Read Online Freddy the Cowboy by Walter R. Brooks - Free Book Online Page B

then he said suddenly, “Hey, wait a minute. Look, Freddy; this Horrible outfit—well, there aren’t any such animals, are there?”
    â€œMy goodness,” said the pig, “you saw ’em, same as I did. Of course when I got that letter I thought it was just a joke. To tell you the truth, I thought maybe you were the one that sent it to me. But then—golly, there the things were, knives and all! Awful, weren’t they?”
    â€œWell, I suppose I’d better tell you,” said the cat. “I did write the letter. I made up the Horrible Ten. Shucks, it was just a joke! But it isn’t a joke any more. How could they come alive, Freddy, when I just thought ’em?”
    â€œOh, well,” said Freddy, “as long as you’ve owned up to it, I ought to tell you who they are.” And he did.
    There was one good thing about Jinx, he could laugh just as hard when the joke was on himself as when it was on someone else. He just lay down and rolled in the grass. “Rabbits!” he said. “Me lying awake all last night for fear rabbits were after me! You wait till I get hold of that 23.”
    â€œYou mustn’t do anything to him, Jinx,” Freddy said. “I was the one that put him up to it.”
    â€œShucks, I want to congratulate him. Guess I’ll go up now and see if he’s home.” And he trotted off.
    When Freddy set out to do something, he was never satisfied with just halfway doing it. To have a horse and a cowboy suit and a gun belt with two guns in it would have been enough for some people. But not for him. He was determined to learn how to ride and shoot and handle a rope as well as any real cowboy. And because he wanted to learn, he learned quickly. He had a good teacher in Cy, and within a few days he could stick tight to the saddle while the pony whirled and crow-hopped and bucked and reared. Of course Cy didn’t really try to throw Freddy. He could have done that easily. But he tried to give the pig as much as he could take, and Freddy could take a little more every day.
    Freddy was getting quick on the draw, too. He had practised by the hour, and now when Cy gave the signal he could yank both guns—the real one and the water pistol—out of their holsters and point them and pull the triggers, all inside of a single second.
    Freddy didn’t neglect other sides of life on the range either. There was an old guitar in the Bean attic. Before they were married, Mr. Bean used to serenade Mrs. Bean with it. Some unkind people said that she married him in order to stop the racket, but this doesn’t make sense, for when he sang, Mr. Bean’s voice was just a sort of grumble—so low that you could hardly hear it. Freddy got the guitar out and strung and tuned it, and he worked away at it evenings until he could strum a pretty good accompaniment to Home on the Range and other such songs.

    Be worked until he could strum a good accompaniment.

    In the evening, two days after Taffy’s rescue, Freddy was sitting out in the new canvas chair Mr. Bean had bought him, twanging his guitar in the moonlight, when Charles came down through the pasture.
    â€œHi, rooster,” said Freddy. “Back from your travels? Did you have any adventures?”
    â€œAdventures!” said Charles bitterly. “I knew how it would be when Henrietta insisted on coming along. You can’t take your wife along when you ride out in search of adventure. Because what happens? Instead of looking for adventure you go visit all her relatives. And she’s got relatives in every chicken coop in the county. Just as sure as I saw a nice likely looking piece of road or a patch of woods where some real adventure might be waiting, Henrietta would say: ‘Come along, Charles; Cousin Eunice lives down this lane,’ and we’d drop in and stay a couple days.
    â€œWell, late this afternoon we were up by the end of the lake, and we saw a lot