Freddy Rides Again Page 9

  They both pulled up and looked at each other, and then Freddy said: “If you and your pa hadn’t been so scairt we’d have had that pig in the jailhouse this morning.”

  “All right, so we were scared,” said Billy. “What of it?” He looked at the guitar which Freddy had slung across his back. “You play that thing?”

  “Sure.” Freddy started to unsling the guitar, then stopped. If he took off his gauntlets to pluck the strings, Billy would see that he had trotters instead of hands, and would know he was a pig. “When we’re ridin’ herd, we play and sing to the cattle. Specially when it’s building up for a storm. Keeps ’em from stampeding.”

  Something giggled in a tree overhead, and a voice said: “They must be deaf. I’ve heard you sing and it made me stampede.”

  “They laugh at you, too, don’t they?” said Billy.

  “Squirrels!” said Freddy contemptuously. “They ain’t got no manners.” He pulled out his pistol. “Where is he?”

  “Oh, don’t shoot him!” Billy exclaimed. And as Freddy stared: “Well, I mean, he didn’t do anything but laugh.”

  Freddy shot the gun back into the holster. Maybe, he thought, Billy wasn’t so bad after all. “O.K.,” he said. “But it ain’t healthy to laugh at the Comanche Kid. There’s a hospital out where I come from, just built special to take care of folks that laugh at me.”

  Billy looked at him doubtfully. “Well,” he said, “they laugh at me too. All the animals, they just roar whenever they see me. I guess they don’t like me.” He gave a laugh which he tried to make sound careless. “As if I cared!”

  “If you didn’t care you wouldn’t talk about it,” said Freddy. “But why should they like you? The way I heerd it, you come pushin’ in here, snootin’ at the Beans because they ain’t got much money, pointing your finger and laughing at the animals. They just give you the same treatment. And so you don’t like it!” He gave a snort of contempt. “You’re a fool, boy!”

  To Freddy’s surprise, Billy didn’t flare up. “Maybe I hadn’t ought to have laughed at that pig,” he said. “He’s sort of the boss animal on the farm, I guess.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say he was the boss,” said Freddy modestly. “He’s smarter than some of the others, I suppose. Quite a poet, too; he swings a mean rhyme.”

  Billy looked at him in surprise. “I thought you came up here to shoot him?” he said.

  Freddy had forgotten for the moment that, as the Comanche Kid, he was out after his own scalp. “That’s what I’m aimin’ to do, pardner,” he said. “But effen he was just an ordinary pig, wouldn’t be no glory in shootin’ him. Folks the Comanche Kid plugs has got to be important folks—cattle rustlers or bank presidents or such. This here pig now—he’s a poet and a bank president and a detective and I don’t know what all. He’ll rate a good deep notch on this old six-gun.”

  “My father’s a bank president,” said Billy proudly.

  “Is that right?” said Freddy. “Better scalp than, the pig’s,” he added thoughtfully. “Twould mount nice. Maybe after I get the pig I could pick a fight with him.”

  Billy looked at him doubtfully. “You wouldn’t do that! Aw, you’re kidding me. I don’t believe you’ll even shoot that Freddy. Anyway, my father doesn’t want you to; he just wants to capture him.”

  Freddy shook his head. “Like to oblige him, but I’m getting out of practise—ain’t shot anybody in a week. Last feller was Snake Peters; he jumped my minin’ claim in Grisly Gulch—him and Snaggle-tooth Charlie, and a greaser they called Old Nasty. Well, sir, they was holed up in my cabin by the mine shaft …”

  He continued the story as they rode along. Billy listened eagerly, and when Freddy reached the point where, with one cartridge left in his gun, he had had to get the three claim jumpers in a line so as to drill them all with the single bullet, the boy nearly fell out of the saddle with excitement. “Golly, that’s a good story!” he exclaimed.

  So Freddy started another one, about the time he was captured by the Pawnees.

  At noon they were sitting in the grass up by the edge of the woods, and Freddy was just finishing the tenth chapter of the personal reminiscences of the Comanche Kid, which had to do with a duel he had fought with Geronimo, the Apache chief, when he saw Rabbit No. 23 sitting on a rock a little way off and trying to attract his attention by waving his ears.

  He saw rabbit No. 23 sitting on a rock weaving his ears.

  Freddy motioned him to approach. “If you got something to say to the Comanche Kid, stranger,” he said, “don’t stand there wagglin’ your ears; come and say it. Message from that pig, I suppose. Offer of surrender, hey?”

  No. 23 was a smart rabbit. He gave a quick glance at Billy; then he said: “No, sir. I was just to tell you—you know Mr. Margarine has warned all the Bean animals off his place. Well, this morning he caught one of the cows. He claims she was on his side of the fence. Anyway, he caught her and tied her up in his stable, and he says that if you—that is, if that pig, doesn’t give himself up within twenty-four hours, he’s going to shoot her.”

  Freddy got up. “Which cow did he catch? And does Mr. Bean know about this?”

  “Mrs. Wiggins. No sir, Mr. Margarine said he’d leave Mr. Bean out of it; it was up to Mrs. Wiggins’ friends to turn Freddy in. Or if Freddy was such a good friend of hers he’d give himself up.”

  “I see,” said Freddy thoughtfully. “I don’t think he’d shoot Mrs. Wiggins—”

  “Oh, but he would!” Billy interrupted. “You don’t know my dad. He’s awful mad at those animals. Wanted to shoot some of them the other day—he said old Bean would probably sue him, but he’s got plenty of money to pay if the judge fined him.” He paused and frowned unhappily. “I wish he wouldn’t,” he said. “I don’t like those animals any better than he does, and I’d like to get even with them, but not shoot them.”

  “Kind of a mean man, your pa, ain’t he?” said Freddy.

  “It isn’t that so much,” Billy said. “But he gets mad and says he’s going to do something, and then he has to do it. He says a bank president, if he gives his word, he has to keep it right to the letter. So even if he knows, when he gets over being mad, that he hadn’t ought to carry out some threat he made, he has to do it just the same. He says sometimes he regrets he has such an awful temper.”

  “He’s going to regret it more and more as time goes on,” said Freddy, getting to his feet. “Attention, No. 23!” he said to the rabbit.

  No. 23 saluted. “Yes, sir.”

  “Go down and tell the animals not to say anything to Mr. Bean about this. I’ll take care of Mrs. Wiggins. And ask everybody to come up to the Grimby house this afternoon; we may have to stand a siege.”

  Billy had been looking more and more alarmed as Freddy talked, and all at once he jumped up and ran to his horse. But as he put his foot into the stirrup, Freddy’s gun snapped out and was leveled at him. “Hold it!” the pig commanded.

  “Ah, you wouldn’t shoot!” Billy said, and swung into the saddle. “Comanche Kid, hey?” And he yelled with laughter. “The Comanche Pig! Boy, will Dad be sore when he hears how you fooled him!” He galloped off towards home.

  Freddy didn’t bother to shoot one of his blanks; he just stood staring after the boy until Cy ranged up alongside him. “Well, come on, pig, come on!” the horse said. “Get after him.”

  “We can’t catch him,” said Freddy.

  “We can have a darned good try,” Cy said. “You’ve got that rope on the saddle horn, haven’t you? Get on!”

  So Freddy unslung his guitar, dropped it on the grass and jumped into the saddle. He took his rope from the horn, and as Cy stretched out at full speed he began whirling the loop around his head. “Yippeee!” he yelled.

  Billy’s horse was a tall, rangy hunter, and there seemed little chance that Cy could overtake him. But to get down to the Margarine place they had to cross several very rough and rocky pastures, and the hunter was taking no chances of breaking a leg. He ran, but he didn’t
run as fast as Cy, who tore recklessly along, leaping boulders and crashing through bushes. And halfway across the second field Freddy caught up. The rope circled and the loop fell neatly over Billy’s head.

  “Stop!” Freddy yelled. “Or I’ll yank you out of the saddle!” And Billy pulled up, as the noose was drawn gently tight just above his elbows.

  “O.K.,” said Billy. O.K., I give in. What do we do now?”

  Chapter 13

  Mrs. Wiggins wasn’t much of a worrier. After her capture by Mr. Margarine and his stable man, Thomas, she was locked into one of a row of box stalls where the horses lived. She munched on the forkful of hay that Thomas had thrown into the stall. “If they’re going to shoot me,” she said to herself, “they’re going to shoot me, and I might as well get all I can out of them.” And she thought with pleasure of the kick she had got home on Mr. Margarine’s shin, after they had sneaked up and slipped a rope around her neck, and were dragging her down to the barn.

  Perhaps she might have worried more if she hadn’t been sure that Freddy would hear about her capture. She had seen Mrs. Pomeroy sitting on the roof when she had been led into the stall. The robin had waved a claw, and then had flown off towards home. Pretty soon, she thought, Freddy would come to the rescue, riding, like a knight in shining armor, with a pistol in each hand, and Jinx and Bill and Hank and the rest of the animals at his back. It was a pretty confused picture Mrs. Wiggins painted in her mind, but the main fact about it was clear: Freddy would certainly come.

  About noon Mr. Margarine reappeared. He opened the upper half of the stall door and said: “I suppose you can talk, like all the rest of Bean’s menagerie?”

  Mrs. Wiggins was one of those rare people who, when they don’t have anything to say, don’t say it. She went on munching hay.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mr. Margarine said. “I have sent a note over to Beans, stating my terms. Either the pig gives himself up, or you will be shot. I have nothing against you personally, you understand; I am—” He broke off as a voice some distance away began calling.

  “Come Sweetie! Sweetie Pie! Come kitty, kitty, kitty!” It was Mrs. Margarine. She came inside, still calling, and then saw her husband. “Oh, there you are, Elihu. I can’t think what has become of that cat. I haven’t seen him for several days. Why, what’s the matter with the cow?”

  “She’s coughing. I suppose she choked on the hay.”

  But Mr. Margarine was wrong about that as he was about so many things. Mrs. Wiggins wasn’t coughing. She was trying not to laugh out loud at the thought of the saintly and dignified Sweetie Pie.

  There are very few cows, or people either, who would feel any inclination to laugh under such circumstances. Freddy would organize a rescue, but would he organize it in time? If he didn’t, she would be led out in the cold dawn to face a firing squad. But there’s no sense in crossing a bridge until you come to it. That’s what Mrs. Wiggins thought. So she went on enjoying her laugh. And it was then that she got her idea. She stopped laughing and began to think.

  “Oh, here,” said Mrs. Margarine. “Here’s a package that came for you, Elihu.”

  Mr. Margarine took it. “Where’s it from?”

  “It was left on the porch,” she said. “Look, there’s some writing on it.”

  Mr. Margarine read it. “Enclosed find one scalp, formerly attached to your hired man, the Comanche Kid. Compliments of Freddy, the Terror of the Plains. P. S. I’ll send you Billy’s scalp next.” He tore the paper off and pulled out a hank of long black hair, at which Mrs. Margarine began to scream.

  Her husband snapped at her. “Be quiet. Can’t you see that this is a wig? That man I hired—he wore it. He was no Westerner—he was the pig!” Mr. Margarine was so mad at having been fooled that he turned white, and his lips were pressed together in a thin line. “I’ll—if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll—” He stopped suddenly and the wig and the paper dropped from his hands. “Billy!” he exclaimed. “Where’s Billy?” He turned and limped towards the house, shouting for Thomas, and for Jenks, the chauffeur.

  Mrs. Margarine was a tall woman with a long face. If she had looked out of a barn window at you in a dim light, you might have thought she was one of her own thoroughbreds. She picked up the wig and looked at it in a puzzled way, then hung it over the lower door of the stall. “Well really!” she said out loud. “That’s not Billy’s hair. Why is Elihu so disturbed?” She was not a very bright woman.

  Mrs. Wiggins could no longer control her laughter. Partly it was relief at the assurance that her friends were really on the job. For she guessed that the threat about Billy meant that Freddy had captured the boy. But mostly she laughed because by sending the wig Freddy had made a monkey out of Mr. Margarine. He really had disposed of Mr. Margarine’s hired gunman and had sent in his scalp as a proof and a warning.

  When Mrs. Wiggins really got to laughing she unsettled the entire neighborhood. She roared so that a thunderstorm could come up and go crashing and banging across the sky and you would never hear it. Rabbits on distant hillsides crouched trembling in the grass, and mice and squirrels and chipmunks covered their ears with their paws. “Oh, ho, ho!” Mrs. Wiggins shouted, and Mrs. Margarine cried out in dismay and turned and ran for the house. “O, ho, hoo, haw!” Mrs. Wiggins roared. Only of course there aren’t enough letters in the alphabet to spell what that laugh sounded like.

  “O, ho, hoo, haw!” Mrs. Wiggins roared.

  Up at the Grimby house in the Big Woods, Freddy heard it, and he grinned at his captive, who was sitting on a pile of sacks in the attic, guarded by Robert and Georgie. “That’s my partner, Mrs. Wiggins, you hear,” he said. “She’s laughing. But of course hearing a cow laugh is no novelty to you, is it?”

  “She hasn’t got much to laugh about,” said Billy sullenly.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Jinx, who was sitting on the windowsill. “She’s got your old man; he’s good for about a laugh a minute. Shucks, he don’t even have to open his mouth—just looking at him gives ’em the screaming giggles.”

  “Aw, lay off me, will you?” said the boy. “You wouldn’t be so funny if you didn’t have me locked up here.”

  “I guess maybe you’re right,” Freddy said. “It isn’t very nice to tease prisoners. Well, you won’t be a prisoner long. Your father will start looking for you as soon as he gets the Comanche Kid’s scalp. We’ll let him worry for an hour or two, and then we’ll make him a proposition. You’ll be home by suppertime.”

  “You don’t know my dad,” said Billy. “He said if you didn’t give yourself up he’d shoot the cow, and he means just that. No matter what you do to me. But I don’t suppose he thinks you’d dare do anything to me.”

  “To tell you the truth, we wouldn’t do anything to you,” Freddy said. “But he can’t be sure of that.”

  “He’ll shoot the cow just the same,” said Billy, “because he said he would.”

  Jinx snarled angrily. “You’re a fine lot, you Margarines,” he said. “You come into a peaceful neighborhood and try to run things and push everybody around and get everybody mad and worried and upset—and now you want to start shooting them! Let me tell you something, you stuck-up little squinch: if your father shoots Mrs. Wiggins, or any other friend of ours—”

  “I don’t want him to shoot her!” Billy interrupted, almost tearfully. “But what can I do about it? Look, you’ve made fun of me a lot—well, I’ve made fun of you, too: so that makes us even, doesn’t it? I’d like to live here and be friends with everybody. It isn’t any fun riding around when you know every animal you see hates you.”

  “We don’t hate you,” Freddy said. “We just don’t think … that is, we think it’s sort of silly, your going around pretending to be so much better than everybody else, just because you have a pocket full of money, and a fine horse and shiny expensive riding boots—”

  “I don’t like these boots,” Billy said. “I’d like to have Western boots like yours. And a ten-gallon hat and a gun belt—”r />
  “Wait a minute,” said Freddy. “Let me think.” He looked thoughtfully at the boy. “Are you as good at keeping your word as your father is?” And when Billy said yes, he hoped he was, Freddy said: “All right, I’m going to believe you. I’m going to try an experiment. You’re about my size. Now by this time your father must know that we’ve captured you, and he’ll come right here. We’ll fight him if we have to, but it will be better if we don’t. So we’ll go down to my place and I’ll fit you out with a complete cowboy outfit. Only you’ll have to give me your word you’ll stay with me and not try to escape.”

  “All right,” said Billy. “I promise. Only if we should meet my Dad—”

  “We won’t meet him. He’ll probably guess that we’re holding you here, and he’ll come into the Big Woods from your side, the west side. You and I will ride out the east side and circle around down to the farm. Jinx, you and the other animals better scatter and go home. We can’t stand a siege here, because Mr. Margarine and his men will certainly be armed.”

  “And how about me?” Charles said angrily. “I can’t go back; I’ll be arrested. If they come search the henhouse the way they did the pig pen—”

  “Oh, don’t be so scared,” said Jinx. “What could they do with you if they did arrest you? Who’d want a stringy old rooster—”

  “I’m not scared!” Charles shouted. “Let old Margarine come. Let him bring on his armed cohorts, let him put guns in the hands of his greasy scullions and lead them against me. Scared?” He thumped his chest with a claw. “Let the odds be what they may—a hundred, a thousand, a million to one; this proud rooster heart—”

  “Is just a giblet,” said Freddy sharply. “Dry up; there’s no time for an oration now. You can hide in the spruces back of the house; nobody will find you there if you keep your noisy beak shut. Come on, Billy.”