Rutherford left his post at the rope and stuck his head over the top of the dirt pile. what are you doing, Fritz?” The cat was frozen in mid-step at the edge of the well, the rope still dangling from his mouth. He hadn’t gone far enough along the board to drop in into the well. “I’m scared,” Fritz answered around the piece of rope. “What if the board breaks and we lose Susan forever? I’m really scared, Rutherford.”
“Susan? Susan?” Mister Tinkerman’s voice was filled with desperation as it drummed its way across the top of the tall grass.
Rutherford heard it and looked up through the streaks of rain to see the scarecrow shape of Mister Tinkerman as it stumbled and fell to the ground. In an instant, it was back on its two legs moving toward him carrying a long stick like the one Rutherford used to haul his parcel around on; only this one had a crook at one end. It looked to Rutherford as though it could be dangerous. “Fritz!” he shouted. “You’d better watch out. A human’s comin!”
Fritz raised his head and started meowing louder than even he thought was possible. “Oh, boy! Oh, boy!” he meowed as he watched Mister Tinkerman run to him. “Fritzy, will you be quiet?” Susan called. “I Can’t hear myself think with all that noise.”
Mister Tinkerman stopped in his tracks. “Susan?” he yelled. He took his glasses off and gave them a quick wipe on the front of his jacket.
“Grandpa!”
“I’m here. Are you okay, honey? Are you hurt? Where are you?” He rattled off the questions in rapid succession as he squinted through his smudged-up glasses. He still couldn’t see exactly where Susan was.
“I’m good, grandpa,” she called back. “But I’m so glad to hear your voice. Be careful where you step, though, the boards up there are all broken.” She sounded like she was talking in atunnel.
“Where are you?” Mister Tinkerman shouted again.
“I fell in a hole,” Susan called. That surprised Mister Tinkerman. He didn’t know about any holes on this part of the farm.
Fritz meowed to get his attention, but Mister Tinkerman took no notice of him, instead he took his glasses off and began cleaning them with his handkerchief. When he put them back on, Fritz meowed again. This time it worked. He got the man’s attention, but with it he also got a puzzled look.Mister Tinkerman recognized the rope Fritz was holding in his mouth; the very same rope that he worried Susan would get hurt playing on just the day before. Now, it was probably going to save her. But how, he marveled, did it manage to show up here so far from the barn where he left it?
“How did you get that all the way down here?” he asked like he expected the cat to answer. “And what are you doing with it, anyhow?” He shook his head, and took the rope from Fritz. Fritz meowed and began slowly backing away while Mister Tinkerman got down on his hands and knees and tried to figure out how to reach the hole without causing it to fall in. He crawled as close as he thought was safe and gently tossed a small coil of the rope over the edge of the opening. “Can you reach it, honey?” he called.Susan tugged on it. “Good. Get a good grip on it and hold on tight,” he told her. “I’ll move back a little and pull you up.”
Rutherford watched from the top of the dirt pile to make sure Fritz was alright before starting back down to rejoin the group at the other end of the rope. When his workforce saw him coming from the mound of dirt, they must have thought it was time to pull Susan to safety. “Heave, ho,” clucked momma hen, and Carlisle started backing up. Mister Tinkerman looked over his shoulder to see why the rope was getting tighter in his hands. For the first time since he found Susan’s staff, he remembered why he had stopped the truck in the first place—all those animals. But they weren’t in the garden, they were trying to pull Susan out of a hole! A tiny field mouse and J.J. and the Mallard were in their midst. He couldn’t believe it.
“Heave, ho,” clucked momma hen again, and the crew of animals tugged with all their might. They weren’t actually pulling Susan up but they were holding the rope tight enough that she could climb up it on her own. One hand came into view, then another and then her sandy colored hair popped up. “I’ve got you,” Mister Tinkerman said, grasping her hands and pulling her the rest of the way out. All the creatures crowded around them, and as the rain began to pour in earnest, they began chanting, “Susan, Susan, Susan.” This time, all the racket sounded to Susan and Mister Tinkerman like a symphony playing the most beautiful song ever written. Susan was finally safe.
As the hurrahing for Susan calmed, a new chant began. “Rutherford, Rutherford, Rutherford.”Lucky nudged his nose against Rutherford. “Betcha didn’t know you’re a hero, did you?”
Rutherford looked around at all his friends who were responsible for Susan’s rescue: Charlie who taught him what weather and humans were--Lucky who introduced him to Curls and Carlisle--and Fritz, J.J. and Muffin who all turned out to be Mister Nice Guys at heart. And, of course there was Gitter, the beagle who thought he was a duck. Without his incessant baying in the beginning no one would have known that Susan needed help. All of them were the heroes in Rutherford’s mind. As far as he was concerned, he wasn’t a hero, he was just a happy little field mouse who was lucky enough to have been born under the haystack in Mister Tinkerman’s barn.
But that wasn’t the story he told Nell and the others. One day, when they gained their courage, perhaps they too would find that there is more to life than playing hide and seek. Until then, Rutherford planned to spend his every waking moment with his mates who knew he wasn’t a coward.
Oh, yes. As for Susan, Rutherford had the feeling that someday he and she would become very good friends.
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Here’s a quick look:
Host is the go-to guy that God calls upon whenever there’s something important brewing. So it stands to reason when God figures it’s time for another miracle that He turns to Host to get the job done. To help complete the mission, God assigns Host two hard-drinking hoboes to be his earthly emissaries.
Although Host is a bit rusty when it comes to field work, he plows ahead, working very hard to overcome the free-will clause and Gabriel’s heckling from the sidelines.
What begins in a small town facing hard times, soon blossoms into a worldwide event that will make you laugh a lot, cry a little and will surely give you pause for thought. Welcome to Midvale, the chicken processing capital of the world.
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