On a bright sunny morning in the forest, all the animals were gathered in the Great Meadow for the annual race. The Great Deer was to represent them, so the animals all met to decide who was to be the Great Deer. They looked at all the deer, and at last chose Dash. This made him feel very proud, but when he heard that he was to run against the fleetest runner of all the forest animals, his heart sank.
“I can never do it. They will pick out a better runner,” he thought. But right afterward as he was getting ready for the race he met Spin the Squirrel getting his coat cleaned and blackened for the race.
“How do you feel?” asked Dash.
“Tip top!” answered Spin. “If they only had chosen you instead of me for the Great Deer! You are by far the best runner.”
“Oh, no. I’ll surely lose,” said Dash.
So they had a little talk about the race, and at last Dash said, “I’ll never be able to get there. I am so fearful and timid. I wish you would get out on the course and run it with me once or twice.”
So they got a little practice in before the race to build up Dash’s courage. But Dash was “as timid as a deer.”
After a while all the other forest animals began to come. First appeared Onion the Hare in his blue and white check trousers, and not far behind him waddled up Robert the Bullfrog in an old black frock coat trimmed with olive green.
Then the servants brought up the birds in cages, for they were not allowed to fly until the race began. Henny Penny came in an old straw hat with a white rose in it. The other animals all wore their best clothes, and looked very respectable, but Henny Penny had a red apple in her mouth, which made her look quite a lady. She was great friends with all the other birds, but they were afraid of her sharp eyes and sharp beak and her still sharper tongue.
Just as all the animals were about to start, Long-Ears the Keeper stepped up and said in a very grave voice, “Hurry up now, you crickets! Why don’t you fall in behind? By how much are we behind time?”
This is an allusion to the real heroes of the race, who always get left out of the picture. Crickets are supposed to represent Patagonians, who are the best runners in the world.
So when the day of the race came, they beat out their wings, stood on their hind legs, and shot themselves off toward the goal at a rattling pace.
Dash put on his shoes and went to the starting point, which was to be found in the next meadow. All the animals, including the Henny Penny family, came and placed themselves behind their several starting points.
“Now, all ready!” cried Spin on the sidelines.
Dash trotted up. He was the only one who had his shoes on and he had only just succeeded in getting the last one on when—“Are you ready?” said Spin the Squirrel.
“Ready!” cried out all.
“Then off!” cried Spin.
And off they all went with a bound. It was easy for Dash, with the shoes, to keep ahead of the Henny Pennies, but Robert Bullfrog dashed up almost to him. But when he came to the end of his energy, and found his frock coat heavy with the weight of mud, he hobbled out of the race and sat on a lily pad with three mesquite bushes growing in it, wiping his brow. The Hare was too quick for all of them, and kept close to the goal. He knew the distance almost as well as Mother Mercy does.
The other birds, too, even the Henny Pennies, dropped off.
The Hare, pulling a few heads of spinach out of his trousers to refresh him, kept running along. He laughed and tried to bite the hind legs off Dash; but he managed to say to Spin, “I would give all the wood behind Mount Shaw to understand what sort of a thing that hare’s blood is.”
Then as the Hare was going to the water stand and coming back with several strawberries on a leaf, and giving the Bullfrog some, and a pretty close friend he was always to every frog in the pond; and as the Bullfrog was basking in the sun, shaking his head, and saying, “No; whether mine are or not, you can’t eat a tongue of the hare’s meat;” on came Porpoise the Cow, who had sprinkled herself all over with pond lily specks. Porpoise seldom ran fast, but she knew she could win, and had slipped away to come and throw dust in everybody’s eyes.
“Who won? Did I win?” asked the Crickets, who fell behind even the Tortoises and the Snails.
“You did, boys; you did,” exclaimed a Henny Penny, who had already seen the fate in a dream one night.
But Porpoise came slowly rolling along, and said to Dash in a hoarse voice, “No; you won the race.”
“Won the race! What do you mean?” asked Spin.
“Oh, that bullfrog has nothing to do but eat and sleep; the others used all their energy; and as for the hare, he is in such slumberous tranquillity that it is a miracle he is not introducing his head between his legs into his capacious mouth,” replied she.
Spin the Squirrel scratched his head.
“Have I won the race? I knew nothing of it. I had lost all hope of it.”
Sure enough, the next day some one came rushing into the Toad Chamber where Spin and others were sitting.
“Have you heard the news?” said Henny Penny. “What were you watching for? The Tortoises and Snails have been about some and are not far from it. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! in pleasure and pain!”
Star-Tooth the Tortoise, or somebody else, would seem to know best all about it, no doubt.
But a great many animals had gone near him after the race; and he must have felt that it was after all a very respectable little affair.