Freddy the Cowboy by Walter R. Brooks

Author:Walter R. Brooks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Overlook Press

Bang-Bang-Bang-Bang!

The other animals were well pleased that Freddy had managed to scare off Mr. Flint. The pig had proved himself such a superb marksman that the ranch owner would hardly dare to try holding up the bank, even with the help of Jasper and Slim. However, Freddy was taking no chances, and the next day when he and his friends were sitting around under the big tree by the back porch, thinking about what they could do to keep an eye on Mr. Flint, Hank said: “What you need is somebody to patrol around the bank nights. Those guards you’ve got down there, squirrels and like that, they don’t stay awake after sundown. Most nights you can hear ’em snorin’ half a mile down the road. Anybody could walk right in and go down in the vaults and they wouldn’t even turn over on the other side. So I was just wondering—I dunno—but how about getting my friend Sidney to keep an eye on things nights?”

Sidney was a small brown bat who used to come in and flit around and talk to Hank nights when the rheumatism in his off hind leg kept him awake.

“He lives in my barn now,” Hank added.

“If you can call it living,” said Jinx contemptuously. “Hanging upside down with his eyes shut all day long. Lives on a diet of mosquitoes, so they tell me. And that isn’t living either.”

“Well, I dunno,” said Hank. “I wouldn’t care to live on mosquitoes myself. Don’t seem as if there’s much nourishment in ’em. I guess usually it’s t’other way round—what mosquitoes there are here usually live on me. But Sidney keeps ’em cleared out. And why are you so mad because he likes to eat ’em, Jinx?”

“I haven’t any use for bats,” Jinx said. “Why can’t they make up their minds to be either animals or birds—not just stay in between.”

“That isn’t why you don’t like them, though,” said Freddy.

“Oh, no? You tell me then.”

“Sure, I will. You don’t like ’em because they’re the one little animal a cat can’t catch. They’ll outsmart a cat every time.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Jinx. “Well, I can make you eat those words, pig, and you’ll find them even less nourishing than mosquitoes. I’ll go bring Sidney out here to you.”

He got up and walked down to the barn. As soon as he had disappeared inside the others got up quietly and sneaked over to where they could see, either through the door or through cracks in the wall, what went on.

Sidney was hanging upside down from one of the beams that supported the floor of the loft. Jinx saw that by standing on a crosspiece that was nailed as a brace between two upright beams against the wall, he could reach up and scoop the bat right down with his paw. Also there was an old stepladder leaning against the wall, and from its top he could jump to the crosspiece.

He went up noiselessly and jumped across. But bats are sensitive to the slightest vibration.

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