The Black Fox Pen
A grand morning awaited the four boys as they hurriedly dressed, and
then stepped outdoors. Ralph was already afoot, as he had a few
chores to be attended to at the nearby barns, where the grunting of
fat hogs and squealing of smaller pigs, the lowing of fancy cattle
that gave the rich cream they had enjoyed the night before at
supper, as well as horses, sheep, and even some high-priced goats
told how Mr. Jeffords took his country pleasures.
Then there was a series of houses and yards devoted to poultry,
mostly of the Rhode Island Red and White Leghorn varieties. Just
beyond the boys were delighted to find a pen of beautiful imported
pheasants with magnificent plumage of almost every color of the
rainbow.
“But try as we would,” confessed Ralph, “we’ve never been very
successful in raising many of those birds. Father thinks they are
not suited to the climate, even up here in the mountains, where it
never gets as hot as down your way. You see, they flourish best in a
country like England, where the winters are mild, and summers fairly
decent. So we just keep that stock for show purposes. Father lost
money in his investment; but it taught us both a lesson. We go in
now for the best native stock of all sorts.”
Breakfast even raised the good opinion Tubby already entertained
toward the woman who did the cooking. When he found that she was a
genuine Southern “mammy,” for the Jeffords originally used to be
slave-owners down in South Carolina, he could understand how she
made such jolly cornbread, and why they had hominy on the table
every morning of their stay.
Now they had the first day before them, and there would be much to
interest them.
“First thing you want to watch,” Ralph went on to say as they still
sat around the table, though no one could eat another mouthful of
food, “is the way we smash our big stumps up here. It’s always well
worth seeing to a novice, though long ago we became so accustomed of
harnessing dynamite, and making it do our work for us, that we take
things as a matter of course.”
“I suppose,” said Andy Bowles, reflectively, “it’s just like folks
who have electricity, and use it for cooking, ironing, making toast,
heating water in a hurry, and a thousand-and-one other things; so
before long they look on it as a servant in the house, always to be
started working by the touch of a button.”
Once outside and the boys were led to a distant part of the farm,
where the wood lot still remained. Here several men were busily
engaged in blasting out stumps of trees that had previously been cut
down, and carted away in one shape or other.
The dynamite cartridge was placed properly, being connected by a
wire with a battery at some little distance away. Then at a signal
the operator made his connection, there would follow a sharp report
quite different from a powder explosion or the roar of big guns over
on the battle lines in Europe. After that the stump would be lifted
bodily from its lodgings and could be carted away, either whole or,
as usually happened, in fragments.
Rob was particularly interested in the operation. He examined
everything connected with the simple apparatus, and asked a number
of questions concerning the outfit. No one dreamed how valuable the
information he thus received was going to prove before a great time
had elapsed.
“Of course, if you are doing all these stunts with dynamite, Ralph,”
he finally remarked, “you must keep quite a stock of the explosive
on hand all the time?”
“We have to,” he was told, without hesitation. “It is kept locked up
in that little stone house we passed coming up here, and father
himself doles out the day’s supply. The stuff is a little too
dangerous, and costly, too, to be left around loose.”
“I should say so,” admitted Tubby, who had listened to all this talk
with interest, though never for a minute dreaming that it would
enter into any affair in which they would be connected.
“You see,” continued Ralph, always willing to supply information,
“we have it so arranged that we can carry several cartridges, as
well as the coil of wire and the battery, on this little hand-cart
that one man can push. So we can go to any part of the farm. Once we
drove twenty miles with the outfit to clear up a tract for a
gentleman who had never seen stumps blown to pieces in this way.”
Rob thought that was a clever idea. He impressed it upon his mind,
though had he been asked why he did this he might have found it
difficult to answer, except to say that he always liked to store
such interesting facts away for future reference.
“How about that plowing with dynamite?” asked Sim. “Will Uncle Simon
be doing any of that today, do you expect, Ralph?”
“I hardly think so,” the other replied. “It was laid out for
tomorrow, and one gang working along those lines is enough at a
time. The next thing on the morning’s programme is a visit to my fur
farm. Are you feeling fit for a little walk?”
“We’re crazy to be on the jump,” affirmed Sim. “You must know that
scouts hike a great deal, which is one thing that makes for their
good health. Even Tubby here is pretty good at tramping, though you
wouldn’t think it to look at his build. He has plenty of grit, and
will stick everlastingly to anything he attempts, even if laboring
under a handicap that none of the rest of us have to stand.”
Tubby had to bow to Sim after this compliment.
“Oh! I’ve got plenty of grit,” he admitted, “but there are times
when I puff and blow terribly. That can’t be helped, you know. I’m
built on such a generous order that I have to carry a heap more
weight than most fellows.”
Presently they started forth, chattering like magpies as they walked
along. The section of the big farm given over to Ralph’s experiment
in fur raising was quite some distance from the house, being an
angle where the primeval woods covered most of the “soil,” which, by
the way, happened to be pretty much rock.
On the road they came across a pond where there were rushes, and
plenty of frog-spawn floating on the water. Tubby became interested
at once.
“Oh! listen to the bass chorus, will you?” he ejaculated. “Why,
there must be a dozen huskies keeping time if there’s one. Oh! see
that monster on the bank! Say, I can count three more big greenbacks
sunning themselves on the mud near the edge of the water. Whew! but
it makes my mouth water just to think of the _delicious_ messes a
fellow can pick up here any old day.”
Ralph laughed good-naturedly.
“Then consider yourself appointed official frog hunter for the
crowd,” he told Tubby, whose eyes glistened at hearing the joyous
news. “You can have just as many as you want to eat while up here.
Somehow, I don’t seem to care much for frogs’ legs myself, nor does
dad. When we hanker after chicken we get chicken, and if it’s fish
we want, we go out for trout or bass; but the combination doesn’t
appeal to us.”
“Thank you a dozen times, Ralph, for giving me the promise of a
smashing good feast. I’m abnormally fond of them. When you ship a
batch of frogs’ legs down to New York markets, how do you go after
them? They jump so swift that it’s always hard for me to corral any.
At home I use a short pole with two feet of line, and a red fly at
the end, pushing close enough to dangle the said fly before the nose
of Mr. Frog, who grabs it in a hurry.”
“Oh! we don’t bother with all that fuss up here,” explained Ralph.
“I have a little Flobert rifle that I knock ’em over with. You could
get a hundred in a morning without much trouble. I’ll lend it to you
any time you want, Tubby.”
That completed the delight of the fat boy, who, in imagination,
already saw himself feasting on his favorite dish to his heart’s
content.
“It’s going to be lots of fun for Tubby,” remarked Andy,
quizzically, “but all the same it’s bound to be death to the frogs.”
“Well, what good are the slippery things, except to serve as food
for people, I’d like to know? As singers they’re a miserable
failure, and all their lives, from the time they’re tadpoles up to
when they weigh two solid pounds, they never do any particular good
till they are served on the table, browned to a crisp, and making
honest boys’ hearts send up their thanksgiving.”
“No use trying to convince Tubby about the sin of sacrificing things
to satisfy his appetite,” laughed Rob. “He’s committed to the idea
that everything was put on this earth for one great purpose, which
was to cater to the wants of man.”
“Well, isn’t getting good and hungry one of man’s greatest
troubles?” Tubby immediately demanded, triumphantly. “Hasn’t he been
given dominion over all the fowls of the air, the fishes of the
waters, and the animals that populate the woods in order to sustain
his life? That’s my way of looking at it, so there you are.”
As usual, Tubby’s argument was unanswerable, and as they left the
noisy frog pond in the rear, the fat boy cast a happy glance back at
the watery stretch, as though anticipating royal good times around
that vicinity later on.
After a while they came to a wilder stretch of country. Rob knew
then that the fur farm was close at hand, and presently they caught
glimpses of the high fence surrounding the tract given over to this
unique enterprise.
“I wanted to ask if you ever had any of your foxes stolen, Ralph?”
Sim was inquiring as they pushed on. “When a single black fox pelt
is worth hundreds of dollars, it strikes me that some unscrupulous
men might scheme to sneak in on you and try to clean out your farm.”
“Well, they couldn’t do that, because the foxes are mighty cunning,”
the proprietor explained. “They would have to set traps, and come
and go. I’ve figured all that out, and taken proper precautions
against losing any of my prizes. One of the men stays up here day
and night, and I often join him. He has a cabin inside the
enclosure; and, besides, we have a way of detecting it if any
intruder should try to climb the fence. Electricity is a great
agent, you know, Sim.”
He did not take the trouble to explain further, so the boys could
only guess what he meant. Rob believed that there must be a wire
running along the top of the fence, and that every night an electric
current was turned on, after the manner in which empty dwelling
houses are protected in big cities by a firm that guarantees against
their being entered and robbed during the absence of the owners.
If this were so, it would mean that Ralph was clever, and
up-to-date. Rob found himself admiring the other more than ever. He
also meant to win Ralph over to a new way of looking at scout
activities before they departed from that region. Such a wideawake
and enterprising boy certainly should be enrolled in the ranks where
his influence would be for the upbuilding of other fellows’
character.
In other words, Rob believed that Wyoming was horribly behind the
times in not encouraging a regular scout troop; and he hoped that
this fault could be remedied before a great while, to the betterment
of the community and every growing lad around Wyoming. Because an
irresponsible group of fellows had once organized and tried to carry
out the ideas of the Boy Scouts without any real authorization from
Headquarters was no reason the experiment should not be tried again,
this time starting from the right base.
Once inside the enclosure, they found many things to interest them.
Tubby expressed himself wild to set eyes on a genuine black fox. He
had often seen the common red variety, but something that was
especially valuable appealed to his curiosity.
So, to oblige him, Ralph uttered a little call that, after being
repeated several times, brought a response. They could see a
dark-colored object creeping toward them, but it would not come very
close.
“Usually Timmy will come up and eat food out of my hand,” said
Ralph; “but, like all his breed, he’s a timid little duck, and
doesn’t take to strangers. So that’s about all you’ll see of him
today.”
At the first movement one of them made the fox vanished like a
streak.
“He’s lit out,” said Tubby, in a disappointed tone. “I’m sorry, too,
because I’d like to say I’d petted a black fox. But, Ralph, between
us, he looked sort of silver-colored, you know?”
“Some people call them silver foxes,” the grower of fine fur
explained. “In some lights they do look silver gray, and then again
dense black. But their fur is the silkiest known, which is one
reason it commands such a big price; it isn’t coarse like that of
other foxes. You know the difference between a common cart animal
and a thoroughbred Kentucky race horse; well, and black fox is of
that racer breed.”
They naturally talked more or less of the chances of such an
enterprise succeeding, and Ralph learned that Rob Blake was pretty
well posted about all such things.
“We are taking a chance, you understand,” he remarked, after Rob had
asked several questions, “but we think we are on the way to making
the venture a profitable one. Like everything else that deserves
success, you have to work like a beaver, and put your whole soul
into it, day and night. It’s eternal vigilance in raising fur,
because we have all sorts of enemies to fight against.”
“Enemies?” repeated Tubby. “What do you mean by that, Ralph?”
“Oh! some disease may get into your pen, just as sometimes happens
to chicken fanciers, and cleans them out. Foxes are liable to
disease, and also to insect pests that make the fur less valuable.
Then eagles and hawks are always ready to pick up a fat young fox if
they get a chance, not to speak of raiding wildcats. My man always
carried a gun with him when making his rounds.”
“And has he often had to use it to protect your fox litters?” asked
Tubby.
“We’ve killed quite a few birds that meant to rob me of the profits
of my labor,” Ralph answered, “and one wildcat was shot close to
this place; but so far as I know up to now I haven’t lost a single
pelt. We count our animals every day at feeding time. I’ll fix it
later on so you can see the whole pen at once by staying hidden in a
tree while we call them around. Now let’s move along, because you
will want to see my other pens containing the mink, otter, and
skunks.”