truth she was little learned in woodcraft, and by her mere eyes could
scarce have tracked an elephant. But her heart was clutched by a grip
of ice, and she went as one tranced. All at once, however, over the
mossy crest of a rock, she saw a sight which brought her to a
standstill. Her eyes and her mouth opened wide in sheer amazement.
Then the terrible tension relaxed. A strong shudder passed through her,
and she was her steadfast self again. A smile broke up the sober lines
of her face.
"Sure enough," she muttered; "the child was right. She knows a sight
more about the beasts than I do."
And this is what she saw. Through the hoary arcades of the fir-wood
walked a huge black bear, with none other than Miranda trotting by its
side, and playfully stroking its rich coat. The great animal would
pause from time to time, merely to nuzzle at the child with its snout or
lick her hand with its narrow red tongue; but the course it was making
was straight for the cabin. Kirstie stood motionless for some minutes,
watching the strange scene; then, stepping out from her shelter, she
hastened after them. So engrossed were they with each other that she
came up undiscovered to within some twenty paces of them. Then she
called out:
"Miranda, where _have_ you been?"
The child stopped, looked around, but still clung to Kroof's fur.
"Oh, mother!" she cried, eager and breathless, and trying to tell
everything at once, "I was all lost--and I was just going to be eaten
up--and the dear, good, big bear came and frightened the panther
away--and we were just going home--and do come and speak to the dear,
lovely, big bear! Oh, don't let it go away! don't let it!"
But on this point Kroof had her own views. It was Miranda she had
adopted, not Kirstie; and she felt a kind of jealousy of Miranda's
mother. Even while Miranda was speaking, the bear swung aside and
briskly shambled off, leaving the child half in tears.
It was a thrilling story which Miranda had to tell her mother that
evening, while the black-and-white cow was getting milked, and while
Michael, the calf, was having its supper of milk and hay tea. It made a
profound impression on Kirstie's quick and tolerant mind. She at once
realised the value to Miranda of such an affection as Kroof's. Most
mothers would have been crazed with foolish fear at the situation, but
Kirstie Craig was of no such weak stuff. She saw in it only a strong
shield for Miranda against the gravest perils of the wood.
*A ROYAL MARAUDER[1]*
[1] This is the eleventh chapter of "RED FOX: the Story of His
Adventurous Career in the Ringwaak Wilds and of His Final Triumph over
the Enemies of His Kind."
The new lair on the ridge, being little more than a cleft in the rock,
had been accepted as a mere temporary affair. Near by, however, was a
deep and well-drained pocket of dry earth, hard to come at, and
surrounded by an expanse of rocky debris where scent would not lie.
This was the place the foxes needed for security; and here, as soon as
the frost was well out, and the mother fox ready to resume her full
share of the hunting, the two dug out a new burrow, which ran far under
an overhanging rock. Hither, with great satisfaction, they transferred
the bright-eyed woolly whelps. So secure was the retreat that they were
comparatively careless about hiding the entrance or removing the
evidences of their occupancy. In a little while the ground about the
hole was littered with the skins of rabbits, woodchucks, squirrels, with
feathers, and with musk-rat tails; while about the old den in the bank
below no such remnants had been allowed to collect.
In this difficult retreat Red Fox and his family had few neighbours to
intrude upon their privacy. Over the naked ridge-crest the winds blew
steadily, sometimes humming to a gale; but they never disturbed the
quiet of that deep pocket in the rocks, with its little plot of bright,
bare soil where the young foxes played and sunned themselves. No matter
what the direction of the wind, no matter from what quarter the driven
rain came slanting, the hollow was perfectly protected. On the top of
the bare rock which partly overhung it from the north Red Fox would
sometimes lie and watch, with eyes half-closed and mouth half-open, the
world of green and brown and purple and blue outspread below and around
him. Far down, on both sides of the ridge, he would note the farmers of
both valleys getting in their crops, and the ceaseless, monotonous
toiling of the patient teams. And far over to the eastward he would eye
the bold heights of old Ringwaak, with the crow-hunted fir-groves on its
flanks, and plan to go foraging over there some day, for sheer
restlessness of curiosity.
But though neighbours were few up here, there was one pair on whom Red
Fox and his mate looked with strong disapproval, not unmixed with
anxiety. On an inaccessible ledge, in a ravine a little way down the
other side of the ridge, toward Ringwaak, was the nest of a white-headed
eagle. It was a great, untidy, shapeless mass, a cart-load of sticks,
as it were, apparently dropped from the skies upon this bare ledge, but
in reality so interwoven with each point of rock, and so braced in the
crevices, that no tempest could avail to jar its strong foundations. In
a hollow in the top of this mass, on a few wisps of dry grass mixed with
feathers and fur, huddled two half-naked, fierce-eyed nestlings, their
awkward, sprawling, reddish bodies beginning to be sprinkled with short
black pin-feathers. All around the outer edges of this huge nest, and
on the rocks below it, were the bones of rabbits, and young lambs, and
minks, and woodchucks, with claws, and little hoofs, and bills, and
feathers, a hideous conglomeration that attested both the appetites of
the nestlings and the hunting prowess of the wide-winged, savage-eyed
parents.
Of the eagle pair, the larger, who was the female, had her aerial range
over Ringwaak, and the chain of lonely lakes the other side of Ringwaak.
But the male did all his hunting over the region of the settlements and
on toward the Ottanoonsis Valley. Every morning, just after sunrise,
his great wings went winnowing mightily just over the crest of the
ridge, just over the lofty hollow where Red Fox had his lair. And as the
dread shadow, with its sinister rustling of stiff pinions, passed by,
the little foxes would shrink back into their den, well taught by their
father and mother.
When the weather was fine and dry, it was Red Fox's custom to betake
himself, on his return from the night's hunting, to his safe "lookout"
on the rocky summit above the den, and there, resting with his nose on
his fore-paws, to watch the vast and austere dawn roll up upon the
world. Sometimes he brought his prey--when it was something worth
while, like a weasel or woodchuck or duck or rabbit--up to this lonely
place to be devoured at leisure, beyond the solicitude of his mate and
the irrepressible whimperings of the puppies. He would lie there in the
mystic spreading of the grey transparencies of dawn till the first long
fingers of gold light touched his face, and the thin flood of amber and
rose washed all over the bald top of the rock. He would watch, with
ceaseless interest, the mother eagle swoop down with narrowed wings into
the misty shadows of the valley, then mount slowly, questing, along the
slopes of Ringwaak, and finally soar high above the peak, a slowly
gyrating speck against the young blue. He would watch the male spring
into the air resolutely, beat up the near steep, wing low over his rock,
and sail majestically down over the valley farms. Later he would see
them return to the nest, from any point of the compass as it might
chance, sometimes with a big lake trout snatched from the industrious
fish-hawks, sometimes with a luckless mallard from the reed-beds
southward, sometimes with a long-legged, pathetic white lamb from the
rough upland pastures. With keenest interest, and no small
appreciation, he would watch the great birds balance themselves, wings
half-uplifted, on the edge of the nest, and with terrible beak and claws
rend the victim to bloody fragments. He marvelled at the insatiable
appetites of those two ugly nestlings, and congratulated himself that
his four playful whelps were more comely and less greedy.
One morning when, in the grey of earliest dawn, he climbed to his
retreat with a plump woodchuck in his jaws, it chanced he was in no
hurry for his meal. Dropping the limp body till he should feel more
relish for it, he lay down to rest and contemplate the waking earth. As
he lay, the sun rose. The female eagle sailed away toward Ringwaak.
The male beat up, and up, high above the ridge, and Red Fox paid no more
attention to him, being engrossed in the antics of a porcupine which was
swinging in a tree-top far below.
Suddenly he heard a sharp, hissing rush of great wings in the air just
above him, and glanced upward astonished. The next instant he felt a
buffeting wind, huge wings almost smote him in the face,--and the dead
woodchuck, not three feet away, was snatched up in clutching talons, and
borne off into the air. With a furious snarl he jumped to his feet; but
the eagle, with the prize dangling from his claws, was already far out
of reach, slanting down majestically toward his nest.
The insolence and daring of this robbery fixed in Red Fox's heart a
fierce desire for vengeance. He stole down to the ravine that held the
eyrie, and prowled about for hours, seeking a place where he could climb
to the ledge. It was quite inaccessible, however; and the eagles,
knowing this, looked down upon the prowlings with disdainful serenity.
Then he mounted the near-by cliff and peered down directly into the
nest. But finding himself still as far off as ever, and the eagles
still undisturbed, he gave up the hope of an immediate settlement of his
grudge, and lay in wait for the chances of the wilderness. He was frank
enough, however, in his declaration of war; for whenever the eagle went
winging low over his rocky lookout, he would rise and snarl up at him
defiantly. The great bird would bend his flight lower, as if to accept
this challenge; but having a wise respect for those long jaws and white
fangs which the fox displayed so liberally, he took care not to come
within their reach.
A few days later, while Red Fox was away hunting down in the valley, the
fox-puppies were playing just in the mouth of the den, when they saw
their slim mother among the rocks. In a puppy-like frolic of welcome
they rushed to meet her, feeling secure in her nearness. When they were
half-way across the open in front of the den, there came a sudden shadow
above them. Like a flash they scattered,--all but one, who crouched
flat and stared irresolutely. There was a dreadful whistling sound in
the air, a pounce of great flapping wings and wide-reaching talons, a
strangled yelp of terror. And before the mother fox's leap could reach
the spot, the red puppy was snatched up and carried away to the beaks of
the eaglets.
When he learned about this, Red Fox felt such fury as his philosophic
spirit had never known before. He paid another futile visit to the foot
of the eagles' rock; and afterward, for days, wasted much time from his
hunting in the effort to devise some means of getting at his foe. He
followed the eagle's flight and foraging persistently, seeking to be on
the spot when the robber made a kill. But the great bird had such a
wide range that this effort seemed likely to be a vain one. In whatever
region Red Fox lay in wait, in some other would the eagle make his kill.
With its immeasurable superiority in power of sight, the royal marauder
had no trouble in avoiding his enemy's path, so that Red Fox was under
surveillance when he least suspected it.
It was one day when he was not thinking of eagles or of vengeance that
Red Fox's opportunity came. It was toward evening, and for a good
half-hour he had been quite out of sight, watching for a wary old
woodchuck to venture from its hole. As he lay there, patient and
moveless, he caught sight of a huge black snake gliding slowly across
the open glade. He hesitated, in doubt whether to attack the snake or
keep on waiting for the woodchuck. Just then came that whistling sound
in the air which he knew so well. The snake heard it, too, and darted
toward the nearest tree, which chanced to be a bare young birch sapling.
It had barely reached the foot of the tree when the feathered
thunderbolt out of the sky fell upon it, clutching it securely with both
talons about a foot behind the head.
Easily and effectively had the eagle made his capture; but, when he
tried to rise with his prey, his broad wings beat the air in vain. At
the instant of attack the snake had whipped a couple of coils of its
tail around the young birch-tree, and that desperate grip the eagle
could not break. Savagely he picked at the coils, and then at the
reptile's head, preparing to take the prize off in sections if
necessary.
Red Fox's moment, long looked for and planned for, had come. His rush
from cover was straight and low, and swift as a dart; and his jaws
caught the eagle a slashing cut on the upper leg. Fox-like, he bit and
let go; and the great bird, with a yelp of pain and amazement, whirled
about, striking at him furiously with beak and wings. He got one buffet
from those wings which knocked him over; and the eagle, willing to shirk
the conflict, disengaged his talons from the snake and tried to rise.
But in an instant Red Fox was upon him again, reaching up for his neck
with a lightning-like ferocity that disconcerted the bird's defence. At
such close quarters the bird's wings were ineffective, but his rending
beak and steel-like talons found their mark in Red Fox's beautiful ruddy
coat, which was dyed with crimson in a second.
For most foxes the king of the air would have proved more than a match;
but the strength and cleverness of Red Fox put the chance of battle
heavily in his favour. In a few seconds he would have had the eagle
overborne and helpless, and would have reached his throat in spite of
beak and claw. But at this critical moment the bird found an unexpected
and undeserved ally. The snake which he had attacked, being desperately
wounded, was thrashing about in the effort to get away to some hiding.
Red Fox happened to step upon it in the struggle; and instantly, though
blindly, it threw a convulsive coil about his hind legs. Angrily he
turned, and bit at the constricting coil. And while he was tearing at
it, seeking to free himself, the eagle recovered, raised himself with
difficulty, and succeeded in flopping up into the air. Bedraggled,
bloody, and abjectly humiliated, he went beating over the forest toward
home; and Red Fox, fairly well satisfied in spite of the incompleteness
of his victory, proceeded to refresh himself by a hearty meal of snake.
He felt reasonably certain that the big eagle would give both himself
and his family a wide berth in the future.
Made at the
Temple Press
Letchworth
in Great Britain