Moonlight Brigade Page 6

  “Enough!” Coyote howled so loud that the even the clouds seemed to pull back from the moon, shining brightly on him.

  The fighting ceased, and all the animals of Ankle Snap Alley were left groaning and licking their wounds. “We could play this song until the sun comes up,” Coyote explained, striding once more across the stage. “Or you could surrender every seed and nut you’ve got and spare yourselves more bruising.”

  The silence that answered him was even heavier than the silence that had followed Declan’s comedy routine.

  “Why don’t I make this easier for you?” Coyote suggested. “Turtle!” he called. “You might as well stick your head out before my friends haul it out through the back of your shell.”

  The turtle stuck his head out, his deeply wrinkled face showing all its long seasons. He spoke slowly and quietly so that the coyote had to strain to listen.

  “You have messed . . . with the wrong . . . turtle,” the turtle said. “No one . . . pushes around . . . my . . . Rabid Rascals. We own . . . this . . . alley.”

  “Not anymore.” The coyote shrugged. “Please order your goons to collect every seed and nut in the bankers’ vault.”

  “Eat a tick sandwich,” Old Boss Turtle snapped.

  Coyote leaped in one terrifying bound down into the dirt in front of the turtle. He lowered his head and picked the old turtle up in his jaws and shook him mercilessly, rattling the reptile around inside his shell. Then he set the turtle down on his back and rested a massive paw across the unprotected belly of the gangster boss. Coyote pushed down with all his weight.

  “How hard do you think I’d have to push to crack your shell?” Coyote asked.

  The citizens of Ankle Snap Alley looked away and buried their faces in their paws so as not to see the brutal scene. They’d all suffered at the gangster’s claws over the years, but this was too much to watch.

  “Would you now instruct your gang to collect every last seed and nut in this alley for me?” Coyote asked.

  Kit couldn’t hear what the turtle said.

  “Louder, please!” Coyote demanded.

  “Do it,” groaned the old gangster. “Collect the seeds!”

  “You hear that?” the coyote howled. “Rascals! Get to work. You!” He pointed to Shane and Flynn Blacktail. “I’m putting you two in charge. Congratulations. You’re the new leaders of the Rabid Rascals.”

  Through bloody snouts, the brothers grinned.

  “If you hold out so much a single dried pokeberry from that bank vault, then my boys and I will sing you another song. Get it?”

  “Howl to snap,” they answered.

  “Now have your gang collect my loot,” he ordered them.

  Shane and Flynn hopped to it with the enthusiasm of the newly powerful.

  “Come on, boys, you heard the fellow,” Flynn told the gang.

  “He’s not much of a singer, but you know the tune,” said Shane. “Get to it.”

  The mix of mutts and birds and other surly creatures looked around questioningly, but one by one, they moved through the crowd, making merchants and dancers and gamblers of every size and shape turn over their winter seeds. They sent a scurry of squirrels into the bank vault below to haul out the seeds and nuts that had already been deposited.

  When the raccoon brothers reached the merchants, Possum Ansel was defiant. “Why did we pay the Rascals for protection, if they couldn’t protect us?” he demanded.

  Shane and Flynn looked at their feet, stung by a brief pang of shame. The turtle groaned on the floor below. Even criminals such as these had taken pride in their work and were embarrassed to have been out-crimed by a tougher criminal.

  “Just turn over the loot,” Shane pleaded.

  “The sooner you give it up, the sooner he’ll be out of our fur,” Flynn added.

  Possum Ansel crossed his paws. The Blacktail brothers snarled, and Otis the badger jumped up to stand by his side. Coyote turned and delivered a single claw-jitsu kick to Otis’s chest, knocking him into the waiting paws of two otters, who put him in a choke hold.

  Possum Ansel passed out at the sight, in the time-honored tradition of possums everywhere.

  “And we’ll take your woodchuck’s sap supply too,” Coyote told Otis.

  The badger frowned, but nodded.

  “I can’t hear you!”

  “We will pay,” Otis grunted.

  “Good!” Coyote smiled.

  A tiny voice shouted from the crowd. “A lot can happen between the howl that brings us into this world and the snap of the trap that takes us out.” It was Martyn, leader of the church mice, in his bright white robes, surrounded by the other mice of his religious order. “Justice will come to bandits, even those who think they’ll be strong forever.”

  “Ha-ha!” Coyote laughed. “You’re talking about stories of the Moonlight Brigade, aren’t you? Those stories are as stale as your breath. Besides, my stories are just as old as yours, mouse. And in my stories, Coyote always wins.”

  “You only know the stories you like to hear,” Martyn replied. “We mice know them all, even the ones coyotes prefer to forget. The past is a wheel of cheese, and it rolls around and around. What was nibbled once will be nibbled once again, and justice comes to all eventually.”

  Coyote shrugged. “Right now, your winter seeds are what comes to me.” He turned to a weasel in a shining coat who was trying not to be noticed as he stuffed all his seeds and nuts into his mouth at once with the idea that it was better to eat his fortune than to let it be taken from him.

  Coyote lifted the sack away from him and passed it to a waiting otter. The weasel swallowed his last gulp of food.

  One by one the creatures turned over the sacks and trunks and chests and bags, even the usually quarrelsome news finches, and when the entire alley had given over all they had to the coyote, he clapped his paws together and howled so loud that the hawks in their distant mansions in distant neighborhoods heard the sound and wondered what such a howl might mean, but hawks can’t be bothered with the goings-on in the gritty alleyways of the city, and none would come to investigate.

  All the animals watched sadly as their worldly wealth was turned over to the Thunder River Rompers.

  “When bears battle, it’s the grass that breaks,” Eeni murmured to herself. She had a saying for every occasion, but Kit didn’t like this one. He didn’t want to be some broken blade of grass beneath the feet of bears. He wanted to be the hero who kept the bears away. He wanted to be like the Moonlight Brigade was, but what could one young raccoon do against a cruel coyote?

  “The cold season’s coming!” Uncle Rik stepped up to the coyote. Kit held his breath, seeing his uncle go snout to snout with such a ferocious animal. Uncle Rik ran a nervous hand over his fur, then puffed his chest proudly and made his argument. “Without our stores of seeds and nuts, we’ll all starve.”

  A few other animals dared murmur their agreement.

  “Your starvation is not my problem,” said the coyote. He looked over the room and smiled. The animals’ panting made hundreds of breathy clouds in the air. “Well, Rompers, we’ve done a good night’s work. Let’s be on our way. There’s a whole city before us and much more music to make!”

  “WAIT!” Kit shouted. He cleared his throat and yelled in his meanest voice, “What kind of broke-down bandit are you, Coyote?”

  All eyes turned to look at him.

  “What are you doing, Kit?” Eeni whispered.

  “My homework,” Kit whispered back. “I want that extra credit too.”

  Eeni grabbed his paw. “You aren’t supposed to get eaten in the process.”

  Part II

  FLIM-FLAMMERY

  Chapter Eleven

  THE BAMBOOZLE

  THERE have been many names for tricks since the moon first showed her friendship to thieves. They’ve been called lies
and they’ve been called grifts and they’ve been called swindles and frauds and scams. They’ve also been called confidence games, gambits, flimflams, and pranks, but they’re all the same thing: A trick is a trick, and the one who pulls it is a trickster.

  And raccoons, of course, are great tricksters.

  The greatest tricks of all are like stories, as grand as any epic tale bound in the pages of a book. A great trick has separate parts, like the beginning, middle, and end of a story. There are even characters in a trick, just like in a story, whether they know they’re in a trick or not.

  The first part, the beginning of a trick, is called the Bamboozle. The Bamboozle is the part where the one being tricked—the rube—gets lured in. This is where the plot is laid, the traps are set, and the biggest lies are told. The middle part of a trick is called the Sting. This is where the rube gives the trickster exactly what the trickster wants without knowing they’ve done it, and the third part—the final one—that’s the toughest one of all. The third part is the Brush-Off, where the trickster gets rid of the rube, one way or another, and flutters away free as a butterfly.

  All great tricksters, like all great storytellers, crafted these parts in their own ways. The Blacktail brothers did it with fast talk and sharp claws. Eeni did it with quick paws and sweet words. Kit didn’t know exactly how he was supposed to do it, but he had only one chance to save Ankle Snap Alley from a winter of starvation.

  If the coyote escaped with all their seeds and nuts, the Wild Ones would surely go hungry when the cold snows came. There wasn’t enough tasty trash to keep them all alive for winter, and it would be like the old times, when the strong ate the weak and the weak choked the strong on their bones.

  Ankle Snap Alley would fall to pieces if he didn’t find a way to stop this coyote. And maybe he could impress Mr. Timinson at the same time. He’d sure like to prove that he was as clever as Azban and twice as kind. Was that too prideful? he wondered.

  Nah, he thought. Raccoons don’t have much in this world, just their cleverness and their pride. He meant to do his best with both of them. He said a quick prayer to Azban, and then he let his great grift begin.

  Time to bamboozle the coyote.

  He had a plan.

  “Did you hear me?” Kit repeated as loudly as he could. “I’m wondering what kind of timid tail-tucking thieves you and your gang are to come here and steal from us?”

  “Kit, be quiet! Please let the adults handle this,” Uncle Rik pleaded.

  “What did you call us, little fellow?” The coyote whirled on Kit.

  “Well, first I called you and your otters broke-down bandits—”

  “We ain’t broke-down!” Chuffing Chaz protested, looking in the wrong direction without his glasses. “We’re the Thunder River Rompers! The baddest, brawling-est beasts this side of the sun!”

  The other otters barked a chorus of agreement.

  Kit cleared his throat. “After that, I wondered what kind of timid tail-tucking thieves you are. I should have added snail-sniffing snot scavengers too, by the way.”

  If a crowd could gasp as one, the crowd trapped at the First Frost Festival did it at that moment. The gasp made Kit’s whiskers wiggle.

  He couldn’t back down now. Great tricks were won or lost in the first precious moments of the Bamboozle. Just like telling a story, if you lost your audience’s attention even for a second, you might never get it back.

  “Now that I look at the loot you’ve taken,” Kit continued. “I see you’re just a bunch of seed-sucking muskrat moochers.” He tried to act—what was Eeni’s word?—insouciant. He played it as cool and carefree as he could. He hoped the gang didn’t notice his tail quivering. He stood on top of it. “Anyone can rob an alley guarded by a gang as goofy as the Rabid Rascals. That doesn’t make you tough. We got robbed twice last moon, didn’t we?”

  The animals of Ankle Snap Alley looked at Kit in confusion.

  “Didn’t we?” he repeated.

  “Oh yeah,” said Eeni. She couldn’t know what mischief Kit was making, but she knew he needed help making it. Kit and his wits had never let her down before. “We got robbed three times, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, right.” Kit gave her a wink. “Three times. And the last time was by a group of voles.”

  “Little voles,” Eeni agreed, even though all voles were little. “Cute ones. I don’t even think they were a gang. I think they were a choir group.”

  “They did sing beautifully,” agreed Kit. “Unlike some gangs I could think of . . .”

  Coyote growled, which showed Kit that Coyote was still listening.

  “So go ahead.” Kit opened his paws. “Rob us of what little we have left, and word will go out that the Thunder River Rompers are just as bad a band of bandits as a chorus of voles.”

  Voles, it should be noted, were the least criminal of all the creatures who ever scurried beneath the moon. They were the cousins of mice, but smaller, gentler, and more timid. The worst crime a vole ever committed was eating the crumbs left over from the cookies they’d baked for their neighbors. And even then they remembered to send themselves a thank-you note.

  “We eat voles for breakfast!” Chuffing Chaz bellowed, which caused two actual voles in the crowd to dive into their empty seed sacks.

  The coyote shook his head at his own gang. “Don’t get your tails all twisted. This little raccoon’s words aren’t worth much when I’m the one holding all his alley’s winter stores.”

  “But what’s a coyote like you want with a lot of seeds and nuts?” Kit asked. “I thought you were a hunter.”

  “Good point,” Coyote snarled. “Would you rather I eat raccoon meat?”

  “Raccoons are stringy,” Kit squeaked before clearing his throat and speaking with more confidence. “You do not want to eat raccoon. What you want is your food served up nice and neat in cans like the Flealess get. A real bandit would want the Flealess food, not our paltry piles of winter seeds.”

  “Or the minuscule meat on our bones,” Eeni added. The other animals in the alley agreed with her heartily. No one was eager to see the view from inside the coyote’s jaws.

  “Cans?” Coyote asked. He leaned forward, curious.

  “Oh, never mind,” said Kit. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his seed pouch. “You want all the seeds we’ve got, so don’t forget mine. I was going to buy quills for school with it, but please, take it and show the wide world what kind of bandits you really are.”

  Chuffing Chaz groped forward and snatched the seed sack from Kit’s paws. He stuffed it into his own satchel without looking. Coyote kept staring at Kit, sizing him up.

  “Tell me more about this Flealess food,” Coyote said. “In cans.”

  “You don’t have cans of food out in the Howling Lands?” Kit asked.

  Coyote kept eyeing him, but he didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no.

  “Well,” Kit explained, “the Flealess—that’s People’s house pets—they eat food from cans that their People put out for them. Fish and meat and grains and vegetables, all sorts of nice things that wild folk like us couldn’t dream of. Sometimes we get their leftovers when they toss the empty cans in the trash.”

  “What good does a bunch of Flealess food do me?” asked Coyote. “It’s in those houses, and I’m out here. No one breaks into People’s houses and lives to tell about it after.”

  “Raccoons do,” said Kit. “Rats too. Why last week my friend and I broke in to three People’s houses just for fun.”

  Eeni nodded. “We had a party.”

  “I wore a party hat,” Kit added.

  “You lie,” Coyote said. He turned to Shane and Flynn Blacktail. “He lying?”

  Kit looked to the Blacktail brothers and held his breath. With his paws low, he made the symbol of the A with his fingers, the sign of Azban and of all raccoons. He hoped those two flea-b
itten traitors would go along. If they didn’t, he was as good as dog meat.

  “He’s lying,” Flynn said.

  “Kit didn’t break into the People’s houses last week,” added Shane.

  Kit’s heart sank.

  “It was two weeks ago,” Shane continued.

  “Last week was our turn to do it,” said Flynn and flashed the A sign back at Kit. The brothers could smell which way the wind was blowing, and now it blew toward Kit.

  “Oh, right,” said Kit. “I forgot. We take turns. Howl to snap.”

  “So what?” the coyote told him. “Why should I care what you alley vermin do? I’ve got what I came for.”

  “But what if you could get you more than you came for?” said Kit. “What if I could get you double your weight in cans of Flealess food, straight from the People’s houses?”

  “You?” Coyote raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s a simple offer,” said Kit. “Give us our seeds and nuts back, and I’ll give you all the cans of Flealess food you can carry.”

  “You will?” The coyote cocked his head sideways.

  “I will,” Kit said. “Just give me two sunups’ time, and I’ll give you more food than you could ever steal from any neighborhood of Wild Ones in the whole city of the Slivered Sky.”

  “You wouldn’t be trying to pull a little trick or me, would you?” Coyote asked. “A scam? A fraud? A bit of flimflammery? A Bamboozle?”

  “Me?” Kit looked around the alley at his beaten and bruised neighbors, shivering in the morning chill. “I wouldn’t know a Bamboozle from a bumblebee. I could never dream of trying to trick a coyote as wise and well traveled as yourself.”

  “I thought I was a snail-sniffing snot scavenger?” The coyote raised a bushy eyebrow.

  “Well, that was before we got to know you.” Eeni jumped into the conversation. “Now we see that you’re shrewder than a shrew in shiny shoes, we’d be awfully glad to make this deal with you. It’s a win for us and a win for you too.”

  “But we are, of course, at your mercy.” Kit bowed.

  The coyote snorted. “You are at my mercy . . . and I will take this deal.”