THE FOILING OF THE TRAPS
One night soon after these painful episodes, while the moonlight was yet
bright on the glittering wilderness, the two foxes were playing together
in the shining lane which the snow-covered channel of the brook made
through the forest. Their wounds had given little trouble to their hardy
and healthy flesh. Their hunting had been good in the early part of the
night. They were young, extremely well satisfied with themselves and with
each other; and the only occupation that met their mood was to chase each
other round and round in short circles, leaping over each other’s backs,
and occasionally grappling, rising on their hind legs, and biting at each
other’s throats with every pretence of ferocity. Unlike dogs, they made
no noise in their play, except for the hushed rustle and patter of
scurrying and pushing feet, the occasional swish and crackle of the
bushes they disturbed.
Suddenly, as they met after a circling rush, they checked themselves as
they were just about to grapple, and stood motionless, staring at a
strange trail. It was the track of a man on snow-shoes. Their noses,
anxiously inquiring, presently assured them that the trail was many hours
old. Then they subjected it to the most wondering and searching
examination. Surely there could be no creature with such stupendous feet
as that inhabiting their wilderness. But, if there were, it behoved them
to find out all about it, the more securely to avoid encountering such a
monster.
About these great tracks, and especially near the centre of each, where
the depression was deepest, there clung the strong man scent, which
puzzled them the more as they knew that the feet of man made no such
prints. Then Red Fox identified the scent still more exactly, recognizing
it as that of his especial antipathy, the dreaded dispenser of fire and
noise and death, Jabe Smith. Upon this he came to realize that the
gigantic tracks were made by something attached to Jabe Smith’s feet. For
what purpose, or to what use, the man should so enlarge his feet Red Fox
could not conceive; but he knew that men were always mysterious, and he
was content to let the question go at that. The point that interested
both the foxes now was, Whither did the tracks lead? What was the man’s
business here in their woods?
All thought of play laid aside, they now took up the trail, following
cautiously, with every sense on the alert. The trail led toward the
farthest and wildest section of the she fox’s range. At length it came to
a halt, where it crossed a well-marked runway of her own. The snow was
trampled and disturbed at this point, and just here, where the runway was
narrowed by a thick bush on either side, lay the frozen head and neck of
a chicken. Red Fox, for all his natural wariness, was starting forward to
investigate this prize; but his mate, who had somehow obtained a certain
knowledge of traps, thrust him aside so brusquely that he realized the
presence of an unknown peril. Then, and not till then, he noticed that at
that point, around and beneath the chicken head, there were no fox tracks
visible. They had evidently been covered with snow.
[Illustration: “SHE REVEALED A SMALL, DARK, MENACING THING.”]
While he was considering this ominous fact, his mate moved forward with
the extreme of caution, sniffing at the snow before every step. With
intense interest he watched her, realizing that she knew something of
which he, for all his craft, was ignorant. In a moment or two she
stopped, and began sniffing around the point at which she had stopped.
The care she displayed in this amounted to timidity, and convinced Red
Fox that something terribly dangerous lay hidden beneath the snow. In a
moment or two the prudent investigator began to dig, pawing away the snow
with light, delicate, surface strokes; and presently she revealed a
small, dark, menacing thing, made of the same hard, cold substance which
Red Fox had observed that so many of man’s implements were made of. The
snow on the middle of the trap the wise little she dared not disturb; and
she flatly discouraged any very close examination on Red Fox’s part. But
she gave him to understand that this was one of the cunningest and most
deadly of all the devices which that incomprehensible creature, man, was
wont to employ against the wild kindreds. And she also made him
understand that unexpected blessings, like the chicken head, or other
unusual dainties, when found scattered with seeming generosity about the
forest ways, were pretty sure to indicate at least one trap in the
immediate neighbourhood. Leaving the treacherous thing unmasked, so that
no other of the forest dwellers might be betrayed by it, the two foxes
resumed the trapper’s trail, to find out what more treasons he had
plotted against the wild folk.
They had gone but a little way farther when a great noise of scrambling
and struggling, just ahead, brought them to a sudden stop. It was a
mysterious and daunting sound, as if some strong creatures were fighting,
voicelessly, to the death. With the utmost stealth they crept forward,
along the snow-shoe trail, and came suddenly upon a terrifying spectacle.
Here the trapper had set a strong snare of copper wire, baiting it with a
dead rabbit, which crouched in lifelike attitude just behind it, under a
bush. A huge lynx, rash with hunger, came slinking by and saw the rabbit.
Straight through the snare he saw the apparently heedless victim; but he
did not see the slender, bright loop faintly gleaming among the green
fir-twigs. Stealthily, noiselessly as a shadow, crouching low, his great
round eyes coldly aflame, he crept up till within springing distance.
Then, his mighty and unerring spring! His huge paws, all their claws
extended, clutched the dead rabbit. But at the same instant a terrible
grip clutched his own throat chokingly.
Forgetting his prize, the big cat sprang violently aside, with a spitting
screech of terror. At the first jump, he saw no sign of his foe, though
that clutch was still on his throat. His natural courage turned to water
at the mystery of the attack. But at the second leap his neck was jerked
savagely, the grip on his throat tightened so that he could not screech
again, and the enemy came into view, jumping at him. To his horror it was
only a harmless-looking stick of white birch, such as he had seen many
and many a time lying around the camps of the lumbermen. He could not
understand the appalling and malignant hostility which it now displayed
toward him.
First he tried flight, but the stick came jumping after him, clutching
the harder the harder he tried to escape. Then in the madness of his fear
he wheeled and pounced upon it, tearing at it with tooth and claw. The
stick lay quiet enough under this assault, making no visible resistance,
but all the while, in some awful way, managing to keep up the pressure on
his throat. The lynx sat down and stared, his eyes starting from his
head, his red jaws open in the struggle for breath.
It was at this time the foxes came up, and crouched behind a bush, their
bright eyes watching and wondering. They hated the lynx; but this
inexplicable attack upon him awed and terrified them, as the
manifestation of a hostile force which they could not comprehend.
The slender noose was now drawn close, deep in the fur behind the lynx’s
jaws; and the pressure clouded his wild cunning. A wiser animal than the
lynx would have found his wisdom fail him in such crisis. Nevertheless,
in his despair he thought of something else to do, a pathetic device.
Perhaps the stick was like a dog, and could not climb a tree. He ran up
the nearest tree; but the stick followed, tightening, ever tightening
that strangle grip upon his throat. He crept out on a great branch; and
saw the stick dangling below him. The winter world, the moonlight and the
snow and the black trunks of the trees, were now reeling before his eyes,
and his swelling tongue stuck out beyond his jaws. In the extremity of
his horror he gave one more look downward at the dancing stick, then
sprang outward, on the other side of the branch.
As he sprang the stick flew violently upward. It caught under the branch,
and held fast for a moment, checking the victim’s leap and tightening the
noose to its utmost. Kicking and writhing, the miserable animal swung
widely to the other side of the branch, and back again. At the top of
that backward swing the stick slipped over the branch; and the two came
down upon the snow together. The stick fell on the lynx’s body; and the
lynx, after a few convulsive twitchings, lay quite still.
Not till the stillness had lasted a long time, and the moon was beginning
to sink among the tree-tops, did the two foxes dare to come forward and
investigate. They satisfied themselves at once that the lynx was dead.
Then, sniffing shrewdly at the noose and cord and stick, all with the
dangerous taint of man strong upon them, they achieved a pretty clear
understanding of the affair. This, plainly, was another form of trap,
another manifestation of man’s tireless and inescapable enmity. It was to
both, and to the inquiring Red Fox in particular, a priceless lesson in
the need of untiring vigilance.
For two or three hours more the two foxes stuck to the trapper’s trail,
Red Fox being moved the more by his antagonism to Jabe Smith, and eager
to thwart him at as many points as possible. Whenever they came to a
point where the snow-shoe trail had halted, there they cautiously smelt
about for a trap, whether there was any bait in view or not. Four more
traps they found, and left uncovered, as they had the first, to the scorn
of such wild creatures as might pass. One more snare, also, they found;
but this they did not know what to do with. They were afraid to go near
it; so they contented themselves with trampling and defiling the snow all
around it, in a way that would serve as ample warning to any creature not
hopelessly besotted in folly.
By this time they were once more hungry, and the she fox was ready to
turn her hunting. But the snow-shoe trail still led forward, ever deeper
into the wilds; and Red Fox was unwilling to relinquish it. His will
prevailed, and the two continued their journey. But at the next trap his
persistence met its reward. The trap had been set beside an open spring,
whose bubbling waters defied all frost. In the trap a mink was held,
caught by both front feet. The captive was still alive, and bared its
teeth at them, dauntless in the face of doom. But the foxes were no
philanthropists; and their hostility to the trapper, their general
sympathy with the wild creatures in their contest with the trapper, had
no tendency to make them sentimental when they found a square meal thus
ready to hand. With healthy zest they fell upon the unfortunate mink, who
was in no position to put up a fight; and in a few minutes there was
nothing left for the trapper but the tail and feet.
[Illustration: “IN THE TRAP A MINK WAS HELD, CAUGHT BY BOTH FRONT FEET.”]
The wild creatures, as a rule,—and even one so intelligent as the
fox,—are apt to be whimsical and not hold long to one purpose. By this
time Red Fox had rather lost interest in following up the trail of the
snow-shoes. Having well supped, he grew tired of investigation, and his
desires turned homeward toward the den in the bank. His mate he neglected
to consult. But she followed his caprice promptly, with no thought of
protest or petulance.
By this time the moonlight was graying into the bitter midwinter dawn;
and at that coldest hour of the twenty-four the trees were snapping
sharply under the intense frost. The two foxes retraced their steps more
rapidly and less cautiously than they had come, carefully observing and
carefully avoiding each uncovered trap as they came to it. But when they
reached the dead lynx they stopped abruptly, shrank back with a guilty
air, and swerved off from the trail. There beside the huddled, pathetic
body stood another of the big, gray, shadowy-looking cats, who glared and
spat savagely at them. They had no wish to challenge the stranger, so
they made a wide, respectful détour, and struck the trail again some
hundred yards or so farther on.
And now they approached the first trap. They would look at it again, with
that half-scornful, half-fearful interest which their experiences of the
night had taught them, then dash home by the shortest path to sleep away
the brightening hours of morning. But they found that another of the
woods folk was interested in that trap. A big porcupine was just ahead of
them.
The porcupine glanced at them scornfully from under his bristling
defences, erected his quills as a hint that they had better mind their
own business, and resumed his examination of the trap. The foxes knew
better than to meddle with him, though they regarded him with some
contempt as a blundering fool, more than likely to get himself into
mischief. They sat down on their tails a dozen feet away, and watched
with dispassionate interest to see what was going to happen.
The porcupine, with a little fretting grunt of disapproving curiosity,
sniffed all around the trap, yet managed, by sheer luck, not to spring
it. The critical part of the mechanism was, of course, in the centre,
where the foxes had left a covering of snow. Snow was not interesting to
the porcupine, so, most fortunately for himself, he did not investigate.
Had he done so, he would have been caught by the nose in those powerful
jaws of steel, and died miserably. As it was, he sniffed only at the
exposed parts. They were not good to eat, so to him they were useless. He
turned contemptuously, and flouted the worthless thing with a flick of
his tail.
Now, as it chanced, that strenuous tail of his, a most effective weapon
of defence, struck fair in the centre of the trap, and the spring was
instantly released. The steel jaws caught the tail fairly by the middle,
crunching through fur and quills right to the bone.
With a squeal of terror the porcupine jumped into the air, but the tough
tail held. In his panic for an instant his quills all lay down flat, till
he seemed to shrink to half his size, and looked as if he had been soaked
and dragged through a knothole. Then he bristled up again, still
squealing with pain and anger, and turned to bite furiously at the
presumptuous instrument. As to biting, however, and things bitable, he
was an authority, the best in all the forest; so he soon realized that it
was no use trying to bite the thing that had him by the tail. Thereupon
he started to drag it away. The trap yielded and moved a few feet; then
stopped resolutely. It was chained to the foot of a bush.
The porcupine, however, is the most obstinate of animals, and, having
started, he was not lightly to be stopped. If it was his tail that tried
to stop him, so much the worse for his tail. He dug his powerful claws
into the snow, and tugged, and jerked, and strained; till suddenly the
tail gave up the struggle and peeled off. He went ploughing forward on
his nose with a squeal of pain, leaving a great tuft of fur and quills
sticking up in the jaws of the trap. Thoroughly frightened, demoralized,
and humiliated, he scurried at his best speed to the nearest hemlock, the
raw stump of his tail standing out stiffly behind him. Up the tree he
clambered in haste, with a great rattling of his claws on the hard, scaly
bark, and tried to hide his shame in the highest crotch.
Interested and greatly excited over the affair, the two foxes had sprung
forward when he jerked himself free, and followed at his heels till he
ran up the hemlock. They did not dare to touch him, however, or even to
come within two or three feet of him, so keen was their dread of his
quills. While they stood looking up at his bleeding but ludicrous figure
as he climbed, they caught a clear jangling of sled-bells through the
trees, and whisked behind some thick bushes to watch what was coming.
[Illustration: “HE DUG HIS POWERFUL CLAWS INTO THE SNOW.”]
It chanced that that morning, at the very first hint of grayness in the
sky, Jabe Smith had set out with sled and team to carry some
supplies—cornmeal and flour and salt pork and dried apples—to one of the
lumber camps at the head of the valley. Along with him he had taken the
Boy, because he was interesting company. The Boy and Jabe Smith had
widely divergent views as to the rights and the feelings of the wild
kindreds; but they were both keenly interested in woodcraft, and
delighted in comparing notes. The Boy called Jabe Smith “cruel”; and Jabe
Smith called the Boy “chicken-hearted”; but they were very good friends
for all that. As a matter of fact neither accusation was true. For Jabe
was not cruel, but merely eager and relentless in the chase when his
blood was up. His was the primitive, unthinking hunter’s lust. And toward
animals whom he did not regard as game, he was kindly and compassionate
enough. As for the Boy, on the other hand, he was sympathetic and hated
to give pain; but he was not timid, and there was not a stain of
cowardice in his whole make-up.
Suddenly the jangling sled-bells stopped, and the listening foxes, behind
their covert, peered out with redoubled solicitude. Said Jabe Smith, as
he jumped off and hitched the team to a tree, “I’ve got one of my traps
set right about here! Let’s go an’ hev’ a look at it!”
Now the Boy didn’t like traps, but his interest overshadowed his
aversion. He jumped off the sled with alacrity, and, following Jabe’s
example, slipped on his snow-shoes. Presently the listening foxes heard
the peculiar, soft, measured _crunch, crunch_ of the snow-shoes drawing
near through the trees. When they caught sight of the two human creatures
approaching, their anxiety increased, and they slipped back to a yet
safer covert; but, as their curiosity was no less than their anxiety, by
reason of all these new things of snow-shoes, snares and traps, they took
care not to go so far but that they could command a clear view of
whatever the newcomers should do. As for Red Fox, his instinctive terror
of the tall woodsman was somewhat tempered by seeing him in the company
of the Boy.
As soon as he came in sight of the trap, and saw the absurd tuft of fur
and quills sticking up in it, the woodsman swore in disgust.
“The varmint!” he growled. “Meddlin’ round where he wasn’t wanted! I’ll
put a bullet through his durned fool head for that! I’m wantin’ some
quills, anyways!” And he started forward to find the wretched fugitive’s
tracks.
But the Boy’s vivid imagination promptly pictured the suffering of the
poor beast, with the red, denuded, smarting stump of a tail.
“Hold on, Jabe!” he cried. “Don’t you think he’s punished enough, losing
his tail that way? And what’s the good of wasting time over an old
porcupine, anyway?”
At the same time his keen eyes, much more cunning in discernment than
Jabe’s, had caught sight of the porcupine, crouched close in the high
crotch of the hemlock. As he spoke, he hurried forward and tramped over
the fugitive’s trail where it led up to the tree and stopped there.
“I’ll teach him to monkey with my traps!” cried Jabe, the hunter’s fever
flushing hot in his veins, so that he ached to kill something. He darted
forward eagerly on the mixed trail of the porcupine and the two foxes,
overran the indecipherable confusion at the foot of the hemlock, and
pursued the double tangle of fox-tracks beyond. The Boy stood and watched
him, with wide, non-committal eyes and satisfaction in his heart. He felt
amiable enough toward the foxes, but considered that they might very well
look out for themselves and take the chances of the wild without his
intervention.
The foxes, indeed, were not willing to take any chances at all in their
present frame of mind. When they saw that Jabe was actually on their
trail, they had no more curiosity left. Bellies close to the snow, their
red brushes floating straight out behind them, they flashed off with
desperate speed—not homeward, of course, but upward toward the rocky
ridges, where they knew they could best elude pursuit. They carefully
kept the bushes behind them in line with the enemy; but Jabe saw them as
they darted off, and let fly a hurried shot after them. The ball hummed
like a hornet close over Red Fox’s ears, and chipped a white patch on the
side of a brown-trunked maple just ahead, and the fugitives sped more
madly than ever.
“This doesn’t seem to be your lucky day, Jabe!” said the Boy, gravely
derisive. And Jabe, letting slip his grudge against the unfortunate
porcupine, silently reloaded his gun and reset the trap.
“I’ll git one of them durn foxes yet!” he muttered, all unaware of the
part they had played in laying bare his devices.