A ROYAL MARAUDER
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 débris 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 muskrat tails; while about the old den in the bank
below no such remnants had been allowed to collect.
[Illustration: “THE CROW-HAUNTED FIR-GROVES ON ITS FLANKS.”]
In this difficult retreat Red Fox and his family had few neighbours to
intrude upon his 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-haunted 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 gray 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.
[Illustration: “THE EAGLE, WITH THE PRIZE DANGLING FROM HIS CLAWS, WAS
ALREADY FAR OUT OF REACH.”]
One morning when, in the gray 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.
[Illustration: “IN AN INSTANT RED FOX WAS UPON HIM AGAIN.”]
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.