Chapter 16

MR. CROW LOOKS ON



Nimble and his friend Dodger the Deer picked themselves up off the ground where they had fallen after their collision in the air. They did not feel any too pleasant. One of Dodger's sharp tines had given Nimble a good prick. And one of Nimble's points had stung Dodger like a hornet's sting.

If only one of them had been pricked the whole affair might have ended differently. For then perhaps only one of them would have lost his temper. As they drew apart they were growing more angry every instant. And when they wheeled and glared at each other old Mr. Crow, who was watching them from his perch in the pine tree, called out: "Don't stop! Make it lively, now!"

Nimble gritted his teeth and stamped upon the ground.

"I'll teach you not to prick me!" he muttered.

"I'll make you wish you'd left those new antlers at home!" cried Dodger the Deer.

"Don't stop!" old Mr. Crow urged them once more as he teetered on his perch. "Let the fun go on!"

He squalled so loudly that his cousin Jasper Jay heard him half a mile away and came hurrying up to see what was going on. He arrived just in time to see Nimble and Dodger stagger back from another mad charge.

"What's this? A mock battle?" Jasper Jay inquired as he settled down beside Mr. Crow.

"No!" Mr. Crow replied in muffled tones. "It is a real one--but they don't know it yet."

Next to quarreling himself, old Mr. Crow loved to look on while others wrangled. And though he had no taste himself for actual fighting, he liked to see his neighbors pummel and peck and buffet and bounce one another.

So Mr. Crow enjoyed watching the tilt between Nimble and Dodger the Deer. Neither Mr. Crow, nor his rowdy cousin Jasper Jay, had ever seen so furious a fracas as that one soon became. Sometimes Nimble and Dodger rushed together with such force that it seemed to Mr. Crow their horns must break off. Sometimes they reared and struck each other with their front hoofs.

At first, whenever he felt a hurt Nimble only fought the harder. When Dodger's horns gouged him and his hoofs cut him Nimble butted and thrust and struck all the faster. But for every buffet he repaid Dodger, Dodger gave him another that was heavier than ever.

It was no wonder that in time Nimble began to feel tired. But he didn't let Dodger the Deer know that.

"This was easy to start," Nimble thought, "but it seems hard to stop. I wish Dodger would run away."

In the meantime Mr. Crow and Jasper Jay agreed that the battle was growing tamer every moment.

"Hustle it up!" Mr. Crow called to Nimble and Dodger, while Jasper Jay jeered at them both and told them they were mollycoddles.

"I shouldn't call this a mock battle now," Mr.