WARTON AND THE TRADERS

Setting out (as in a previous adventure) to exchange home-canned goodies with his Aunt Toolia, toad Warton discovers that a wildcat has been terrorizing the area and that his aunt has vanished. He finds her in the dreaded Bog, nursing a starving fawn who was wounded fleeing the wildcat; and, always the good samaritan, he digs in to help her. This requires bargaining with a pack of trader wood rats--Warton's part is to help them get rid of the wildcat, which he does eventually though his original hare-and-hedgehog-style race into the quicksand fails to do the trick. The rats are committed traders who will neither accept nor give favors; every transaction must be a swap--and their strict adherence to this code adds some spark not provided by the stock predator threat and the goody-goody toads.