to do on returning home, he scented it in the litter beneath a spot
completely overlapped on every side by some part or other of his
recumbent sire. For a few moments, he was nonplussed by the situation;
then, desperate for his plaything, he suddenly began to dig, and, in a
twinkling, was half buried in the hay and leaves; while to right and to
left he scattered soil and bedding that fell like a shower over his
mother and sister. Before the old dog-badger had realised the meaning of
the commotion, Brock had grabbed his treasure, and, withdrawing his head
from the shallow pitfall he had hurriedly fashioned, had caused his
drowsy parent to roll helplessly over. This was more than a
self-respecting father could possibly endure in his own home and among
his own kin, so, with unexpected agility, as he turned in struggling to
recover his balance, he gripped Brock by the loose skin of the neck, and
held him as in a vice from which there seemed no escape. Brock,
doubtless thinking that his right to the bone was being disputed, strove
vigorously to get hold of his sire, but the grip of the trap-like jaws
was inflexible, and kept him firmly down till his rage had expended
itself, and he was cowed by his parent's prompt, easy show of tremendous
power. When, at last, the old badger relinquished his hold, Brock shook
himself, and sulkily departed from the "set," followed to the door by
his relentless chastiser. An hour before noon, Brock heard the note of a
horn--sounding far distant, but really coming only from the other side
of the hill--succeeded by the eager baying of a pack of fox-hounds.
Then, for a while, all was silent, but soon the cries of the hounds
broke out again, away beyond the farm by the river. Evidently something
was amiss. Brock, though hardly, perhaps, alarmed, shifted uneasily in
his retreat under the yellow bracken, and finally, almost fascinated,
lay quiet, watching and listening. Presently the ferns parted; and a
fox-cub appeared in full view, treading lightly, his tongue lolling out,
his jaws strained far back towards his ears, and his face wearing the
look of a creature of excessive cunning, though for the time frightened
nearly out of his wits. The fox-cub paused an instant, turned as if to
look at something in the dark thickets by the glen, climbed the mound,
and, after another hasty glance, entered his home among the outer
chambers of the "set." Unknown, of course, to Brock, the leading hounds
were running mute on the fox-cub's scent down the path by the river.
They swerved, and lost the line for a moment, then, "throwing their
tongues," crashed through the briars into the fern; and at once Brock
was surrounded.
Luckily, he had neither been punished too severely by his sire, nor had
exhausted himself in hotly resisting the chastisement. For a few
seconds, however, as the hounds pressed closely in the rough-and-tumble
fray, trying to tear him limb from limb, he was disconcerted. But
quickly regaining his self-possession, he began to make the fight
exceedingly warm for his assailants. A hound caught him by the leg;
turning, he caught the aggressor by the muzzle. His strong, sharp teeth
crashed through nose and lip clean to the bone, and the discomfited
hound, directly one of the pack had "created a diversion," made off at
full speed, running "heel," and howling at the top of his voice. One
after another, Brock served two couples thus, till the wood was filled
with a mournful chorus altogether different from the usual music of the
hounds.
Little hurt, except for a bruise or two on his loose, rough hide, and
feeling almost as fresh as when the attack began, Brock, with his face
to the few foes still remaining to threaten him hoarsely from a safe
distance, retired with dignity to the mound, and disappeared in the
tunnel just as reinforcements of the enemy hastened up the slope.
Henceforth, even in leafy summer, he seldom remained outside his
dwelling during the day, and any fresh sign of a dog in the
neighbourhood of his immediate haunt never failed to fill him with rage
and apprehension.
Since the time when their silvery-grey coats had turned to
brownish-yellow, the badger cubs had become more and more independent of
their parents; and before long, familiar with the forest paths, they
often wandered alone. Yet so regular was their habit of returning home
during the hour preceding dawn, that, unless something untoward
happened, the last badger to reach the "earth" was rarely more than a
few minutes after the first. Towards the end of autumn, however, the
female cub seemed to have lost this habit; on several occasions dawn was
breaking when she sought her couch; and one morning she was missing
from the family. Her regular home-coming had given place to meeting, in
a copse over the hill, a young male badger reared among the rocks of a
glen up-stream; and by him she had at last been led away to a home,
which, after inspecting several other likely places, he had made by
enlarging a rabbit burrow in a long disused quarry.
Brock was in no hurry to find himself a spouse; he waited till the end
of winter. Meanwhile, the colour of his coat changed from yellow to
full, dark grey, and simultaneously a change became apparent in his
disposition. Wild fancies seized him; from dusk to dawn he wandered with
clumsy gait over the countryside, little heeding how noisily he lumbered
through the undergrowth. The gaunt jack-hare, that, crying out in the
night, hurried past him, was not a whit more crazy.
At one time, Brock met a young male badger in the furze, attacked him
vigorously, and left him more dead than alive. At another time, he even
turned his rage against his sire. The old badger was by no means
unwilling to resent provocation: he, too, felt the hot, quick blood of
spring in his veins. The fight was fierce and long--no other wild animal
in Britain can inflict or endure such punishment as the badger--and it
ended in victory for Brock. His size and strength were greater than his
father's; he also had the advantage of youth and self-confidence; but
till its close the struggle was almost equal, for the obstinate
resistance of the experienced old sire was indeed hard to overcome.
Brock forced him at last from the corner where he stood with his head to
the wall, and hustled him out of doors. Then the victor hastened to the
brook to quench his thirst, and, returning to the "set," sought to sleep
off the effects of the fight. When he awoke, he found that the mother
badger had gone to join her evicted mate. The inseparable couple
prepared a disused part of the "set" for future habitation; there they
collected a heap of dry bedding, and, free from further interruption,
were soon engaged with the care of a second family.
For nearly a week after his big battle, Brock felt stiff and sore, and
altogether too ill to extend his nightly rambles further than the
boundaries of the wood. But with renewed health his restlessness
returned, and he wandered hither and thither in search of a mate to
share his dwelling. A knight-errant among badgers, he sought adventure
for the sake of a lady-love whose face he had not even seen.
Sometimes, to make his journeys shorter than if the usual trails from
wood to wood had been followed, he used the roads and by-ways leading
past the farmsteads, and risked encounter with the watchful sheep-dogs.
For this indiscretion, he almost paid the penalty of his life. Crossing
a moonlit field on the edge of a covert, he saw a flock of sheep break
from the hurdles of a fold near the distant hedge, and run
panic-stricken straight towards him. Long before he had time to regain
the cover, they swept by, separating into two groups as they came where
he stood. Immediately afterwards, he saw that one of the sheep was lying
on her back, struggling frantically, while a big, white-ruffed collie
worried her to death. The dog was so engrossed with his victim that the
badger remained unnoticed. Having killed the sheep, the dog sat by,
panting because of his exertions, and licking the blood from his lips.
Suddenly, raising his head, he listened intently, his ears turned in the
direction of the fold. Then, growling savagely, he slunk away, with his
tail between his legs, and disappeared within the wood.
He had scarcely gone from sight, when the farmer and his boy climbed
over the hedge near the field and hastened across the pasture. They saw
the sheep lying dead, and, not far from the spot, the badger lumbering
off to the covert. Instantly believing that Brock was the cause of their
trouble, they called excitedly for help from the farm, and dashed in
pursuit. As Brock gained the gap by the wood, he felt a sharp, stinging
blow on his ribs. On the other side of the hedge, he reached an opening
in the furze, and the sticks and stones aimed at him by his pursuers, as
he turned downwards through the wood, fell harmlessly against the trees
and bushes. The noise he made when crashing through the thickets was,
however, such a guide to his movements, that he failed to baffle the
chase till he reached a well worn trail through the open glades. Luckily
for him, as he emerged from cover a cloud obscured the moon, and he was
able to make good his escape by crossing a deep dingle to the lonely
fields along his homeward route, where, in the shadows of the hedges,
though now the moon again was bright, he could not easily be seen.
It was fortunate for the badger, not only that the moon was hidden by a
cloud as he crossed the dingle when fleeing from the wood, but also that
his home was distant from the scene of the tragedy in the upland pasture
near the farm. A hue-and-cry was raised, and for days the farmer's boy
searched the wood around the spot where Brock had disappeared, hoping
there to find the earth-pig's home. Other sheep were mysteriously killed
on farms still further from the badger's "earth"; then watchers, armed
with guns, lay out among the cold, damp fields to guard the sleeping
flocks; and the collie, a beautiful creature whose character had
hitherto been held above reproach, was shot almost in the act of closing
on a sheep he had already wounded, close to the corner of a field where
a shepherd lay in hiding.
The farmer and his boy were chaffed so unmercifully--for this story of
the badger was now considered a myth--that they grew to hate the very
name of "earth-pig," and to believe that after all they must have chased
through the wood some incarnation of Satan.
V.
HILLSIDE TRAILS.
Several times during his search for a mate, Brock struck the trail of a
female badger, and followed its windings through the thickets and away
across the open fields towards the distant valley, only, however, to
lose it near some swollen brook or on some well trodden sheep-path. The
female had evidently come to a little copse on the crest of a rugged
hill overlooking the river, and, after skirting a pond where wild duck
sheltered among the flags, had retraced her steps. Brock's most
frequented tracks led close to the spot where the stranger's return
trail joined the other near an opening from an almost impenetrable
gorse-cover into a marshy fallow. There, late one night, he found, as he
crossed the opening, that the female badger had travelled forward, but
had not yet returned. Revisiting the spot some minutes afterwards, he
discovered that the backward "drag" was strong on the damp grass. He
followed it quickly, and, in a stubble beyond the gorse, came up at last
with the object of his oft-disappointed quest. She was a widow badger,
older and more experienced than Brock, but smaller and of lighter build.
Perhaps because she wished to test the loyalty of her new lover, and to
find whether he would fight for her possession with any intruder, she
resisted his advances, and refused to go with him to his home. So he
followed her far away to her own snug dwelling on the fringe of the
moorlands. Thence, with the first streak of dawn in the south-eastern
sky, he hurried back to his lair.
Early next evening, Brock went forth to meet his lady-love; and
throughout the long night and for nights afterwards he wandered at her
side, till, concluding that no other suitor was likely to appear, she
accompanied him to his home, and entered on the season's house-keeping
in the central chamber of the great "set" where he had been born. There
they lived happily, and without the slightest annoyance from the old
badgers; and, since the time of the spring "running" was over, they
wandered no further afield than in the cold winter nights. Filled with
the joy of the life-giving season, they often romped together in the
twilight for half an hour at a time, chasing one another in and out of
the entrances to the "set," or kicking up the soil as if they suddenly
recollected that their claws needed to be filed and sharpened, or
standing on their hind-feet and rubbing their cheeks delightedly against
a favourite tree--grunting loudly in their fun the while, and in general
behaving like droll, ungainly little pigs just escaped from a stye. At
last, their frolic being ended, they "bumped" away into the bushes, and,
meeting on the trail beyond, proceeded soberly towards the outskirts of
the wood.
As in the previous spring, the big burrow was soon the scene of family
affairs other than those of the badgers. By the end of February, there
were cubs in the vixen's den, and both the wood-mice and the rabbits
were diligently preparing for important family events. Brock's
companion, unlike himself was not accustomed to a house inhabited by
other tenants. None but members of her own family had dwelt in the
"earth" near the moor; and, being somewhat exclusive in her ideas, she
strongly resented the presence of the vixen in any quarter of her new
abode. A little spiteful in her disposition, she lurked about the
passages, and by the mound outside the entrance, intending to give her
neighbour "a bit of her mind" at the first opportunity. But since she
did not for the present care to enter the vixen's den, that opportunity
never came till her own family arrangements claimed her undivided
attention, and effectually prevented her from following the course of
action she had planned.
In the first week of April, the badger's spring-cleaning began in
downright earnest. The old bedding of fern, and hay, and leaves was
cleared entirely from the winter "oven," and, after a few windy but
rainless days and nights, when the refuse of Nature's woodland garden
was dry, new materials for a cosy couch were carried to the lair, and
arranged on the floor of the roomy chamber where Brock's mother had
brought him into the world. The badgers' methods of conveying the
required litter were quaintly characteristic, for the animals possessed
the power of moving backward almost as easily and quickly as forward.
They collected a pile of leaves, and, grasping it between their
fore-legs, made their way, tail first, to the mound, and thence, in the
same manner, along their underground galleries, as far as the place
intended for its reception, strewing everywhere in the path proofs of
their presence, quite sufficient for any naturalist visiting their
haunts.
On a dark, wet night rather less than a fortnight after they had
completed their preparations, when Brock returned to his home for
shelter from the driving storm, three little cubs were lying by their
mother's side.
The training of the badger-cubs during the first two months was left
wholly to their dam; but afterwards Brock shared the work with his mate,
teaching the youngsters, by his example, how to procure food, and, at
the same time, to detect and to avoid all kinds of danger. In so doing,
he simply acted towards his cubs as his sire had acted towards him.
Apart from family ties, however, his life--that of a strong, deliberate
animal, self-possessed in peril and in conflict, yet shy and cautious to
a fault--was of extreme interest to both naturalist and sportsman.
Five young foxes, as well as the vixen, now dwelt in the antechamber
near the main entrance of the "set," and the presence of this numerous
family became, for several reasons, so objectionable to the she-badger,
that, about the middle of May, the antipathy which, since her
partnership with Brock, she had always felt towards the vixen, was
united with a fixed determination to get rid of her neighbours. She was
too discreet, however, to attempt to rout them during the day, when some
dreaded human being might be attracted by the noise; so she endeavoured
to surprise the vixen and her cubs together at night.
For a while, she was unsuccessful. She happened to frighten them by an
impetuous, blustering attack in the rear, from which they easily
escaped; thus her difficulties had been increased, since the objects of
her aversion became loath to stay in the "earth" after nightfall. But
at last, probably more through accident than set purpose, the badger
out-manoeuvred the wily foxes.
Lying one evening in the doorway, she heard the vixen, followed by the
young foxes, creeping stealthily from the den. Retreating quickly, she
barred their exit, thus compelling them to return to their lair; then
she took up her position in the neck of the passage, and waited
patiently till midnight before commencing her assault. At last, in the
dense darkness, she crawled along the winding tunnel, and, directly, the
den was the scene of wild confusion and uproar, as its inmates leaped
and tumbled over each other in their frantic efforts to escape. For a
few minutes, the advent of danger unnerved them; then, as if peculiarly
fascinated by the grim, motionless enemy blocking their only outlet,
they began an aimless, shuffling dance, baring their teeth and hissing
as they lurched from side to side. Their suspense was soon ended. The
badger, emerging partly from the passage, gripped one of the cubs by a
hind-leg, and dragged it backwards along the passage to the thicket
outside, where, after worrying her victim unmercifully, she ended its
life by crushing its skull, above the muzzle, into fragments between
her teeth.
Once more, but this time furious with the taste of blood, she hurried to
the den; and the scene of fear and violence was repeated. Her third
visit was futile: the vixen with the other cubs had bolted into the main
gallery, and escaped thence to the wood, through an old opening, almost
choked with withered leaves, at the back of the "set."
They never returned, but the following spring a strange vixen from the
rocks across the valley came to the burrow, gave birth to her young,
and, in due course, without loss, was evicted by Brock's relentless
mate.
[Illustration: "HE CLIMBED FROM HIS DOORWAY, AND STOOD MOTIONLESS, WITH
UPLIFTED NOSTRILS, INHALING EACH BREATH OF SCENT."]
On the night after the death of the fox-cubs, when Brock was led by the
she-badger to the spot where her victims lay, he noticed that man's
foot-scent was strong on the grass around, and also that his hand-scent
lingered on the fur of the slain animal. Often, during the succeeding
two months, he was awakened in the day by quick, irregular footsteps
overhead; and later, when he climbed from his doorway, and stood
motionless, with uplifted nostrils, inhaling each breath of scent, he
found that the dreaded signs of man were numerous on the trail, on
the near beech-trunk, and even on the mound before the "set." Once, on
returning home with his family, he was greatly alarmed to discover that
in the night the man had visited his haunts, and that a dog had passed
down the galleries and disturbed the bed on which he slept.
Henceforward, he used the main opening as an exit only, and invariably
entered the "set" by the opening through which the vixen had escaped
from his mate, passing, on his way, the mouth of a side-gallery
connected with the apartments occupied by his old sire and dam, together
with their present family. Eventually, through these precautions, he
saved his principal earthworks from destruction.
Had Brock been able to ascertain the meaning of man's frequent visits to
the neighbourhood of his dwelling, he would have sorely lamented the
killing of the young foxes by the female badger. In the eyes of the
Hunt, vulpicide was an unpardonable crime, whether committed by man or
beast; and, when the dead fox-cubs were shown to the huntsman, he vowed
vengeance on the slayer. Because of a recent exchange, between the two
local Hunts, of certain outlying farms, it happened that this huntsman
was not he who in past seasons had tethered his horse near the "set"
while he "drew" the cover on foot. The new-comer soon discovered the
"earth"; but after a brief examination, from which he concluded, because
of the strong taint still lingering, that it was tenanted by a fox, he
walked away towards the farm. Fearing a reprimand from the Master if the
mysterious slaughter of the foxes could not be explained, he made
careful enquiries of the farmers, by whom he was told of the badger and
the sheep, as well as of the poacher who had seen Brock's sire in the
upland fields two years ago; but he laughed at the first tale, and for
want of adequate information paid no heed to the second. Nevertheless,
when he again visited the "earth," and, stooping, saw the withered
leaves and fern, and detected, not now the scent of a fox, but the scent
of half a dozen badgers, his sluggish brain began to move in the right
direction. Stories he had heard by the lodge fireside when he was a lad,
casual remarks dropped by followers of the Hunt, questions asked him by
an inquisitive boy-naturalist--he slowly remembered them all; and then
the revealing light dawned on his mind, that no animal but a badger
could with ease have broken the limbs of a fox-cub, and cracked the
skull as though it were a hazel-nut. Filled with a sense of
self-importance, befitting the bearer of a momentous message, the
huntsman rode away in the breathless summer twilight to the country
house where the Master lived, and presently was shown into the gun-room
to wait till dinner was over.
The Master prided himself on his love of every kind of sport; and before
the huntsman had finished a long, rambling story of the woodland tragedy
he had formed his plans for the punishment of the offender and was
writing a brief, urgent letter to a distant friend. As the result, a few
days afterwards three little terriers, specially trained for "drawing" a
badger, arrived at the Master's house, and were accommodated in a vacant
"loose-box" in the stables. Late at night, one of these was introduced
to the "set," and from the experiment the Master was led to believe
that, though the place, as he surmised, was empty of its usual tenants
at the time, it held sure promise of sport for an "off" day, as soon as
the otter-hounds, now about to hunt in the rivers of the west, had
departed from the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, according to his strictest
orders, the little terriers were well fed, regularly exercised, and kept
from quarrelling, and their coats were carefully brushed and oiled that
they might be as fit as fiddles for the eventful "draw."