Freddy Goes to the North Pole (9 page)

Ferdinand cawed derisively. “Winter!” he exclaimed. “Why this is nothing—
nothing
to what's coming. Maybe you animals'll wake up to the fact some time that this isn't any picnic we're going on.”

“Oh my goodness!” said the cow. “Who said it was? Can't I make a single remark about the weather without your jumping all over me?”

“Oh, who's jumping all over you?” snapped the crow. “I just get sick of hearing you complain when there isn't anything to complain about.”

“I'm complaining about you,” retorted Mrs. Wiggins, “and I guess anyone here will bear me out that there's something to complain about.”

“He, he!” snickered the goat.” Laugh that one off, Ferd. That's a hot one, that is.”

Bill's laughter made the crow mad. He hopped down to the ground. “Look here,” he said, “if there's any dissatisfaction with me as leader of this expedition, I want to know about it now.”

“No, no!” said all the animals. “We're perfectly satisfied. You're a fine leader. Mrs. Wiggins didn't mean anything.” But Ferdinand walked straight up to the cow. “And how about you?” he asked, looking her straight in the eye.

“My goodness!” she said again. “This has all come up very suddenly. I didn't really mean anything against you, Ferdinand.”

“Then you've no complaint to make?” he demanded.

Now, Mrs. Wiggins was very good-natured, and she didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but she didn't see why she should have to back down when she hadn't really done anything. So she said boldly: “Yes, I have.”

“All right,” said Ferdinand grimly. “Out with it.”

The cow hesitated. She couldn't really think of anything she had against the crow, except that he was bad-tempered and bossy and disagreeable, and she didn't want to use any of those words because she was afraid they might make him feel bad. If she could only think of one that didn't mean quite so much; even one that didn't mean anything at all would be better.… And then she suddenly remembered a word that she had heard in a story that Freddy had been reading out loud one night in the cow-barn. She didn't know what it meant, but it sounded like the right kind of word. So she said: “Well, if you want to know, I think you're too sophisticated.”

At this unexpected word Ferdinand gave a little jump. Then he opened his beak to say something, but as he didn't know what the word meant, he couldn't think of any way to argue against it, and he just stood there with his beak open, looking very foolish.

Mrs. Wiggins turned to the other animals. “Isn't he too sophisticated?” she asked, and as none of them wanted to admit that he didn't know what the word meant, they all nodded and said yes.

Poor Ferdinand managed to pull his wits together somewhat. “I am
not
sophisticated!” he exclaimed. “I've been perfectly open and above-board about everything, and—”

“Oh, that isn't what I mean at all,” said the cow; and as she didn't know what she did mean, it was perfectly true.

“Well, what do you mean, then?” asked the harassed crow.

“Just what I say,” returned Mrs. Wiggins. She appealed to the others. “Isn't it perfectly plain?” And they all nodded emphatically and said: “Yes, yes. Perfectly.”

“Well, it isn't what
I
mean by sophisticated,” said Ferdinand, now thoroughly mixed up.

“Just what
do
you mean by it?” asked the cow coldly.

And at that the crow just turned round and walked off with his shoulders hunched up and didn't come near the others for the rest of the day. But it had done him some good, as Mrs. Wiggins observed with satisfaction, for from that time on he treated her with marked respect.

They went on through the snowy woods for several days, and the snow came down in thick flakes and got deeper and deeper and harder and harder to walk through. The big animals didn't mind it much, but the smaller animals and Charles and Henrietta and the children had to ride most of the time; and the children in particular were cold because they didn't have warm enough clothing. They were only warm at night when they snuggled down under a feather bed between Uncle William and the bear. Moreover, it was a good deal harder to find enough food, now that the country was all covered with snow.

So pretty soon the animals began to grumble. If Ferdinand was such a good leader, they said, he ought to be able to keep them from starving or freezing. They wouldn't be much good to the animals they had come to rescue if they starved or froze stiff. And if the snow got much deeper, how were they going to travel at all? They asked Ferdinand these questions. “You've been here before,” they said. “How did you get food?”

“We took it with us in the old phaeton,” said the crow.

“How did you keep warm?”

“We took blankets with us and wrapped them around us.”

“And how did you walk over the deep snow?”

“We made snowshoes,” said the crow. “I can show you how to do that.”

“H'm,” said Jack thoughtfully. “That takes care of one thing. But what are we going to do for food and clothing?”

“Yes,” said Henrietta. “Why didn't you tell us all this in the first place, when we started out? You didn't think about anybody but yourself. You don't mind the cold the way we do, and you can fly through the air and live on nuts and things that you steal from squirrels and chipmunks. It's very easy for
you
. But why didn't you think about
us?
A fine leader you are!”

Ferdinand looked round out of the corners of his eyes at his comrades. It was perfectly true. When he had come back to organize the rescue party, he had been so full of his own importance that he had forgotten all about such little matters as proper food and clothing. He'd have to think of something pretty quickly, or they'd reduce him to the ranks and elect a new leader. He could see them looking meaningly at one another—even his bosom friend, Bill, was shaking his head very seriously and avoided his eye—and he could hear a
buzz-buzz
as they whispered to each other: “Too sophisticated. Yes, yes; too sophisticated.” Then suddenly an idea came to him. He ruffled out his feathers.

“My friends,” he said importantly, “on the face of it, what you allege against me seems to be true. I did
not
see fit to burden us with large stores of food and clothing, which would seriously have hampered us. There is a better way to get what we need. There are reasons why I did not tell you about it before—”

Bill giggled audibly. “I'll say there were!” he muttered coarsely; but Ferdinand gave him a hard look and he subsided, though his beard continued to tremble with subdued laughter.

“The time, however,” continued the crow, “has now come. As you have seen, these woods are full of birds and animals—creatures of little experience, who have never known much about anything but their small woodland affairs and are intensely curious about the outside world. What's the one thing we can give them that they haven't got? Why, our experience of the outside world, of course. We've travelled; we've been everywhere and done everything; we know life. We can sell that knowledge for the things we need.”

At this point Bill snickered again. “You mean you're going to trade your good advice for food?” he asked. “Well, if these animals are anything like me, you won't get many customers. My experience is that you can get all the good advice you want from your relatives. You don't have to go outside the family. And you don't have to pay for it, either. Sell advice indeed! Huh! Might as well try to sell Cecil here a quill toothpick!”

“That was
not
what I meant,” said Ferdinand coldly, “and now that this unseemly interruption is over, I will tell you that my idea was simply this: to give a series of lectures of various kinds, admission to which will be paid in articles of food or clothing.”

“That's a good idea all right,” said Uncle William, “as far as food goes. But how do you expect to get blankets and clothing for the children? These woods animals haven't got such things.”

“They'll find them,” said the crow confidently. “Why, suppose you wanted to find an old coat for this boy to wear. I mean if you were at home, in your own stable. Couldn't you do it?”

“Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I could,” replied the horse. “There's a couple of old overcoats down in the tool-shed. But that's different. Up here in the woods—”

“Up here in the woods it's just the same,” said Ferdinand. “There are hunters and campers and trappers and lumbermen, and they're always throwing away things.”

“But how can you find them, in all these square miles of trees?”

“
You
couldn't. That's just the point. But take one of these deer. He knows every square inch of ground for miles. If there's an old coat within five miles of here, he'll know it. If there isn't, he'll have a friend over the hill who'll know where there is one. And so on.”

“Why not have a lecture tonight?” said Charles. “I have one, you know, that I prepared after our trip to Florida. ‘A Trip to the Sunny Southland.' And that one about Washington: ‘How Our Legislators Live.' That was very well received. And—”

“Oh, be still!” said Henrietta. “Nobody wants to hear you lecture If they'd heard you talk as much as I have, they'd pay to stay away.”

“But that's the point: they haven't!” said Charles triumphantly.

“Well, they will!” said his wife sarcastically. “Believe me, if there's an animal between here and the pole that doesn't know your life-history by the time the winter's over, I'll be surprised.”

Charles hung his head, but Ferdinand came to his rescue. “I think it's a good idea for Charles to deliver his Florida talk tonight,” he said. “We'll stay here today and make snowshoes. I'll go notify those chickadees over in that pine there, and they'll tell all the other birds and animals. I bet we have a big attendance.”

For the rest of the day under the crow's supervision the travellers gnawed down small saplings and tore off strips of bark, which they bent and tied into rough snowshoes. Charles alone was absent. He had retired into a thicket where he could rehearse his speech privately, and every now and then phrases would float out to the workers and they would smile at each other. “I have been asked.… A very unpretentious task, my friends.… Undaunted I flew at the alligator and pecked him so that he winced. ‘Sir,' I said.… With my skill in debate, I of course won the prize without difficulty.…” And so on.

The lecture that evening, however, was a great success. A large and enthusiastic audience of deer, coons, foxes, rabbits, porcupines, and skunks hung breathlessly on Charles's words, rocked with laughter at his sallies, and cheered wildly at the stories of hairbreadth escapes—which, as he said afterwards, while not strictly true, were founded on fact. The other members of the rescue party, with the exception of the children, Henrietta, and the bear, acted as ushers at the beginning, but sneaked off when he began to talk and played twenty questions until the meeting broke up. They had heard it all so many times that they felt they just couldn't stand it again, and, as Ferdinand said: “We're all fond of Charles, but he
is
tiresome when he gets to talking about himself, and if we stay, we'll get so irritated we'll throw things, and that wouldn't do.”

The children stayed, and at first they were so delighted to have so many animals around them that they were a little noisy, but although they didn't understand what Charles was saying, they understood pretty soon that he was making a speech, and, being considerate children, they sat quietly and applauded when the others applauded, and at the end when some of the animals went up to shake hands with the lecturer, they went up too.

The bear stayed, partly because he hadn't heard Charles talk before, and partly because two of his cousins whom he hadn't seen in a long time came to the lecture. He sat with them in the front row, but he was so glad to see them again that he talked a good deal and had to be shushed by the other animals several times before he would keep still.

As for Henrietta, although in private she scolded her husband soundly at every opportunity, she was really very proud of him and would fly at anyone else who ventured even the slightest criticism of him, and so tonight she perched quite close beside him on the low branch from which he spoke, and admired him so openly and applauded so enthusiastically that it embarrased even Charles a little.

“Not so loud!” he whispered to her once when she continued stamping and shouting “Bravo!” long after the audience had stopped. “They'll think it's funny.”

“They don't know I'm your wife,” she muttered.

“They'll think I hired you to applaud,” he replied.

“Oh, shut up and go on with your talk,” she whispered angrily. Then she shouted “Bravo!” again and looked him defiantly in the eye. And Charles went hastily on with the lecture.

The box-office, presided over by Ferdinand, took in enough food to feed them for a week, a heavy flannel shirt checquered in big red and black squares, two old sweaters, four pairs of lumbermen's heavy socks, a knitted bed jacket with pink ribbons, a whisk broom, two boxes of matches, a bottle of hair-tonic, and a postage-stamp album containing a complete collection of the stamps of the British colonies. The woods animals had found these various articles at different times and had hidden them away for no particular reason, as animals do. Everett put on the flannel shirt, which came down to his heels, and Ella wore one of the sweaters, which she had to hold up so she wouldn't trip over it, and they both put on the heavy socks, which were much too large, so that they looked very funny. But they didn't care, for they were warm.

From that day on, the trip became more of a lecture tour than a rescue expedition. The news of their coming ran ahead of them, and every ten miles or so they would be met by a committee of animals who wanted to engage them to give a series of lectures in their territory. But of course they were in a hurry, so they decided that they could give only one lecture in each place, and if the animals wanted to hear a different talk, they would have to travel along with them to the next stop. Many animals did this, and the result was that although the snow soon got very deep, they seldom had to use their snowshoes, for in order to pay their admission to the next lecture, the animals who travelled with them would go on ahead and break trail for them. When fifty to a hundred moose and deer and bear had tramped over a trail, it was almost as hard and smooth as a state road.