This explained everything. Mr. Porcupine was a spy. He would cross the front line disguised as a rodent doctor, part of the wounded exchange program, bound for the military hospital at St. Golliwoq. Once inside Toyland territory he’d throw off his disguise and travel about with a sharp eye out for troop movements and artillery batteries, calling himself a circus owner looking for new acts.
As the back of the caravan passed, the colonel clambered on, pulling Von Ratte up after him. When the caravan emerged from the trees, some rat dragoons came galloping up and, shouting for the gate to be opened, they escorted it inside.
The caravan trundled deeper into the compound and then came to a stop. De Filbert cut two peepholes in the canvas with his saber and they saw they were next to a long wooden trough which stood inside another barbed wire enclosure of considerable size. A line of bowlegged wrangler rats in ten-gallon hats and with barbed wire braided into their tails were passing buckets filled with a steamy slurry of sawdust gruel from hand to hand. As the colonel watched, a wrangler dumped the last of it and then banged on the trough with the empty bucket.
Out of the darkness at the far end of the enclosure rushed a good fifty beaver moving on all fours. Teenagers, judged the colonel. Beaver were notoriously nearsighted. These hadn’t yet taken the eye test for the glasses they’d need to qualify for licenses to walk on their hind legs.
Colonel de Filbert uttered a curse. Better Dutch Elm disease than beaver. The very name made pine forests tremble and moan like the night wind working at the windows of a nursery dollhouse where a lonely toy yearns for sleep.
He and Von Ratte exchange pale glances. Then they returned to the peepholes to watch the beaver shoulder and fight each other to get at the skimpy gruel until the trough was dry.
Now the circus owner stepped up on the driver’s seat of the caravan. He threw off his hat, duster, and long-tailed quill overcoat, revealing himself to be no porcupine but a beaver. And no mere beaver. The heavy gold chain now visible across his chest proclaimed him to be Big Beaver himself, Grand Master of All the Beaver Lodges.
As the beaver in the enclosure grunted loudly and unhappily around the empty trough, Big Beaver said, “My dear young friends, traditionally our people have held ourselves aloof from the Battle for Christmas, judging our rodent brothers effete city folk, delicate nibblers and noshers who scorned our lumberjack appetites. In its wisdom, our High Council has always asked this simple question: ‘What’s in it for yours truly? Candy canes? Sugarplums?’ ” Big Beaver shook his smiling head.
Here a young beaver stepped forward. “Please, sir,” he asked, nodding at the trough, “can I have some more?”
“More?” said Big Beaver. “More? Oh, Oliver, you shall have much more. This very dawn you and I will breakfast on whole regiments of wooden soldiers freshly cut from juicy pine.” He smacked his lips. “There’s richness for you. Yes, we beaver will grow fat beyond the dreams of gluttony. Just before dawn you will take up your positions.” Big Beaver mimicked Oliver’s tiny voice to ask, “ ‘But please, sir, how can we directionally deprived young beaver find our positions in the darkness?’ ”
Beaver, the colonel knew, had no sense of direction. Anything beyond upstream and downstream and they were lost.
“My fine young beaver,” continued Big Beaver, “if you’re serious about breakfast, let these be your bywords: Follow the Glitterati!” With this oratorical flourish he stepped down to the pounding beaver tail applause and went over to confer with a circle of rat brass.
“ ‘Glitterati’?” asked Von Ratte.
“It’s rodent for will-o’-the-wisps.”
“I don’t get it,” said Von Ratte.
“Neither do I,” said the colonel. But he was more concerned with the image he had of a horde of hungry young beaver chasing wooden soldiers from the battlefield like wide-eyed, terrified gingerbread men. “You were right,” he admitted. “We’ve got to warn our people to call off the Big Push.”
Von Ratte looked around hopelessly at the barbed wire and hostile garrison.
A moment later, a rat dragoon vaulted up into the driver’s seat, turned the caravan around, and drove out the compound gate. He parked it in a garage beside the entrance, took the brass wind-up key, and left, closing the doors behind him.
Astonished by their sudden luck, the colonel and Von Ratte stretched out among the sacks. They’d wait until the coast was clear, sneak outside, and run like hell back to the Toyland lines. The Jumping Jacks in Signals would semaphore back to the high command. Orders for a disciplined pull back of the wooden regiments would come down the chain of command. Maybe a concentration of tin armor and a sustained artillery barrage could fill in the gap in the line.
Suddenly the colonel sat up straight. Hadn’t he heard a click back there when the garage doors closed? He jumped down and checked. They were padlocked in.
They lit the caravan’s lantern and searched the garage without finding another way out. Two hours to dawn. “Let’s use our old noggins here,” urged the colonel. “Why lock the garage? What are they protecting?” He got up into the caravan. Von Ratte followed close behind with the lantern. The colonel thrust his saber into a gunnysack and watched as a stream of liquid silver poured out into his cupped hand. Then he poked at the puddle of silver with a finger. “Minced tinsel!” he exclaimed.
“Spanglesmith, my ass,” said Von Ratte. “When he left the estaminet our Mr. Porcupine-slash-Big Beaver paid a little visit to the local dealer in black-market tinsel.”
The colonel nodded. “They’re going to use the caravan like a tinsel spreader and make a trail the beaver can follow by moonlight.”
Von Ratte brightened. “Hey, that means they’ll have to come back for it.” Then he sagged. “By then it’ll be too late to warn anyone.” With a shrug he said, “Minced tinsel. Who’da thunk it. Awhile back I dreamed of these seven little Hi-Ho brothers who sang a lot and mined kriskringlite in Tinseltown. Funny, right?”
The colonel knew toy dreams often pre-shadow some human event. So what? The dreamer never sees it come to pass. He blew out the lantern and turned away from the glow behind Von Ratte’s lapels. His noggin worked better in the dark.
As the colonel explained his plan, they heard rat voices outside and a key in a padlock. The nutcracker surprised the two dragoons come for the caravan, holding them in armpit headlocks until they passed out from lack of air. They left them both, gagged and tied up back-to-back to one of the garage uprights.
Von Ratte, in his rat-dragoon greatcoat, backed the caravan out of the garage and waved to the guards at the gate. Beyond the compound barbed wire they could hear the wrangler rats snapping their fierce tails, trying to whip the beaver into a herd. Then the caravan was rolling down the trail toward the road with the colonel in back shoveling tinsel out in double handfuls and the moon above them sailing high and free.
When they reached the road, Von Ratte called, “Now where?”
“Make like we’re heading for the Front,” said De Filbert. With no time to warn the high command, maybe they could lead the beaver off on a long wild-goose chase.
After a few minutes, Von Ratte called back, “We’re coming to a fork in the road. Call it. Left or right?”
“Take the one that looks the less traveled.”
Von Ratte chose the right lane and that seemed to make all the difference. Before long the lane had turned and was running parallel to the Front.
They passed a ruined stone barn. “Hey,” shouted Von Ratte, “Now I know where we are. I scouted this area last year during the big Scandahoovian scare.” A chance sighting of picnicking rat senior citizens had sparked a rumor the Gray Norwegian breed had thrown in with the Rodent Alliance.