Читать книгу Billy Mink - Thornton Waldo Burgess - Страница 9

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Oh, if we but always knew

What to do or not to do.

Billy Mink.

When Billy Mink cried “Stop!” Bobby Coon stopped. He stopped with one paw lifted and just ready to put it down in the middle of the little opening in that fence which had so puzzled him. He turned his head to look back at Billy Mink. “Why should I stop?” he demanded, and he spoke rather crossly.

“Because, if you take one more step ahead, it will be the last step you ever will take,” snapped Billy.

Bobby didn’t take that step. Instead he backed away in such a hurry that it really was funny. You would have thought that he had burned his toes. Then he turned to face Billy Mink. “What sort of nonsense is this?” he growled. “I don’t see anything wrong.”

Billy grinned. “You may not see anything wrong,” said he, “but if you had put your foot down in that little opening you would have felt something wrong. Yes, indeed, you would have felt something wrong! You certainly would. There is a trap hidden there. I suspect it was set for me, but I guess the trapper who set it would almost as soon catch you as me.”

Bobby Coon blinked and looked very hard at Billy Mink to see if he were fooling. When he saw the angry red in Billy’s eyes, he knew that Billy wasn’t fooling.

“Goodness, that was a narrow escape!” exclaimed Bobby. “I’m ever so much obliged to you, Billy Mink. I hope that some day I can do something for you. If you hadn’t happened along to-night, I guess I would be in a terrible fix right now. Do you suppose that trapper built that little fence?”

“Of course,” retorted Billy Mink. “He built it so that the only way of going up or down the Laughing Brook without taking a lot of trouble would be to go through that little opening, and no one could get through that little opening without stepping in that trap. There’s another one set just the same way on the other side of the Laughing Brook.”

Bobby Coon looked across and for the first time he saw the other little fence. Bobby’s face became very sober. “We ought to do something about those traps,” said he. “We are the only ones who know anything about them, and we can’t sit here all the time to warn others who may be traveling up and down the Laughing Brook. I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to be caught in one of those dreadful traps. What can we do to warn others?”

“I don’t know,” replied Billy Mink. “I guess we’ll have to put our heads together and think up something. You know two heads are better than one.”

Bobby nodded. “Let’s go back to that old log there and talk it over,” said he. And this is just what they did.