Young Fredle by Cynthia Voigt Read Free Book Online

close up against the back wall and listened.
    The stomping ceased and they heard Missus. “Have adrink of water. Then I want you two to burn off some of that energy. Run around, wrestle, chase cats, whatever. If it starts to rain, I’ll let you back in, I promise.”
    At the splashing and slurping, Fredle whispered, “Only the dogs.”
    Bardo shook his head, impatient. “Be quiet!” he hissed.
    Fredle shook his head right back at Bardo, and whispered, “
You don’t know dogs. They don’t eat mice.
” He crossed to the lattice wall. Bardo either didn’t understand or decided to pay no attention. He neither moved nor spoke. The two mice both kept very quiet and listened carefully, one huddled up against the farthest wall in case of danger, the other close to the lattice, so as not to miss anything.
    The dogs were large, clumsy creatures, spilling water all around as they drank out of the same large bowl. When he had drunk his fill, Angus decided, “We’d better check on the chickens, in case of foxes. Or raccoons—those raccoons like to come in close. Or weasels. We better smell around the chicken pen for anything suspicious.”
    “Do you smell mouse?”
    “Not again, Sadie. How about you stop with all this mouse-smelling?”
    “This is a different mouse. This is a mouse under the porch.”
    “All mice smell the same.”
    Sadie wasn’t listening. She came snuffling up to the lattice wall. At the approach of her large black snout, Fredle froze. With her dog’s sharp ears, Sadie might hear him moving. Were a dog’s sharp ears sharp enough to hear even thealmost soundless brush of mouse paws on soft ground? Fredle wondered.
    The snout blocked a whole opening, and blocked out much of the light, too. It snuffled, sniffing. “Someone’s there.”
    Fredle didn’t move. Bardo didn’t move.
    “I can smell you.”
    The mice were silent.
    Sadie said, “I
can
smell you,” in case she hadn’t been heard the first time. She waited some more, snuffled some more, and then asked, “Who’s there?” She waited and waited.
    Fredle finally answered her, in a faint, whispery voice, as small as an ant’s, “Nobody.”
    “Oh,” Sadie said, disappointed. “But I thought—” Then the snout was gone and the empty opening once again filled with light.
    The two mice waited for a long time, silent, patient, the way mice do, making sure that all danger has passed. At last, Bardo broke the silence. “That was pretty stupid.”
    “It worked, didn’t it?”
    “She’ll figure it out before long.”
    “Then we’d better get going,” Fredle announced. This time,
he
led the way out through the lattice wall. Once outside, however, his confidence left him and he let Bardo re-take the lead.
    Keeping close to whatever wall was there, the lattice first and then a solid green wall that turned two sharp corners, they came to another lattice, a duplicate of Fredle’s. “Those were steps back there,” Bardo told Fredle. “Humans use those steps for going into and out of the house, and so do the dogs. Andthe house cat does, too, sometimes. You never know when the house cat might show up.”
    This lattice wall, like his own, had stalks of cut grass spread out in front of it. “Is this where you have your nest?” Fredle asked.
    “What would our nest be good for here? No, our nest is way far away. You don’t know but it’s a dangerous trip I take to come find you. It’s dangerous everywhere out here so do me a favor and get moving, Fredle. Maybe inside things are different, but outside we don’t hang around out in the open.” Bardo hurried on ahead. “You have to know where the compost is if you don’t want to starve. Because I certainly don’t plan to spend the rest of my life bringing you food.”
    Fredle ran after him.
    When they arrived at the end of that second section of lattice wall, Bardo crouched up against a huge, high, green plastic container. “These hold trash,” he told Fredle. “There are two of them,