FullReads

“I’m not going to tell you what I know,” retorted Sammy Jay. “You’ll find out soon enough. And when you do find out, you’ll never steal another tree from our Green Forest. Somebody is going to catch you, and it isn’t Farmer Brown’s boy either!”

Paddy pretended to be terribly frightened. “Oh, who is it? Please tell me, Mr. Jay,” he begged.

Now to be called Mr. Jay made Sammy feel very important. Nearly everybody else called him Sammy. He swelled himself out trying to look as important as he felt, and his eyes snapped with pleasure. He was actually making Paddy the Beaver afraid. At least, he thought he was.

“No, Sir, I won’t tell you,” he replied. “I wouldn’t be you for a great deal, though! Somebody who is smarter than you are is going to catch you, and when he gets through with you, there won’t be anything left but a few bones. No, Sir, nothing but a few bones!”

“Oh, Mr. Jay, this is terrible news! Whatever am I to do?” cried Paddy, all the time keeping on at work cutting another tree.

“There’s nothing you can do,” replied Sammy, grinning wickedly at Paddy’s fright. “There’s nothing you can do unless you go right straight back to the North where you came from. You think you are very smart, but–“

Sammy didn’t finish. Crack! Over fell the tree Paddy had been cutting and the top of it fell straight into the alder in which Sammy was sitting. “Oh! Oh! Help!” shrieked Sammy, spreading his wings and flying away just in time.

Paddy sat down and laughed until his sides ached. “Come make me another call someday, Sammy!” he said. “And when you do, please bring some real news. I know all about Old Man Coyote. You can tell him for me that when he is planning to catch people he should be careful not to leave footprints to give himself away.”

Sammy didn’t reply. He just sneaked off through the Green Forest, looking quite as foolish as he felt.

CHAPTER XVI. Old Man Coyote is Very Crafty.

Coyote has a crafty brain;
His wits are sharp his ends to gain.

There is nothing in the world more true than that. Old Man Coyote has the craftiest brain of all the little people of the Green Forest or the Green Meadows. Sharp as are the wits of old Granny Fox, they are not quite so sharp as the wits of Old Man Coyote. If you want to fool him, you will have to get up very early in the morning, and then it is more than likely that you will be the one fooled, not he. There is very little going on around him that he doesn’t know about. But once in a while something escapes him. The coming of Paddy the Beaver to the Green Forest was one of these things. He didn’t know a thing about Paddy until Paddy had finished his dam and his house, and was cutting his supply of food for the winter.

You see, it was this way: When the Merry Little Breezes of Old Mother West Wind first heard what was going on in the Green Forest and hurried around over the Green Meadows and through the Green Forest to spread the news, as is their way, they took the greatest pains not to even hint it to Old Man Coyote because they were afraid that he would make trouble and perhaps drive Paddy away. The place that Paddy had chosen to build his dam was so deep in the Green Forest that Old Man Coyote seldom went that way. So it was that he knew nothing about Paddy, and Paddy knew nothing about him for some time.

But after awhile Old Man Coyote noticed that the little people of the Green Meadows were not about as much as usual. They seemed to have a secret of some kind. He mentioned the matter to his friend, Digger the Badger.