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Updated: May 12, 2025
Peter grinned back, for he knew that under those friendly brambles he was quite safe. "I heard what you said to Johnny Chuck about his cousin, Yap-Yap," said Peter. Old Man Coyote looked as surprised as he felt. "Where were you?" he demanded gruffly. "Lying flat in the grass close by Johnny Chuck's house," replied Peter, and grinned more broadly than ever.
On this being pulled there was a faint tinkle, followed by a canine uproar of the most miscellaneous description, the deep-mouthed bay of the blood-hound, the sharp yap-yap of the toy terrier, and a chorus of intermediate undistinguishable barkings, some fierce, some frolicsome, some expectant, being mixed up with the rattling of chains.
You remind me very much of your cousin, Yap-Yap the Prairie Dog, who lives out where I came from. There's a fellow who certainly knows how to make a house in the ground. He doesn't have to depend on the roots of trees to keep from being dug out. Well, I guess it is a waste of time to hang around here. You'll make just as good a dinner some other time as you would now, so I'll wait until then."
"I have a right to an extension of my franchises for fifty years, and I am going to get it. Look at New York and Philadelphia. Why, the Eastern houses laugh. They don't understand such a situation. It's all the inside work of this Hand-Schryhart crowd. I know what they're doing and who's pulling the strings. The newspapers yap-yap every time they give an order.
"Then one day came Skimmer the Swallow and brought him news of the hard times which had come to the rest of the Great World and how as a result the big and the strong were hunting the small and the weak in order that they themselves might live. When Skimmer had gone, Yap-Yap grew uneasy.
The stars prick through the indigo blue of a desert sky like lighted candles; and there flames up in the doorway of cavern window and door the deep red of juniper and cedar log glow in the fireplaces at the corner of each room. The mourning dove utters his plaintive wail. You hear the yap-yap of fox and coyote far up among the big timbers between you and the snows. Then a gong rings.
In fair weather that mound was a splendid place on which to sit and watch for danger. So once more Yap-Yap was happy and care-free, all because he had used his wits. "And from that day to this the Prairie Dogs have made their houses in just that way, and no one that I know cares to try to dig one out," concluded Old Man Coyote.
"From the very beginning Yap-Yap was a keen lover of the great open spaces. Trees were all very well for those who liked them, but he preferred to have nothing above him but the blue, blue sky. It seemed to him that he never could find a big enough open space, so he never stayed very long in any one place, but kept pushing on and on, looking for a spot in the Great World that would just suit him.
"And to think I didn't know it!" sighed Old Man Coyote. "When I failed to catch Johnny Chuck, I thought I had missed only one dinner, but it seems I missed two. Next time I shall look around a little more sharply. Do you know, the sight of Johnny Chuck always makes me homesick, he reminds me so much of his cousin, Yap-Yap, and the days when I was young."
What if some of the big and strong people he had known should come out there in quest of food and should find him? There was no place in which to hide. There was no cave or hollow log. "Yap-Yap looked at the strong claws Old Mother Nature had given him and an idea came to him. He would dig a hole in the ground.
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