Frisky, the Red Fox Pup, had learned many lessons since the day he so
nearly hanged himself in the wild grape-vines.
There was the day of the first snow, for instance.
Awakening one morning, cramped and chilled because he had not lined his
bed deeply enough with leaves to keep off the cold, he peered from his
little den on the hillside with wide eyes.
The air seemed filled, as far as he could see, with tiny white feathers,
and the ground was covered with them.
He peered this way and that, wondering what kind of birds they could be
whose plumage was being shed so freely. It must be a flock large enough
to cover the whole sky, he decided, mystified.
He crept stealthily from the den, afraid, because he did not understand.
The instant his black feet touched the cold stuff, he leaped high into
the air, with a yip of fright and amazement. But when he opened his
mouth he got a taste of the falling flakes.
"Ha!" he said to himself, "that accounts for it. It is just rain turned
white."
Still, he crept warily down to Pollywog Pond for his breakfast, stepping
high, because he hated wet feet.
Arrived at the pond he stopped for a drink, when his lapping tongue came
plump against a film of something hard and shining that seemed to cover
the water. What could it be, he asked himself, lapping up a mouthful of
the snow-flakes to ease his thirst. (He wisely held them in his mouth
till they had melted, for fear of chilling his stomach.)
It was certainly very queer. Now the very trees were beginning to be
outlined in white. It made the world look quite a different place.
As for the deer, they took to a thicket of poplar, birch and spruce, on
which they could feed when the snow lay deep.
There was one other to whom winter brought a change and that was Old Man
Lynx.
Now it is very, very seldom that good luck falls right at one's feet
undeserved.
So Old Man Lynx warned himself when he came upon the muskrat in the
trap.
Of course the giant cat did not know it was a trap, as he circled around
and around the struggling rat. His green eyes gleamed hungrily in his
tawny face, and he crouched so close to the snow crust that his whiskers
dragged on the ground. His tasseled ears twitched nervously, his stubby
tail thrashed the earth and his claws were bared in a fringe across the
great awkward paws, as he crept nearer and nearer the struggling bait.
To the nostrils of the cat tribe the musky smell of the water-rat is
most tempting, and his mouth watered till he licked his jaws at thought
of the feast within such easy reach.
And yet--and yet--some spirit of the wild--some instinct of the dumb
brute who must fight to live--seemed to warn him that where man had
been, there would be trouble for him. And he circled his prey without
quite daring to close in upon it and end its squeaking protest.
Now the Hired Man at the Valley Farm had not meant the trap for Old Man
Lynx. He had placed it there on the bare chance of there being a wolf at
large in the forest around Mount Olaf.
As the midwinter dawn deepened from salmon to rose, and the snow began
to glitter in the sun's first rays, Old Man Lynx decided that the thing
was altogether too mysterious to be wholesome. Instead, he trotted down
to Lone Lake, where muskrats were supposed to be. And he promised
himself that even were it too late in the day to catch a rat, he could
at least afford the pleasure of sniffing at the chimneys to their round
houses,--those air-holes in the top, where their musky breath steamed
out, while the rats themselves lay snug and warm within.
Then, suddenly, just as Old Man Lynx was passing a snow-laden clump of
spruces, he caught a little movement in their lower branches. Circling
till he had the ribbon of the wind in his nostrils, he discovered that
it was a covey of grouse.
Grouse! How infinitely more delicious than muskrat--more tender even
than rabbit! Now indeed he was glad he had saved his appetite.
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