All the little creatures of the Big Green Woods were looking toward the big elm where Ki-yi Coyote was hiding and were wondering what would happen.

Then all of a sudden they heard big-mouthed Yappy baying away out on the Wide Prairie. Pretty soon they heard another hound baying.

It was quite true that Jack Rabbit had been started up at last. He had waited at the tree, and it had seemed as though nine o’clock never would come. At last when he saw Yappy and his friend coming, he was really glad.

When they were pretty close, Jack Rabbit sprang up, put his long ears straight in the air, and away he went. You see, when he doesn’t have to run[Pg 90] very fast, he keeps his ears straight up in the air; but when he has to run as fast as he can—the way he did when Speedy Grey Hound got after him—then he lays his long ears down flat to his head. And how he does run! He looks like a streak, he goes so fast.

Jack Rabbit was not much afraid of Yappy, because you see, Yappy was only a fox hound. Now a fox hound is dangerous enough at night, when he is on the trail of Ray Coon or O. Possum, but he can’t do any harm in the daytime to swift Jack Rabbit on the Wide Prairie.

Big Yappy and his friend, the other fox hound, had been trained to trail, at night, nothing but Ray Coon and O. Possum and Tom Wildcat. But in the daytime they certainly did like to start up Jack Rabbit. Most of all, though, they liked to start up Ki-yi Coyote.

[Pg 91]“There he goes!” shouted happy Yappy to his friend, as Jack Rabbit jumped up; and away they all went. And Jack Rabbit, of course, led them straight away for the Big Green Woods.

As they ran, Jack Rabbit kept thinking to himself, “I surely do hate to run so close to Ki-yi Coyote. Indeed, I do! Just suppose he should go after me as hard as ever he could.” Then he would comfort himself by thinking, “But then, he’ll never do it with the two hounds chasing him. I’ll be all right. Yes, I’ll just keep going. My, but I wish I could kick old Ki-yi right on the nose as I go past him!”

But wise Jack Rabbit said to himself that as soon as he had started up Ki-yi Coyote, he would run right back to the Wide Prairie, where there was plenty of room, because he might need it.

[Pg 92]While all the little creatures ............