shadow said:

"Good evening, Brother Fox." Reddy whirled about. His heart seemed to come right up in his throat. It was too late to run, for there was Old Man Coyote right in front of him. Reddy tried to swell himself up just as he so often did before the little people who were afraid of him, but somehow he couldn't. "Go-good evening, Mr. Coyote," he replied, but his voice sounded very weak. "I hear you've come to make your home on the Green Meadows. I-I hope we will be the best of friends."

"Of course we will," replied Old Man Coyote. "I'm always the best of friends with those who are not afraid of me, and I hear that you are not afraid of anybody."

"N-no, I-I'm not afraid of anybody," said Reddy. "Everybody is afraid of me." All the time he was speaking, he was slowly backing away, and in spite of his bold words, he was shaking with fear. Old Man Coyote saw it and he chuckled to himself.

"I'm not, Brother Fox!" he suddenly snapped, in a deep, horrid sounding voice. "Gr-r-r-r-r, I'm not!" As he said it, all the hair along his back stood on end, and he showed all his great, cruel-looking teeth.

Instead of holding his ground as Jimmy Skunk would have done, Reddy leaped backward, tripped over his own tail, fell, and then scrambled to his feet with a frightened yelp, and ran as he had never run before in all his life. And as he ran, he heard Old Man Coyote laughing, and all the Green Meadows and the Green Forest heard it:

"Ho, ho, ho! Ha, ha, ha! Hee, hee, hee! Ho, ha, hee, ho! Reddy Fox isn't afraid! Ho, ho!"

Reddy ground his teeth in rage, but he kept on running.