The Case of the Fiddle Playing Fox Read Online Free Page A

got teeth, maybe you didn’t realize that. We swaller gravel and it goes down to the gizzard and the gizzard grinds up our food.”
    â€œYes, I know.”
    â€œSo we never have problems with our teeth, see. You can’t have problems with what you ain’t got.”
    â€œI’m very happy for you but . . .”
    â€œPretty good system most of the time, but like Elsa says, she says a rooster my age has got no business swallering tacks and nails and running all that hardware through my gizzard.”
    â€œJ.T.?”
    â€œCauses cavities in the gizzard gravel and gives me indigestion.”
    â€œTell me about last night.”
    â€œHuh? Last night? Naw, this happened several weeks ago.”
    â€œNever mind your indigestion. What happened last night? Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”
    â€œWell, let me think here.” He cocked his head and raised one foot off the ground. “Yes, I did. I heard something last night that I won’t forget for a long time.”
    â€œOkay, tell me about it. Describe exactly what you heard and keep to the facts.”
    â€œYou bet, here we go. You know what was strange about the whole deal?” He glanced over both wings and moved closer. “What was funny about that deal of the busted eggs was that sometime in the deep dark of the night, I woke up—I was on the roost, see, sleeping real good—I woke up in the deep dark of the night and heard . . .”
    I stood motionless, waiting to hear the rest. “Yes? You heard something? Go on.”
    â€œNaw, you wouldn’t believe it.”
    â€œTry me.”
    â€œNaw, it’s just too outrageous, and I ain’t sure I believe it my own self.”
    â€œTELL ME WHAT YOU HEARD!”
    â€œWell, you don’t have to screech. I ain’t deaf yet! Okay, I’ll tell you the rest of the darned story. I woke up in the deep dark of the night and I heard something. And what I heard was . . . fiddle music!”
    â€œFiddle music?”
    â€œYes sir, that’s exactly what I heard. Fiddle music.”
    I swung my eyes around to Drover. He was looking up at the clouds. “Have you been talking to this rooster behind my back?”
    His gaze drifted down and settled on me. It was as empty a gaze as I’d ever seen. “Oh, hi. I was just watching the clouds. Kind of looks like rain.”
    â€œNever mind the rain. This rooster says he heard fiddle music last night.”
    â€œI’ll be derned, so did I.”
    â€œThat’s quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say? Two unreliable witnesses making the same outrageous claim on the same day?”
    â€œSounds pretty crazy, all right.”
    â€œExactly, that’s my whole point. If only one of you had made such a claim, I might have passed it off as mere chance, but the fact that both of you told the same story points to something deeper and darker.”
    â€œYeah, it makes you think we heard the same fiddle.”
    I couldn’t help chuckling at his nativity . . . niavity . . . naw-eev-ity . . . at his simple-minded re­sponse. “Except that there WAS no fiddle, Drover, and therefore no fiddle music. Now the question becomes, why would you and J. T. Cluck go to the trouble to tell me the same incredible yarn?”
    â€œOh, it wasn’t any trouble.”
    I stuck my nose in his face. “Could it be that I have exposed a little conspiracy here? Perhaps you were bored and thought it would be fun to pull a practical joke on old Hank?”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œTell him a crazy story about fiddle music in the night, get him stirred up and running off in all directions? Yes, of course. Nice try, Drover, you almost pulled it off, but you forgot one small detail.”
    â€œI did?”
    â€œYes. You got a rooster to corroborate your story, never realizing that you had picked the most unreliable witness on the entire ranch, never realizing