f them spied Benny nearing the settlement he never failed
to jerk his tail up and down and call out the news.

At the sound of the alarm--a high-pitched chatter--every prairie dog
who wasn't at home scurried for his hole as fast as he could scamper.

Benny Badger always had to smile when he saw the villagers tumbling
through their doorways. They couldn't have done anything that would have
suited him better. Had there been a single one among the prairie dogs
that wasn't a dunce he would have run _away_ from his hole, outside the
village, to hide somewhere until Benny Badger left the place.

But the prairie dogs were too stupid to think of such a trick. They knew
no better than to rush into their houses--which was exactly what Benny
Badger wanted them to do.

And if anything happened now and then to make matters specially
unpleasant for the prairie dogs, it never troubled Benny Badger. He
seemed to grow fatter and happier than ever as time passed.

But at last he heard a bit of news one day that made him feel quite
glum.

A young deer mouse claimed to have overheard a rancher talking--the
rancher that lived about a mile from Benny Badger's home. And the deer
mouse reported that the man was going to get rid of the whole prairie
dog family. "He says they eat too much grass, and dig too many holes,"
the deer mouse declared.

Though the news upset Benny, and quite took away his appetite, for a few
moments, he began to cast about for a way to prevent such a sad affair.
If you could have seen him with a worried look on his face, anxiously
asking everybody he met to give him advice, you would have thought that
he felt very, very sorry for the prairie dogs.

But such was not the case at all. Benny Badger was feeling sorry for
himself; for he knew that if the rancher drove the villagers away he
would miss them terribly. Benny had almost given up hope of finding a
way to put an end to the rancher's plan when the deer mouse told him
another bit of news.

"He's going to build a new fence out this way--the rancher is!" the deer
mouse informed Benny. "It's coming this side of the Prairie Dog village.
And that's why the rancher wants to get rid of the Prairie Dogs."

"How do you know this?" Benny Badger asked his small friend. "Have you
been eavesdropping again?"

The deer mouse blushed. And since he made no reply, Benny Badger had to
believe him.

Still, Benny could see no way out of his difficulty. And he went home at
d