Freddy and the Dragon (8 page)

CHAPTER 7

Uncle Ben couldn't stand the smell of the perfume which came seeping up through the floorboards into his workshop from the box stall below, so he got Mr. Bean to tie the bull out back of the barn. There were some mice and a number of beetles, and a couple of hoptoads that lived there, and they moved out right away. They couldn't stand it either.

The birds kept pestering Percy about how sweet he smelled. They flew around him, perched on fence posts, and made fun of him and yelled all day long. He was mad and he snarled and growled at them, but there wasn't anything he could do. And when Freddy came out and offered again to scrub the perfume off if he would tell who the head of his gang was, and where their headquarters was, he refused again flatly. They argued, and finally they both got mad and yelled at each other, and Freddy squirted him again with the perfume pistol. This was a different kind of perfume from the first kind, but it was just as awful. The combination of two kinds of cheap perfume was so terrible that it drove the birds away.

Late that afternoon Samuel Jackson came to see Freddy. “You're not getting anywhere with that bull,” he said. “I think you need some help. I say you need some help.”

“If you've got any ideas,” said the pig, “trot 'em out.”

So they talked for a while, and then Samuel went down to the stable. When he got to the corner of the stable, he dove right into the ground. Moles can move almost as fast under the grass roots as they can on top; they have large flat front feet, turned sideways, so that they can really swim along in the soil. The only thing that shows is a little ridge in the grass behind them. Percy didn't notice this ridge as it came toward him; most people wouldn't.

When Samuel had got up almost to the fence post to which the bull was tied he stopped and said: “Percy!” He had a very deep voice for a mole.

The bull lifted his head and looked around. There was no one anywhere near. “Now I'm beginning to hear things!” he grumbled.

“Percy!” said Samuel again, and this time the bull said: “Yeah? Where are you?”

“Percy!” said the mole severely, “You cannot see me. I am inside you. I am the voice of your conscience.”

“My conscience!” Percy exclaimed. He thought a minute. “It's funny I never heard you before.”

“You have never been so wicked before,” said Samuel. “You have been rough and rude; you have been a loud-mouthed bully; but you have never been a member of a criminal gang.”

Percy looked all around. There was no one in sight. The voice, he thought,
must
be coming from inside him.

“Hey, look,” the bull said. “How come I never heard of you before? I didn't even know I had a conscience. Rats! I think you're just a noise in my head.”

“I am,” said Samuel. “The noise of your conscience.”

The bull thought a moment. “If that's so,” he said, “why didn't you say anything when I went off and left my daughters? When I tossed old Briggs over the fence? When I busted into Witherspoon's oat bin?”

“I'm not a very strong and active conscience,” said Samuel. “You wouldn't expect to have an active one, would you—a fellow like you? But there are some things even a weak conscience can't take. I say there's some things even I can't take. Like becoming a gangster.”

Of course Samuel wasn't sure that Percy was a member of the gang that was causing all the trouble, but he thought it was a pretty safe bet. And as it turned out, he was right.

“I ain't a gangster!” said the bull indignantly. “We've just been having some fun, busting up things, and maybe swiping a little stuff—”

“And smashing property and making people pay money so you won't smash it up worse,” said Samuel.

“Well, I didn't really like that idea of Jack's, making people pay so we wouldn't smash their windows and—” He stopped. “What are you trying to do?” he demanded. “Get information out of me?”

“I don't need it,” said Samuel. “I'm your conscience—remember? I know everything you've ever done.”

“Oh …” said the bull. “Sure … well, if you're my conscience you must be right. Only … I don't
feel
like a gangster.”

“I'm your conscience,” said the mole. “I ought to know better than you do.”

“Yeah,” said Percy. “That could be.… I suppose you got some idea of reformin' me.”

Samuel said: “No-o-o. You ain't as bad as that. Anyway, you know what you ought to do as well as I do.”

“Maybe I do and maybe I don't,” said the bull. “Anyway, my conscience is supposed to tell me what to do, ain't it?”

“O.K.,” said Samuel. “This is what I say to do. Quit the gang. You can stay here and live in the cow barn, probably—there's lots of room, and your daughters will keep house for you. That, of course, is merely a suggestion. But besides that, you must tell the police who the head of your gang is, and where his headquarters is.”

“That's a pretty large order,” Percy said. “Couldn't I just tell you, and then it would be just between us.”

Samuel hesitated. That would be a way of getting what he wanted to know, all right. But the bull was no fool; if his conscience didn't know these facts, then it wasn't his conscience. “No point telling me what I know,” said the mole. “You must tell the police, so they can put an end to the crime wave. Or maybe you could tell that detective fellow, Freddy. He seems to like you. I say he likes you.”

“Yeah,” said Percy. “Yeah. But suppose I won't?”

“Then I'll keep on bothering you,” Samuel replied.

“You mean like now—calling me a gangster and all?”

“Twenty-four hours a day,” said Samuel firmly.

“Gosh!” said the bull. “That's kind of tough. Let me think about it for a spell.”

“O.K.,” said Samuel. “I'll be back in a little while.” And he curled up in the burrow and took a nap.

After a while he woke up. He couldn't see the bull, of course, but he could hear his jaws chumping slowly on his cud. He said: “Well, here I am again. I say, here I am again.”

The bull groaned. “Ain't you ever going to let me alone?” he said.

“I'd be a pretty poor conscience if I did,” said Samuel. “You know what would happen, don't you? I say you know what would happen? You'd just fall deeper and deeper into crime, and then maybe you'd murder somebody, and they'd take you and shoot you.”

“Maybe they'd just put me in prison,” said the bull.

“You'd take up too much room,” Samuel replied. “Easier to shoot you. Well, what are you going to do?”

“I got to think about it a little more,” said Percy.

“O.K., you think and I'll talk.” And the mole went on to tell about how mean and cheap it was to go around destroying property, and how joining up with gangsters was bad and wrong, and he went on for an hour or more. The bull didn't say anything, just groaned once or twice.

“If I'm going to break this guy down,” Samuel said to himself, “I've got to have help. Might have to talk for a couple of days. And I'm getting sleepy again. I'll keep on for a while, and then I'll go get Cousin Leonard to come help me.”

But he didn't have to get help, for after another half-hour the bull gave up. “I can't
stand
this!” he bellowed suddenly. And then in a lower voice he said: “I don't want to be a crook and a gangster. What do you want me to do?”

“It isn't what I
want
you to do,” said the mole; “it's what you
ought
to do.”

“You mean like telling that pig about Jack and everything?”

“Sure.”

“How do I know you'll quit picking on me if I do?” said the bull suspiciously. “Maybe you'll think of some other things I've done, and you'll keep on trying to make me ashamed of myself about them, too.”

“No,” said Samuel, “I told you I wasn't awful particular. All your rampagin' round and bustin' things up is mostly just high spirits. And tryin' to scare folks. No, no, you know what I mean well enough. I say, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” said Percy, “I guess I do. Hey, you,” he called to a passing sparrow, “go get that pig to come here, will you? Freddy.”

So pretty soon Freddy came and asked the bull what he wanted.

“You said you'd scrub this awful-smelling stuff off me if I'd tell you some things,” Percy said. “Well, I'll take you up on that.”

“H'm,” said Freddy. “What changed your mind?”

“To tell you the truth,” said the bull, “my conscience has been bothering me. I've always been kind of a rough, noisy guy, but I can see that this hookin' up with racketeers is wrong. My conscience won't stand for it, and that's the truth. I guess if I want to keep my conscience quiet I've got to reform.”

“Well, that's fine,” said Freddy. “How are you going to begin?”

“Well, you'll want to get rid of this guy Jack. I'll tell you about him. But first, would you mind scrubbing the perfume off just one side of me? I can stand one of those smells, but the combination of the two is terrible.”

So Freddy got the hose and some soap and a scrubbrush, and scrubbed off one side of Percy. And while he was working, Percy told him his story.

It seemed that this racketeer from the city, Jack, had retired and bought himself a rough little hill farm up on the edge of the Adirondacks.

“He didn't retire very far,” said Freddy, “if he's still going on with this racket of selling protection.”

“Well,” said the bull, “you know how it is when a man retires. He fools around in the garden, and sits around and doesn't know what to do with himself, and then he decides he needs a hobby. So, being as it's the only business he knows, he goes back into the same business. That's what Jack did.”

“But how come he picked on this locality?” Freddy asked.

“Well, he bought some animals along with this farm—me and some pigs and horses and others like that. And he wasn't any kind of a farmer, so most of us never got enough to eat. So when we heard about this animal revolution which started down here a couple of years ago, we joined up and came down. When the revolt got busted up, we went back home again. But we told Jack about it, and he thought it might be fun for a bunch of us to come down again and start a kind of a reign of terror. Jack and some of 'em holed up in that old cave at the west end of the lake.

“But I didn't know he'd gone in for a regular racketeer job like selling protection. I don't like that stuff. I ain't seen him for a week or more—I kind of went off on my own a while ago. I get more fun in breakin' windows; I don't see much fun in getting some guy to pay you
not
to break his windows.”

“Percy,” said Samuel from under the grass roots. “I'm ashamed of you. Oh sure, it makes a nice smash when you heave a rock through a window. But the poor guy that owns the house—he's the one that has to pay to get it fixed. You ought to pay for your own fun, not make someone else pay for it.”

“Oh gosh, you again!” muttered the bull. “Did you hear that, Freddy?”

“I didn't hear anything,” said the pig.

“I thought probably not,” said Percy. “It's just my conscience again.”

“I don't
expect
to make a gentleman of you,” said the mole. “But I don't want you to behave like a nasty little boy.”

“Who said I wasn't a gentleman?” the bull demanded.

Samuel was silent, and Freddy said: “Nobody said anything, did they? Go on, tell me more about this Jack.”

“Not much to tell,” said Percy. “As to this headless horseman you've talked about, it must be some trick of Jack's. Only it can't be Jack, because he hasn't got a detachable head.”

The other members of the gang included several pigs, two horses, a mink named Thurlow, and a black-and-tan dog named Cornelius. Jack was also expecting a friend named Gimpy Jones because he limped. Mr. Jones was an accomplished burglar, though most of his burglaries he did not do himself; he had a black snake whom he had trained to crawl in open windows and pick up small objects, such as money or watches or jewelry, and bring them out to him. They had never been caught. Freddy got a few more facts, and then he hosed Percy off and left him in the sun to dry.

“Tomorrow,” he said to himself, “I'll go up and scout around that old cave.”