. At least he saw Weedly’s nose coming out from behind a bush and Charles’s tail feathers disappearing at the same time in behind the other side of the bush. And he jumped to the conclusion that both nose and tail feathers belonged to the same animal.

  It’s sometimes pretty hard to tell how large things really are, if there isn’t something near to them that you can measure them by. In the dim light of the woods, a squirrel can look as big as a cow, if you think he’s farther away than he is. To Freddy, this queer monster with the head of a pig and a great plume of tail feathers seemed to be quite a distance away, and consequently it appeared as huge as an elephant. He gave a squeal of sheer fright and dashed off through the underbrush.

  It was a good loud squeal, and it seemed louder because of the silence. Charles and Weedly looked and caught a glimpse of a whitish animal through the leaves, and then they too made a rush for the safety of the road. The three animals burst from the woods at almost the same moment, and threw themselves down panting in the grass.

  “Oh, my word!” gasped Charles. “What an escape! Why, Freddy! How’d you get here?”

  “You didn’t meet me,” said Freddy. “I went alone. Saw the Ignormus. Great white creature with a wicked long snout and a tail on him like a bird.”

  “We waited for you,” said Weedly. “But that don’t matter. We went into the Big Woods all right. Do you suppose there’s two of those Ig-what-do-you-call-’ems, or did we see the same one?”

  “I didn’t see any tail feathers,” said Charles, “but what a terrible screech he gave! Like a fire engine. Ugh!” He shuddered, and then suddenly his eyes rolled up in his head and he fell over in a dead faint.

  “My goodness!” said Freddy. “Poor chap, I don’t blame him. Catch hold, Weedly, and we’ll carry him down to the brook where we can splash some water on him. Look out; easy with those tail feathers. If you pull any of ’em out, Henrietta’ll have something to say to us, and we’ve had enough excitement for one day.”

  So they carried Charles over to the brook, and after they had splashed water on him and patted his claws and done all the things people do when anybody faints, Charles opened his eyes.

  “Where am I?” he said weakly.

  “You’re all right, old boy,” said Freddy. “Can you get up? Here, you put one wing over Weedly’s shoulder and the other over mine, and we’ll help you home.”

  It wasn’t very easy for the two pigs to get the rooster down through the woods. He leaned on them heavily, and complained a good deal when they stumbled.

  “Don’t hurry me!” he said. “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “We don’t want to hurry you,” said Weedly, “but we think you ought to get home as soon as you can. Henrietta will be anxious about you.”

  “Ah, my poor Henrietta!” sighed Charles. “Little does she know what terrors her devoted husband has faced.”

  “You’ll want to get back and tell her about it,” said Freddy. “She’ll be pretty proud of you, I bet. Why, you’ve seen the Ignormus!”

  “Eh?” said Charles, perking up. “Why, that’s so, isn’t it? They’ll all be proud of me, won’t they? Oh, of you, too, of course. Maybe they’ll give us a parade, eh, Freddy?” And he stopped leaning on them and darted ahead, running as fast as he could.

  Freddy winked at Weedly. “We ought to have thought of that before,” he said.

  Chapter 6

  For the next week little was talked about on the Bean farm but what came to be known as the Big Woods Exploring Expedition. Charles got the lion’s share of the praise, probably because the animals had always thought of him, perhaps not exactly as a coward, but at least as a good deal better at big talk than at brave action, whereas the two pigs had both in the
past shown plenty of courage. Henrietta was so pleased that she even offered several mornings to get up and crow for Charles, if he wanted to stay in bed. For hens, as you perhaps know, can crow just as well as roosters if they want to. Usually they don’t want to.

  But Charles wouldn’t let her. “No, no, my dear,” he said. “I must continue to fulfill my humble duties, just like any ordinary rooster.”

  The truth was that he wanted to be up and around where he could be admired. All day long he could be seen strutting about the farmyard, stopping to acknowledge graciously the praise and congratulations of his friends, or perched on a fence, delivering a short address on courage or bravery. He even went around to some of the neighboring farms and gave lectures on such topics as “Through the Big Woods with Gun and Camera,” or “Tracking the Ignormus to His Lair,” or “Hairbreadth Escapes of an Intrepid Explorer.”

  But after his fright had worn off, Freddy began to wonder what really had happened up in the Big Woods. He thought and he thought, and finally one day he made up his mind, and without saying anything to anybody he went back. The trail of crushed leaves and broken twigs where he had rushed down to the road, was easy to follow. It scared him to go into the Big Woods again, but he went on until he came to the place where he had been when he had heard the twig snap. From it, he could see the bush behind which he had seen the fearsome animal that he had taken for the Ignormus. It was nearer than he had thought. He went over to it, and then the whole thing was clear. For behind it were footmarks which could only have been made by a pig, and a small reddish feather that had probably been shaken out of Charles’s wing.

  “Ho hum,” said Freddy. “So that was it. We scared each other.” He sat down and looked at the footprints. “Just the same,” he thought, “that doesn’t prove that there isn’t an Ignormus in the woods.” It wasn’t a very comfortable thought. He shivered and looked over his shoulder; then he tiptoed quietly back to the road.

  As soon as he was out in the sunlight again he felt better. “It’s funny,” he thought. “Whether I believe in the Ignormus or not depends entirely on where I am. Out here I’m perfectly sure there isn’t any such creature. Am I sure?” He thought a minute. “Yes, I am,” he said. “But the minute I step in under those trees I’ll believe in him again.”

  He tried it to see. He went a little way into the Big Woods, but he hadn’t been there more than a few minutes before he began to feel queer in the back of his neck and to peer around anxiously. “Maybe there is something here,” he said. “I suppose it’s sort of foolish to be here. I guess—ooh! What was that!” For something had groaned.

  Freddy dashed out across the road again. And as he was lying there watching, the groan was repeated. Then he saw that it was two branches rubbing against each other in the wind. “Just the same,” he said, “I think I’ve done enough for one day.”

  He had been going to tell the other animals what he had found out, but when he thought it over he saw that he couldn’t. If it got out that he and Charles and Weedly had just scared each other, they’d never hear the last of it. Life just wouldn’t be worth living. So he kept it to himself. But when he was asked, as he was a dozen times a day, to describe the Ignormus, he began to make his description a little less frightful. He said no, it wasn’t so terrible big; maybe not much bigger than a pig. And he left off the plume of tail feathers entirely.

  Finally Charles got a little angry about it. “What’s the matter with you, Freddy?” he said. “Here we’ve had a perfectly dreadful adventure, and you talk as if it didn’t amount to anything. You talk as if we’d been scared by a mouse.”

  “Well, maybe we were,” said Freddy. “I didn’t see anything but just something white going through the bushes. What did you see, really?”

  “Well, I—well, it was a terrible great creature, champing his jaws and screaming,” said Charles. “Wasn’t it?” he added doubtfully.

  “I don’t know. Maybe that’s what you saw, but I didn’t see anything like that. All I mean, Charles, is—if somebody finds out that there really isn’t any Ignormus in the woods at all. we’re going to look pretty silly.”

  “Pooh,” said the rooster, “he’s there all right.”

  But after that, Freddy noticed that Charles didn’t describe the Ignormus much.

  In the meantime, nothing more had been heard about Simon, although the army had been out patrolling the fields and the fences, and Jinx had been watching nights around the barn.

  “I guess the rats know better than to come back here,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “Certainly if they were living in the neighborhood, somebody would have seen them by this time.”

  So the next time the army came to report, she told them they weren’t needed any more, and they lined up and gave three loud cheers, and then disbanded.

  One evening Charles and Freddy and Jinx and his sister went down to Centerboro to the movies. Mr. Muszkiski, the manager of the movie theatre, liked to have the animals come, because it made it more interesting for the audience to have celebrities like the Bean animals in the house, and he only charged them ten cents. Since Freddy had founded the First Animal Bank, most of the animals had got together a little money which they kept in the bank vaults, and when they went to the movies they would stop in and draw out enough for their tickets, with perhaps an ice cream cone afterwards.

  Tonight the picture was about pirates, and the hero dashed about fighting duels and rescuing the heroine and pitching people overboard and generally acting in a very swashbuckling and death-defying manner. Charles, who since the adventure in the Big Woods, had begun to think of himself as a good deal of a hero, got very excited. He jumped up and down on his seat. “That’s it!” he shouted. “Go it! Hit him again!” And finally, in the big fight between the hero and the villain, he flew up on the back of his seat and flapped his wings and crowed.

  Everybody in the audience turned around and stared, and a good many of them laughed. This made Charles mad, and paying no attention to Freddy, who was trying to get him to quiet down, he shouted angrily: “That’s right—laugh! I guess you people don’t know who I am! Me, who’s seen what I’ve seen and done what I’ve done! Me—”

  “Who’s going to get slapped into a feather duster if you don’t shut up,” interrupted the cat, scooping Charles down into his seat with one black paw. “Now, pipe down, rooster, or I’ll abolish you.”

  So after a protesting squawk or two, Charles subsided.

  As they were leaving the theatre, Freddy felt a sharp poke in the back, and he turned around. An old lady a little farther back in the crowd was reaching forward with her umbrella to jab him again. He recognized her at once, and bowed politely. She was a Mrs. Lafayette Bingle, and once when Freddy had been in the detective business she had come to him to help her find her spectacles, which she had mislaid. Freddy had looked at her and said: “Why, ma’am, they’re right on your forehead.” And they were, for she had pushed them up there to look at something out of the window, and forgotten them.

  … an old lady was reaching with an umbrella.

  Mrs. Bingle had thought it very clever of Freddy to see them, and she had promised him that if she was ever able to, she would pay him well for his services. Of course Freddy hadn’t wanted any pay for so small a service, but she had insisted, and so Freddy had said: “Why, all right, if you feel that way, ma’am, you can pay me some time.” And then he had forgotten about it.

  But now she drew him aside when they got into the street, and fumbled in her purse and brought out three ten dollar bills.

  “I told you I would pay you some day for finding my spectacles,” she said, “and I am happy to say that I am now able to do so, for I have just inherited two large apartment houses, three farms, and $250 from an uncle in California, and so you must take this.”

  “I couldn’t think of it, ma’am,” Freddy protested.

  “You can think of it and you can do it,” said Mrs. Bingle.

  “A dollar would be more than enough,” said Fredd
y. “Why, this would buy half a dozen pairs of glasses.”

  But Mrs. Bingle was determined, and she made such a fuss that Freddy finally accepted. “But,” he said, “it is a very large fee for such a small service.”

  “And you,” said Mrs. Bingle, “are a very important pig to ask such a small service of. Besides, I should never have found the spectacles without your help, and then I should never have been able to read the letter telling me about the two large apartment houses, and the three farms, and the $250, and so I would probably never have got them at all.”

  Freddy argued some more, but Mrs. Bingle was quite a character—that is, she was accustomed to having her own way. So when Freddy had thanked her, he said: “If you ever need a detective again, you shall have all the help I can give you, and I will give it free, gratis and for nothing.”

  Charles was pretty excited on the way home. He strutted up the middle of the road, and shouted threats and insults at passing cars when he had to jump into the ditch to keep from being run over. Once, when they were climbing a hill, a truck came up slowly behind them and Charles refused to get out of the way. He stood in the glare of the headlights, and dared the driver to come on. And the truck stopped.

  “Hey, chicken, get out of the road,” shouted the driver, sticking his head around the windshield. “If I hadn’t thought you were a skunk, you’d be a pancake now.”

  “Get out of the way yourself,” screamed Charles. “I’ve got as much right on the road as you have. Chicken, indeed! Get down and fight, if you want to get by here. I’m as good a man as you are.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said the truck driver with a laugh. “Guess you’re one of Bean’s talking animals, ain’t you? Hop in, you and your friends, and I’ll give you a lift.”

  But Charles said he wouldn’t ride with anyone who called him names.

  “I hope you’ll excuse my friend,” said Freddy. “He isn’t usually this way. He’s been seeing too many movies.”