Young Fredle - Louise Yates [11]
Hiding in the shadows, his nose and eyes looking out through the opening in the wall, Fredle was both frightened and excited. These were dogs up close. There was a bowl set out on the stalks, and when the dogs suddenly appeared, landing in front of him, they both stuck their noses into it and water splashed out.
They must be drinking, Fredle thought. When they’d gone off, he would go out and drink some water himself; some drops had caught on the sides of the stalks, he could see them shining there, and Fredle was, he realized, terribly thirsty.
He was thirsty, hungry, and alone—the three worst things for a mouse to be.
At that thought, fear rose up all over again in Fredle and he would have crept back into his place to escape it in sleep, if it hadn’t been for those dogs. Curiosity kept him with nose, ears, and eyes pointed out through the opening.
“I smell mice,” said Sadie, lifting her head. Water dropped down off her long tongue and her bright brown ears were cocked toward the wall where Fredle hid and listened. But the dog didn’t see Fredle. Fredle was too small, it was too dark and shadowy behind the wall, and as long as Fredle didn’t move he couldn’t be seen. He was a mouse; he knew how to freeze.
“Of course you do,” answered Angus. “There are mice all over the farm. You know that, Sadie. That’s why Mister and Missus have cats.”
“But, Angus, this one’s different.”
“One mouse is no different from any other,” Angus announced. His whole head was black, except for his white nose, and his voice had no doubt in it. He sounded just as bossy as Axle and Father, so Fredle’s sympathies went immediately to Sadie. “Mice are all the same and none of them are any good to eat, whatever Patches might say.”
Patches?
“I like our food. Don’t you like kibbles?” said Sadie. That made no sense to Fredle and apparently made no sense to Angus, either, because he just snorted and stuck his snout back into the bowl of water. When he’d finished drinking he said, “Let’s go check the barn.”
“I’ll scare those cats, won’t I?” Sadie answered as she ran off, out of Fredle’s view.
“We’ll give those rats something to think about, too,” said Angus, following her.
Without further thought, Fredle scrambled out through the hole toward the bowl, to lick at the water dripping off the green stalks next to it. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something sliding by, hidden among the stalks, but when he lifted his head to look he saw nothing but green stalk after green stalk, packed thickly in together, and he went back to licking up water and thinking about the dogs.
The dogs were often in the kitchen; he knew that. Now he knew that they were also outside. He could deduce, therefore, that there was a way to get from the kitchen to outside. And if there was a way to get from the kitchen to outside, there was also a way to get from outside back into the kitchen.
But did you have to be as big and strong as a dog to find it?
Returning to his place, Fredle thought hard. He was thinking so hard about the dogs that he didn’t even think to notice that he was no longer blinking in the bright daylight, as if he had gotten used to it, and he almost didn’t notice that there, right beside his little nest, was a dried-up piece of orange peel. Orange peel? What? How did—? His stomach began to growl and he stopped wondering.
Eating and being full and then falling into a sound sleep, Fredle forgot to think about returning to the kitchen, but he dreamed of home. He dreamed he was back in his round, soft nest, with the warm bodies of his family