Part 8 (2/2)
IX
BLACKCROSS
After running twenty miles, old Raven Road stopped to rest under a vast black-oak tree. Beyond its sentinel bulk was Wild-Folk Land.
Where hidden springs had kept the wet gra.s.s green all winter, the first flower of the year had forced its way through the cold ground.
Smooth as ivory, all crimson-lake and gold-green on the outside, the curved hollow showed a rich crimson within. Cursed with an ill name and an evil savor, yet the skunk cabbage leads the year's procession of flowers.
Among the dry leaves of the thickets showed the porcelain petals of a colony of hepatica, snow-white, pale pink, violet, deep purple, pure blue, lilac, and lavender. Beyond them was a patch of spice-bush, whose black fragrant branches snapped brittle as gla.s.s, and whose golden blossoms appear before the leaves. At the foot of a bank, hidden by the scented boughs, bubbled a deep unfailing spring, and from it a little trickle of water wound through the thicket into the swale beyond. Growing wider and deeper with every rod, it ran through a little valley hidden between two round, green hills, which widened into a stretch of marshland filled with reeds and thickets of wild rose, elderberry, and b.u.t.tonbush, laced and interlaced with the choking orange strands of that parasite, the dodder.
Beside the stream, and at times crossing it, a path, trodden deep, twisted in and out of the marsh. It was too narrow to have been made by human feet, nor could any man have found and followed so unerringly the little ridges of dry going hidden away between the bogs and under the lush growth. Packed hard by long years of use, nowhere in the path's whole length did any paw-print show. Only in snow-time was the white page printed deep with tracks like those of a dog, but cleaner cut and running in a straight line instead of spraddling to one side.
Nor was there ever in these trails the little furrow which a dragging paw makes. Only a fox could have made that long straight line, where every paw-print was stamped in the soft snow as if with a die. From Cold Spring to Darby Creek the long narrow valley belonged to the fox-folk.
Close beside the spring itself, at the very edge of its fringe of bushes, was a deep burrow that ran out into the open field, and yet was so cunningly hidden by a rock and masked by bushes and long gra.s.s that few humans ever suspected that a sly, old, gray fox had lived there for a fox-lifetime, or nearly ten years. His range extended to the swamp on the south, and up through the tangle of little wooded hills and valleys to the north known throughout the countryside as the Ridge.
The other end of Fox Valley, and all the Darby Creek country from Fern Valley to Blacksnake Swamp was owned by a red-fox family. They were larger than the gray foxes and the blood of long-ago English foxes, brought over by fox-hunting colonial governors, ran in their veins. To the strength and size of the American fox they added the craft of a thousand generations of hunted foxes on English soil.
Both fox families kept, for the most part, strictly to their own range, for poaching in a fox country always means trouble. Both ranges were well stocked with rabbits, three varieties of mice, birds, frogs, and the other small deer on which foxes live. Occasionally the hunters of both families would make a foray on some far-away farm and bring back a plump hen, a pigeon, or sometimes a tame duck. Never did the hunter rob a near-by farm, or go twice in succession to the same place; for it is a foolish fox who will make enemies for himself on his own home ranges--and foolish foxes are about as common as white crows.
The red-fox range included a number of well-hidden homes. Rarely did they occupy the same house two seasons in succession, for experience has taught foxes that long leases are neither sanitary nor safe. This year they were living on the slope of a dry hillside in the very heart of a beech wood. Long years before they had fas.h.i.+oned their very first home, and during every succeeding year of occupancy had added improvements and repairs, until it was as complete a residence as any fox family could wish. The first burrow, which was some nine inches in diameter, ran straight into the hillside for about three feet; then it angled sharply along the side of a hidden rock, and ran back some twenty feet more. From off the main shaft branched different galleries. One led to a storehouse, and another to a chamber where the garbage of the den was buried; for there are no better housekeepers among the wild folk than the foxes. Last and best hidden of all was the sleeping-room, fully twelve inches across, and carefully lined with soft, dry gra.s.s.
The perpendicular air shaft ran from the deepest part of the tunnel to the centre of a dense thicket on the hillside. In an irregular curve of some twenty feet, two more entrances were dug. Both of these joined the main shaft after describing an angle. Last of all was the emergency exit, the final touch which makes a fox home complete. It is always concealed carefully, and is never used except in times of great danger. This one was dug down through a decayed chestnut stump some two feet high, hidden in a fringe of bushes some distance up the hillside, and wound itself among the roots, and connected with the sleeping-chamber. Back of the main entrance lay a chestnut log fully three feet through, and screened from the hilltop by a thicket interlaced with greenbrier. This was the watchtower and sun-parlor of the fox family. From it they could survey the whole valley, while one bound would bring them to any one of the regular entrances.
On a day in early April, full of suns.h.i.+ne and showers blowing across a soft spring sky, the old dog fox approached the den, carrying a cottontail rabbit slung over one shoulder. As he came to the main entrance, he suddenly stopped and, with one foot raised, stood motionless, sniffing a faint scent from the depths of the burrow.
Without entering, he laid the rabbit down at the lip of the opening and withdrew; for no dog fox may enter his burrow after the cubs arrive. There were three of them--blind, lead-colored little kittens, who nuzzled and whimpered against Mother Fox's warm body and fed frantically every hour or so during the first days of their new life.
For the next three weeks Father Fox hunted for five. Squirrels, red and gray, chipmunks, birds, rabbits, and scores and scores of mice, found their way into the den.
The ninth day of the cubs' life on earth marked an event more important to Mother Fox than the Declaration of Independence, or the promulgation of the Suffrage Amendment. On that date, all three of her cubs opened their eyes! Twelve nights later, when the May moonlight made a new heaven and a new earth, they took their first journey. It was only twenty feet, but it covered the distance from one world to another. For a moment three sharp little noses peered out wonderingly at the new world. It was roofed with a s.h.i.+mmering sky instead of damp earth, and was big and boundless and very, very beautiful. Altogether the newcomers approved of it highly, although there did seem to be a great waste of air, and it was not so warm and cozy as the world underground.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FOX FAMILY]
Then the trio of little heads disappeared, and Mother Fox came out and winnowed the air through the marvelous mesh of her nostrils. Convinced that all was safe, she called her cubs out with one of those wild-folk signals pitched below the range of human ears. A moment later, the cubs were out and about in the dangerous, delightful world of out-of-doors. With their long, sprawly legs and heads too big for their bodies, they had something of the lumbering, appealing looks that puppies have. Their broad foreheads and p.r.i.c.ked-up ears seemed enormous compared with their little faces. Each one in turn put his head to one side and looked engagingly at the new world. With their soft woolly backs and round little stomachs, they seemed made to be patted and cuddled. Yet, playful and confiding as they appeared, a profound wisdom and craft looked out from their young eyes, which is never seen in those of any other animal.
Mother Fox watched them with much pride. Forgotten were the nine cubs of the year before, and the quartettes and s.e.xtettes of many a yesteryear. Never before, in her opinion, had there ever been three cubs so wise and beautiful and remarkable as these. Suddenly she raised her voice in the squalling screech of a vixen. Again and again the fierce uncanny sound shuddered away over the hills, and a pair of newly arrived summer boarders, who were strolling along Raven Road in the moonlight, returned with exceeding haste to old Mose Butler's farmhouse, and reported to their grinning host that they had heard the scream of a panther.
From far down Darby Creek came the answering bark of the old fox. Only the sudden explosive quality of the sound made it resemble in any way the bark of a dog. A curious screeching quality of tone ran through it, and it sounded as if made by some animal who was trying to bark but had never really learned how. Then, with the disconcerting suddenness of a fox, Father Fox stood before his new family for the first time. From his narrow jaws swung a fringe of plump mice, with their tails ingeniously crossed so that they could all be carried by one grip of the narrow jaws. Dropping them, the old fox stared solemnly at his family grouped in the moonlight, and then growled deep and approvingly in his throat. Two of the cubs wore the usual clouded pale yellow of a young red fox. The third, however, showed, faintly outlined, a velvety black face, ears, muzzle, and legs, with a silky black streak down his back, crossed at the shoulders by a similar stripe shading into reddish and silver-gray, while his little black tail had the silver tip which is the hall-mark of the rare cross-fox, which is sometimes born into a red-fox family.
From that night the training of the little fox family began. Father Fox no longer brought his kill directly to the den. Instead, he hid it not too carefully some fifty yards away, and the cubs learned to know the scent of food--flesh or fowl--and to dig it out from under piles of leaves or brush, or even from under an inch or so of freshly dug earth. Then, with tiny growls, they would crouch and steal forward and pounce upon the defenseless kill, with tremendous exhibitions of craft and ferocity. They went out on little hunting-trips by night, with Mother Fox, to lonely hillside pastures, where she taught them to hunt field-mice in the withered gra.s.s. In the starlight, they would steal up to some promising clump, and rising on their hind legs peer far forward, with ears p.r.i.c.ked up to catch the faintest squeak and eyes alert to note the tiniest movement in the gra.s.s. They learned to spring and pounce like lightning, with outspread paws, just ahead of where the gra.s.s stirred ever so slightly. If successful, they would kill with one nip a plump, round-headed, short-tailed meadow-mouse.
Every night they went farther and farther, until at last with Mother Fox they covered the whole range, at the brisk walk which is the usual hunting-gait of a fox, with frequent pauses and sniffings and listenings.
It was Father Fox who first took them into the sunlight, which was as strange and unnatural to fox children as midnight out-of-doors would be to a human child. He it was who taught them, when in danger, to stand still and keep on standing still--one of the most difficult courses in the wild-folk curriculum. Sometimes they met man, whose approach through the woods or across the fields sounded as loud to the fox children as the rumble of an auto-truck would sound to the human child. Crouched in the bleached tawny gra.s.s, absolutely immovable, the foxes looked so much like tussocks that it would have taken a trained eye indeed to have discovered them.
Just as the cubs had grown old and wise enough to be left in and about the burrows alone, the Sword fell. That night both of the old foxes were abroad on a hunt too long for the untrained muscles of the cubs. Awaiting their return, the little foxes were playing and frolicking silently around the den. They had learned that the scent of man or dog means death to foxes, and to seek safety in their burrow at any strange sound. No one of them knew that a shadow in the air, which drifted silently nearer to the den, might conceal any danger. Suddenly the shadow fell, and seemed to blot out the little straw-colored cub farthest from the burrow. He had but time for a terrified whicker, when a double set of steel-like talons clamped through his soft fur clear to his heart, and in a second the little body shot up through the air and disappeared in the darkness. A few moments later, from a far-away clump of trees, sounded the deep sinister ”Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo” of the great horned owl.
Once having found the fox family, Death followed fast on its trail.
One morning the largest cub awoke, and decided to take a stroll by himself in the sunlight, without waiting for Father Fox to come, and without waking the rest of the family, who slept curled up together in the sleeping-room of the den. Stealing out of the main burrow, the little cub sniffed the air wisely, and examined the landscape from under wrinkled brows with an air of profound consideration. At first he followed a winding path which ran through a bit of woodland where Mother Fox had taken him once before by night. Finding no trace of game there, he left the path and climbed up a rocky hillside half covered with brush and trees. Just as he was turning a corner of a little rocky ledge which jutted out in front of him, he heard a low thick hiss. Directly in front of him, in an irregular loop, lay a hazel-brown snake, dappled with blunt Y's of a rich chestnut color, its head and neck being the color of rusty copper.
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