THE FOOLING OF THE MONGRELS
Through the early spring thaws there was little for Red Fox but anxiety
and discomfort. He hated the wet, and the slumping snows, and the hunt
became a toil rather than a joy. His mate, moreover, being heavy with
young, was not inclined to play and wrestle and run races as she had
been. She hunted near home, but back among the rocks, of course, and
never down toward the valley; and Red Fox brought home to her the larger
share of his own captures. For his own part, he now became particularly
cautious, never going down into the settlement at all. But he got into
the habit of making a long, toilsome journey over the ridge and down into
the next valley, and compensating himself for the extra hardships by
taking easy toll of the farmyards at the foot of Ringwaak. He calculated
that these depredations would never be laid to the charge of a fox living
so far away as he.
But in this, as it proved, he was reckoning without allowance for his
fame. He wronged his own renown. When the folk under Ringwaak began to
feel the attacks of a particularly daring and clever enemy, they
immediately thought of the big fox of the neighbouring valley, of whose
exploits they had heard such tales. Inquiry in the neighbouring valley
revealed the fact that of late nothing had been seen or heard of the
notable marauder. From this it was readily inferred that he had shifted
his field of operations. Thereupon there were many efforts made to trail
the audacious raider back to his lair. But the trail invariably lost
itself among rocks and ravines and tumbled thickets before it reached the
summit of the ridge. Of traps and snares, of course, scores were set; but
these were always treated with contumelious scorn, or else given a wide
berth. So it came about at last that a message was sent over to the next
valley, asking the farmers to hunt down their troublesome, furry outlaw,
or at least keep him at home.
Not without a certain pride did the settlement accept this tribute to Red
Fox’s prowess. But at the same time it was agreed that something had to
be done. The Boy smiled wisely, and said that whatever was done, Red Fox
would not be the one to regret it. But Jabe Smith undertook to lead a
hunt, with the two dogs, that should end in Red Fox’s final discomfiture,
or he’d know the reason why.
For some inexplicable reason, just at this juncture Red Fox’s anxiety and
apprehension increased amazingly. It was as if the stir of hostility down
in the valley were conveyed to him by some subtle telepathic force, or as
if some inquisitive blue jay, having overheard Jabe Smith’s plans, had
brought word in an occult way to Red Fox of the mischief brewing against
him. Let the scientist, if he will, take the one explanation, and the
lover of fairy-tale and fable the other. Or, perhaps, the responsibility
of approaching fatherhood sharpened his memory, and he recalled the
tragic events which had forced his mother to flee from the lair in the
sunny bank. However that may be, one evening, after a fit of aimless
restlessness, he ran and sniffed inquiringly about the entrance to the
old den, under the juniper-bush. Something which he saw there decided
him. Returning to his own lair, half by force and half by coaxing, he
succeeded in ejecting his reluctant mate, who was now very near her time,
and much averse to quitting such snug quarters. This feat accomplished,
he resolutely led her away up to the crest of the ridge, to a sort of
rude little cave which he had found in the side of a rocky ravine. This
done, and his mate—because she could not help herself or make head
against his dominance—apparently reconciled, his restless solicitude
vanished. He went back alone to the den in the bank and waited to see
what was going to happen. He was now less careful about his
hunting-grounds, and permitted himself, in his confidence, to range once
more the lower slopes and the fringes of the settlement.
When Jabe Smith was ready for the grand hunt, he bethought him of the old
den on the hillside where the fox family had been “dug out” of house and
home the previous year. He had not thought of this place before, because
he knew that the scene of such tragic discomfiture and defeat would be
the very last one that an ordinary fox would choose to live in. But it
occurred to him now that Red Fox was no ordinary fox, and might be
cunning enough to regard such a place as the safest retreat of all. With
the Boy as a critical and unsympathetic, but much interested, spectator,
and two young farmers as assistant huntsmen, and the two dogs to do the
real work, Jabe Smith led the way to that secluded hole in the bank far
up the hillside.
“You’ll never find him there, Jabe,” jeered the Boy, encouragingly, from
time to time. And Jabe, having his own misgivings on the subject,
maintained a strategic silence.
Within a hundred yards of the bank, however, the dogs, who had been
quartering the soft and shrunken snow on every side, suddenly set up a
chorus of excited yelpings and bayings. They had come upon a perfect
tangle of fox-tracks. Jabe Smith’s gaunt face broke into a liberal grin,
and turning to the Boy triumphantly, he cried:
“There, now, what did I tell you?”
The two young farmers ran forward in exultant glee, expecting to find Red
Fox securely cornered in the hole, and to dig him out at their leisure.
But the Boy, though in his heart troubled and surprised, kept an
undiscouraged face, and advised the hunters not to crow too soon.
As the dogs were obviously confused by the tangle of trails, Jabe called
them straight to the mouth of the old den behind the juniper. They thrust
their noses into it eagerly, gave an inquiring sniff, and turned away in
scorn. Jabe’s face fell; for it was obvious from their manner that no
foxes had for a long time lived in that hole. The Boy tried to think of
some sarcasm suited to the occasion. But before anything could be said on
either side the dogs raced up the bank and set up a joyous chorus at the
mouth of another cunningly hidden den.
“_Now_, what did I tell you?” cried Jabe again, with no great variation
of vocabulary; and the two young men shouted, “We’ve got him this time!”
But the Boy, obstinately optimistic, assumed an air of authority, and
remarked:
“There’s _been_ something there. But that doesn’t prove it’s there now!
And you needn’t think it’ll be Red Fox, anyway!”
“We’ll soon find out!” said Jabe Smith, taking some rags from his pocket
and proceeding to smear them with a mixture of gunpowder and wet snow.
Having constructed the “spitting devil” to his satisfaction, he tied it
securely to the tip of a slender birch sapling, like a fishing-pole.
Then, calling the eager dogs to one side, he lighted the rags, and thrust
the blazing, sputtering mass carefully into the hole.
“Ef ther’s anything in there, I don’t keer if it’s a tiger, that’s goin’
to fetch him out!” said Jabe. As all the onlookers fully agreed with him,
there was no reply; but every one waited with eyes fixed intently on the
hole. Slowly the sapling worked its way, till it came to a resolute stop
at a distance of about ten feet in. Here Jabe turned and twisted it
hopefully; but there came forth nothing but volumes of evil-smelling
smoke.
The Boy gave a little derisive laugh; and Jabe, dropping the end of the
sapling, acknowledged regretfully that there was no fox at home.
“But he was there just a minute ago,” said he, doggedly, “or the scent
wouldn’t ’a’ been so hot an’ the dogs so worked up. An’ it’s Red Fox
himself, or he wouldn’t ’a’ got away so slick. He’s somewhere’s ’round,
an’ we’ll git him.” With this he sent the dogs off over the bank, to pick
up the trail by which the crafty fugitive had departed.
Red Fox, meanwhile, had been watching the whole scene from that safe
little ledge of rock whence he had once before made note of a kindred
performance. This time, however, his feelings were very different. He
knew his own powers, and he pretty well understood his opponents; and he
realized that as long as he took care to keep out of Jabe Smith’s way he
had the game in his own hands. With Jabe he would take no chances, but
the dogs he would fool to the top of their bent. As for the rest of the
party, he was not greatly concerned about them. The Boy he knew was not
hostile, and the two young men did not seem woods-wise enough to be
dangerous. But there was one thing certain, he did not want the dogs to
come sniffing about among the rocks on top of the ridge. He slipped down
from his post of observation, and ran a fresh trail down across his old
one, toward the lowlands. Five minutes later the dogs were in full cry at
his heels, and he could hear the men crashing along clumsily behind.
[Illustration: “HE AMUSED HIMSELF FOR A MINUTE OR TWO WITH WILD,
FANTASTIC LEAPS FROM TRUNK TO TRUNK.”]
The running was heavy, deep, moist snow in the woods, and sloppy, sticky
turf in the open spaces; but Red Fox knew that these conditions told more
severely on his heavy pursuers than on himself. For a time he ran
straight on, without doublings or tricks, in order to get the dogs well
ahead of the slow-going men. When this was accomplished to his
satisfaction, he amused himself for a minute or two with wild, fantastic
leaps from trunk to trunk in a patch of felled timber, and then circled
back to see what Jabe Smith was doing. He felt it absolutely necessary to
know Jabe’s tactics in the contest before finally deciding upon his own.
In this backward reconnaissance he ran at top speed, and was back within
a half-mile of his starting-point while the puzzled dogs were still
whimpering about the patch of felled timber. Fast as he ran, however, he
kept all his wits about him, speeding through thick underbrush, and never
exposing himself to a possible shot from that dreaded firearm of Jabe’s.
And suddenly, not fifty yards away, he caught sight of Jabe himself,
patiently watching a runway.
This sight gave Red Fox a pang of sharp apprehension, so terrible seemed
the cunning which led the woodsman to keep watch at that particular spot.
And there beside him, sitting on a stump and motionless as the stump, was
the Boy. It was just the place where Red Fox _would_ have run, under
ordinary circumstances, or if he had been an ordinary fox. It was only,
indeed, his unsleeping caution that had saved him. Instead of keeping to
his runway, he had warily parallelled it at a distance of about fifty
yards; and so his cunning had fairly outdone that of the backwoodsman.
Watching his enemies with almost a touch of contempt from his safe
hiding, Red Fox lay down for a few minutes’ rest. Then, hearing the dogs
at last in full cry on his back track, he rose up, stretched himself,
gave a yawn that seemed to nearly split his jaws, and stole around behind
Jabe and the Boy, whose eyes were now fairly glued to the runway in the
momentary expectation of his coming. He yawned again in scorn, ran
swiftly back to the door of his den, zigzagged for a couple of minutes in
that tangle of tracks just below it, then headed down along the shore of
the brook, whose channel was now open wherever the current was swift.
As he ran, his plans took definite shape. His object being to lead the
chase far away from the ridge, he had no motive for puzzling his pursuers
any more than enough to keep them from pressing him too closely. The
brook was too swollen and angry to be easily fordable, except where the
ice still lingered in the stretches of dead water. But in one place he
crossed it by skilful leaps from rock to rock amid the foam, because he
knew that the dogs were less sure-footed than he, and might possibly have
some trouble in the crossing. Half a mile farther down, where there was
firm ice, he crossed back again, gathering from the voices of his
pursuers that they had not found the crossing as difficult as he had
hoped they would. Then he put on a burst of speed, and made for a remote
little farm on the outskirts of the settlement, where he thought he could
give the dogs something to puzzle over while he rested for another long
run. Having thoroughly explored every farmyard for a half-score miles
about, he knew just which ones had any tactical advantages to offer him.
At the farm in question the chicken-house was a lean-to shed set against
the side of the cow-barn. The lower edge of the roof was about four feet
from the ground; and beneath it was a small hole leading to a spacious
hollow under the floor. From a thicket just outside the farmyard Red Fox
took a careful observation to assure himself that there was no one about
the premises. The wagon was gone from the shed over on the other side of
the well, so he knew the farmer was away. There was no face at the
kitchen window. The big gray cat dozed on the door-step. He darted to the
hole under the chicken-house, and with some difficulty squeezed himself
in.
This feat accomplished, he promptly squeezed himself out again, then,
standing in his trail, he made a splendid leap straight into the air, and
landed on the sloping roof of the lean-to. From here he ran nimbly up to
the roof of the cow-barn, and down the other side, and across the
highroad, and into a field of thick young evergreens. Here he lay down
with a sense of security to enjoy a well-earned rest.
It was fully five minutes after this before the dogs arrived, their
tongues hanging out. They ran straight to the hole under the
chicken-house; and there, in spite of their fatigue, they set up a wild
chorus of triumph. They had run the quarry to earth. The hole, however,
was so small that they could not force a way in; and the ground all about
it was still frozen, so they could not dig an entrance with their claws.
The black and white mongrel kept on scratching valiantly, however; while
the half-breed hound, keeping his nose close to the foundations, made a
swift but careful circuit of the cow-barn, to assure himself that there
was no other exit. Had he ranged away from the foundations he would, of
course, have picked up the crafty fugitive’s trail where he had made a
great leap from the roof to the haystack and thence far out into the
field. But the hound was methodical and kept close to work; and he came
back to his companion, therefore, quite assured that the quarry was there
in hiding.
When, some ten minutes later, the hunters came up panting and hot, they
were as completely deceived as the dogs. Even the Boy, when he saw there
was but one exit, and that guarded by the self-satisfied dogs, was fain
to acknowledge that poor Red Fox’s sagacity had failed him at last. With
the fugitive at last securely cornered, there seemed to be no need of
further haste, so a leisurely council of war was held behind the
chicken-house, the Boy sorrowfully aloof. At length it was decided that
the only thing to do was to stop the hole, then get leave to take up some
boards of the hen-house floor.
This extreme measure, however, was not to be carried out. While he was
talking about it, Jabe Smith chanced to lean upon the hen-house roof,
just at the point where Red Fox had made his cunning leap. It chanced
that Jabe’s nose, though not so keen as the Boy’s, was, nevertheless,
capable of detecting the fresh scent of a fox on a surface so propitious
as a roof of dry shingles. He sniffed suspiciously, smelled the roof
carefully as far up as he could reach, then turned to the Boy with an air
of humbly confessing defeat.
“The critter’s fooled us ag’in!” said he.
“How? What do you mean?” cried the Boy, with glad incredulity; while the
other two stood bewildered.
“He’s not in there at all!” said Jabe, recovering himself. “He’s gone up
yonder over the roof. We’ll find his trail all right, somewhere’s ’round
behind the barn! You watch!”
Ordering the reluctant dogs to follow, he led the way around behind the
barn, and then, with shrewd discernment, around the haystack. Here the
dogs picked up the trail at once, and were off with savage cries, furious
at the way they had been fooled. But as for Jabe, he was filled with a
sense of triumph in the very face of defeat. The Boy had said humbly:
“That beats me, Jabe. You know more about them than I do, after all.
However did you find out where he’d gone?”
“Why,” said Jabe, shamelessly prevaricating, “I just thought what would
be the very smartest kind of a trick,—an’ I knowed that was what that red
varmint would be up to!”
Red Fox, meanwhile, resting in his covert among the dense young
evergreens, was filled with indignant amazement at hearing the cries of
the dogs so soon again on his trail. What had gone wrong with his
admirable stratagem? Promptly and properly he laid the blame upon the
dreaded Jabe; and his sagacious eyes narrowed with something like
apprehension. For a moment he paused, considering anxiously. Then, making
a short circle, he doubled back and ran along parallel with the road,
keeping himself carefully out of sight, lest he should attract a gunshot.
He was heading for the mill-pond at the farther side of the settlement,
where a small stream, a tributary of his own brook, had been dammed, and
harnessed, and forced to do the grinding and wool-carding of all the
Ringwaak region.
Though the stream, at ordinary seasons, was small, the pond it fed was
large, and just now, under the stress of the spring thaws, a heavy volume
of water was pouring noisily through the open floodgates of the dam. Red
Fox’s mood was now an ugly one. At no time anything approaching a
humanitarian, he now felt a trifle harassed and crowded. If all his
pursuers—the dogs, and the men, and the harmless Boy together—had but one
neck,—a long, slender neck like that of a wild goose,—what keen joy it
would have given him to put his fine white teeth crunching through it! He
was ready to take great risks in the hope of doing some hurt to his
persecutors.
The dogs, following a plain trail, with the scent so hot that it hung in
the air, were now following close, with the hunters far behind and out of
gunshot. When Red Fox reached the edge of the mill-pond, which was still
partly frozen over, he stepped out upon the ice, testing it shrewdly.
Then, returning to the shore, he ran on down toward the dam.
For a space of thirty feet or so above the roaring flood-gate the pond
was open. The edges of the ice were rapidly rotting away as the water
surged up beneath. On the bank above Red Fox hesitated, lagging as if
exhausted, and turned as if he were at last brought to bay. Seeing this,
the dogs broke into fiercer clamour and rushed forward madly. At last, it
seemed, the game was in their hands, and many an old score was to be
wiped out.
Not till they were within a dozen paces of him did Red Fox stir. Then,
whipping about as if defiance had given way to uncontrollable fear, he
darted straight out upon the dangerous ice. Either instinct or a
peculiarly shrewd and unerring judgment told him that the ice-fringe
above the sluice was strong enough to bear his weight if he went swiftly
and smoothly. With the dogs a few yards behind him he sped safely over.
The next moment, above the roar of the sluice, came a crunching sound and
a startled yelping from the black and white mongrel. Looking over his
shoulder with narrowed eyes of triumph, Red Fox saw his enemies in the
water, pawing wildly at the rotten edges of the ice, which kept breaking
away beneath their struggles.
Past the drenched stragglers the bits of broken ice went streaming, to
vanish in the loud turmoil of the fall. Red Fox ran on to the shelter of
a bush up the shore, then turned to enjoy his revenge. The dogs were
still clutching wildly at the ice, and the treacherous ice still yielding
under their clutches. As he watched, a larger piece, some three or four
feet square, separated itself under the attack of the black and white
mongrel, just as he succeeded in dragging himself out upon it. The next
moment it slipped swiftly off with its exhausted passenger, wallowed into
the roaring flood-gates, plunged over the fall, and vanished amid the
rocks and smother below. With deepest satisfaction Red Fox observed this
tragic end of one of his enemies. Then the men came in sight once more,
so he crept away stealthily beyond gunshot, and continued his run over
toward the hills overlooking the Ottanoonsis Valley. But there was really
no need of his running any farther. When the hunters arrived on the bank
of the pond the half-breed hound was just dragging himself out of the
water, thoroughly cowed. The mongrel was nowhere to be seen, but it was
easy to guess what had happened to him. The party halted and looked at
each other comprehendingly. Jabe whistled the dejected hound to his feet,
and patted his wet head sympathetically.
[Illustration: “IT SLIPPED SWIFTLY OFF WITH ITS EXHAUSTED PASSENGER.”]
“I saw Red Fox,” said the Boy, gravely, sorry for the black and white
mongrel’s fate, “just slipping into the woods ’way up yonder!”
“Reckon we might’s well be gittin’ back home!” remarked Jabe, turning on
his heels.