under the leaf carpet. It was only the shadow of a sound, but in a
wink the shrew was gone, following the love call of his mate
underground. Overhead sounded the deep and dreadful voice of a barred
owl, as it floated back to its tree top, disappointed for once of its
prey.
At midnight Ben Gunnison, the peddler, reached the little glade where
the shrew had disappeared. Trying for a short cut through the Barrens,
Ben had followed the old cattle-trail from Perth Ambov, unused for
more than a century. At first it stretched straight and plain through
the pitch-pine woods. Beyond Double Trouble and Mount Misery, it began
to wind, and by the time he had reached Four Mile he was lost. For
long he staggered under his heavy pack through thickets of scrub oak,
white-cedar swamps, and tangles of greenthorn. By the time he had
reached the little opening, he was exhausted, and putting his pack
under his head for a pillow, lay down under a great sweet-gum tree to
sleep out the night.
Just before dawn he was awakened by high-pitched, trilling, elfin
music. Opening his eyes, he saw in the light of the setting moon two
tiny things chasing each other round and round his pack, singing as
they ran. Even as he listened, he heard from overhead an ominous
cracking noise, and leaped to his feet just as a decayed stub whizzed
down, landing with a crash on his pack. As long as he lives, Ben will
believe that two fairies saved his life.
"Don't tell me," he would say. "I _saw_ 'em. Little weeny fellows half
the size of a mouse callin' me to get up. An' I got up. That's the
reason I'm here to-day, bless 'em."
IX
BLACKCROSS
After running twenty miles, old Raven Road stopped to rest under a
vast black-oak tree. Beyond its sentinel bulk was Wild-Folk Land.
Where hidden springs had kept the wet grass green all winter, the
first flower of the year had forced its way through the cold ground.
Smooth as ivory, all crimson-lake and gold-green on the outside, the
curved hollow showed a rich crimson within. Cursed with an ill name
and an evil savor, yet the skunk cabbage leads the year's procession
of flowers.
Among the dry leaves of the thickets showed the porcelain petals of a
colony of hepatica, snow-white, pale pink, violet, deep purple, pure
blue, lilac, and lavender. Beyond them was a patch of spice-bush,
whose black fragrant branches snapped brittle as glass, and whose
golden blossoms appear before the leaves. At the foot of a bank,
hidden by the scented boughs, bubbled a deep unfailing spring, and
from it a little trickle of water wound through the thicket into the
swale beyond. Growing wider and deeper with every rod, it ran through
a little valley hidden between two round, green hills, which widened
into a stretch of marshland filled with reeds and thickets of wild
rose, elderberry, and buttonbush, laced and interlaced with the
choking orange strands of that parasite, the dodder.
Beside the stream, and at times crossing it, a path, trodden deep,
twisted in and out of the marsh. It was too narrow to have been made
by human feet, nor could any man have found and followed so unerringly
the little ridges of dry going hidden away between the bogs and under
the lush growth. Packed hard by long years of use, nowhere in the
path's whole length did any paw-print show. Only in snow-time was the
white page printed deep with tracks like those of a dog, but cleaner
cut and running in a straight line instead of spraddling to one side.
Nor was there ever in these trails the little furrow which a dragging
paw makes. Only a fox could have made that long straight line, where
every paw-print was stamped in the soft snow as if with a die. From
Cold Spring to Darby Creek the long narrow valley belonged to the
fox-folk.
Close beside the spring itself, at the very edge of its fringe of
bushes, was a deep burrow that ran out into the open field, and yet
was so cunningly hidden by a rock and masked by bushes and long grass
that few humans ever suspected that a sly, old, gray fox had lived
there for a fox-lifetime, or nearly ten years. His range extended to
the swamp on the south, and up through the tangle of little wooded
hills and valleys to the north known throughout the countryside as the
Ridge.
The other end of Fox Valley, and all the Darby Creek country from
Fern Valley to Blacksnake Swamp was owned by a red-fox family. They
were larger than the gray foxes and the blood of long-ago English
foxes, brought over by fox-hunting colonial governors, ran in their
veins. To the strength and size of the American fox they added the
craft of a thousand generations of hunted foxes on English soil.
Both fox families kept, for the most part, strictly to their own
range, for poaching in a fox country always means trouble. Both ranges
were well stocked with rabbits, three varieties of mice, birds, frogs,
and the other small deer on which foxes live. Occasionally the hunters
of both families would make a foray on some far-away farm and bring
back a plump hen, a pigeon, or sometimes a tame duck. Never did the
hunter rob a near-by farm, or go twice in succession to the same
place; for it is a foolish fox who will make enemies for himself on
his own home ranges--and foolish foxes are about as common as white
crows.
The red-fox range included a number of well-hidden homes. Rarely did
they occupy the same house two seasons in succession, for experience
has taught foxes that long leases are neither sanitary nor safe. This
year they were living on the slope of a dry hillside in the very heart
of a beech wood. Long years before they had fashioned their very first
home, and during every succeeding year of occupancy had added
improvements and repairs, until it was as complete a residence as any
fox family could wish. The first burrow, which was some nine inches in
diameter, ran straight into the hillside for about three feet; then
it angled sharply along the side of a hidden rock, and ran back some
twenty feet more. From off the main shaft branched different
galleries. One led to a storehouse, and another to a chamber where the
garbage of the den was buried; for there are no better housekeepers
among the wild folk than the foxes. Last and best hidden of all was
the sleeping-room, fully twelve inches across, and carefully lined
with soft, dry grass.
The perpendicular air shaft ran from the deepest part of the tunnel to
the centre of a dense thicket on the hillside. In an irregular curve
of some twenty feet, two more entrances were dug. Both of these joined
the main shaft after describing an angle. Last of all was the
emergency exit, the final touch which makes a fox home complete. It is
always concealed carefully, and is never used except in times of great
danger. This one was dug down through a decayed chestnut stump some
two feet high, hidden in a fringe of bushes some distance up the
hillside, and wound itself among the roots, and connected with the
sleeping-chamber. Back of the main entrance lay a chestnut log fully
three feet through, and screened from the hilltop by a thicket
interlaced with greenbrier. This was the watchtower and sun-parlor of
the fox family. From it they could survey the whole valley, while one
bound would bring them to any one of the regular entrances.
On a day in early April, full of sunshine and showers blowing across a
soft spring sky, the old dog fox approached the den, carrying a
cottontail rabbit slung over one shoulder. As he came to the main
entrance, he suddenly stopped and, with one foot raised, stood
motionless, sniffing a faint scent from the depths of the burrow.
Without entering, he laid the rabbit down at the lip of the opening
and withdrew; for no dog fox may enter his burrow after the cubs
arrive. There were three of them--blind, lead-colored little kittens,
who nuzzled and whimpered against Mother Fox's warm body and fed
frantically every hour or so during the first days of their new life.
For the next three weeks Father Fox hunted for five. Squirrels, red
and gray, chipmunks, birds, rabbits, and scores and scores of mice,
found their way into the den.
The ninth day of the cubs' life on earth marked an event more
important to Mother Fox than the Declaration of Independence, or the
promulgation of the Suffrage Amendment. On that date, all three of her
cubs opened their eyes! Twelve nights later, when the May moonlight
made a new heaven and a new earth, they took their first journey. It
was only twenty feet, but it covered the distance from one world to
another. For a moment three sharp little noses peered out wonderingly
at the new world. It was roofed with a shimmering sky instead of damp
earth, and was big and boundless and very, very beautiful. Altogether
the newcomers approved of it highly, although there did seem to be a
great waste of air, and it was not so warm and cozy as the world
underground.
[Illustration: THE FOX FAMILY]
Then the trio of little heads disappeared, and Mother Fox came out and
winnowed the air through the marvelous mesh of her nostrils. Convinced
that all was safe, she called her cubs out with one of those wild-folk
signals pitched below the range of human ears. A moment later, the
cubs were out and about in the dangerous, delightful world of
out-of-doors. With their long, sprawly legs and heads too big for
their bodies, they had something of the lumbering, appealing looks
that puppies have. Their broad foreheads and pricked-up ears seemed
enormous compared with their little faces. Each one in turn put his
head to one side and looked engagingly at the new world. With their
soft woolly backs and round little stomachs, they seemed made to be
patted and cuddled. Yet, playful and confiding as they appeared, a
profound wisdom and craft looked out from their young eyes, which is
never seen in those of any other animal.
Mother Fox watched them with much pride. Forgotten were the nine cubs
of the year before, and the quartettes and sextettes of many a
yesteryear. Never before, in her opinion, had there ever been three
cubs so wise and beautiful and remarkable as these. Suddenly she
raised her voice in the squalling screech of a vixen. Again and again
the fierce uncanny sound shuddered away over the hills, and a pair of
newly arrived summer boarders, who were strolling along Raven Road in
the moonlight, returned with exceeding haste to old Mose Butler's
farmhouse, and reported to their grinning host that they had heard the
scream of a panther.
From far down Darby Creek came the answering bark of the old fox. Only
the sudden explosive quality of the sound made it resemble in any way
the bark of a dog. A curious screeching quality of tone ran through
it, and it sounded as if made by some animal who was trying to bark
but had never really learned how. Then, with the disconcerting
suddenness of a fox, Father Fox stood before his new family for the
first time. From his narrow jaws swung a fringe of plump mice, with
their tails ingeniously crossed so that they could all be carried by
one grip of the narrow jaws. Dropping them, the old fox stared
solemnly at his family grouped in the moonlight, and then growled deep
and approvingly in his throat. Two of the cubs wore the usual clouded
pale yellow of a young red fox. The third, however, showed, faintly
outlined, a velvety black face, ears, muzzle, and legs, with a silky
black streak down his back, crossed at the shoulders by a similar
stripe shading into reddish and silver-gray, while his little black
tail had the silver tip which is the hall-mark of the rare cross-fox,
which is sometimes born into a red-fox family.
From that night the training of the little fox family began. Father
Fox no longer brought his kill directly to the den. Instead, he hid it
not too carefully some fifty yards away, and the cubs learned to know
the scent of food--flesh or fowl--and to dig it out from under piles
of leaves or brush, or even from under an inch or so of freshly dug
earth. Then, with tiny growls, they would crouch and steal forward and
pounce upon the defenseless kill, with tremendous exhibitions of
craft and ferocity. They went out on little hunting-trips by night,
with Mother Fox, to lonely hillside pastures, where she taught them to
hunt field-mice in the withered grass. In the starlight, they would
steal up to some promising clump, and rising on their hind legs peer
far forward, with ears pricked up to catch the faintest squeak and
eyes alert to note the tiniest movement in the grass. They learned to
spring and pounce like lightning, with outspread paws, just ahead of
where the grass stirred ever so slightly. If successful, they would
kill with one nip a plump, round-headed, short-tailed meadow-mouse.
Every night they went farther and farther, until at last with Mother
Fox they covered the whole range, at the brisk walk which is the usual
hunting-gait of a fox, with frequent pauses and sniffings and
listenings.
It was Father Fox who first took them into the sunlight, which was as
strange and unnatural to fox children as midnight out-of-doors would
be to a human child. He it was who taught them, when in danger, to
stand still and keep on standing still--one of the most difficult
courses in the wild-folk curriculum. Sometimes they met man, whose
approach through the woods or across the fields sounded as loud to the
fox children as the rumble of an auto-truck would sound to the human
child. Crouched in the bleached tawny grass, absolutely immovable, the
foxes looked so much like tussocks that it would have taken a trained
eye indeed to have discovered them.
Just as the cubs had grown old and wise enough to be left in and
about the burrows alone, the Sword fell. That night both of the old
foxes were abroad on a hunt too long for the untrained muscles of the
cubs. Awaiting their return, the little foxes were playing and
frolicking silently around the den. They had learned that the scent of
man or dog means death to foxes, and to seek safety in their burrow at
any strange sound. No one of them knew that a shadow in the air, which
drifted silently nearer to the den, might conceal any danger. Suddenly
the shadow fell, and seemed to blot out the little straw-colored cub
farthest from the burrow. He had but time for a terrified whicker,
when a double set of steel-like talons clamped through his soft fur
clear to his heart, and in a second the little body shot up through
the air and disappeared in the darkness. A few moments later, from a
far-away clump of trees, sounded the deep sinister "Hoo, hoo, hoo,
hoo, hoo" of the great horned owl.
Once having found the fox family, Death followed fast on its trail.
One morning the largest cub awoke, and decided to take a stroll by
himself in the sunlight, without waiting for Father Fox to come, and
without waking the rest of the family, who slept curled up together in
the sleeping-room of the den. Stealing out of the main burrow, the
little cub sniffed the air wisely, and examined the landscape from
under wrinkled brows with an air of profound consideration. At first
he followed a winding path which ran through a bit of woodland where
Mother Fox had taken him once before by night. Finding no trace of
game there, he left the path and climbed up a rocky hillside half
covered with brush and trees. Just as he was turning a corner of a
little rocky ledge which jutted out in front of him, he heard a low
thick hiss. Directly in front of him, in an irregular loop, lay a
hazel-brown snake, dappled with blunt Y's of a rich chestnut color,
its head and neck being the color of rusty copper.
[Illustration: DEATH IN THE DARK]
For a second the young fox looked into the lidless, deadly eyes of the
copperhead, with their strange oval pupils, the hall-mark of the fatal
pit-vipers. All in one flash, the grim jaws of the snake gaped open,
the two movable fangs of the upper jaw unfolded and thrust straight
out like tiny spearheads, and the fatal crooked needles stabbed deep
in the cub's soft side. Growling fiercely in his little throat, he
clenched his sharp teeth through the snake's spine; but even as he
closed his jaws, the fatal virus touched the tide of his life and he
fell forward.
The wild folk have no tears, nor may they show their sorrow by the
sobs and wailing of humankind, yet there was something in the dumb
despair of the two foxes who had followed the trail of their lost cub,
as they hung over the soft little body, that showed that the love of
our lesser brethren for their little ones is akin to the love of
humankind. Thereafter all the watchfulness and the love and the hope
of the two were concentrated on the little fox with the black cross on
his back. Night and day Mother Fox guarded him. Day and night Father
Fox taught and trained him, until he had acquired much of the lore of
fox-kind. He learned to catch birds and mice and frogs and squirrels,
and even the keen-eared cottontail rabbit, whose eyes can see forward
and backward equally well. He learned, too, the lessons of prudence
and foresight which keep foxes alive when ice and snow have locked
many of their larders. Once, when he was crossing a pasture with
Father Fox, the latter stopped and stood like a pointing dog, one
velvety black bent forefoot in the air, while with outstretched muzzle
he sniffed the faintest of warm scents, which seemed to float from a
clump of tangled dry grass. Stealing forward like a shadow, the old
fox sprang at the tussock. Before he landed, a plump quail buzzed out
of the cover like a bullet, to be caught by the fox in mid-air.
Underneath a fringe of dry grass was a round nest of pure white,
sharp-pointed eggs--so many of them that they were heaped up in
layers.
After eating the quail, the old fox carefully carried off the eggs and
hid them under layers of damp moss, where they would keep indefinitely
and be a resource in the famine days that were yet to come.
Another day the cub learned the advantage of teamwork. On that day the
two old foxes were hunting together, and, as usual, Blackcross tagged
along. Near the middle of a great field, a flock of killdeer were
feeding--those loud-voiced plover, which wear two rings around their
white necks. For a moment the two foxes stood motionless, staring at
the distant birds. Then, without a sound, Mother Fox turned back. For
a moment Blackcross could watch her as she made a wide detour around
the field, and then she disappeared from sight. Father Fox lay still
for several minutes, with his wise head resting on his forepaws. Then,
while Blackcross stayed behind, the old fox started deliberately
toward the flock of feeding birds. At times he would stop, and bound
high in the air, and scurry up and down, waving his flaunting brush
and cutting curious capers, moving gradually nearer and nearer to the
flock.
The killdeer, which are wise birds in spite of their loud voices,
moved farther and farther away toward the end of the pasture, ready to
spring into the air and flash away on their long narrow wings if the
fox came too near, but evidently much interested in his antics as they
fed. Gradually the curveting fox edged the flock clear across the
field, until they were close to a thicket that lay between the field
and a patch of woods beyond. Then he redoubled his efforts, prancing
and bounding and rolling over and over, while his fluffy tail showed
like a plume above the long grass, and the birds stopped feeding and
watched him with evident curiosity.
Suddenly, when the attention of the whole flock was fixed on the
performing fox, there was a rustle in the thicket, and out flashed a
tawny shape. Before the flock could spring into the air, Mother Fox
had caught one bird in her teeth and beaten down another with her
paws.
Another morning Blackcross learned what happens to foxes who poach on
their neighbor's preserves. In the early dawn-light, he was loping
along the upper end of the valley with Father Fox. Suddenly the fur
bristled all along the latter's back, and he gave a little churring
growl. Right ahead of him, trotting along a path made by a generation
of red-fox pads, came the old gray fox who lived by Cold Spring, a
dead cottontail rabbit swung over one shoulder. The poacher was caught
with the game. With another growl, the old red fox sprang at the
trespasser. The gray fox was a mile from his burrow, and knowing that
the red fox could outpace him, decided to fight for his booty. With a
quick flirt of his head, he tossed the rabbit into a near-by bush, and
with bristling back awaited the attack.
Walking stiff-legged like two dogs, and growling deep in their
throats, the two came together, until they stood sidewise to each
other, sparring for an opening. Finally, the old red fox snapped at
the other's foreleg, with a movement more like the slash of a wolf
than the bite of a dog. The gray fox dropped his head, and the bared
teeth of the two snicked together. Again the red fox made the same
lead, and met with the same block. The third time he feinted, and as
the other dropped his head, whirled and brought his brush, with a
blinding, stinging swish, across the eyes of the gray fox. Before the
latter could recover, the narrow jaws of the red fox had met in the
soft flesh just above the gray hind leg. A wolf would have hamstrung
his opponent and killed him at his leisure; but foxes rarely fight to
the death. As the old gray fox felt the rending teeth tear through his
soft skin, he yelped, tore himself loose, and started full-speed for
his den. For two hundred yards the red fox pursued him, with such
swiftness that he managed to nip his unprotected hind quarters several
times. At each bite the fleeing gray fox yelped with the high, shrill,
sorrowful note of a hurt little dog; and when Father Fox returned to
claim the spoils of victory, all that could be seen of the other was a
gray streak moving rapidly toward Cold Spring.
As the cub reached his full stature, he ranged farther and farther
afield with the two old foxes. He learned all the hiding and camping
places of the range, and how to sleep out in a blaze of sunlight in
some deserted field, looking for all the world like a tussock of tawny
blackened grass, or, if so be that he hunted by day and slept by
night, he found that he wore a blanket on his back which kept him warm
even during the coldest nights. As for his unprotected nose and four
paddies, he wrapped them up warm in the fluffy rug of his thick soft
brush. By the time frost had come, his fur had grown long and glossy
and very beautiful, with the velvet cross of midnight-black bordered
with old-gold, silver, and tawny-pink, his black brush waving aloft
like a white-tipped plume.
Death came with the frost, in the form of traps, hounds and hunters.
Old Father Fox taught him how to escape them all. Many years ago he
had lived across the hills on the lonely Barrack, where the Deans and
the Blakesleys and the Howes and the Baileys and the Reeds have a
far-away hill country of their own. Old Fred Dean lived there, and
prided himself on both the wild and the tame crops which he raised on
his hill farm. He made the whitest, sweetest maple sugar in the
world, and harvested hickories, chestnuts, butternuts, and even
hazel-nuts. It was his fur crop, however, which was the most
profitable. Foxes, raccoons, skunks, muskrat, mink--the old man knew
how to trap them all.
In Father Fox's second year, he was caught in a trap which Fred had
cunningly hidden in the snow among a maze of cattle tracks--the last
place where a fox would suspect danger. The fox finally managed to
work his imprisoned foot out of the gripping jaws; but it had cost him
four toes to learn that the scent of man or iron meant death to foxes.
He never forgot, and he taught Blackcross to fear the tiniest whiff of
either. As for dogs, the old fox taught his cub that no dog can
overtake a fox going uphill or in the rough, and that shifting sand
and running water are the fox's friends, since his scent will lie in
neither. He taught him all the cut-offs, the jumps, and the run-backs
of the range, and finally the cherished fortresses where, as a last
resort, he might take refuge.