Red Fox

At length Red Fox’s sagacious brain decided to simulate defeat in the hope of luring the foe to closer quarters. The anger died out of his eyes, his tail and the fur of his neck drooped dejectedly; and he became the very picture of cowed abasement as he slowly turned away from the prize and slunk off. Instantly the mink, content with his victory, darted forward and began to feast upon the rabbit’s blood. Like lightning Red Fox whipped about, and was back between two breaths. But the mink had not been fooled at all. There he was, ten feet away, glaring red, but licking his narrow jaws, with all his wits about him. Red Fox once more had the prize under his paws, but he was no nearer knowing what to do with it. In a sudden outburst of fury he rushed upon the mink to hunt him down by tiring him out.

For a good five minutes the mad chase went on, up the bank, through the bushes, over rocks and stumps, through the deep woods, – but never more than forty or fifty yards distant from the dead rabbit. The mink kept always some ten or fifteen feet ahead of his furious pursuer, and felt quite at ease as to the outcome, because aware that he had the brook at hand as a safe refuge in case of need. If he should find himself getting winded, he would take to the open water or dive under the lingering ice, where Red Fox would be quite incapable of following him. What the end would have been will never be told; for while neither showed any sign of tiring or yielding there came a strange intervention. A black bear came lumbering briskly out of the nearest thicket, and, without so much as an apology to either Red Fox or the mink, helped himself to the rabbit, which he tore to pieces and began to devour with every evidence of good appetite.

The chase stopped short, while both the mink and Red Fox glared indignantly at the giant intruder. Then Red Fox, philosophically concluding that the fight was off, as there was nothing left to fight for, trotted quietly away through the underbrush to seek other game. Time was too precious for him to think of wasting it in a fruitless quarrel.

But the big black mink, as it chanced, was of a different way of thinking. He had wanted that rabbit, which he had earned by clever trailing and persistent chase. He would have had it, had not Red Fox insolently interfered. Now the rabbit was beyond his reach for ever, the bear’s great jaws making short work of it. His rage against Red Fox blazed up with fresh heat, and he had no longer any thought but vengeance.

Following cautiously and at some distance, he waited till Red Fox had apparently dismissed him from his mind. Then he slipped up behind once more, and repeated the old attack, springing back, however, more swiftly than before, because his antagonist was no longer hampered with a burden. This time Red Fox was thoroughly startled. He flashed about and made his spring; but, as he expected, he was again too late. His vindictive and implacable little enemy was crouching there as before, just out of reach, his strong tail twitching, his eyes like savage flame. Red Fox was bothered. He sat up on his haunches and gazed at the mink contemplatively. He wanted to hunt, not to fight. And that last bite hurt worst of all.

Presently he made up his mind what to do. Meekly, and with a frightened air, he got up and once more trotted away. But this time he limped painfully, as if one leg was so injured as to be almost useless; and he kept looking backward deprecatingly over his shoulder. Swelling with vindictive triumph, the mink grew less wary, and followed closer, awaiting the chance for another attack. Upon this, Red Fox broke into a feeble run, limping terribly. And closer still came the mink, feeling that revenge was now close at hand. At last, in passing through a rough, tangled thicket of little bushes and dead weeds, Red Fox stumbled forward, and fell. In a flash the mink was upon him, and reached for his throat.

At this instant, however, Red Fox’s faintness and feebleness fell from him; and the mink’s teeth never gained his throat. They met, indeed, savagely and punishingly enough, near the upper joint of his fore shoulder. But the next moment his long jaws closed over his assailant’s slim black loins, – closed, and crunched together inexorably. For a second or two the mink writhed and snapped, twisting like a snake. Then, as the long white teeth came together through his backbone, he straightened himself out convulsively, and fell together like a wet rag. Red Fox shook him fiercely for a minute or two, till assured that he was dead past all shamming; then threw him over his shoulder, as he had done the rabbit, and started for the den on the ridge. Tough, stringy, hard-fibred mink-meat was not like rabbit-meat, of course, but there was a good lot of it, and his mate was not in a mood to be over dainty.

CHAPTER XI.

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.

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.

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.

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.

CHAPTER XII.

A WINGED INVASION

After this humiliating chastisement the great eagle flew no more over Red Fox’s lookout, but went sailing down his ravine a good half-mile before mounting to cross the ridge. The young foxes, relieved from the only peril that had ever seriously threatened them, played now with perfect freedom all about their high, secluded demesne, and grew visibly from day to day, as the ardent Ringwaak spring grew into summer. By the time June came in, and all the world spread out below the lookout had grown to a sea of vivid greens shading off into shadowy purples toward the sky-line, the puppies were almost able to take care of themselves, and were making rapid progress with their hunting lessons under the careful guidance of their mother. They were lively and impudent youngsters, restless, inquisitive, and given to taking reckless liberties with their self-contained little mother. Of one creature alone did they stand in awe, and that was Red Fox, who hardly seemed aware of their existence as long as no danger threatened them.

One day about mid-June, however, there came a danger against which all Red Fox’s strength and craft were powerless. It was about eleven o’clock, of a hot, sweet day when the only breeze that stirred was a scented air caressing the bare summit of the ridge. It was as if the fields, and woods, and gardens, sleeping in the broad sun, breathed up all their savours of balsam fir, buckwheat and clover gratefully to the sky. About the den mouth, in the shadow, lay the mother and the puppies, stretched out in lax and secure abandon; while Red Fox, just a couple of feet below the top of his lookout, lay in a patch of tiny shade and got all the coolness to be found this side of Ringwaak.

About this time, down in Jabe Smith’s garden in the valley, there was an expectant excitement among the bees. Jabe was the possessor of three hives, – old-fashioned box affairs, one white, one light blue, and one yellow, so painted with the idea of helping the bees to recognize their respective abodes. About the thresholds of the blue hive and the white hive hung a few slender festoons of bees, driven out by the heat, while in the doorways a double line of toilers stood with heads down and swiftly whirring wings, ventilating the waxen treasures and the precious brood combs within. From each of these doorways extended, slanting upward, a diverging stream, the diligent gatherers of honey and pollen, going and coming upon their fragrant business.

But from the doorway of the yellow hive went no stream of busy workers. Instead of that, almost all the colony, except the faithful members who were occupied in feeding the larvæ, or ventilating and cleaning the combs, were gathered in glistening dark clusters over the front of the hive. The front was covered, to a depth of an inch or more, three-quarters of the way up, and from the ledge before the entrance hung a huge inverted cone of bees, clinging firmly together. The hive was about to swarm. It had prospered, and multiplied, and grown overfull. There were throngs of young workers, moreover, just ready to emerge full grown from their cells and take up the business and duties of the hive. It was time for a migration. It was time that a strong colony should go forth, to leave room for the newcomers about to appear, and to carry the traditions of sweetness, order, and industry to other surroundings. Meanwhile nothing but the most necessary hive-work could go on, for every one was athrill with expectation. Even Jabe Smith, watching from the other side of the garden fence, was keenly expectant. He looked for a very fine swarm from that populous commonwealth; and he had a nice new hive, pale pink outside and fresh rubbed with honey-water inside, to offer to the emigrants as their new home.

Presently there was a louder buzzing within the yellow hive, and an electric shock went through the waiting clusters outside. Among the combs might be heard a series of tiny, angry squeaks, as the queen bee sought to sting to death her young rivals still imprisoned in their waxen cells, and was respectfully but firmly restrained by her attendants. Foiled in these amiable intentions, the long, slim, dark queen at last rushed excitedly to the door, darted out through the clusters, and sprang into the air. In a moment, like foam before a great wind, the black clusters melted away; and the air above the bean-patch and the currant-bushes was suddenly thick with whirling, wildly humming bees, the migrating queen at their centre.

Attenuated to the transparency almost of a cloud, yet held together by a strange cohesion, like a nebula soon to condense into a world, the swarm, revolving about its own mystic centre, moved slowly across the garden, across the blue-flowered flax-field, and halted, enveloping a wide-limbed apple-tree. Jabe Smith, who had followed at a discreet distance, was delighted at this, because an accessible, low-growing tree like the apple made the hiving of the swarm an easy task.

Yes, the swarm was settling in the apple-tree. Near the base of one of the main limbs a dark cluster began to form. Rapidly it grew, the encircling cloud as rapidly shrinking. Soon it was as large as a water-bucket. The humming, revolving nebula had condensed, and hung, a new world, in the firmament of apple-green shade.

The moment the swarm was thoroughly settled, Jabe Smith came hurrying across the field with the new hive, a short ladder, and some rope. Planting the ladder carefully against the trunk, he climbed into the tree with the hive, lowered it just over the cluster of bees, and roped it securely in that position. All his movements were firm, slow, gentle, and confident – such movements as the bees seem to understand and trust. When he had the hive fixed to his satisfaction, so that the swarm could not fail to perceive what a convenient and attractive home it would make, he descended. A few bees had hummed about his head inquiringly. Several had alighted on his bare hands and face. But not one had offered to sting. The gaunt backwoodsman was persona grata to the bees.

In at least nine cases out of ten, Jabe Smith’s just expectations would have been realized. The bees would soon have moved up from the apple-tree limb to the cool, sweet, dark cavity above them, and taken possession. Then, Jabe would have covered the hive with a sheet, for further privacy, and left the swarm alone till evening. After dark he would have undone the rope, softly lowered the hive, fitted it to its floor, – a square of smoothed board with hooks at the sides, – and carried the swarm to its waiting stand beside the other hives, where it would have settled down to its business of making honey and increasing its population.

But this swarm, as it chanced, was one with a prearranged plan which it would not be seduced from carrying out. Every now and then the keeper of bees comes across such a swarm, obstinate explorers and pioneers, determined to throw off the ancient domination of man. A few bees did, indeed, crawl up into the empty hive and taste the sweets with which it had been flavoured. But all at once the swarm rose. The cluster melted, – and the swarm was again revolving in the air. With bitter disappointment, but knowing himself helpless to prevent, Jabe leaned on the snake fence, and watched the whirling cloud drift off, higher and higher, toward the woods and the ragged slope. Long before it was half-way up the hillside he had lost sight of it, and had turned back regretfully to his hoeing. He knew very well it was useless to pursue that high-flying swarm, which had evidently sent out explorers some days ahead and chosen itself a new dwelling-place in the deep of the wilds.

The day being such a windless one, and clear, with no menace of storm, it was safe for the migrating bees to undertake a long journey. In a little while Red Fox, from his post of vantage, saw the strange cloud moving slowly up the slopes, well above the tree-tops. He knew it was a swarm of bees; for more than once, from a secure covert, he had watched such a swarm with keen interest and curiosity. But he had no apprehensions as he gazed down on the strange flight. He had never seen any bees about these high regions of the ridge, and he felt sure the swarm was bound for some hollow tree or crevice below him. Had he known, however, that during the past few days a few straggling bees had visited the ridge top, exploring the dry recesses, he might have viewed the approaching flight with a certain anxiety to emphasize his interest. But had he known that these tiny, solitary, insignificant explorers had even visited his own den, and found it a marvel of security alike from wet and frost and foes, his philosophic confidence would have vanished. Nearer and nearer came the whirling cloud, larger and larger, blacker and blacker, till now its humming thrilled Red Fox’s ears. Before he realized how rapid was its flight, the skirmishers of the vanguard were buzzing about his ears. He concluded that they were going to cross the ridge. For a second or two he crouched flat. Then he felt a hot sting on his ear. Too wise to retaliate, he shook his head, slipped nervously down the rock, and dodged into the burrow. The little hollow before the entrance was already humming with the fringes of the swarm; so the mother fox and the young ones understood at once that there was trouble afoot and that it was time to run to earth. The young ones, however, as they followed their mother, obeyed their natural impulse to snap at these impertinent flies that were buzzing about their ears. They promptly got stung, of course, and darted in with a chorus of yelps, their pretty brushes drooping in consternation.

Once inside, the whole family crouched down behind Red Fox, wondering apprehensively what was going to happen. They were not left long in suspense. Red Fox saw the entrance darken, as the bees gathered thickly down to it. He felt the first intruders crawling in his fur. He felt two or three stings. The puppies began to yelp again. With a sharp bark, which was a signal to his mate to follow with the young ones, he darted out into the daylight, his red coat literally black with the invaders. Still, he was too wise to fight back; and, as the bees were mostly full of honey, and not in particularly warlike mood, he got but two or three more stings.

Close at his heels came the puppies; and he was careful not to run so fast as to leave them behind. At the tail of the procession came the slim mother, so covered with the crawling black invaders as to be almost unrecognizable for a fox. Quick to learn, she was copying her mate’s self-restraint, and making no fight; and few of the bees, therefore, were attacking her. She had some stings, to be sure; but most of the bees that were crawling over her were perfectly good-natured, and treated her merely as something convenient to light upon. The puppies, however, were not faring so well. True to their fighting pedigree, they snapped and bit at their assailants as they ran, yelping with pain and astonishment, but not cowed even in this moment of disastrous retreat.

At a few paces from the mouth of the den the majority of the bees that blackened the fur of Red Fox and his mate arose into the air and hummed off eagerly to rejoin their queen in the hole. But those upon the rash puppies, thoroughly stirred up, stuck to the battle. Red Fox understood the situation; and, fortunately for the youngsters, knew just what to do. Darting among the rocks, he led the unhappy procession to the nearest juniper thicket, and plunged straight into it. When the family emerged on the other side of the thicket, their coats had all resumed their proper colour; for few indeed were the bees that succeeded in resisting the firm and harsh brushes of the juniper. Many of them were killed, and many more maimed; while for some minutes the thicket was all a-buzz with those who had escaped injury in the unceremonious brushing.

From the juniper thicket Red Fox led down through a thick blueberry scrub, and thence through every kind of brushy bush he saw, till there was not a bee left in the fur of any member of the family. All the while he was heading for the little hillside meadow by the brook, where he was wont to catch mice. Along the edges of the brook, between grass and water, was a space of moist and naked earth. Here he taught the unhappy young ones to nose and wallow and roll themselves, till the cooling and healing soil was plastered all over them and rubbed deep into the very roots of their fur. Assuaging the fiery anguish and drawing the acrid poison from every tiny wound, the wet earth did its work, and after a time the sufferers felt better. Then they spent hours rolling in the sweet grass to clean and dry their fur; and when this was accomplished, there was the meadow, with all the mice, to afford them an easy meal. Just above the meadow, where the earth sloped upward and became dry and sandy, they found an old woodchuck burrow; and here, for the moment, they took up their abode till a more satisfactory dwelling might be found.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE YELLOW THIRST

The old woodchuck hole – it was one whose owner had been killed by Red Fox himself earlier in the season – served very well, when enlarged, for the rest of the summer. Red Fox did not occupy it, objecting as he did to the restlessness of the puppies, and preferring the spicy air beneath some thick spruce or fir near at hand. The puppies, with their increasing size and independence of spirit, were by this time growing troublesome to their mother, who had a busy time keeping them out of scrapes. The reputation of their father had secured them against many of the perils which beset young foxdom; and, except for the one little victim snatched away by the eagle, their number was not diminished. Never meddling, never teaching, never disciplining, apparently unaware, indeed, of their existence, Red Fox stood behind the little family and watched that it came to no hurt. Why he did this it would have puzzled him to decide, had the question in any way occurred to him. He would have concluded, probably, that it was all for the sake of the slim red mate; though back of this motive; without any doubt, the deeper instinct of fatherhood was at work.

The little foxes were now given to stealing off at twilight, or by moonlight, studying for themselves the mysteries of the trails; and sometimes, though not always, unknown to the young adventurers, Red Fox would manage to conduct his own hunting in the near neighbourhood. More than once his wisdom was justified by the event.

One day, as he was lying in wait in a clump of weeds for a rabbit which he had some reason to expect in the runway before him, he saw a big raccoon go running by on her toes, her big, dark, inquisitive eyes peering into every shadowy place. They detected Red Fox at once, hidden though he thought himself; and Red Fox knew himself discovered, by the change of expression, the sudden narrowing of the pupils, of those strange, restless eyes. The raccoon ran on, however, as if she had seen nothing, and Red Fox never moved. Each knew the other very well, and each had the highest respect for the other’s prowess in battle. There was no desire to interfere on either side. Had a fight been forced upon them, Red Fox would unquestionably have come out conqueror, but not without rememberable scars; for all his quick intelligence would have been needed, in addition to his strength and courage, to assure him the victory over so redoubtable an adversary as the big raccoon.

Some ten paces behind their mother ran three little raccoons, evidently in haste to catch up. They did not see Red Fox; and Red Fox, on his part, eyed them quite casually. He allowed himself no thought of how appetizing a morsel one of those fat little coons would be. Out of the corner of one eye, however, he cast a keen glance up along the runway, and noted that the mother raccoon had turned, and was looking backwards, to make quite sure that the great fox would respect the tacit truce that stood between her and him.

No sooner had the group of young coons gone, and disappeared with their mother down the runway, than another of the bright-eyed, bar-faced, ring-tailed little ones came along. He was in no hurry whatever, and seemed to care not a jot how far the rest of his family might get ahead of him. He went loafing along, nosing here and there, and apparently took no thought of all the perils of the wilderness. It may have been mere rash folly on his part, or it may have been the extreme of confidence in his mother’s ability to protect him even at long range; but he certainly showed himself lacking in that wholesome apprehensiveness which so helps a wilderness youngster to grow up. Red Fox wrinkled his black nose at the sight of such heedlessness, but had no thought of molesting the unwary traveller.

The little raccoon, however, had hardly got by, when Red Fox caught sight of one of his own irrepressible litter stealing up swiftly on the trail. It was the biggest of the whelps, this one, a particularly sturdy and well-grown youngster, who bid fair to one day rival his father in size and strength. He had none of his father’s wisdom, however, or he would not have been following the trail of the whole raccoon family. Red Fox was exasperated at this exhibition of blind, headlong rashness. He saw himself, in a moment more, being drawn into a bloody and altogether unprofitable contention with the big raccoon, – perhaps with her mate also. This was not to be endured. Darting from his hiding-place he stood across the runway, and turned a face of censure upon the foolish puppy. The look and attitude, together with a faint murmur of a growl, conveyed plainly enough to the youngster all that was necessary for him to know. Sullen and unconvinced, the youngster shrank back, turned, and went trotting reluctantly homeward, probably telling himself that his father had some hidden motive for his interference. When he had disappeared up the runway, Red Fox turned his head, and saw the big raccoon just vanishing in the other direction. She had been back to look after her dilatory offspring.

A few days later another of the ambitious puppies, starting out about sunset to follow the trails alone, got himself engaged in an enterprise too great for him. Under a rock on the edge of a little grassy, steeply sloping glade, where the red-gold light fell richly through the thin tree-tops along the lower edge, the youngster had found a woodchuck hole. Very proud and aspiring, he crouched beside it like a cat and waited for the occupant to come out. In a few minutes the occupant did come out, – grumpy woodchuck with a good appetite, starting out to forage for his bloodless evening meal of herbs and roots. The moment he emerged, the rash young fox pounced upon him, expecting an easy and speedy victory. But the woodchuck was no whit dismayed. His squat, brown body, rather fat and flabby-looking, was in reality a mass of vigorous muscles. His long, gnawing teeth, keen-edged as chisels, were very potent weapons. And there was not a drop of craven blood in his sturdy little heart. With an angry, whistling sort of squeak, he turned savagely upon his assailant and set a deep, punishing grip into his neck.

The young fox was startled, and let go his hold with a short yelp at the unaccustomed pain. He was game, however, and reached straightway for another and more effective hold. He bit and bit, slashing his antagonist severely; while the woodchuck, satisfied with the grip he had gained, held on like a bulldog, worrying, worrying, worrying. For perhaps three or four minutes the two thrashed around in the rose-lit grass before the hole, – the inexperienced puppy working desperately and rapidly tiring himself out, while the crafty old woodchuck held on and saved his breath, biding his opportunity. A minute or two more and he would have had the little fox at his mercy, bewildered and exhausted. But just at this critical point in the fight, when victory was already within his reach, he relaxed his hold, violently shook himself free, and darted like a brown streak into his hole.