Read Online Freddy and the Dragon by Walter R. Brooks - Free Book Online

you?”
    â€œSome pig has. I’ve seen him at night on the back road.”
    â€œThat’s the trouble with being a pig,” Freddy said. He meant that to most people and other animals, one pig looks very like another. “Well,” he went on, “I assure you that we have had nothing to do with this trouble. We’ve got to find the real criminals. We came up here to get some information. I understand you’ve seen a headless horseman, or a headless bicyclist. Was it on the back road?”
    â€œA horseman,” said Alice. “Not on the back road—we never go up there. It was twice we saw him—wasn’t it, sister?—riding down along the brook.”
    â€œHe had no head on his shoulders,” said Emma. “We thought it very odd.”
    â€œOdd! “Jinx exclaimed.
    â€œWell, unusual anyway,” said Emma. “We were quite puzzled.”
    â€œBut he did have a head, sister,” said Alice; “we decided afterwards—remember? But he had it sort of in front of him on the saddle.”
    Freddy and Jinx looked at each other. “And you—you weren’t frightened?” the pig asked.
    â€œFrightened? Why, no, there was nothing frightening about him,” said Emma. “Dear me, he seemed most well behaved. It just struck us that it was—well, as I said, an unusual way to wear a head.”
    â€œUnhandy,” said Alice.
    Jinx let out a long sigh. “That’s one way of looking at it,” he said. “Well, what do you say, pig?” They looked silently at each other and then turned back home.

CHAPTER 7
    Uncle Ben couldn’t stand the smell of the perfume which came seeping up through the floorboards into his workshop from the box stall below, so he got Mr. Bean to tie the bull out back of the barn. There were some mice and a number of beetles, and a couple of hoptoads that lived there, and they moved out right away. They couldn’t stand it either.
    The birds kept pestering Percy about how sweet he smelled. They flew around him, perched on fence posts, and made fun of him and yelled all day long. He was mad and he snarled and growled at them, but there wasn’t anything he could do. And when Freddy came out and offered again to scrub the perfume off if he would tell who the head of his gang was, and where their headquarters was, he refused again flatly. They argued, and finally they both got mad and yelled at each other, and Freddy squirted him again with the perfume pistol. This was a different kind of perfume from the first kind, but it was just as awful. The combination of two kinds of cheap perfume was so terrible that it drove the birds away.
    Late that afternoon Samuel Jackson came to see Freddy. “You’re not getting anywhere with that bull,” he said. “I think you need some help. I say you need some help.”
    â€œIf you’ve got any ideas,” said the pig, “trot ’em out.”
    So they talked for a while, and then Samuel went down to the stable. When he got to the corner of the stable, he dove right into the ground. Moles can move almost as fast under the grass roots as they can on top; they have large flat front feet, turned sideways, so that they can really swim along in the soil. The only thing that shows is a little ridge in the grass behind them. Percy didn’t notice this ridge as it came toward him; most people wouldn’t.
    When Samuel had got up almost to the fence post to which the bull was tied he stopped and said: “Percy!” He had a very deep voice for a mole.
    The bull lifted his head and looked around. There was no one anywhere near. “Now I’m beginning to hear things!” he grumbled.
    â€œPercy!” said Samuel again, and this time the bull said: “Yeah? Where are you?”
    â€œPercy!” said the mole severely, “You cannot see me. I am inside you. I am the voice of your conscience.”
    â€œMy