Red Fox

“If you’re so blame smart,” said he, at last, “let’s see you do it. It’s easy enough to talk.”

This was the very invitation he had been wanting, and the Boy instantly dropped his air of banter.

“I will do it,” he said, seriously. The backwoodsman paused in his chewing, spat over the sawhorse, – the two were sitting on the wood-pile in Jabe’s yard, – and eyed the lad doubtfully. He could not believe that his eloquence had triumphed so overwhelmingly as this speech seemed to imply.

“It’s this way, Jabe,” went on the Boy after a few moments of silence. “I know that fox a sight better than you do! I’ve watched and studied him; and I’ve got so that I like him. I could have shot him a dozen times. I know all his kinks. I’ve lugged him by the hind legs, hanging over my shoulder – ”

“The hell you have!” ejaculated the backwoodsman, looking at the Boy with astonishment and growing respect. The two knew each other too well to be incredulous of each other’s statements.

“Yes! and even then he fooled me! But I know, now, how to best him if I wanted to. I don’t want to. But if you’re bound you’re a-going to, then I’ll chip in with and show you how, on condition that you spare his life. You’ll get the glory, Jabe; and I’ll get the fox.”

The backwoodsman spat contemplatively, and rolled the question over in his mind. What he called the Boy’s “durn foolishness” about killing things naturally made him impatient at times, and he was unwilling to seem to humour it. But in this the Boy was certainly meeting him half-way; and he wanted to gratify him.

“What’d you want to do with the critter, after we’d got him?” he inquired at last, suspicious of some strategy.

The Boy smiled comprehendingly.

“Well, I wouldn’t let him go again, to give you your trouble all over, Jabe! Don’t be scared of that!”

“I ain’t skeered of that!” protested Jabe, ashamed of having his suspicions penetrated.

“Well,” went on the Boy, “I’d keep the fox a little while myself, I think, if father didn’t mind, and see if I could tame him. He’s so clever, maybe he’d not be so hard to tame as other foxes. But I don’t expect I could do much with him that way. Foxes all think too much of themselves to let any one brag of having tamed them. But he’s such a beauty that any show or ‘zoo’ would be mighty proud to get him, and would take care to treat him well. I’ll sell him, and get a big price for him, Jabe. And we’ll divide. He’d better be in a show, Jabe, than dead, – whatever some people might say.”

“Don’t know about that!” said the woodsman, looking around upon the familiar fields and the old woods glowing in the sunshine. “I’d ruther be dead than shet up – never to see all this no more!” And he made a sweep with his hand that seemed to caress the sweet and lonely landscape.

“Tut! Jabe!” said the Boy, bluntly. “Then you’ve got no imagination. I’ll bet Red Fox has lots. I know which he’d choose, anyway, if it was put up to him. So I’m going to choose for him, if you’ll agree. Death’s the only thing that can’t be reconsidered. Why, suppose you were shut up for life, there might come an earthquake some day, and split open your stone walls, and let you walk right out! Speaking for Red Fox, I take the circus. What do you say?”

“All right,” assented the backwoodsman, slowly. “Only, let’s git him, quick! He’s fooled us all too long.”

“Do you know,” said the Boy, “he’s a queer beast, that! I’ve found his tracks about your farm – the most dangerous place in the whole settlement for him – oftener than anywhere else. Haven’t you?”

“Of course I hev’!” answered the backwoodsman. “And he’s took to follerin’ me, in the woods, too. Looks like he had it in for me special. What do you s’pose he’s up to?”

“Perhaps he’s just particularly scared of you, and so wants to keep an eye on you. Or, maybe, knowing you are already his enemy, he thinks it safer to steal your chickens than to risk making other enemies by stealing somebody else’s!”

“He ain’t got none of mine yet!” declared the woodsman with emphasis.

“Then I’ll bet it’s because he hasn’t wanted to,” said the Boy. “I’ve seen him looking around your place, and lying in the bushes watching, while the hens caught grasshoppers out in the stubble not ten feet away, where he could grab them without any trouble at all. And I’ve seen him on his hind legs behind the hen-house looking in through a crack, – at some hen on the nest, most likely. If he has spared you, Jabe, it’s been just because he chose to. You may be sure of that. He’s had some good reason in his wise red noddle.”

“He’d better hurry up, then!” growled Jabe. “He ain’t got much more time to spare. What do you reckon we’d better do, now, to circumvent the varmint?”

“Come along and I’ll show you!” said the Boy, leading the way to Jabe’s chicken-house.

It happened that the tall backwoodsman had a fancy for good fowls. He had several times sent away for settings of thoroughbred eggs; and having had good luck with them, he had now a very handsome and unusual flock to brag of. To be sure, Buff Cochins and Plymouth Rocks and White Leghorns and Black Minorcas all ran together, and the free mixture of breeds wrought strangely diversified results. But it was a great flock, for all its commingling, and accomplished wonders of egg-laying; and Jabe Smith took pride in having it well housed. The fowl-house was simple, but quite up to date in its pattern, which had been carefully copied from cuts in the Colonial Farmer. At each end of the long sunny front was a little entrance cut for the use of the “biddies,” and closed at night by a sliding drop door.

“Here, Jabe,” said the Boy, kicking one of these little doors with his toe, “is your trap!”

A gleam of instant comprehension flashed into the woodsman’s eyes, but he maintained a strategic silence.

“And yonder,” continued the speaker, with a wave of his hand toward the scattered flock, feeding, or scratching, or dusting feathers in the sun, – “is your bait.”

“How’s the bait goin’ to like it?” asked Jabe.

“Oh, the bait’s not going to mind!” said the Boy, cheerfully. “You just wait and see!”

The problem now was a simple one. The Boy knew that Red Fox had explored the premises thoroughly by night, outside, and would undoubtedly have explored them inside as well but for the fact that nightfall found the doors all closed. He argued that the shrewd animal was expecting to sometime find a door left open by mistake. Now was the time for that mistake to occur. In its simplicity and effectiveness the Boy’s plan commanded the backwoodsman’s instant acceptance.

Knocking together a little platform of light boards about three feet square, the Boy laid it on the floor just inside one of the small doors. From it he ran a cord up each side of the door, over two nails at the top, and joined them in the centre. Here he rigged a sensitive trigger catch connecting with the loop that held up the sliding door. The edge of the platform he raised about an inch from the floor, attaching it to the trigger in such a way that the slightest additional weight would spring the catch and let the door drop down. This accomplished, with the skilful aid of Jabe Smith and his tools, the Boy placed some tiny blocks under the platform to brace it up and prevent it being sprung prematurely by the hens as they passed out and in.

“Now, Jabe,” said the proud strategist as the two stood off and eyed their handiwork, “all you’ve got to do is wait till all the hens have gone to roost. Then shut the other door, and take out the props from under the platform. When Red Fox comes, as he’s likely to do just about moonrise, he’ll be much pleased to find that for once his enemy has forgotten and left a door open. He’ll slip right in to see what the hen-house is like inside. The door will drop, – and then you have him!”

“But what about the hens?” queried their owner, doubtfully.

“When he finds he’s caught, he won’t be bothering about hens!” laughed the Boy. Now that he was fairly committed to the venture, the natural, primitive boy within him, which is always something of a wild animal, was beginning to wake up and assert itself. He was growing keen for the event.

That evening the Boy stayed at Jabe Smith’s farm for supper. After sundown, when the chickens were all at roost, and high in the pale greenish sky the latest crows were winging homeward to the spruce groves, the trap was set and the other door of the hen-house securely closed. Then in a hay-loft opposite, behind the big open window through which the hay was pitched, the Boy and Jabe hid themselves comfortably where they could command a perfect view of whatever might happen. Slowly the light faded out over the farmyard, and the roofs, and the spiky tree-tops along the ridges of the hills. With the cool-smelling twilight came a sort of expectant silence, a hush that seemed to listen consciously; and the two hidden in the hay-loft spoke only in a whisper. Up from the stanchions below the loft came startlingly loud the munching of the cattle’s jaws on the dry hay and the occasional windy sighs which their great flanks heaved forth from time to time. When a mouse rustled the hay softly at the other side of the loft, the sound seemed abrupt and conspicuous. Then, at last, a change came over the quality of the shadows in the yard below. They grew more liquid and transparent. A silvery glow caught the tree-tops along the opposite ridge, crept down, and bathed the rich fir masses of the woods in wonder. Then the roof of the hen-house turned silver, and a mysterious, transfiguring illumination seemed to tip down into the yard, making lovely, spectral things of the sawhorse, and the well-sweep, and the cart. Both Jabe and the Boy watched the transformation with wordless delight. The moon was floating up behind the barn.

The radiance had no more than fairly occupied the farmyard, when a shadowy shape came flitting soundlessly around the corner of the hen-house. From the crack in the boarding behind Red Fox had seen that one of the little doors was open. His opportunity – not necessarily to kill chickens, but to explore the inside of the chicken-house – had come at last. He peered in cautiously. There were all the fowls on their perches, sleeping soundly. There was no game-cock among them. He knew these tall, handsome Cochins and Minorcas, haughty but not dangerous. He darted confidently through the opening. The next moment the door dropped, with a sharp rap, behind him, catching and pinching smartly the tip of his beautiful brush.

Like lightning he wheeled about, jerking his tail free. But the door fitted securely in its grooves, so that his furiously scratching claws and desperate teeth could not budge it. In a silent frenzy he darted to the other door. It, too, refused to budge. Then he jumped up, scramblingly, toward the window, snubbing his nose against the glass and the sashes. But there was no way out. He stopped, crouched down close beside the treacherous door, and set his shrewd wits working desperately.

The hens, meanwhile, aroused by the dropping of the door, and greatly excited by the prisoner’s antics, had set up a wild commotion of squawking and cackling. The cocks were particularly noisy; but unlike the valorous game, they made no move to come down and give battle to the intruder. Their outcry, however, was by no means ineffectual. At the first sound of it the two hiders in the loft swung themselves down, and rushed eagerly to the hen-house.

The main door of the hen-house was at one end. The Boy opened it cautiously, keeping his feet and legs in the opening, while Jabe Smith peered over his head. What they saw brought an exclamation of astonishment from Jabe, and a knowing laugh from the Boy. There on the floor, half in moonlight and half in shadow, lay the great fox, stretched out lifeless in front of the perches, with the cackling fowls all craning long necks down to look at him. The two conspirators stepped inside and shut the door behind them. And the hens moderated their clamour, satisfied that help had come.

The Boy, smiling wisely, waited. But Jabe, after stirring the long, limp body with his toe, picked it up by the tail and examined it critically.

“I swan!” he exclaimed at length, in the voice which one accredits a miracle. “If he hain’t gone an’ fell an’ plumb broke his neck!”

“Well,” said the Boy, taking from his pocket the small dog-collar and chain which Jabe had lent him, “I guess I’ll take no risks.” And he proceeded to affix the chain and collar. Then he tied the animal’s slack, unresisting legs together with a stout cord.

Jabe jeered at him in a dry drawl, but the Boy kept his counsel.

“You never can tell, Jabe!” said he, enigmatically. “Red Fox dead is cleverer than most other beasts alive, and something might happen on the way home. He might mend this broken neck of his, you know, suddenly, – and then – whizz! – and no more Red Fox!”

“If that ’ere beast ain’t a dead one,” averred the backwoodsman, “I’ll eat my old shoe-packs.”

“Don’t undertake too much, Jabe,” mocked the Boy. “You may need those shoe-packs, with winter coming on! If you’ll just give me an old oat-sack, now, to wrap this unfortunate victim in, I’ll start for home ’fore it gets any later. And maybe if you’ll come ’round to-morrow morning you’ll find Red Fox holding a soirée in our back yard!”

“Reckon I’ll go along with you now,” said Jabe. “The beast’s too queer to let you go alone with him.”

CHAPTER XVII.

UNDER ALIEN SKIES

Securely wrapped up in the oat-sack, with just the black tip of his nose sticking out, Red Fox showed never a sign of life during that interminable journey to the home of the Boy. Tucked under the Boy’s sturdy young arm he endured the painful grip with unwavering heroism, and never stiffened or twitched a muscle. But if the elated victors had taken it into their heads to peer suddenly into the end of the roll of sacking, past the black nose-tip, they would have caught a shrewd and watchful eye wide open. The captive was not going to lose any point unnecessarily; and peering out into the flooding moonlight he marked well where his captors were carrying him. Bitterness was in his heart as he watched the silvered trees and fields and fences go by, – bitterness, and humiliation, and rage, and fear, but by no manner of means despair. Helpless as he was for the moment, he knew that he could not be carried in that way for ever. There must come some change. He was full of devices. And he had no idea of counting the great game lost.

When the Boy had unrolled him, and chained him to a staple in the corner of a spacious box-stall in the barn, and undone the bonds that fettered his legs, Red Fox still lay limp, so utterly slack in every sinew that the backwoodsman was more than ever assured that he was dead. To all jibes, however, the Boy answered, merely, “Come back in the morning and see!” And soon, after having wearied of admiring the rich fur and congratulating themselves on their speedy triumph, the victors went away, fastening the barn door behind them.