LOBO, RAG, AND VIXEN

AND PICTURES

BY

NOTE TO THE READER

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

LOBO

THE KING OF CURRUMPAW

LOBO

THE KING OF CURRUMPAW

I

Currumpaw is a vast cattle range in northern New Mexico. It is a
land of rich pastures and teeming flocks and herds, a land of
rolling mesas and precious running waters that at length unite in
the Currumpaw River, from which the whole region is named. And the
king whose despotic power was felt over its entire extent was an
old gray wolf.

Old Lobo, or the king, as the Mexicans called him, was the
gigantic leader of a remarkable pack of gray wolves, that had
ravaged the Currumpaw Valley for a number of years. All the
shepherds and ranchmen knew him well, and, wherever he appeared
with his trusty band, terror reigned supreme among the cattle, and
wrath and despair among their owners. Old Lobo was a giant among
wolves, and was cunning and strong in proportion to his size. His
voice at night was well-known and easily distinguished from that of
any of his fellows. An ordinary wolf might howl half the night
about the herdsman’s bivouac without attracting more than a passing
notice, but when the deep roar of the old king came booming down
the cañon, the watcher bestirred himself and prepared to
learn in the morning that fresh and serious inroads had been made
among the herds.

Old Lobo’s band was but a small one. This I never quite
understood, for usually, when a wolf rises to the position and
power that he had, he attracts a numerous following. It may be that
he had as many as he desired, or perhaps his ferocious temper
prevented the increase of his pack. Certain is it that Lobo had
only five followers during the latter part of his reign. Each of
these, however, was a wolf of renown, most of them were above the
ordinary size, one in particular, the second in command, was a
veritable giant, but even he was far below the leader in size and
prowess. Several of the band, besides the two leaders, were
especially noted. One of those was a beautiful white wolf, that the
Mexicans called Blanca; this was supposed to be a female, possibly
Lobo’s mate. Another was a yellow wolf of remarkable swiftness,
which, according to current stories, had, on several occasions,
captured an antelope for the pack.

It will be seen, then, that these wolves were thoroughly
well-known to the cowboys and shepherds. They were frequently seen
and oftener heard, and their lives were intimately associated with
those of the cattlemen, who would so gladly have destroyed them.
There was not a stockman on the Currumpaw who would not readily
have given the value of many steers for the scalp of any one of
Lobo’s band, but they seemed to possess charmed lives, and defied
all manner of devices to kill them. They scorned all hunters,
derided all poisons, and continued, for at least five years, to
exact their tribute from the Currumpaw ranchers to the extent, many
said, of a cow each day. According to this estimate, therefore, the
band had killed more than two thousand of the finest stock, for, as
was only too well-known, they selected the best in every
instance.

The old idea that a wolf was constantly in a starving state, and
therefore ready to eat anything, was as far as possible from the
truth in this case, for these freebooters were always sleek and
well-conditioned, and were in fact most fastidious about what they
ate. Any animal that had died from natural causes, or that was
diseased or tainted, they would not touch, and they even rejected
anything that had been killed by the stockmen. Their choice and
daily food was the tenderer part of a freshly killed yearling
heifer. An old bull or cow they disdained, and though they
occasionally took a young calf or colt, it was quite clear that
veal or horseflesh was not their favorite diet. It was also known
that they were not fond of mutton, although they often amused
themselves by killing sheep. One night in November, 1893, Blanca
and the yellow wolf killed two hundred and fifty sheep, apparently
for the fun of it, and did not eat an ounce of their flesh.

These are examples of many stories which I might repeat, to show
the ravages of this destructive band. Many new devices for their
extinction were tried each year, but still they lived and throve in
spite of all the efforts of their foes. A great price was set on
Lobo’s head, and in consequence poison in a score of subtle forms
was put out for him, but he never failed to detect and avoid it.
One thing only he feared—that was firearms, and knowing full
well that all men in this region carried them, he never was known
to attack or face a human being. Indeed, the set policy of his band
was to take refuge in flight whenever, in the daytime, a man was
descried, no matter at what distance. Lobo’s habit of permitting
the pack to eat only that which they themselves had killed, was in
numerous cases their salvation, and the keenness of his scent to
detect the taint of human hands or the poison itself, completed
their immunity.

On one occasion, one of the cowboys heard the too familiar
rallying-cry of Old Lobo, and stealthily approaching, he found the
Currumpaw pack in a hollow, where they had ’rounded up’ a small
herd of cattle. Lobo sat apart on a knoll, while Blanca with the
rest was endeavoring to ‘cut out’ a young cow, which they had
selected; but the cattle were standing in a compact mass with their
heads outward, and presented to the foe a line of horns, unbroken
save when some cow, frightened by a fresh onset of the wolves,
tried to retreat into the middle of the herd. It was only by taking
advantage of these breaks that the wolves had succeeded at all in
wounding the selected cow, but she was far from being disabled, and
it seemed that Lobo at length lost patience with his followers, for
he left his position on the hill, and, uttering a deep roar, dashed
toward the herd. The terrified rank broke at his charge, and he
sprang in among them. Then the cattle scattered like the pieces of
a bursting bomb. Away went the chosen victim, but ere she had gone
twenty-five yards Lobo was upon her. Seizing her by the neck he
suddenly held back with all his force and so threw her heavily to
the ground. The shock must have been tremendous, for the heifer was
thrown heels over head. Lobo also turned a somersault, but
immediately recovered himself, and his followers falling on the
poor cow, killed her in a few seconds. Lobo took no part in the
killing—after having thrown the victim, he seemed to say,
“Now, why could not some of you have done that at once without
wasting so much time?”

The man now rode up shouting, the wolves as usual retired, and
he, having a bottle of strychnine, quickly poisoned the carcass in
three places, then went away, knowing they would return to feed, as
they had killed the animals themselves. But next morning, on going
to look for his expected victims, he found that, although the
wolves had eaten the heifer, they had carefully cut out and thrown
aside all those parts that had been poisoned.

The dread of this great wolf spread yearly among the ranchmen,
and each year a larger price was set on his head, until at last it
reached $1,000, an unparalleled wolf-bounty, surely; many a good
man has been hunted down for less. Tempted by the promised reward,
a Texan ranger named Tannerey came one day galloping up the
cañon of the Currumpaw. He had a superb outfit for
wolf-hunting—the best of guns and horses, and a pack of
enormous wolf-hounds. Far out on the plains of the Panhandle, he
and his dogs had killed many a wolf, and now he never doubted that,
within a few days, old Lobo’s scalp would dangle at his
saddle-bow.

Away they went bravely on their hunt in the gray dawn of a
summer morning, and soon the great dogs gave joyous tongue to say
that they were already on the track of their quarry. Within two
miles, the grizzly band of Currumpaw leaped into view, and the
chase grew fast and furious. The part of the wolf-hounds was merely
to hold the wolves at bay till the hunter could ride up and shoot
them, and this usually was easy on the open plains of Texas; but
here a new feature of the country came into play, and showed how
well Lobo had chosen his range; for the rocky cañons of the
Currumpaw and its tributaries intersect the prairies in every
direction. The old wolf at once made for the nearest of these and
by crossing it got rid of the horsemen. His band then scattered and
thereby scattered the dogs, and when they reunited at a distant
point of course all of the dogs did not turn up, and the wolves, no
longer outnumbered, turned on their pursuers and killed or
desperately wounded them all. That night when Tannerey mustered his
dogs, only six of them returned, and of these, two were terribly
lacerated. This hunter made two other attempts to capture the royal
scalp, but neither of them was more successful than the first, and
on the last occasion his best horse met its death by a fall; so he
gave up the chase in disgust and went back to Texas, leaving Lobo
more than ever the despot of the region.

Next year, two other hunters appeared, determined to win the
promised bounty. Each believed he could destroy this noted wolf,
the first by means of a newly devised poison, which was to be laid
out in an entirely new manner; the other a French Canadian, by
poison assisted with certain spells and charms, for he firmly
believed that Lobo was a veritable ‘loup-garou,’ and could not be
killed by ordinary means. But cunningly compounded poisons, charms,
and incantations were all of no avail against this grizzly
devastator. He made his weekly rounds and daily banquets as
aforetime, and before many weeks had passed, Calone and Laloche
gave up in despair and went elsewhere to hunt.

In the spring of 1893, after his unsuccessful attempt to capture
Lobo, Joe Calone had a humiliating experience, which seems to show
that the big wolf simply scorned his enemies, and had absolute
confidence in himself. Calone’s farm was on a small tributary of
the Currumpaw, in a picturesque cañon, and among the rocks
of this very cañon, within a thousand yards of the house,
old Lobo and his mate selected their den and raised their family
that season. There they lived all summer, and killed Joe’s cattle,
sheep, and dogs, but laughed at all his poisons and traps, and
rested securely among the recesses of the cavernous cliffs, while
Joe vainly racked his brain for some method of smoking them out, or
of reaching them with dynamite. But they escaped entirely
unscathed, and continued their ravages as before. “There’s where he
lived all last summer,” said Joe, pointing to the face of the
cliff, “and I couldn’t do a thing with him. I was like a fool to
him.”

II

This history, gathered so far from the cowboys, I found hard to
believe until, in the fall of 1893, I made the acquaintance of the
wily marauder, and at length came to know him more thoroughly than
anyone else. Some years before, in the Bingo days, I had been a
wolf-hunter, but my occupations since then had been of another
sort, chaining me to stool and desk. I was much in need of a
change, and when a friend, who was also a ranch-owner on the
Currumpaw, asked me to come to New Mexico and try if I could do
anything with this predatory pack, I accepted the invitation and,
eager to make the acquaintance of its king, was as soon as possible
among the mesas of that region. I spent some time riding about to
learn the country, and at intervals, my guide would point to the
skeleton of a cow to which the hide still adhered, and remark,
“That’s some of his work.”

It became quite clear to me that, in this rough country, it was
useless to think of pursuing Lobo with hounds and horses, so that
poison or traps were the only available expedients. At present we
had no traps large enough, so I set to work with poison.

I need not enter into the details of a hundred devices that I
employed to circumvent this ‘loup-garou’; there was no combination
of strychnine, arsenic, cyanide, or prussic acid, that I did not
essay; there was no manner of flesh that I did not try as bait; but
morning after morning, as I rode forth to learn the result, I found
that all my efforts had been useless. The old king was too cunning
for me. A single instance will show his wonderful sagacity. Acting
on the hint of an old trapper, I melted some cheese together with
the kidney fat of a freshly killed heifer, stewing it in a china
dish, and cutting it with a bone knife to avoid the taint of metal.
When the mixture was cool, I cut it into lumps, and making a hole
in one side of each lump, I inserted a large dose of strychnine and
cyanide, contained in a capsule that was impermeable by any odor;
finally I sealed the holes up with pieces of the cheese itself.
During the whole process, I wore a pair of gloves steeped in the
hot blood of the heifer, and even avoided breathing on the baits.
When all was ready, I put them in a raw-hide bag rubbed all over
with blood, and rode forth dragging the liver and kidneys of the
beef at the end of a rope. With this I made a ten-mile circuit,
dropping a bait at each quarter of a mile, and taking the utmost
care, always, not to touch any with my hands.

Lobo, generally, came into this part of the range in the early
part of each week, and passed the latter part, it was supposed,
around the base of Sierra Grande. This was Monday, and that same
evening, as we were about to retire, I heard the deep bass howl of
his majesty. On hearing it one of the boys briefly remarked, “There
he is, we’ll see.”

The next morning I went forth, eager to know the result. I soon
came on the fresh trail of the robbers, with Lobo in the
lead—his track was always easily distinguished. An ordinary
wolf’s forefoot is 4-1/2 inches long, that of a large wolf 4-3/4
inches, but Lobo’s, as measured a number of times, was 5-1/2 inches
from claw to heel; I afterward found that his other proportions
were commensurate, for he stood three feet high at the shoulder,
and weighed 150 pounds. His trail, therefore, though obscured by
those of his followers, was never difficult to trace. The pack had
soon found the track of my drag, and as usual followed it. I could
see that Lobo had come to the first bait, sniffed about it, and had
finally picked it up.

Then I could not conceal my delight. “I’ve got him at last,” I
exclaimed; “I shall find him stark within a mile,” and I galloped
on with eager eyes fixed on the great broad track in the dust. It
led me to the second bait and that also was gone. How I
exulted—I surely have him now and perhaps several of his
band. But there was the broad paw-mark still on the drag; and
though I stood in the stirrup and scanned the plain I saw nothing
that looked like a dead wolf. Again I followed—to find now
that the third bait was gone—and the king-wolf’s track led on
to the fourth, there to learn that he had not really taken a bait
at all, but had merely carried them in his mouth. Then having piled
the three on the fourth, he scattered filth over them to express
his utter contempt for my devices. After this he left my drag and
went about his business with the pack he guarded so
effectively.

This is only one of many similar experiences which convinced me
that poison would never avail to destroy this robber, and though I
continued to use it while awaiting the arrival of the traps, it was
only because it was meanwhile a sure means of killing many prairie
wolves and other destructive vermin.

About this time there came under my observation an incident that
will illustrate Lobo’s diabolic cunning. These wolves had at least
one pursuit which was merely an amusement, it was stampeding and
killing sheep, though they rarely ate them. The sheep are usually
kept in flocks of from one thousand to three thousand under one or
more shepherds. At night they are gathered in the most sheltered
place available, and a herdsman sleeps on each side of the flock to
give additional protection. Sheep are such senseless creatures that
they are liable to be stampeded by the veriest trifle, but they
have deeply ingrained in their nature one, and perhaps only one,
strong weakness, namely, to follow their leader. And this the
shepherds turn to good account by putting half a dozen goats in the
flock of sheep. The latter recognize the superior intelligence of
their bearded cousins, and when a night alarm occurs they crowd
around them, and usually, are thus saved from a stampede and are
easily protected. But it was not always so. One night late in last
November, two Perico shepherds were aroused by an onset of wolves.
Their flocks huddled around the goats, which being neither fools
nor cowards, stood their ground and were bravely defiant; but alas
for them, no common wolf was heading this attack. Old Lobo, the
weir-wolf, knew as well as the shepherds that the goats were the
moral force of the flock, so hastily running over the backs of the
densely packed sheep, he fell on these leaders, slew them all in a
few minutes, and soon had the luckless sheep stampeding in a
thousand different directions. For weeks afterward I was almost
daily accosted by some anxious shepherd, who asked, “Have you seen
any stray OTO sheep lately?” and usually I was obliged to say I
had; one day it was, “Yes, I came on some five or six carcasses by
Diamond Springs;” or another, it was to the effect that I had seen
a small ‘bunch’ running on the Malpai Mesa; or again, “No, but Juan
Meira saw about twenty, freshly killed, on the Cedra Monte two days
ago.”

At length the wolf traps arrived, and with two men I worked a
whole week to get them properly set out. We spared no labor or
pains, I adopted every device I could think of that might help to
insure success. The second day after the traps arrived, I rode
around to inspect, and soon came upon Lobo’s trail running from
trap to trap. In the dust I could read the whole story of his
doings that night. He had trotted along in the darkness, and
although the traps were so carefully concealed, he had instantly
detected the first one. Stopping the onward march of the pack, he
had cautiously scratched around it until he had disclosed the trap,
the chain, and the log, then left them wholly exposed to view with
the trap still unsprung, and passing on he treated over a dozen
traps in the same fashion. Very soon I noticed that he stopped and
turned aside as soon as he detected suspicious signs on the trail,
and a new plan to outwit him at once suggested itself. I set the
traps in the form of an H; that is, with a row of traps on each
side of the trail, and one on the trail for the cross-bar of the H.
Before long, I had an opportunity to count another failure. Lobo
came trotting along the trail, and was fairly between the parallel
lines before he detected the single trap in the trail, but he
stopped in time, and why and how he knew enough I cannot tell; the
Angel of the wild things must have been with him, but without
turning an inch to the right or left, he slowly and cautiously
backed on his own tracks, putting each paw exactly in its old track
until he was off the dangerous ground. Then returning at one side
he scratched clods and stones with his hind feet till he had sprung
every trap. This he did on many other occasions, and although I
varied my methods and redoubled my precautions, he was never
deceived, his sagacity seemed never at fault, and he might have
been pursuing his career of rapine to-day, but for an unfortunate
alliance that proved his ruin and added his name to the long list
of heroes who, unassailable when alone, have fallen through the
indiscretion of a trusted ally.

Lobo and Blanca.

III

Once or twice, I had found indications that everything was not
quite right in the Currumpaw pack. There were signs of
irregularity, I thought; for instance there was clearly the trail
of a smaller wolf running ahead of the leader, at times, and this I
could not understand until a cowboy made a remark which explained
the matter.

“I saw them to-day,” he said, “and the wild one that breaks away
is Blanca.” Then the truth dawned upon me, and I added, “Now, I
know that Blanca is a she-wolf, because were a he-wolf to act thus,
Lobo would kill him at once.”

This suggested a new plan. I killed a heifer, and set one or two
rather obvious traps about the carcass. Then cutting off the head,
which is considered useless offal, and quite beneath the notice of
a wolf, I set it a little apart and around it placed six powerful
steel traps properly deodorized and concealed with the utmost care.
During my operations I kept my hands, boots, and implements smeared
with fresh blood, and afterward sprinkled the ground with the same,
as though it had flowed from the head; and when the traps were
buried in the dust I brushed the place over with the skin of a
coyote, and with a foot of the same animal made a number of tracks
over the traps. The head was so placed that there was a narrow
passage between it and some tussocks, and in this passage I buried
two of my best traps, fastening them to the head itself.

Wolves have the habit of approaching every carcass they get the
wind of, in order to examine it, even when they have no intention
of eating it, and I hoped that this habit would bring the Currumpaw
pack within reach of my latest stratagem. I did not doubt that Lobo
would detect my handiwork about the meat, and prevent the pack
approaching it, but I did build some hopes on the head, for it
looked as though it had been thrown aside as useless.

Next morning, I sallied forth to inspect the traps, and there,
oh, joy! were the tracks of the pack, and the place where the
beef-head and its traps had been was empty. A hasty study of the
trail showed that Lobo had kept the pack from approaching the meat,
but one, a small wolf, had evidently gone on to examine the head as
it lay apart and had walked right into one of the traps.

We set out on the trail, and within a mile discovered that the
hapless wolf was Blanca. Away she went, however, at a gallop, and
although encumbered by the beef-head, which weighed over fifty
pounds, she speedily distanced my companion who was on foot. But we
overtook her when she reached the rocks, for the horns of the cow’s
head became caught and held her fast. She was the handsomest wolf I
had ever seen. Her coat was in perfect condition and nearly
white.

She turned to fight, and raising her voice in the rallying cry
of her race, sent a long howl rolling over the cañon. From
far away upon the mesa came a deep response, the cry of Old Lobo.
That was her last call, for now we had closed in on her, and all
her energy and breath were devoted to combat.

Then followed the inevitable tragedy, the idea of which I shrank
from afterward more than at the time. We each threw a lasso over
the neck of the doomed wolf, and strained our horses in opposite
directions until the blood burst from her mouth, her eyes glazed,
her limbs stiffened and then fell limp. Homeward then we rode,
carrying the dead wolf, and exulting over this, the first
death-blow we had been able to inflict on the Currumpaw pack.

At intervals during the tragedy, and afterward as we rode
homeward, we heard the roar of Lobo as he wandered about on the
distant mesas, where he seemed to be searching for Blanca. He had
never really deserted her, but knowing that he could not save her,
his deep-rooted dread of firearms had been too much for him when he
saw us approaching. All that day we heard him wailing as he roamed
in his quest, and I remarked at length to one of the boys, “Now,
indeed, I truly know that Blanca was his mate.”

As evening fell he seemed to be coming toward the home
cañon, for his voice sounded continually nearer. There was
an unmistakable note of sorrow in it now. It was no longer the
loud, defiant howl, but a long, plaintive wail: “Blanca! Blanca!”
he seemed to call. And as night came down, I noticed that he was
not far from the place where we had overtaken her. At length he
seemed to find the trail, and when he came to the spot where we had
killed her, his heart-broken wailing was piteous to hear. It was
sadder than I could possibly have believed. Even the stolid cowboys
noticed it, and said they had “never heard a wolf carry on like
that before.” He seemed to know exactly what had taken place, for
her blood had stained the place of her death.

Then he took up the trail of the horses and followed it to the
ranch-house. Whether in hopes of finding her there, or in quest of
revenge, I know not, but the latter was what he found, for he
surprised our unfortunate watchdog outside and tore him to little
bits within fifty yards of the door. He evidently came alone this
time, for I found but one trail next morning, and he had galloped
about in a reckless manner that was very unusual with him. I had
half expected this, and had set a number of additional traps about
the pasture. Afterward I found that he had indeed fallen into one
of these, but such was his strength, he had torn himself loose and
cast it aside.

I believed that he would continue in the neighborhood until he
found her body at least, so I concentrated all my energies on this
one enterprise of catching him before he left the region, and while
yet in this reckless mood. Then I realized what a mistake I had
made in killing Blanca, for by using her as a decoy I might have
secured him the next night.

I gathered in all the traps I could command, one hundred and
thirty strong steel wolf-traps, and set them in fours in every
trail that led into the cañon; each trap was separately
fastened to a log, and each log was separately buried. In burying
them, I carefully removed the sod and every particle of earth that
was lifted we put in blankets, so that after the sod was replaced
and all was finished the eye could detect no trace of human
handiwork. When the traps were concealed I trailed the body of poor
Blanca over each place, and made of it a drag that circled all
about the ranch, and finally I took off one of her paws and made
with it a line of tracks over each trap. Every precaution and
device known to me I used, and retired at a late hour to await the
result.

Once during the night I thought I heard Old Lobo, but was not
sure of it. Next day I rode around, but darkness came on before I
completed the circuit of the north cañon, and I had nothing
to report. At supper one of the cowboys said, “There was a great
row among the cattle in the north cañon this morning, maybe
there is something in the traps there.” It was afternoon of the
next day before I got to the place referred to, and as I drew near
a great grizzly form arose from the ground, vainly endeavoring to
escape, and there revealed before me stood Lobo, King of the
Currumpaw, firmly held in the traps. Poor old hero, he had never
ceased to search for his darling, and when he found the trail her
body had made he followed it recklessly, and so fell into the snare
prepared for him. There he lay in the iron grasp of all four traps,
perfectly helpless, and all around him were numerous tracks showing
how the cattle had gathered about him to insult the fallen despot,
without daring to approach within his reach. For two days and two
nights he had lain there, and now was worn out with struggling.
Yet, when I went near him, he rose up with bristling mane and
raised his voice, and for the last time made the cañon
reverberate with his deep bass roar, a call for help, the muster
call of his band. But there was none to answer him, and, left alone
in his extremity, he whirled about with all his strength and made a
desperate effort to get at me. All in vain, each trap was a dead
drag of over three hundred pounds, and in their relentless fourfold
grasp, with great steel jaws on every foot, and the heavy logs and
chains all entangled together, he was absolutely powerless. How his
huge ivory tusks did grind on those cruel chains, and when I
ventured to touch him with my rifle-barrel he left grooves on it
which are there to this day. His eyes glared green with hate and
fury, and his jaws snapped with a hollow ‘chop,’ as he vainly
endeavored to reach me and my trembling horse. But he was worn out
with hunger and struggling and loss of blood, and he soon sank
exhausted to the ground.

Something like compunction came over me, as I prepared to deal
out to him that which so many had suffered at his hands.

“Grand old outlaw, hero of a thousand lawless raids, in a few
minutes you will be but a great load of carrion. It cannot be
otherwise.” Then I swung my lasso and sent it whistling over his
head. But not so fast; he was yet far from being subdued, and,
before the supple coils had fallen on his neck he seized the noose
and, with one fierce chop, cut through its hard thick strands, and
dropped it in two pieces at his feet.

Of course I had my rifle as a last resource, but I did not wish
to spoil his royal hide, so I galloped back to the camp and
returned with a cowboy and a fresh lasso. We threw to our victim a
stick of wood which he seized in his teeth, and before he could
relinquish it our lassoes whistled through the air and tightened on
his neck.

Yet before the light had died from his fierce eyes, I cried,
“Stay, we will not kill him; let us take him alive to the camp.” He
was so completely powerless now that it was easy to put a stout
stick through his mouth, behind his tusks, and then lash his jaws
with a heavy cord which was also fastened to the stick. The stick
kept the cord in, and the cord kept the stick in, so he was
harmless. As soon as he felt his jaws were tied he made no further
resistance, and uttered no sound, but looked calmly at us and
seemed to say, “Well, you have got me at last, do as you please
with me.” And from that time he took no more notice of us.

We tied his feet securely, but he never groaned, nor growled,
nor turned his head. Then with our united strength we were just
able to put him on my horse. His breath came evenly as though
sleeping, and his eyes were bright and clear again, but did not
rest on us. Afar on the great rolling mesas they were fixed, his
passing kingdom, where his famous band was now scattered. And he
gazed till the pony descended the pathway into the cañon,
and the rocks cut off the view.

By travelling slowly we reached the ranch in safety, and after
securing him with a collar and a strong chain, we staked him out in
the pasture and removed the cords. Then for the first time I could
examine him closely, and proved how unreliable is vulgar report
where a living hero or tyrant is concerned. He had not a
collar of gold about his neck, nor was there on his shoulders an
inverted cross to denote that he had leagued himself with Satan.
But I did find on one haunch a great broad scar, that tradition
says was the fang-mark of Juno, the leader of Tannerey’s
wolf-hounds—a mark which she gave him the moment before he
stretched her lifeless on the sand of the cañon.

I set meat and water beside him, but he paid no heed. He lay
calmly on his breast, and gazed with those steadfast yellow eyes
away past me down through the gateway of the cañon, over the
open plains—his plains—nor moved a muscle when I
touched him. When the sun went down he was still gazing fixedly
across the prairie. I expected he would call up his band when night
came, and prepared for them, but he had called once in his
extremity, and none had come; he would never call again.

A lion shorn of his strength, an eagle robbed of his freedom, or
a dove bereft of his mate, all die, it is said, of a broken heart;
and who will aver that this grim bandit could bear the threefold
brunt, heart-whole? This only I know, that when the morning dawned,
he was lying there still in his position of calm repose, but his
spirit was gone-the old king-wolf was dead.

I took the chain from his neck, a cowboy helped me to carry him
to the shed where lay the remains of Blanca, and as we laid him
beside her, the cattle-man exclaimed: “There, you would come
to her, now you are together again.”

REDRUFF

THE STORY OF THE DON VALLEY PARTRIDGE

REDRUFF

THE STORY OF THE DON VALLEY PARTRIDGE

I

Down the wooded slope of Taylor’s Hill the Mother Partridge led
her brood; down toward the crystal brook that by some strange whim
was called Mud Creek. Her little ones were one day old but already
quick on foot, and she was taking them for the first time to
drink.

She walked slowly, crouching low as she went, for the woods were
full of enemies. She was uttering a soft little cluck in her
throat, a call to the little balls of mottled down that on their
tiny pink legs came toddling after, and peeping softly and
plaintively if left even a few inches behind, and seeming so
fragile they made the very chicadees look big and coarse. There
were twelve of them, but Mother Grouse watched them all, and she
watched every bush and tree and thicket, and the whole woods and
the sky itself. Always for enemies she seemed seeking—friends
were too scarce to be looked for—and an enemy she found. Away
across the level beaver meadow was a great brute of a fox. He was
coming their way, and in a few moments would surely wind them or
strike their trail. There was no time to lose.

‘Krrr! Krrr! (Hide! Hide!) cried the mother in a
low, firm voice, and the little bits of things, scarcely bigger
than acorns and but a day old, scattered far (a few inches) apart
to hide. One dived under a leaf, another between two roots, a third
crawled into a curl of birch-bark, a fourth into a hole, and so on,
till all were hidden but one who could find no cover, so squatted
on a broad yellow chip and lay very flat, and closed his eyes very
tight, sure that now he was safe from being seen. They ceased their
frightened peeping and all was still.

Mother Partridge flew straight toward the dreaded beast,
alighted fearlessly a few yards to one side of him, and then flung
herself on the ground, flopping as though winged and lame—oh,
so dreadfully lame-and whining like a distressed puppy. Was she
begging for mercy—mercy from a bloodthirsty, cruel fox? Oh,
dear, no! She was no fool. One often hears of the cunning of the
fox. Wait and see what a fool he is compared with a
mother-partridge. Elated at the prize so suddenly within his reach,
the fox turned with a dash and caught—at least, no, he didn’t
quite catch the bird; she flopped by chance just a foot out of
reach. He followed with another jump and would have seized her this
time surely, but somehow a sapling came just between, and the
partridge dragged herself awkwardly away and under a log, but the
great brute snapped his jaws and bounded over the log, while she,
seeming a trifle less lame, made another clumsy forward spring and
tumbled down a bank, and Reynard, keenly following, almost caught
her tail, but, oddly enough, fast as he went and leaped, she still
seemed just a trifle faster. It was most extraordinary. A winged
partridge and he, Reynard, the Swift-foot, had not caught her in
five minutes’ racing. It was really shameful. But the partridge
seemed to gain strength as the fox put forth his, and after a
quarter of a mile race, racing that was somehow all away from
Taylor’s Hill, the bird got unaccountably quite well, and, rising
with a decisive whirr, flew off through the woods, leaving the fox
utterly dumfounded to realize that he had been made a fool of, and,
worst of all, he now remembered that this was not the first time he
had been served this very trick, though he never knew the reason
for it.

Meanwhile Mother Partridge skimmed in a great circle and came by
a roundabout way back to the little fuzz-balls she had left hidden
in the woods.

With a wild bird’s keen memory for places, she went to the very
grass-blade she last trod on, and stood for a moment fondly to
admire the perfect stillness of her children. Even at her step not
one had stirred, and the little fellow on the chip, not so very
badly concealed after all, had not budged, nor did he now; he only
closed his eyes a tiny little bit harder, till the mother said:

‘K-reet,’ (Come, children) and instantly, like a fairy
story, every hole gave up its little baby-partridge, and the wee
fellow on the chip, the biggest of them all really, opened his
big-little eyes and ran to the shelter of her broad tail, with a
sweet little ‘peep peep‘ which an enemy could not have heard
three feet away, but which his mother could not have missed thrice
as far, and all the other thimblefuls of down joined in, and no
doubt thought themselves dreadfully noisy, and were proportionately
happy.

The sun was hot now. There was an open space to cross on the
road to the water, and, after a careful lookout for enemies, the
mother gathered the little things under the shadow of her spread
fantail and kept off all danger of sunstroke until they reached the
brier thicket by the stream.

Here a cottontail rabbit leaped out and gave them a great scare.
But the flag of truce he carried behind was enough. He was an old
friend; and among other things the little ones learned that day
that Bunny always sails under a flag of truce, and lives up to it
too.

And then came the drink, the purest of living water, though
silly men had called it Mud Creek.

At first the little fellows didn’t know how to drink, but they
copied their mother, and soon learned to drink like her and give
thanks after every sip. There they stood in a row along the edge,
twelve little brown and golden balls on twenty-four little
pink-toed, in-turned feet, with twelve sweet little golden heads
gravely bowing, drinking, and giving thanks like their mother.

Then she led them by short stages, keeping the cover, to the far
side of the beaver-meadow, where was a great, grassy dome. The
mother had made a note of this dome some time before. It takes a
number of such domes to raise a brood of partridges. For this was
an ant’s nest. The old one stepped on top, looked about a moment,
then gave half a dozen vigorous rakes with her claws. The friable
ant-hilt was broken open, and the earthen galleries scattered in
ruins down the slope. The ants swarmed out and quarrelled with each
other for lack of a better plan. Some ran around the hill with vast
energy and little purpose, while a few of the more sensible began
to carry away fat white eggs. But the old partridge, coming to the
little ones, picked up one of these juicy-looking bags and clucked
and dropped it, and picked it up again and again and clucked, then
swallowed it. The young ones stood around, then one little yellow
fellow, the one that sat on the chip, picked up an ant-egg, dropped
it a few times, then yielding to a sudden impulse, swallowed it,
and so had learned to eat. Within twenty minutes even the runt had
learned, and a merry time they had scrambling after the delicious
eggs as their mother broke open more ant-galleries, and sent them
and their contents rolling down the bank, till every little
partridge had so crammed his little crop that he was positively
misshapen and could eat no more.

Then all went cautiously up the stream, and on a sandy bank,
well screened by brambles, they lay for all that afternoon, and
learned how pleasant it was to feel the cool, powdery dust running
between their hot little toes. With their strong bent for copying,
they lay on their sides like their mother and scratched with their
tiny feet and flopped with their wings, though they had no wings to
flop with, only a little tag among the down on each side, to show
where the wings would come. That night she took them to a dry
thicket near by, and there among the crisp, dead leaves that would
prevent an enemy’s silent approach on foot, and under the
interlacing briers that kept off all foes of the air, she cradled
them in their feather-shingled nursery and rejoiced in the fulness
of a mother’s joy over the wee cuddling things that peeped in their
steep and snuggled so trustfully against her warm body.

II

The third day the chicks were much stronger on their feet. They
no longer had to go around an acorn; they could even scramble over
pine-cones, and on the little tags that marked the places for their
wings, were now to be seen blue rows of fat blood-quills.

Their start in life was a good mother, good legs, a few reliable
instincts, and a germ of reason. It was instinct, that is,
inherited habit, which taught them to hide at the word from their
mother; it was instinct that taught them to follow her, but it was
reason which made them keep under the shadow of her tail when the
sun was smiting down, and from that day reason entered more and
more into their expanding lives.

Next day the blood-quills had sprouted the tips of feathers. On
the next, the feathers were well out, and a week later the whole
family of down-clad babies were strong on the wing.

And yet not all—poor little Runtie had been sickly from
the first. He bore his half-shell on his back for hours after he
came out; he ran less and cheeped more than his brothers, and when
one evening at the onset of a skunk the mother gave the word
‘Kwit, kwit‘ (Fly, fly), Runtie was left behind, and when
she gathered her brood on the piney hill he was missing, and they
saw him no more.

Meanwhile, their training had gone on. They knew that the finest
grasshoppers abounded in the long grass by the brook; they knew
that the currant-bushes dropped fatness in the form of smooth,
green worms; they knew that the dome of an ant-hill rising against
the distant woods stood for a garner of plenty; they knew that
strawberries, though not really insects, were almost as delicious;
they knew that the huge danaid butterflies were good, safe game, if
they could only catch them, and that a slab of bark dropping from
the side of a rotten log was sure to abound in good things of many
different kinds; and they had learned, also, the yellow-jackets,
mud-wasps, woolly worms, and hundred-leggers were better let
alone.

It was now July, the Moon of Berries. The chicks had grown and
flourished amazingly during this last month, and were now so large
that in her efforts to cover them the mother was kept standing all
night.

They took their daily dust-bath, but of late had changed to
another higher on the hill. It was one in use by many different
birds, and at first the mother disliked the idea of such a
second-hand bath. But the dust was of such a fine, agreeable
quality, and the children led the way with such enthusiasm, that
she forgot her mistrust.

After a fortnight the little ones began to droop and she herself
did not feel very well. They were always hungry, and though they
ate enormously, they one and all grew thinner and thinner. The
mother was the last to be affected. But when it came, it came as
hard on her—a ravenous hunger, a feverish headache, and a
wasting weakness. She never knew the cause. She could not know that
the dust of the much-used dust-bath, that her true instinct taught
her to mistrust at first, and now again to shun, was sown with
parasitic worms, and that all of the family were infested.

No natural impulse is without a purpose. The mother-bird’s
knowledge of healing was only to follow natural impulse. The eager,
feverish craving for something, she knew not what, led her to eat,
or try, everything that looked eatable and to seek the coolest
woods. And there she found a deadly sumach laden with its poison
fruit. A month ago she would have passed it by, but now she tried
the unattractive berries. The acrid burning juice seemed to answer
some strange demand of her body; she ate and ate, and all her
family joined in the strange feast of physic. No human doctor could
have hit it better; it proved a biting, drastic purge, the dreadful
secret foe was downed, the danger passed. But not for
all—Nature, the old nurse, had come too late for two of them.
The weakest, by inexorable law, dropped out. Enfeebled by the
disease, the remedy was too severe for them. They drank and drank
by the stream, and next morning did not move when the others
followed the mother. Strange vengeance was theirs now, for a skunk,
the same that could have told where Runtie went, found and devoured
their bodies and died of the poison they had eaten.

Seven little partridges now obeyed the mother’s call. Their
individual characters were early shown and now developed fast. The
weaklings were gone, but there was still a fool and a lazy one. The
mother could not help caring for some more than for others, and her
favorite was the biggest, he who once sat on the yellow chip for
concealment. He was not only the biggest, strongest, and handsomest
of the brood, the best of all, the most obedient. His mother’s
warning ‘rrrrr‘ (danger) did not always keep the others from
a risky path or a doubtful food, but obedience seemed natural to
him, and he never failed to respond to her soft ‘K-reet‘
(Come), and of this obedience he reaped the reward, for his days
were longest in the land.

August, the Molting Moon, went by; the young ones were now three
parts grown. They knew just enough to think themselves wonderfully
wise. When they were small it was necessary to sleep on the ground
so their mother could shelter them, but now they were too big to
need that, and the mother began to introduce grown-up ways of life.
It was time to roost in the trees. The young weasels, foxes,
skunks, and minks were beginning to run. The ground grew more
dangerous each night, so at sundown Mother Partridge called
‘K-reet‘ and flew into a thick, low tree.

The little ones followed, except one, an obstinate little fool
who persisted in sleeping on the ground as heretofore. It was all
right that time, but the next night his brothers were awakened by
his cries. There was a slight scuffle, then stillness, broken only
by a horrid sound of crunching bones and a smacking of lips. They
peered down into the terrible darkness below, where the glint of
two close-set eyes and a peculiar musty smell told them that a mink
was the killer of their fool brother.

Six little partridges now sat in a row at night, with their
mother in the middle, though it was not unusual for some little one
with cold feet to perch on her back.

Their education went on, and about this time they were taught
‘whirring.’ A partridge can rise on the wing silently if it wishes,
but whirring is so important at times that all are taught how and
when to rise on thundering wings. Many ends are gained by the
whirr. It warns all other partridges near that danger is at hand,
it unnerves the gunner, or it fixes the foe’s attention on the
whirrer, while the others sneak off in silence, or by squatting,
escape notice.

A partridge adage might well be ‘foes and food for every moon.’
September came, with seeds and grain in place of berries and
ant-eggs, and gunners in place of skunks and minks.

The partridges knew well what a fox was, but had scarcely seen a
dog. A fox they knew they could easily baffle by taking to a tree,
but when in the Gunner Moon old Cuddy came prowling through the
ravine with his bob-tailed yellow cur, the mother spied the dog and
cried out Kwit! Kwit!” (Fly, fly). Two of the brood thought
it a pity their mother should lose her wits so easily over a fox,
and were pleased to show their superior nerve by springing into a
tree in spite of her earnestly repeated ‘Kwit! Kwit!‘ and
her example of speeding away on silent wings.

Meanwhile, the strange bob-tailed fox came under the tree and
yapped and yapped at them. They were much amused at him and at
their mother and brothers, so much so that they never noticed a
rustling in the bushes till there was a loud Bang! bang! and
down fell two bloody, flopping partridges, to be seized and mangled
by the yellow cur until the gunner ran from the bushes and rescued
the remains.

III

Cuddy lived in a wretched shanty near the Don, north of Toronto.
His was what Greek philosophy would have demonstrated to be an
ideal existence. He had no wealth, no taxes, no social pretensions,
and no property to speak of. His life was made up of a very little
work and a great deal of play, with as much out-door life as he
chose. He considered himself a true sportsman because he was ‘fond
o’ huntin’,’ and ‘took a sight o’ comfort out of seein’ the
critters hit the mud’ when his gun was fired. The neighbors called
him a squatter, and looked on him merely as an anchored tramp. He
shot and trapped the year round, and varied his game somewhat with
the season perforce, but had been heard to remark he could tell the
month by the ‘taste o’ the patridges,’ if he didn’t happen to know
by the almanac. This, no doubt, showed keen observation, but was
also unfortunate proof of something not so creditable. The lawful
season for murdering partridges began September 15th, but there was
nothing surprising in Cuddy’s being out a fortnight ahead of time.
Yet he managed to escape punishment year after year, and even
contrived to pose in a newspaper interview as an interesting
character.

He rarely shot on the wing, preferring to pot his birds, which
was not easy to do when the leaves were on, and accounted for the
brood in the third ravine going so long unharmed; but the near
prospect of other gunners finding them now, had stirred him to go
after ‘a mess of birds.’ He had heard no roar of wings when the
mother-bird led off her four survivors, so pocketed the two he had
killed and returned to the shanty.

The little grouse thus learned that a dog is not a fox, and must
be differently played; and an old lesson was yet more deeply
graven—’Obedience is long life.’

The rest of September was passed in keeping quietly out of the
way of gunners as well as some old enemies. They still roosted on
the long, thin branches of the hardwood trees among the thickest
leaves, which protected them from foes in the air; the height saved
them from foes on the ground, and left them nothing to fear but
coons, whose slow, heavy tread on the limber boughs never failed to
give them timely warning. But the leaves were falling now—
every month its foes and its food. This was nut time, and it was
owl time, too. Barred owls coming down from the north doubled or
trebled the owl population. The nights were getting frosty and the
coons less dangerous, so the mother changed the place of roosting
to the thickest foliage of a hemlock-tree.

Only one of the brood disregarded the warning ‘Kreet,
kreet.’ He stuck to his swinging elm-bough, now nearly naked,
and a great yellow-eyed owl bore him off before morning.

Mother and three young ones now were left, but they were as big
as she was; indeed one, the eldest, he of the chip, was bigger.
Their ruffs had begun to show. Just the tips, to tell what they
would be like when grown, and not a little proud they were of
them.

The ruff is to the partridge what the train is to the
peacock—his chief beauty and his pride. A hen’s ruff is black
with a slight green gloss. A cock’s is much larger and blacker and
is glossed with more vivid bottle-green. Once in a while a
partridge is born of unusual size and vigor, whose ruff is not only
larger, but by a peculiar kind of intensification is of a deep
coppery red, iridescent with violet, green, and gold. Such a bird
is sure to be a wonder to all who know him, and the little one who
had squatted on the chip, and had always done what he was told,
developed before the Acorn Moon had changed, into all the glory of
a gold and copper ruff-for this was Redruff, the famous partridge
of the Don Valley.

IV

One day late in the Acorn Moon, that is, about mid-October, as
the grouse family were basking with full crops near a great pine
log on the sunlit edge of the beaver-meadow, they heard the
far-away bang of a gun, and Redruff, acting on some impulse from
within, leaped on the log, strutted up and down a couple of times,
then, yielding to the elation of the bright, clear, bracing air, he
whirred his wings in loud defiance. Then, giving fuller vent to
this expression of vigor, just as a colt frisks to show how well he
feels, he whirred yet more loudly, until, unwittingly, he found
himself drumming, and tickled with the discovery of his new power,
thumped the air again and again till he filled the near woods with
the loud tattoo of the fully grown cock-partridge. His brother and
sister heard and looked on with admiration and surprise; so did his
mother, but from that time she began to be a little afraid of
him.

In early November comes the moon of a weird foe. By a strange
law of nature, not wholly without parallel among mankind, all
partridges go crazy in the November moon of their first year. They
become possessed of a mad hankering to get away somewhere, it does
not matter much where. And the wisest of them do all sorts of
foolish things at this period. They go drifting, perhaps, at speed
over the country by night, and are cut in two by wires, or dash
into lighthouses, or locomotive headlights. Daylight finds them in
all sorts of absurd places, in buildings, in open marshes, perched
on telephone wires in a great city, or even on board of coasting
vessels. The craze seems to be a relic of a bygone habit of
migration, and it has at least one good effect, it breaks up the
families and prevents the constant intermarrying, which would
surely be fatal to their race. It always takes the young badly
their first year, and they may have it again the second fall, for
it is very catching; but in the third season it is practically
unknown.

Redruff’s mother knew it was coming as soon as she saw the frost
grapes blackening, and the maples shedding their crimson and gold.
There was nothing to do but care for their health and keep them in
the quietest part of the woods.

The first sign of it came when a flock of wild geese went
honking southward overhead. The young ones had never before
seen such long-necked hawks, and were afraid of them. But seeing
that their mother had no fear, they took courage, and watched them
with intense interest. Was it the wild, clanging cry that moved
them, or was it solely the inner prompting then come to the
surface? A strange longing to follow took possession of each of the
young ones. They watched those arrowy trumpeters fading away to the
south, and sought out higher perches to watch them farther yet, and
from that time things were no more the same. The November moon was
waxing, and when it was full, the November madness came.

The least vigorous of the flock were most affected. The little
family was scattered. Redruff himself flew on several long erratic
night journeys. The impulse took him southward, out there lay the
boundless stretch of Lake Ontario, so he turned again, and the
waning of the Mad Moon found him once more in the Mud Creek Glen,
but absolutely alone.

V

Food grew scarce as winter wore on. Redruff clung to the old
ravine and the piney sides of Taylor’s Hill, but every month
brought its food and its foes. The Mad Moon brought madness,
solitude, and grapes; the Snow Moon came with rosehips; and the
Stormy Moon brought browse of birch and silver storms that sheathed
the woods in ice, and made it hard to keep one’s perch while
pulling off the frozen buds. Redruff’s beak grew terribly worn with
the work, so that even when closed there was still an opening
through behind the hook. But nature had prepared him for the
slippery footing; his toes, so slim and trim in September, had
sprouted rows of sharp, horny points, and these grew with the
growing cold, till the first snow had found him fully equipped with
snowshoes and ice-creepers. The cold weather had driven away most
of the hawks and owls, and made it impossible for his four-footed
enemies to approach unseen, so that things were nearly
balanced.

His flight in search of food had daily led him farther on, till
he had discovered and explored the Rosedale Creek, with its banks
of silver-birch, and Castle Frank, with its grapes and rowan
berries, as well as Chester woods, where amelanchier and
Virginia-creeper swung their fruit-bunches, and checkerberries
glowed beneath the snow.

He soon found out that for some strange reason men with guns did
not go within the high fence of Castle-Frank. So among these scenes
he lived his life, learning new places, new foods, and grew wiser
and more beautiful every day.

He was quite alone so far as kindred were concerned, but that
scarcely seemed a hardship. Wherever he went he could see the jolly
chickadees scrambling merrily about, and he remembered the time
when they had seemed such big, important creatures. They were the
most absurdly cheerful things in the woods. Before the autumn was
fairly over they had begun to sing their famous refrain, ‘Spring
Soon,’ and kept it up with good heart more or less all through
the winter’s direst storms, till at length the waning of the Hungry
Moon, our February, seemed really to lend some point to the ditty,
and they redoubled their optimistic announcement to the world in an
‘I-told-you-so’ mood. Soon good support was found, for the sun
gained strength and melted the snow from the southern slope of
Castle Frank Hill, and exposed great banks of fragrant wintergreen,
whose berries were a bounteous feast for Redruff, and, ending the
hard work of pulling frozen browse, gave his bill the needed chance
to grow into its proper shape again. Very soon the first bluebird
came flying over and warbled as he flew ‘The spring is
coming.’ The sun kept gaining, and early one day in the dark of
the Wakening Moon of March there was a loud ‘Caw, caw,’ and
old Silverspot, the king-crow, came swinging along from the south
at the head of his troops and officially announced

All nature seemed to respond to this, the opening of the birds’
New Year, and yet it was something within that chiefly seemed to
move them. The chickadees went simply wild; they sang their
‘Spring now, spring now now—Spring now now,’ so
persistently that one wondered how they found time to get a
living.

And Redruff felt it thrill him through and through. He sprang
with joyous vigor on a stump and sent rolling down the little
valley, again and again, a thundering ‘Thump, thump, thump,
thunderrrrrrrrr,’ that wakened dull echoes as it rolled, and
voiced his gladness in the coming of the spring.

Away down the valley was Cuddy’s shanty. He heard the drum-call
on the still morning air and ‘reckoned there was a cock patridge to
git,’ and came sneaking up the ravine with his gun. But Redruff
skimmed away in silence, nor rested till once more in Mud Creek
Glen. And there he mounted the very log where first he had drummed
and rolled his loud tattoo again and again, till a small boy who
had taken a short cut to the mill through the woods, ran home,
badly scared, to tell his mother he was sure the Indians were on
the war-path, for he heard their war-drums beating in the glen.

Why does a happy boy holla? Why does a lonesome youth sigh? They
don’t know any more than Redruff knew why every day now he mounted
some dead log and thumped and thundered to the woods; then strutted
and admired his gorgeous blazing ruffs as they flashed their jewels
in the sunlight, and then thundered out again. Whence now came the
strange wish for someone else to admire the plumes? And why had
such a notion never come till the Pussywillow Moon?

he rumbled again and again.

Day after day he sought the favorite log, and a new beauty, a
rose-red comb, grew out above each clear, keen eye, and the clumsy
snow-*shoes were wholly shed from his feet. His ruff grew finer,
his eye brighter, and his whole appearance splendid to behold, as
he strutted and flashed in the sun. But-oh! he was so lonesome
now.

Yet what could he do but blindly vent his hankering in this
daily drum-parade, till on a day early in loveliest May, when the
trilliums had fringed his log with silver stars, and he had drummed
and longed, then drummed again, his keen ear caught a sound, a
gentle footfall in the brush. He turned to a statue and watched; he
knew he had been watched. Could it be possible? Yes! there it
was—a form—another—a shy little lady grouse, now
bashfully seeking to hide. In a moment he was by her side. His
whole nature swamped by a new feeling—burnt up with
thirst—a cooling spring in sight. And how he spread and
flashed his proud array! How came he to know that that would
please? He puffed his plumes and contrived to stand just right to
catch the sun, and strutted and uttered a low, soft chuckle that
must have been just as good as the ‘sweet nothings’ of another
race, for clearly now her heart was won. Won, really, days ago, if
only he had known. For full three days she had come at the loud
tattoo and coyly admired him from afar, and felt a little piqued
that he had not yet found her out, so close at hand. So it was not
quite all mischance, perhaps, that that little stamp had caught his
ear. But now she meekly bowed her head with sweet, submissive
grace—the desert passed, the parch-burnt wanderer found the
spring at last.

Oh, those were bright, glad days in the lovely glen of the
unlovely name. The sun was never so bright, and the piney air was
balmier sweet than dreams. And that great noble bird came daily on
his log, sometimes with her and sometimes quite alone, and drummed
for very joy of being alive. But why sometimes alone? Why not
forever with his Brownie bride? Why should she stay to feast and
play with him for hours, then take some stealthy chance to slip
away and see him no more for hours or till next day, when his
martial music from the log announced him restless for her quick
return? There was a woodland mystery here he could not clear. Why
should her stay with him grow daily less till it was down to
minutes, and one day at last she never came at all. Nor the next,
nor the next, and Redruff, wild, careered on lightning wing and
drummed on the old log, then away up-stream on another log, and
skimmed the hill to another ravine to drum and drum. But on the
fourth day, when he came and loudly called her, as of old, at their
earliest tryst, he heard a sound in the bushes, as at first, and
there was his missing Brownie bride with ten little peeping
partridges following after.

Redruff skimmed to her side, terribly frightening the
bright-eyed downlings, and was just a little dashed to find the
brood with claims far stronger than his own. But he soon accepted
the change, and thenceforth joined himself to the brood, caring for
them as his father never had for him.

VI

Good fathers are rare in the grouse world. The mother-grouse
builds her nest and hatches out her young without help. She even
hides the place of the nest from the father and meets him only at
the drum-log and the feeding-ground, or perhaps the dusting-place,
which is the club-house of the grouse kind.

When Brownie’s little ones came out they had filled her every
thought, even to the forgetting of their splendid father. But on
the third day, when they were strong enough, she had taken them
with her at the father’s call.

Some fathers take no interest in their little ones, but Redruff
joined at once to help Brownie in the task of rearing the brood.
They had learned to eat and drink just as their father had learned
long ago, and could toddle along, with their mother leading the
way, while the father ranged near by or followed far behind.

The very next day, as they went from the hill-side down toward
the creek in a somewhat drawn-out string, like beads with a big one
at each end, a red squirrel, peeping around a pine-trunk, watched
the processing of downlings with the Runtie straggling far in the
rear. Redruff, yards behind, preening his feathers on a high log,
had escaped the eye of the squirrel, whose strange, perverted
thirst for birdling blood was roused at what seemed so fair a
chance. With murderous intent to cut off the hindmost straggler, he
made a dash. Brownie could not have seen him until too late, but
Redruff did. He flew for that red-haired cutthroat; his weapons
were his fists, that is, the knob-joints of the wings, and what a
blow he could strike! At the first onset he struck the squirrel
square on the end of the nose, his weakest spot, and sent him
reeling; he staggered and wriggled into a brush-pile, where he had
expected to carry the little grouse, and there lay gasping with red
drops trickling down his wicked snout. The partridges left him
lying there, and what became of him they never knew, but he
troubled them no more.

The family went on toward the water, but a cow had left deep
tracks in the sandy loam, and into one of these fell one of the
chicks and peeped in dire distress when he found he could not get
out.

This was a fix. Neither old one seemed to know what to do, but
as they trampled vainly round the edge, the sandy bank caved in,
and, running down, formed a long slope, up which the young one ran
and rejoined his brothers under the broad veranda of their mother’s
tail.

Brownie was a bright little mother, of small stature, but keen
of wit and sense, and was, night and day, alert to care for her
darling chicks. How proudly she stepped and clucked through the
arching woods with her dainty brood behind her; how she strained
her little brown tail almost to a half-circle to give them a
broader shade, and never flinched at sight of any foe, but held
ready to fight or fly, whichever seemed the best for her little
ones.

Redruff saving Runtie.

Before the chicks could fly they had a meeting with old Cuddy;
though it was June, he was out with his gun. Up the third ravine he
went, and Tike, his dog, ranging ahead, came so dangerously near
the Brownie brood that Redruff ran to meet him, and by the old but
never-failing trick led him on a foolish chase away back down the
valley of the Don.

But Cuddy, as it chanced, came right along, straight for the
brood, and Brownie, giving the signal to the children, ‘Krrr,
krrr‘ (Hide, hide), ran to lead the man away just as her mate
had led the dog. Full of a mother’s devoted love, and skilled in
the learning of the woods she ran in silence till quite near, then
sprang with a roar of wings right in his face, and tumbling on the
leaves she shammed a lameness that for a moment deceived the
poacher. But when she dragged one wing and whined about his feet,
then slowly crawled away, he knew just what it meant—that it
was all a trick to lead him from her brood, and he struck at her a
savage blow; but little Brownie was quick, she avoided the blow and
limped behind a sapling, there to beat herself upon the leaves
again in sore distress, and seem so lame that Cuddy made another
try to strike her down with a stick. But she moved in time to balk
him, and bravely, steadfast still to lead him from her helpless
little ones, she flung herself before him and beat her gentle
breast upon the ground, and moaned as though begging for mercy. And
Cuddy, failing again to strike her, raised his gun, and firing
charge enough to kill a bear, he blew poor brave, devoted Brownie
into quivering, bloody rags.

This gunner brute knew the young must be hiding near, so looked
about to find them. But no one moved or peeped. He saw not one, but
as he tramped about with heedless, hateful feet, he crossed and
crossed again their hiding-ground, and more than one of the silent
little sufferers he trampled to death, and neither knew nor
cared.

Redruff had taken the yellow brute away off down-stream, and now
returned to where he left his mate. The murderer had gone, taking
her remains, to be thrown to the dog. Redruff sought about and
found the bloody spot with feathers, Brownie’s feathers, scattered
around, and now he knew the meaning of that shot.

Who can tell what his horror and his mourning were? The outward
signs were few, some minutes dumbly gazing at the place with
downcast, draggled look, and then a change at the thought of their
helpless brood. Back to the hiding-place he went, and called the
well-known ‘Kreet, kreet.’ Did every grave give up its
little inmate at the magic word? No, barely more than half; six
little balls of down unveiled their lustrous eyes, and, rising, ran
to meet him, but four feathered little bodies had found their
graves indeed. Redruff called again and again, till he was sure
that all who could respond had come, then led them from that
dreadful place, far, far away up-stream, where barbed-wire fences
and bramble thickets were found to offer a less grateful, but more
reliable, shelter.

Here the brood grew and were trained by their father just as his
mother had trained him; though wider knowledge and experience gave
him many advantages. He knew so well the country round and all the
feeding-grounds, and how to meet the ills that harass
partridge-life, that the summer passed and not a chick was lost.
They grew and flourished, and when the Gunner Moon arrived they
were a fine family of six grown-up grouse with Redruff, splendid in
his gleaming copper feathers, at their head. He had ceased to drum
during the summer after the loss of Brownie, but drumming is to the
partridge what singing is to the lark; while it is his love-song,
it is also an expression of exuberance born of health, and when the
molt was over and September food and weather had renewed his
splendid plumes and braced him up again, his spirits revived, and
finding himself one day near the old log he mounted impulsively,
and drummed again and again.

From that time he often drummed, while his children sat around,
or one who showed his father’s blood would mount some nearby stump
or stone, and beat the air in the loud tattoo.

The black grapes and the Mad Moon now came on. But Redruff’s
brood were of a vigorous stock; their robust health meant robust
wits, and though they got the craze, it passed within a week, and
only three had flown away for good.

Redruff, with his remaining three, was living in the glen when
the snow came. It was light, flaky snow, and as the weather was not
very cold, the family squatted for the night under the low, flat
boughs of a cedar-tree. But next day the storm continued, it grew
colder, and the drifts piled up all day. At night the snowfall
ceased, but the frost grew harder still, so Redruff, leading the
family to a birch-tree above a deep drift, dived into the snow, and
the others did the same. Then into the holes the wind blew the
loose snow—their pure white bed-*clothes, and thus tucked in
they slept in comfort, for the snow is a warm wrap, and the air
passes through it easily enough for breathing. Next morning each
partridge found a solid wall of ice before him from his frozen
breath, but easily turned to one side and rose on the wing at
Redruff’s morning ‘Kreet, kreet, kwit.’ (Come children, come
children, fly.)

This was the first night for them in a snowdrift, though it was
an old story to Redruff, and next night they merrily dived again
into bed, and the north wind tucked them in as before. But a change
of weather was brewing. The night wind veered to the east. A fall
of heavy flakes gave place to sleet, and that to silver rain. The
whole wide world was sheathed in ice, and when the grouse awoke to
quit their beds, they found themselves sealed in with a great,
cruel sheet of edgeless ice.

The deeper snow was still quite soft, and Redruff bored his way
to the top, but there the hard, white sheet defied his strength.
Hammer and struggle as he might he could make no impression, and
only bruised his wings and head. His life had been made up of keen
joys and dull hardships, with frequent sudden desperate straits,
but this seemed the hardest brunt of all, as the slow hours wore on
and found him weakening with his struggles, but no nearer to
freedom. He could hear the struggling of his family, too, or
sometimes heard them calling to him for help with their long-drawn
plaintive ‘p-e-e-e-e-e-t-e, p-e-e-e-e-e-t-e.’

They were hidden from many of their enemies, but not from the
pangs of hunger, and when the night came down the weary prisoners,
worn out with hunger and useless toil, grew quiet in despair. At
first they had been afraid the fox would come and find them
imprisoned there at his mercy, but as the second night went slowly
by they no longer cared, and even wished he would come and break
the crusted snow, and so give them at least a fighting chance for
life.

But when the fox really did come padding over the frozen drift,
the deep-laid love of life revived, and they crouched in utter
stillness till he passed. The second day was one of driving storm.
The north wind sent his snow-horses, hissing and careering over the
white earth, tossing and curling their white manes and kicking up
more snow as they dashed on. The long, hard grinding of the
granular snow seemed to be thinning the snow-crust, for though far
from dark below, it kept on growing lighter. Redruff had pecked and
pecked at the under side all day, till his head ached and his bill
was wearing blunt, but when the sun went down he seemed as far as
ever from escape. The night passed like the others, except no fox
went trotting overhead. In the morning he renewed his pecking,
though now with scarcely any force, and the voices or struggles of
the others were no more heard. As the daylight grew stronger he
could see that his long efforts had made a brighter spot above him
in the snow, and he continued feebly pecking. Outside, the
storm-horses kept on trampling all day, the crust was really
growing thin under their heels, and late that afternoon his bill
went through into the open air. New life came with this gain, and
he pecked away, till just before the sun went down he had made a
hole that his head, his neck, and his ever-beautiful ruffs could
pass. His great, broad shoulders were too large, but he could now
strike downward, which gave him fourfold force; the snow-crust
crumbled quickly, and in a little while he sprang from his icy
prison once more free. But the young ones! Redruff flew to the
nearest bank, hastily gathered a few red hips to stay his gnawing
hunger, then returned to the prison-drift and clucked and stamped.
He got only one reply, a feeble ‘peete, peete,’ and
scratching with his sharp claws on the thinned granular sheet he
soon broke through, and Graytail feebly crawled out of the hole.
But that was all; the others, scattered he could not tell where in
the drift, made no reply, gave no sign of life, and he was forced
to leave them. When the snow melted in the spring their bodies came
to view, skin, bones, and feathers—nothing more.

VII

It was long before Redruff and Graytail fully recovered, but
food and rest in plenty are sure cure-alls, and a bright, clear day
in midwinter had the usual effect of setting the vigorous Redruff
to drumming on the log. Was it the drumming, or the tell-tale
tracks of their snowshoes on the omnipresent snow, that betrayed
them to Cuddy? He came prowling again and again up the ravine, with
dog and gun, intent to hunt the partridges down. They knew him of
old, and he was coming now to know them well. That great
copper-ruffed cock was becoming famous up and down the valley.
During the Gunner Moon many a one had tried to end his splendid
life, just as a worthless wretch of old sought fame by burning the
Ephesian wonder of the world. But Redruff was deep in woodcraft. He
knew just where to hide, and when to rise on silent wing, and when
to squat till overstepped, then rise on thunder wing within a yard
to shield himself at once behind some mighty tree-trunk and speed
away.

But Cuddy never ceased to follow with his gun that red-ruffed
cock; many a long snap-shot he tried, but somehow always found a
tree, a bank, or some safe shield between, and Redruff lived and
throve and drummed.

When the Snow Moon came he moved with Graytail to the Castle
Frank woods, where food was plenty as well as grand old trees.
There was in particular, on the east slope among the creeping
hemlocks, a splendid pine. It was six feet through, and its first
branches began at the tops of the other trees. Its top in
summer-time was a famous resort for the bluejay and his bride.
Here, far beyond the reach of shot, in warm spring days the jay
would sing and dance before his mate, spread his bright blue plumes
and warble the sweetest fairyland music, so sweet and soft that few
hear it but the one for whom it is meant, and books know nothing at
all about it.

This great pine had an especial interest for Redruff, now living
near with his remaining young one, but its base, not its far-away
crown, concerned him. All around were low, creeping hemlocks, and
among them the partridge-vine and the wintergreen grew, and the
sweet black acorns could be scratched from under the snow. There
was no better feeding-ground, for when that insatiable gunner came
on them there it was easy to run low among the hemlock to the great
pine, then rise with a derisive whirr behind its bulk, and
keeping the huge trunk in line with the deadly gun, skim off in
safety. A dozen times at least the pine had saved them during the
lawful murder season, and here it was that Cuddy, knowing their
feeding habits, laid a new trap. Under the bank he sneaked and
watched in ambush while an accomplice went around the Sugar Loaf to
drive the birds. He came trampling through the low thicket where
Redruff and Graytail were feeding, and long before the gunner was
dangerously near Redruff gave a low warning ‘rrr-rrr‘
(danger) and walked quickly toward the great pine in case they had
to rise.

Graytail was some distance up the hill, and suddenly caught
sight of a new foe close at hand, the yellow cur, coming right on.
Redruff, much farther off, could not see him for the bushes, and
Graytail became greatly alarmed.

‘Kwit, kwit‘ (Fly, fly), she cried, running down the hill
for a start. ‘Kreet, k-r-r-r‘ (This way, hide), cried the
cooler Redruff, for he saw that now the man with the gun was
getting in range. He gained the great trunk, and behind it, as he
paused a moment to call earnestly to Graytail, ‘This way, this
way,’ he heard a slight noise under the bank before him that
betrayed the ambush, then there was a terrified cry from Graytail
as the dog sprang at her, she rose in air and skimmed behind the
shielding trunk, away from the gunner in the open, right into the
power of the miserable wretch under the bank.

Whirr, and up she went, a beautiful, sentient, noble
being.

Bang, and down she fell—battered and bleeding, to
gasp her life out and to lie a rumpled mass of carrion in the
snow.

It was a perilous place for Redruff. There was no chance for a
safe rise, so he squatted low. The dog came within ten feet of him,
and the stranger, coming across to Cuddy, passed at five feet, but
he never moved till a chance came to slip behind the great trunk
away from both. Then he safely rose and flew to the lonely glen by
Taylor’s Hill.

One by one the deadly cruel gun had stricken his near ones down,
till now, once more, he was alone. The Snow Moon slowly passed with
many a narrow escape, and Redruff, now known to be the only
survivor of his kind, was relentlessly pursued, and grew wilder
every day.

It seemed, at length, a waste of time to follow him with a gun,
so when the snow was deepest, and food scarcest, Cuddy hatched a
new plot. Right across the feeding-ground, almost the only good one
now in the Stormy Moon, he set a row of snares. A cottontail
rabbit, an old friend, cut several of these with his sharp teeth,
but some remained, and Redruff, watching a far-off speck that might
turn out a hawk, trod right in one of them, and in an instant was
jerked into the air to dangle by one foot.

Have the wild things no moral or legal rights? What right has
man to inflict such long and fearful agony on a fellow-creature,
simply because that creature does not speak his language? All that
day, with growing, racking pains, poor Redruff hung and beat his
great, strong wings in helpless struggles to be free. All day, all
night, with growing torture, until he only longed for death. But no
one came. The morning broke, the day wore on, and still he hung
there, slowly dying; his very strength a curse. The second night
crawled slowly down, and when, in the dawdling hours of darkness, a
great Horned Owl, drawn by the feeble flutter of a dying wing, cut
short the pain, the deed was wholly kind.

The wind blew down the valley from the north. The snow-horses
went racing over the wrinkled ice, over the Don Flats, and over the
marsh toward the lake, white, for they were driven snow, but on
them, scattered dark, were riding plumy fragments of partridge
ruffs—the famous rainbow ruffs. And they rode on the wind
that night, away, away to the south, over the dark lake, as they
rode in the gloom of his Mad Moon flight, riding and riding on till
they were engulfed, the last trace of the last of the Don Valley
race.

For no partridge is heard in Castle Frank now—and in Mud
Creek Ravine the old pine drum-log, unused, has rotted in silence
away.

RAGGYLUG

THE STORY OF A COTTONTAIL RABBIT

Raggylug, or Rag, was the name of a young cottontail rabbit. It
was given him from his torn and ragged ear, a life-mark that he got
in his first adventure. He lived with his mother in Olifant’s
swamp, where I made their acquaintance and gathered, in a hundred
different ways, the little bits of proof and scraps of truth that
at length enabled me to write this history.

Those who do not know the animals well may think I have
humanized them, but those who have lived so near them as to know
somewhat of their ways and their minds will not think so.

Truly rabbits have no speech as we understand it, but they have
a way of conveying ideas by a system of sounds, signs, scents,
whisker-touches, movements, and example that answers the purpose of
speech; and it must be remembered that though in telling this story
I freely translate from rabbit into English, I repeat nothing
that they did not say.

I

The rank swamp grass bent over and concealed the snug nest where
Raggylug’s mother had hidden him. She had partly covered him with
some of the bedding, and, as always, her last warning was to ‘lay
low and say nothing, whatever happens.’ Though tucked in bed, he
was wide awake and his bright eyes were taking in that part of his
little green world that was straight above. A bluejay and a
red-squirrel, two notorious thieves, were loudly berating each
other for stealing, and at one time Rag’s home bush was the centre
of their fight; a yellow warbler caught a blue butterfly but six
inches from his nose, and a scarlet and black ladybug, serenely
waving her knobbed feelers, took a long walk up one grassblade,
down another, and across the nest and over Rag’s face—and yet
he never moved nor even winked.

‘Mammy, Mammy!’ he screamed, in mortal terror.

After awhile he heard a strange rustling of the leaves in the
near thicket. It was an odd, continuous sound, and though it went
this way and that way and came ever nearer, there was no patter of
feet with it. Rag had lived his whole life in the swamp (he was
three weeks old) and yet had never heard anything like this. Of
course his curiosity was greatly aroused. His mother had cautioned
him to lay low, but that was understood to be in case of danger,
and this strange sound without footfalls could not be any to
fear.

The low rasping went past close at hand, then to the right, then
back, and seemed going away. Rag felt he knew what he was about, he
wasn’t a baby; it was his duty to learn what it was. He slowly
raised his roly-poly body on his short, fluffy legs, lifted his
little round head above the covering of his nest and peeped out
into the woods. The sound had ceased as soon as he moved. He saw
nothing, so took one step forward to a clear view, and instantly
found himself face to face with an enormous Black Serpent.

“Mammy,” he screamed in mortal terror as the monster darted at
him. With all the strength of his tiny limbs he tried to run. But
in a flash the Snake had him by one ear and whipped around him with
his coils to gloat over the helpless little baby bunny he had
secured for dinner.

“Mammy—Mammy,” gasped poor little Raggylug as the cruel
monster began slowly choking him to death. Very soon the little
one’s cry would have ceased, but bounding through the woods
straight as an arrow came Mammy. No longer a shy, helpless little
Molly Cottontail, ready to fly from a shadow: the mother’s love was
strong in her. The cry of her baby had filled her with the courage
of a hero, and-hop, she went over that horrible reptile. Whack, she
struck down at him with her sharp hind claws as she passed, giving
him such a stinging blow that he squirmed with pain and hissed with
anger.

“M-a-m-m-y,” came feebly from the little one. And Mammy came
leaping again and again and struck harder and fiercer until the
loathsome reptile let go the little one’s ear and tried to bite the
old one as she leaped over. But all he got was a mouthful of wool
each time, and Molly’s fierce blows began to tell, as long bloody
rips were torn in the Black Snake’s scaly armor.

Things were now looking bad for the Snake; and bracing himself
for the next charge, he lost his tight hold on Baby Bunny, who at
once wriggled out of the coils and away into the underbrush,
breathless and terribly frightened, but unhurt save that his left
ear was much torn by the teeth of that dreadful Serpent.

Molly had now gained all she wanted. She had no notion of
fighting for glory or revenge. Away she went into the woods and the
little one followed the shining beacon of her snow-white tail until
she led him to a safe corner of the Swamp.

II

Old Olifant’s Swamp was a rough, brambly tract of second-growth
woods, with a marshy pond and a stream through the middle. A few
ragged remnants of the old forest still stood in it and a few of
the still older trunks were lying about as dead logs in the
brushwood. The land about the pond was of that willow-grown, sedgy
kind that cats and horses avoid, but that cattle do not fear. The
drier zones were overgrown with briars and young trees. The
outermost belt of all, that next the fields, was of thrifty,
gummy-trunked young pines whose living needles in air and dead ones
on earth offer so delicious an odor to the nostrils of the
passer-by, and so deadly a breath to those seedlings that would
compete with them for the worthless waste they grow on.

All around for a long way were smooth fields, and the only wild
tracks that ever crossed these fields were those of a thoroughly
bad and unscrupulous fox that lived only too near.

The chief indwellers of the swamp were Molly and Rag. Their
nearest neighbors were far away, and their nearest kin were dead.
This was their home, and here they lived together, and here Rag
received the training that made his success in life.

Molly was a good little mother and gave him a careful bringing
up. The first thing he learned was ‘to lay low and say nothing.’
His adventure with the snake taught him the wisdom of this. Rag
never forgot that lesson; afterward he did as he was told, and it
made the other things come more easily.

The second lesson he learned was ‘freeze.’ It grows out of the
first, and Rag was taught it as soon as he could run.

‘Freezing’ is simply doing nothing, turning into a statue. As
soon as he finds a foe near, no matter what he is doing, a
well-trained Cottontail keeps just as he is and stops all movement,
for the creatures of the woods are of the same color as the things
in the woods and catch the eye only while moving. So when enemies
chance together, the one who first sees the other can keep himself
unseen by ‘freezing’ and thus have all the advantage of choosing
the time for attack or escape. Only those who live in the woods
know the importance of this; every wild creature and every hunter
must learn it; all learn to do it well, but not one of them can
beat Molly Cottontail in the doing. Rag’s mother taught him this
trick by example. When the white cotton cushion that she always
carried to sit on went bobbing away through the woods, of course
Rag ran his hardest to keep up. But when Molly stopped and ‘froze,’
the natural wish to copy made him do the same.

But the best lesson of all that Rag learned from his mother was
the secret of the Brierbrush. It is a very old secret now, and to
make it plain you must first hear why the Brierbrush quarrelled
with the beasts.

So the secret that Rag learned from his mother was, ‘The
Brierbrush is your best friend.’

Much of the time that season was spent in learning the lay of
the land, and the bramble and brier mazes. And Rag learned them so
well that he could go all around the swamp by two different ways
and never leave the friendly briers at any place for more than five
hops.

It is not long since the foes of the Cottontails were disgusted
to find that man had brought a new kind of bramble and planted it
in long lines throughout the country. It was so strong that no
creatures could break it down, and so sharp that the toughest skin
was torn by it. Each year there was more of it and each year it
became a more serious matter to the wild creatures. But Molly
Cottontail had no fear of it. She was not brought up in the briers
for nothing. Dogs and foxes, cattle and sheep, and even man himself
might be torn by those fearful spikes: but Molly understands it and
lives and thrives under it. And the further it spreads the more
safe country there is for the Cottontail. And the name of this new
and dreaded bramble is—the barbed-wire fence.

III

Molly had no other children to look after now, so Rag had all
her care. He was unusually quick and bright as well as strong, and
he had uncommonly good chances; so he got on remarkably well.

All the season she kept him busy learning the tricks of the
trail, and what to eat and drink and what not to touch. Day by day
she worked to train him; little by little she taught him, putting
into his mind hundreds of ideas that her own life or early training
had stored in hers, and so equipped him with the knowledge that
makes life possible to their kind.

Close by her side in the clover-field or the thicket he would
sit and copy her when she wobbled her nose ‘to keep her smeller
clear,’ and pull the bite from her mouth or taste her lips to make
sure he was getting the same kind of fodder. Still copying her, he
learned to comb his ears with his claws and to dress his coat and
to bite the burrs out of his vest and socks. He learned, too, that
nothing but clear dewdrops from the briers were fit for a rabbit to
drink, as water which has once touched the earth must surely bear
some taint. Thus he began the study of woodcraft, the oldest of all
sciences.

As soon as Rag was big enough to go out alone, his mother taught
him the signal code. Rabbits telegraph each other by thumping on
the ground with their hind feet. Along the ground sound carries
far; a thump that at six feet from the earth is not heard at twenty
yards will, near the ground, be heard at least one hundred yards.
Rabbits have very keen hearing, and so might hear this same thump
at two hundred yards, and that would reach from end to end of
Olifant’s Swamp. A single thump means ‘look out’ or
‘freeze.’ A slow thump thump means ‘come.’ A fast thump
thump means ‘danger;’ and a very fast thump thump thump
means ‘run for dear life.’

At another time, when the weather was fine and the bluejays were
quarrelling among themselves, a sure sign that no dangerous foe was
about, Rag began a new study. Molly, by flattening her ears, gave
the sign to squat. Then she ran far away in the thicket and gave
the thumping signal for ‘come.’ Rag set out at a run to the place
but could not find Molly. He thumped, but got no reply. Setting
carefully about his search he found her foot-scent, and following
this strange guide, that the beasts all know so well and man does
not know at all, he worked out the trail and found her where she
was hidden. Thus he got his first lesson in trailing, and thus it
was that the games of hide and seek they played became the
schooling for the serious chase of which there was so much in his
after-life.

Before that first season of schooling was over he had learnt all
the principal tricks by which a rabbit lives, and in not a few
problems showed himself a veritable genius.

He was an adept at ‘tree,’ ‘dodge,’ and ‘squat;’ he could play
‘log-lump’ with ‘wind,’ and ‘baulk’ with ‘back-track’ so well that
he scarcely needed any other tricks. He had not yet tried it, but
he knew just how to play ‘barb-wire,’ which is a new trick of the
brilliant order; he had made a special study of ‘sand,’ which burns
up all scent, and he was deeply versed in ‘change-off,’ ‘fence,’
and ‘double,’ as well as ‘hole-up,’ which is a trick requiring
longer notice, and yet he never forgot that ‘lay-low’ is the
beginning of all wisdom and ‘brierbrush’ the only trick that is
always safe.

He was taught the signs by which to know all his foes and then
the way to baffle them. For hawks, owls, foxes, hounds, curs,
minks, weasels, cats, skunks, coons, and men, each have a different
plan of pursuit, and for each and all of these evils he was taught
a remedy.

And for knowledge of the enemy’s approach he learnt to depend
first on himself and his mother, and then on the bluejay. “Never
neglect the bluejay’s warning,” said Molly; “he is a
mischief-maker, a marplot, and a thief all the time, but nothing
escapes him. He wouldn’t mind harming us, but he cannot, thanks to
the briers, and his enemies are ours, so it is well to heed him. If
the woodpecker cries a warning you can trust him, he is honest; but
he is a fool beside the bluejay, and though the bluejay often tells
lies for mischief you are safe to believe him when he brings ill
news.”

The barbed-wire trick takes a deal of nerve and the best of
legs. It was long before Rag ventured to play it, but as he came to
his full powers it became one of his favorites.

“It’s fine play for those who can do it,” said Molly. “First you
lead off your dog on a straightaway and warm him up a bit by nearly
letting him catch you. Then keeping just one hop ahead, you lead
him at a long slant full tilt into a breast-high barb-wire. I’ve
seen many a dog and fox crippled, and one big hound killed outright
this way. But I’ve also seen more than one rabbit lose his life in
trying it.”

Rag early learnt what some rabbits never learn at all, that
‘hole-up’ is not such a fine ruse as it seems; it may be the
certain safety of a wise rabbit, but soon or late is a sure
death-trap to a fool. A young rabbit always thinks of it first, an
old rabbit never tries it till all others fail. It means escape
from a man or dog, a fox or a bird of prey, but it means sudden
death if the foe is a ferret, mink, skunk, or weasel.

There were but two ground-holes in the Swamp. One on the Sunning
Bank, which was a dry sheltered knoll in the South-end. It was open
and sloping to the sun, and here on fine days the Cottontails took
their sunbaths. They stretched out among the fragrant pine needles
and winter-green in odd, cat-like positions, and turned slowly over
as though roasting and wishing all sides well done. And they
blinked and panted, and squirmed as if in dreadful pain; yet this
was one of the keenest enjoyments they knew.

Just over the brow of the knoll was a large pine stump. Its
grotesque roots wriggled out above the yellow sand-bank like
dragons, and under their protecting claws a sulky old woodchuck had
digged a den long ago. He became more sour and ill-tempered as
weeks went by, and one day waited to quarrel with Olifant’s dog
instead of going in, so that Molly Cottontail was able to take
possession of the den an hour later.

This, the pine-root hole, was afterward very coolly taken by a
self-sufficient young skunk, who with less valor might have enjoyed
greater longevity, for he imagined that even man with a gun would
fly from him. Instead of keeping Molly from the den for good,
therefore, his reign, like that of a certain Hebrew king, was over
in four days.

The other, the fern-hole, was in a fern thicket next the clover
field. It was small and damp, and useless except as a last retreat.
It also was the work of a woodchuck, a well-meaning, friendly
neighbor, but a hare-brained youngster whose skin in the form of a
whip-lash was now developing higher horse-power in the Olifant
working team.

“Simple justice,” said the old man, “for that hide was raised on
stolen feed that the team would ‘a’ turned into horse-power
anyway.”

The Cottontails were now sole owners of the holes, and did not
go near them when they could help it, lest anything like a path
should be made that might betray these last retreats to an
enemy.

There was also the hollow hickory, which, though nearly fallen,
was still green, and had the great advantage of being open at both
ends. This had long been the residence of one Lotor, a solitary old
coon whose ostensible calling was frog-hunting, and who, like the
monks of old, was supposed to abstain from all flesh food. But it
was shrewdly suspected that he needed but a chance to indulge in a
diet of rabbit. When at last one dark night he was killed while
raiding Olifant’s hen-house, Molly, so far from feeling a pang of
regret, took possession of his cosy nest with a sense of unbounded
relief.

IV

Bright August sunlight was flooding the Swamp in the morning.
Everything seemed soaking in the warm radiance. A little brown
swamp-sparrow was teetering on a long rush in the pond. Beneath him
there were open spaces of dirty water that brought down a few
scraps of the blue sky, and worked it and the yellow duckweed into
an exquisite mosaic, with a little wrong-side picture of the bird
in the middle. On the bank behind was a great vigorous growth of
golden green skunk-cabbage, that cast a dense shadow over the brown
swamp tussocks.

The eyes of the swamp-sparrow were not trained to take in the
color glories, but he saw what we might have missed; that two of
the numberless leafy brown bumps under the broad cabbage-leaves
were furry, living things, with noses that never ceased to move up
and down whatever else was still.

It was Molly and Rag. They were stretched under the
skunk-cabbage, not because they liked its rank smell, but because
the winged ticks could not stand it at all and so left them in
peace.

Rabbits have no set time for lessons, they are always learning;
but what the lesson is depends on the present stress, and that must
arrive before it is known. They went to this place for a quiet
rest, but had not been long there when suddenly a warning note from
the ever-watchful bluejay caused Molly’s nose and ears to go up and
her tail to tighten to her back. Away across the Swamp was
Olifant’s big black and white dog, coming straight toward them.

“Now,” said Molly, “squat while I go and keep that fool out of
mischief.” Away she went to meet him and she fearlessly dashed
across the dog’s path.

“Bow-ow-ow,” he fairly yelled as he bounded after Molly, but she
kept just beyond his reach and led him where the million daggers
struck fast and deep, till his tender ears were scratched raw, and
guided him at last plump into a hidden barbed-wire fence, where he
got such a gashing that he went homeward howling with pain. After
making a short double, a loop and a baulk in case the dog should
come back, Molly returned to find that Rag in his eagerness was
standing bolt upright and craning his neck to see the sport.

This disobedience made her so angry that she struck him with her
hind foot and knocked him over in the mud.

One day as they fed on the near clover field a red-tailed hawk
came swooping after them. Molly kicked up her hind legs to make fun
of him and skipped into the briers along one of their old pathways,
where of course the hawk could not follow. It was the main path
from the Creekside Thicket to the Stove-pipe brush-pile. Several
creepers had grown across it, and Molly, keeping one eye on the
hawk, set to work and cut the creepers off. Rag watched her, then
ran on ahead, and cut some more that were across the path. “That’s
right,” said Molly, “always keep the runways clear, you will need
them often enough. Not wide, but clear. Cut everything like a
creeper across them and some day you will find you have cut a
snare. “A what?” asked Rag, as he scratched his right ear with his
left hind foot.

“A snare is something that looks like a creeper, but it doesn’t
grow and it’s worse than all the hawks in the world,” said Molly,
glancing at the now far-away red-tail, “for there it hides night
and day in the runway till the chance to catch you comes.”

“I don’t believe it could catch me,” said Rag, with the pride of
youth as he rose on his heels to rub his chin and whiskers high up
on a smooth sapling. Rag did not know he was doing this, but his
mother saw and knew it was a sign, like the changing of a boy’s
voice, that her little one was no longer a baby but would soon be a
grown-up Cottontail.

V

There is magic in running water. Who does not know it and feel
it? The railroad builder fearlessly throws his bank across the wide
bog or lake, or the sea itself, but the tiniest rill of running
water he treats with great respect, studies its wish and its way
and gives it all it seems to ask. The thirst-parched traveller in
the poisonous alkali deserts holds back in deadly fear from the
sedgy ponds till he finds one down whose centre is a thin, clear
line, and a faint flow, the sign of running, living water, and
joyfully he drinks.

There is magic in running water, no evil spell can cross it. Tam
O’Shanter proved its potency in time of sorest need. The wild-wood
creature with its deadly foe following tireless on the trail scent,
realizes its nearing doom and feels an awful spell. Its strength is
spent, its every trick is tried in vain till the good Angel leads
it to the water, the running, living water, and dashing in it
follows the cooling stream, and then with force renewed takes to
the woods again.

There is magic in running water. The hounds come to the very
spot and halt and cast about; and halt and cast in vain. Their
spell is broken by the merry stream, and the wild thing lives its
life.

And this was one of the great secrets that Raggylug learned from
his mother—”after the Brierrose, the Water is your
friend.”

One hot, muggy night in August, Molly led Rag through the woods.
The cotton-white cushion she wore under her tail twinkled ahead and
was his guiding lantern, though it went out as soon as she stopped
and sat on it. After a few runs and stops to listen, they came to
the edge of the pond. The hylas in the trees above them were
singing ‘sleep, sleep,‘ and away out on a sunken log in the
deep water, up to his chin in the cooling bath, a bloated bullfrog
was singing the praises of a ‘jug o’ rum.‘

“Follow me still,” said Molly, in rabbit, and ‘flop’ she went
into the pond and struck out for the sunken log in the middle. Rag
flinched but plunged with a little ‘ouch,’ gasping and wobbling his
nose very fast but still copying his mother. The same movements as
on land sent him through the water, and thus he found he could
swim. On he went till he reached the sunken log and scrambled up by
his dripping mother on the high dry end, with a rushy screen around
them and the Water that tells no tales. After this in warm, black
nights, when that old fox from Springfield came prowling through
the Swamp, Rag would note the place of the bullfrog’s voice, for in
case of direst need it might be a guide to safety. And thenceforth
the words of the song that the bullfrog sang were, ‘Come, come,
in danger come.’

This was the latest study that Rag took up with his mother-it
was really a post-graduate course, for many little rabbits never
learn it at all.

VI

No wild animal dies of old age. Its life has soon or late a
tragic end. It is only a question of how long it can hold out
against its foes. But Rag’s life was proof that once a rabbit
passes out of his youth he is likely to outlive his prime and be
killed only in the last third of life, the downhill third we call
old age.

The Cottontails had enemies on every side. Their daily life was
a series of escapes. For dogs, foxes, cats, skunks, coons, weasels,
minks, snakes, hawks, owls, and men, and even insects were all
plotting to kill them. They had hundreds of adventures, and at
least once a day they had to fly for their lives and save
themselves by their legs and wits.

More than once that hateful fox from Springfield drove them to
taking refuge under the wreck of a barbed-wire hog-pen by the
spring. But once there they could look calmly at him while he
spiked his legs in vain attempts to reach them.

Once or twice Rag when hunted had played off the hound against a
skunk that had seemed likely to be quite as dangerous as the
dog.

Once he was caught alive by a hunter who had a hound and a
ferret to help him. But Rag had the luck to escape next day, with a
yet deeper distrust of ground holes. He was several times run into
the water by the cat, and many times was chased by hawks and owls,
but for each kind of danger there was a safeguard. His mother
taught him the principal dodges, and he improved on them and made
many new ones as he grew older. And the older and wiser he grew the
less he trusted to his legs, and the more to his wits for
safety.

Ranger was the name of a young hound in the neighborhood. To
train him his master used to put him on the trail of one of the
Cottontails. It was nearly always Rag that they ran, for the young
buck enjoyed the runs as much as they did, the spice of danger in
them being just enough for zest. He would say:

“Oh, mother! here comes the dog again, I must have a run
to-day.”

“You are too bold, Raggy, my son!” she might reply. “I fear you
will run once too often.”

“But, mother, it is such glorious fun to tease that fool dog,
and it’s all good training. I’ll thump if I am too hard pressed,
then you can come and change off while I get my second wind.”

On he would come, and Ranger would take the trail and follow
till Rag got tired of it. Then he either sent a thumping telegram
for help, which brought Molly to take charge of the dog, or he got
rid of the dog by some clever trick. A description of one of these
shows how well Rag had learned the arts of the woods.

He knew that his scent lay best near the ground, and was
strongest when he was warm. So if he could get off the ground, and
be left in peace for half an hour to cool off, and for the trail to
stale, he knew he would be safe. When, therefore, he tired of the
chase, he made for the Creekside brier-patch, where he
‘wound’—that is, zigzagged—till he left a course so
crooked that the dog was sure to be greatly delayed in working it
out. He then went straight to D in the woods, passing one hop to
windward of the high log E. Stopping at D, he followed his back
trail to F, here he leaped aside and ran toward G. Then, returning
on his trail to J, he waited till the hound passed on his trail at
I. Rag then got back on his old

trail at H, and followed it to E, where, with a scent-baulk or
great leap aside, he reached the high log, and running to its
higher end, he sat like a bump.

Ranger lost much time in the bramble maize, and the scent was
very poor when he got it straightened out and came to D. Here he
began to circle to pick it up, and after losing much time, struck
the trail which ended suddenly at G. Again he was at fault, and had
to circle to find the trail. Wider and wider the circles, until at
last, he passed right under the log Rag was on. But a cold scent,
on a cold day, does not go downward much. Rag never budged nor
winked, and the hound passed.

Again the dog came round. This time he crossed the low part of
the log, and stopped to smell it. ‘Yes, clearly it was rabbity,’
but it was a stale scent now; still he mounted the log.

It was a trying moment for Rag, as the great hound came
sniff-sniffing along the log. But his nerve did not forsake him;
the wind was right; he had his mind made up to bolt as soon as
Ranger came half way up. But he didn’t come. A yellow cur would
have seen the rabbit sitting there, but the hound did not, and the
scent seemed stale, so he leaped off the log, and Rag had won.

VII

Rag had never seen any other rabbit than his mother. Indeed he
had scarcely thought about there being any other. He was more and
more away from her now, and yet he never felt lonely, for rabbits
do not hanker for company. But one day in December, while he was
among the red dogwood brush, cutting a new path to the great
Creekside thicket, he saw all at once against the sky over the
Sunning Bank the head and ears of a strange rabbit. The new-comer
had the air of a well-pleased discoverer and soon came hopping
Rag’s way along one of his paths into his Swamp. A
new feeling rushed over him, that boiling mixture of anger and
hatred called jealousy.

The stranger stopped at one of Rag’s rubbing-trees—that
is, a tree against which he used to stand on his heels and rub his
chin as far up as he could reach. He thought he did this simply
because he liked it; but all buck-rabbits do so, and several ends
are served. It makes the tree rabbity, so that other rabbits know
that this swamp already belongs to a rabbit family and is not open
for settlement. It also lets the next one know by the scent if the
last caller was an acquaintance, and the height from the ground of
the rubbing-places shows how tall the rabbit is.

Now to his disgust Rag noticed that the new-comer was a head
taller than himself, and a big, stout buck at that. This was a
wholly new experience and filled Rag with a wholly new feeling. The
spirit of murder entered his heart; he chewed very hard with
nothing in his mouth, and hopping forward onto a smooth piece of
hard ground he struck slowly:

‘Thump—thump—thump,’ which is a rabbit
telegram for ‘Get out of my swamp, or fight.’

The new-comer made a big V with his ears, sat upright for a few
seconds, then, dropping on his fore-feet, sent along the ground a
louder, stronger, ‘Thump—thump—thump.’

And so war was declared.

They came together by short runs sidewise, each one trying to
get the wind of the other and watching for a chance advantage. The
stranger was a big, heavy buck with plenty of muscle, but one or
two trifles such as treading on a turnover and failing to close
when Rag was on low ground showed that he had not much cunning and
counted on winning his battles by his weight. On he came at last
and Rag met him like a little fury. As they came together they
leaped up and struck out with their hind feet. Thud, thud
they came, and down went poor little Rag. In a moment the stranger
was on him with his teeth and Rag was bitten, and lost several
tufts of hair before he could get up. But he was swift of foot and
got out of reach. Again he charged and again he was knocked down
and bitten severely. He was no match for his foe, and it soon
became a question of saving his own life.

Hurt as he was he sprang away, with the stranger in full chase,
and bound to kill him as well as to oust him from the Swamp where
he was born. Rag’s legs were good and so was his wind. The stranger
was big and so heavy that he soon gave up the chase, and it was
well for poor Rag that he did, for he was getting stiff from his
wounds as well as tired. From that day began a reign of terror for
Rag. His training had been against owls, dogs, weasels, men, and so
on, but what to do when chased by another rabbit, he did not know.
All he knew was to lay low till he was found, then run.

Poor little Molly was completely terrorized; she could not help
Rag and sought only to hide. But the big buck soon found her out.
She tried to run from him, but she was not now so swift as Rag. The
stranger made no attempt to kill her, but he made love to her, and
because she hated him and tried to get away, he treated her
shamefully. Day after day he worried her by following her about,
and often, furious at her lasting hatred, he would knock her down
and tear out mouthfuls of her soft fur till his rage cooled
somewhat, when he would let her go for awhile. But his fixed
purpose was to kill Rag, whose escape seemed hopeless. There was no
other swamp he could go to, and whenever he took a nap now he had
to be ready at any moment to dash for his life. A dozen times a day
the big stranger came creeping up to where he slept, but each time
the watchful Rag awoke in time to escape. To escape yet not to
escape. He saved his life indeed, but oh! what a miserable life it
had become. How maddening to be thus helpless, to see his little
mother daily beaten and torn, as well as to see all his favorite
feeding-grounds, the cosey nooks, and the pathways he had made with
so much labor, forced from him by this hateful brute. Unhappy Rag
realized that to the victor belong the spoils, and he hated him
more than ever he did fox or ferret.

How was it to end? He was wearing out with running and watching
and bad food, and little Molly’s strength and spirit were breaking
down under the long persecution. The stranger was ready to go to
all lengths to destroy poor Rag, and at last stooped to the worst
crime known among rabbits. However much they may hate each other,
all good rabbits forget their feuds when their common enemy
appears. Yet one day when a great goshawk came swooping over the
Swamp, the stranger, keeping well under cover himself, tried again
and again to drive Rag into the open.

Once or twice the hawk nearly had him, but still the briers
saved him, and it was only when the big buck himself came near
being caught that he gave it up. And again Rag escaped, but was no
better off. He made up his mind to leave, with his mother, if
possible, next night and go into the world in quest of some new
home when he heard old Thunder, the hound, sniffing and searching
about the outskirts of the swamp, and he resolved on playing a
desperate game. He deliberately crossed the hound’s view, and the
chase that then began was fast and furious. Thrice around the Swamp
they went till Rag had made sure that his mother was hidden safely
and that his hated foe was in his usual nest. Then right into that
nest and plump over him he jumped, giving him a rap with one hind
foot as he passed over his head.

“You miserable fool, I kill you yet,” cried the stranger, and up
he jumped only to find himself between Rag and the dog and heir to
all the peril of the chase.

On came the hound baying hotly on the straight-away scent. The
buck’s weight and size were great advantages in a rabbit fight, but
now they were fatal. He did not know many tricks. Just the simple
ones like ‘double,’ ‘wind,’ and ‘hole-up,’ that every baby Bunny
knows. But the chase was too close for doubling and winding, and he
didn’t know where the holes were.

It was a straight race. The brier-rose, kind to all rabbits
alike, did its best, but it was no use. The baying of the hound was
fast and steady. The crashing of the brush and the yelping of the
hound each time the briers tore his tender ears were borne to the
two rabbits where they crouched in hiding. But suddenly these
sounds stopped, there was a scuffle, then loud and terrible
screaming.

Rag knew what it meant and it sent a shiver through him, but he
soon forgot that when all was over and rejoiced to be once more the
master of the dear old Swamp.

VIII

Old Olifant had doubtless a right to burn all those brush-piles
in the east and south of the Swamp and to clear up the wreck of the
old barbed-wire hog-pen just below the spring. But it was none the
less hard on Rag and his mother. The first were their various
residences and outposts, and the second their grand fastness and
safe retreat.

They had so long held the Swamp and felt it to be their very own
in every part and suburb—including Olifant’s grounds and
buildings—that they would have resented the appearance of
another rabbit even about the adjoining barnyard.

Their claim, that of long, successful occupancy, was exactly the
same as that by which most nations hold their land, and it would be
hard to find a better right.

During the time of the January thaw the Olifants had cut the
rest of the large wood about the pond and curtailed the
Cottontails’ domain on all sides. But they still clung to the
dwindling Swamp, for it was their home and they were loath to move
to foreign parts. Their life of daily perils went on, but they were
still fleet of foot, long of wind, and bright of wit. Of late they
had been somewhat troubled by a mink that had wandered up-stream to
their quiet nook. A little judicious guidance had transferred the
uncomfortable visitor to Olifant’s hen-house. But they were not yet
quite sure that he had been properly looked after. So for the
present they gave up using the ground-holes, which were, of course,
dangerous blind-alleys, and stuck closer than ever to the briers
and the brush-piles that were left.

That first snow had quite gone and the weather was bright and
warm until now. Molly, feeling a touch of rheumatism, was somewhere
in the lower thicket seeking a tea-berry tonic. Rag was sitting in
the weak sunlight on a bank in the east side. The smoke from the
familiar gable chimney of Olifant’s house came fitfully drifting a
pale blue haze through the under-woods and showing as a dull brown
against the brightness of the sky. The sun-gilt gable was cut off
midway by the banks of brier-brush, that purple in shadow shone
like rods of blazing crimson and gold in the light. Beyond the
house the barn with its gable and roof, new gilt as the house,
stood up like a Noah’s ark.

The sounds that came from it, and yet more the delicious smell
that mingled with the smoke, told Rag that the animals were being
fed cabbage in the yard. Rag’s mouth watered at the idea of the
feast. He blinked and blinked as he snuffed its odorous promises,
for he loved cabbage dearly. But then he had been to the barnyard
the night before after a few paltry clover-tops, and no wise rabbit
would go two nights running to the same place.

Therefore he did the wise thing. He moved across where he could
not smell the cabbage and made his supper of a bundle of hay that
had been blown from the stack. Later, when about to settle for the
night, he was joined by Molly, who had taken her tea-berry and then
eaten her frugal meal of sweet birch near the Sunning Bank.

Meanwhile the sun had gone about his business elsewhere, taking
all his gold and glory with him. Off in the east a big black
shutter came pushing up and rising higher and higher; it spread
over the whole sky, shut out all light, and left the world a very
gloomy place indeed. Then another mischief-maker, the wind, taking
advantage of the sun’s absence, came on the scene and set about
brewing trouble. The weather turned colder and colder; it seemed
worse than when the ground had been covered with snow.

“Isn’t this terribly cold? How I wish we had our stove-pipe
brush-pile,” said Rag.

“A good night for the pine-root hole,” replied Molly, “but we
have not yet seen the pelt of that mink on the end of the barn, and
it is not safe till we do.”

The hollow hickory was gone—in fact at this very moment
its trunk, lying in the wood-yard, was harboring the mink they
feared. So the Cottontails hopped to the south side of the pond
and, choosing a brush-pile, they crept under and snuggled down for
the night, facing the wind but with their noses in different
directions so as to go out different ways in case of alarm. The
wind blew harder and colder as the hours went by, and about
midnight a fine, icy snow came ticking down on the dead leaves and
hissing through the brush heap. It might seem a poor night for
hunting, but that old fox from Springfield was out. He came
pointing up the wind in the shelter of the Swamp and chanced in the
lee of the brush-pile, where he scented the sleeping Cottontails.
He halted for a moment, then came stealthily sneaking up toward the
brush under which his nose told him the rabbits were crouching. The
noise of the wind and the sleet enabled him to come quite close
before Molly heard the faint crunch of a dry leaf under his paw.
She touched Rag’s whiskers, and both were fully awake just as the
fox sprang on them; but they always slept with their legs ready for
a jump. Molly darted out into the blinding storm. The fox missed
his spring, but followed like a racer, while Rag dashed off to one
side.

There was only one road for Molly; that was straight up the
wind, and bounding for her life she gained a little over the
unfrozen mud that would not carry the fox, till she reached the
margin of the pond. No chance to turn now, on she must go.

Splash! splash! through the weeds she went, then plunge into the
deep water.

And plunge went the fox close behind. But it was too much for
Reynard on such a night. He turned back, and Molly, seeing only one
course, struggled through the reeds into the deep water and struck
out for the other shore. But there was a strong headwind. The
little waves, icy cold, broke over her head as she swam, and the
water was full of snow that blocked her way like soft ice, or
floating mud. The dark line of the other shore seemed far, far
away, with perhaps the fox waiting for her there.

But she laid her ears flat to be out of the gale, and bravely
put forth all her strength with wind and tide against her. After a
long, weary swim in the cold water, she had nearly reached the
farther reeds when a great mass of floating snow barred her road;
then the wind on the bank made strange, fox-like sounds that robbed
her of all force, and she was drifted far backward before she could
get free from the floating bar.

Again she struck out, but slowly—oh so slowly now. And
when at last she reached the lee of the tall reeds, her limbs were
numbed, her strength spent, her brave little heart was sinking, and
she cared no more whether the fox were there or not. Through the
reeds she did indeed pass, but once in the weeds her course wavered
and slowed, her feeble strokes no longer sent her landward, and the
ice forming around her, stopped her altogether. In a little while
the cold, weak limbs ceased to move, the furry nose-tip of the
little mother Cottontail wobbled no more, and the soft brown eyes
were closed in death.

But there was no fox waiting to tear her with ravenous jaws. Rag
had escaped the first onset of the foe, and as soon as he regained
his wits he came running back to change-off and so help his mother.
He met the old fox going round the pond to meet Molly and led him
far and away, then dismissed him with a barbed-wire gash on his
head, and came to the bank and sought about and trailed and
thumped, but all his searching was in vain; he could not find his
little mother. He never saw her again, and never knew whither she
went, for she slept her never-waking sleep in the ice-arms of her
friend the Water that tells no tales.

Poor little Molly Cottontail! She was a true heroine, yet only
one of unnumbered millions that without a thought of heroism have
lived and done their best in their little world, and died. She
fought a good fight in the battle of life. She was good stuff; the
stuff that never dies. For flesh of her flesh and brain of her
brain was Rag. She lives in him, and through him transmits a finer
fibre to her race.

And Rag still lives in the Swamp. Old Olifant died that winter,
and the unthrifty sons ceased to clear the Swamp or mend the wire
fences. Within a single year it was a wilder place than ever; fresh
trees and brambles grew, and falling wires made many Cottontail
castles and last retreats that dogs and foxes dared not storm. And
there to this day lives Rag. He is a big, strong buck now and fears
no rivals. He has a large family of his own, and a pretty brown
wife that he got no one knows where. There, no doubt, he and his
children’s children will flourish for many years to come, and there
you may see them any sunny evening if you have learnt their signal
code, and choosing a good spot on the ground, know just how and
when to thump it.

VIXEN

THE SPRINGFIELD FOX

VIXEN

THE SPRINGFIELD FOX

I

The hens had been mysteriously disappearing for over a month;
and when I came home to Springfield for the summer holidays it was
my duty to find the cause. This was soon done. The fowls were
carried away bodily one at a time, before going to roost, or else
after leaving, which put tramps and neighbors out of court; they
were not taken from the high perches, which cleared all coons and
owls; or left partly eaten, so that weasels, skunks, or minks were
not the guilty ones, and the blame, therefore, was surely left at
Reynard’s door.

The great pine wood of Erindale was on the other bank of the
river, and on looking carefully about the lower ford I saw a few
fox-tracks and a barred feather from one of our Plymouth Rock
chickens. On climbing the farther bank in search of more clews, I
heard a great outcry of crows behind me, and turning, saw a number
of these birds darting down at something in the ford. A better view
showed that it was the old story, thief catch thief, for there in
the middle of the ford was a fox with something in his
jaws—he was returning from our barnyard with another hen. The
crows, though shameless robbers themselves, are ever first to cry
‘Stop thief,’ and yet more than ready to take ‘hush-money’ in the
form of a share in the plunder.

And this was their game now. The fox to get back home must cross
the river, where he was exposed to the full brunt of the crow mob.
He made a dash for it, and would doubtless have gotten across with
his booty had I not joined in the attack, whereupon he dropped the
hen, scarce dead, and disappeared in the woods.

This large and regular levy of provisions wholly carried off
could mean but one thing, a family of little foxes at home; and to
find them I now was bound.

That evening I went with Ranger, my hound, across the river into
the Erindale woods. As soon as the hound began to circle, we heard
the short, sharp bark of a fox from a thickly wooded ravine close
by. Ranger dashed in at once, struck a hot scent and went off on a
lively straight-away till his voice was lost in the distance away
over the upland.

After nearly an hour he came back, panting and warm, for it was
baking August weather, and lay down at my feet.

But almost immediately the same foxy ‘Yap yurrr‘ was
heard close at hand and off dashed the dog on another chase.

Away he went in the darkness, baying like a foghorn, straight
away to the north. And the loud ‘Boo, boo,’ became a low
‘oo, oo,’ and that a feeble ‘o-o’ and then was lost. They
must have gone some miles away, for even with ear to the ground I
heard nothing of them, though a mile was easy distance for Ranger’s
brazen voice. As I waited in the black woods I heard a sweet sound
of dripping water: ‘Tink tank tenk tink, Ta tink tank tenk
tonk.’

I did not know of any spring so near, and in the hot night it
was a glad find. But the sound led me to the bough of an oak-tree,
where I found its source. Such a soft, sweet song; full of
delightful suggestion on such a night:

It was the ‘water-dripping’ song of the saw-whet owl.

But suddenly a deep raucous breathing and a rustle of leaves
showed that Ranger was back.

He was completely fagged out. His tongue hung almost to the
ground and was dripping with foam, his flanks were heaving and
spume-flecks dribbled from his breast and sides. He stopped panting
a moment to give my hand a dutiful lick, then flung himself flop on
the leaves to drown all other sounds with his noisy panting. But
again that tantalizing ‘Yap yurrr‘ was heard a few feet
away, and the meaning of it all dawned on me.

We were close to the den where the little foxes were, and the
old ones were taking turns in trying to lead us away.

It was late night now, so we went home feeling sure that the
problem was nearly solved.

II

It was well known that there was an old fox with his family
living in the neighborhood, but no one supposed them so near.

This fox had been called ‘Scarface,’ because of a scar reaching
from his eye through and back of his ear; this was supposed to have
been given him by a barbed-wire fence during a rabbit hunt, and as
the hair came in white after it healed, it was always a strong
mark.

The winter before I had met with him and had had a sample of his
craftiness. I was out shooting, after a fall of snow, and had
crossed the open fields to the edge of the brushy hollow back of
the old mill. As my head rose to a view of the hollow I caught
sight of a fox trotting at long range down the other side, in line
to cross my course. Instantly I held motionless, and did not even
lower or turn my head lest I should catch his eye by moving, until
he went on out of sight in the thick cover at the bottom. As soon
as he was hidden I bobbed down and ran to head him off where he
should leave the cover on the other side, and was there in good
time awaiting, but no fox came forth. A careful took showed the
fresh track of a fox that had bounded from the cover, and following
it with my eye I saw old Scarface himself far out of range behind
me, sitting on his haunches and grinning as though much amused.

A study of the trail made all clear. He had seen me at the
moment I saw him, but he, also like a true hunter, had concealed
the fact, putting on an air of unconcern till out of sight, when he
had run for his life around behind me and amused himself by
watching my stillborn trick.

In the springtime I had yet another instance of Scarface’s
cunning. I was walking with a friend along the road over the high
pasture. We passed within thirty feet of a ridge on which were
several gray and brown bowlders. When at the nearest point my
friend said:

“Stone number three looks to me very much like a fox curled
up.”

But I could not see it, and we passed. We had not gone many
yards farther when the wind blew on this bowlder as on fur.

My friend said, “I am sure that is a fox, lying asleep.”

“We’ll soon settle that,” I replied, and turned back, but as
soon as I had taken one step from the road, up jumped Scarface, for
it was he, and ran. A fire had swept the middle of the pasture,
leaving a broad belt of black; over this he skurried till he came
to the unburnt yellow grass again, where he squatted down and was
lost to view. He had been watching us all the time, and would not
have moved had we kept to the road. The wonderful part of this is,
not that he resembled the round stones and dry grass, but that he
knew he did, and was ready to profit by it.

We soon found that it was Scarface and his wife Vixen that had
made our woods their home and our barnyard their base of
supplies.

Next morning a search in the pines showed a great bank of earth
that had been scratched up within a few months. It must have come
from a hole, and yet there was none to be seen. It is well known
that a really cute fox, on digging a new den, brings all the earth
out at the first hole made, but carries on a tunnel into some
distant thicket. Then closing up for good the first made and too
well-marked door, uses only the entrance hidden in the thicket.

So after a little search at the other side of a knoll, I found
the real entry and good proof that there was a nest of little foxes
inside.

Rising above the brush on the hillside was a great hollow
basswood. It leaned a good deal and had a large hole at the bottom,
and a smaller one at top.

We boys had often used this tree in playing Swiss Family
Robinson, and by cutting steps in its soft punky walls had made it
easy to go up and down in the hollow. Now it came in handy, for
next day when the sun was warm I went there to watch, and from this
perch on the roof, I soon saw the interesting family that lived in
the cellar near by. There were four little foxes; they looked
curiously like little lambs, with their woolly coats, their long,
thick legs and innocent expressions, and yet a second glance at
their broad, sharp-nosed, sharp-eyed visages showed that each of
these innocents was the makings of a crafty old fox.

They played about, basking in the sun, or wrestling with each
other till a slight sound made them skurry under ground. But their
alarm was needless, for the cause of it was their mother; she
stepped from the bushes bringing another hen—number seventeen
as I remember. A low call from her and the little fellows came
tumbling out. Then began a scene that I thought charming, but which
my uncle would not have enjoyed at all.

They rushed on the hen, and tussled and fought with it, and each
other, while the mother, keeping a sharp eye for enemies, looked on
with fond delight. The expression on her face was remarkable. It
was first a grinning of delight, but her usual look of wildness and
cunning was there, nor were cruelty and nervousness lacking, but
over all was the unmistakable look of the mother’s pride and
love.

The base of my tree was hidden in bushes and much lower than the
knoll where the den was. So I could come and go at will without
scaring the foxes.

They tussled and fought while their mother looked on with fond
delight.

For many days I went there and saw much of the training of the
young ones. They early learned to turn to statuettes at any strange
sound, and then on hearing it again or finding other cause for
fear, to run for shelter.

Some animals have so much mother-love that it overflows and
benefits outsiders. Not so old Vixen it would seem. Her pleasure in
the cubs led to most refined cruelty. For she often brought home to
them mice and birds alive, and with diabolical gentleness would
avoid doing them serious hurt so that the cubs might have larger
scope to torment them.

There was a woodchuck that lived over in the hill orchard. He
was neither handsome nor interesting, but he knew how to take care
of himself. He had digged a den between the roots of an old
pine-stump, so that the foxes could not follow him by digging. But
hard work was not their way of life; wits they believed worth more
than elbow-grease. This woodchuck usually sunned himself on the
stump each morning. If he saw a fox near he went down in the door
of his den, or if the enemy was very near he went inside and stayed
long enough for the danger to pass.

One morning Vixen and her mate seemed to decide that it was time
the children knew something about the broad subject of Woodchucks,
and further that this orchard woodchuck would serve nicely for an
object-lesson. So they went together to the orchard-fence unseen by
old Chuckie on his stump. Scarface then showed himself in the
orchard and quietly walked in a line so as to, pass by the stump at
a distance, but never once turned his head or allowed the
ever-watchful woodchuck to think himself seen. When the fox entered
the field the woodchuck quietly dropped down to the mouth of his
den; here he waited as the fox passed, but concluding that after
all wisdom is the better part, went into his hole.

This was what the foxes wanted. Vixen had kept out of sight, but
now ran swiftly to the stump and hid behind it. Scarface had kept
straight on, going very slowly. The woodchuck had not been
frightened, so before long his head popped up between the roots and
he looked around. There was that fox still going on, farther and
farther away. The woodchuck grew bold as the fox went, and came out
farther, and then seeing the coast clear, he scrambled onto the
stump, and with one spring Vixen had him and shook him till he lay
senseless. Scarface had watched out of the corner of his eye and
now came running back. But Vixen took the chuck in her jaws and
made for the den, so he saw he wasn’t needed.

Back to the den came Vix, and carried the chuck so carefully
that he was able to struggle a little when she got there. A low
‘woof‘ at the den brought the little fellows out like
school-boys to play. She threw the wounded animal to them and they
set on him like four little furies, uttering little growls and
biting little bites with all the strength of their baby jaws, but
the woodchuck fought for his life and beating them off slowly
hobbled to the shelter of a thicket. The little ones pursued like a
pack of hounds and dragged at his tail and flanks, but could not
hold him back. So Vix overtook him with a couple of bounds and
dragged him again into the open for the children to worry. Again
and again this rough sport went on till one of the little ones was
badly bitten, and his squeal of pain roused Vix to end the
woodchuck’s misery and serve him up at once.

Not far from the den was a hollow overgrown with coarse grass,
the playground of a colony of field-mice. The earliest lesson in
woodcraft that the little ones took, away from the den, was in this
hollow. Here they had their first course of mice, the easiest of
all game. In teaching, the main thing was example, aided by a
deep-set instinct. The old fox, also, had one or two signs meaning
“lie still and watch,” “come, do as I do,” and so on, that were
much used.

So the merry lot went to this hollow one calm evening and Mother
Fox made them lie still in the grass. Presently a faint squeak
showed that the game was astir. Vix rose up and went on tip-toe
into the grass—not crouching, but as high as she could stand,
sometimes on her hind legs so as to get a better view. The runs
that the mice follow are hidden under the grass tangle, and the
only way to know the whereabouts of a mouse is by seeing the slight
shaking of the grass, which is the reason why mice are hunted only
on calm days.

And the trick is to locate the mouse and seize him first and see
him afterward. Vix soon made a spring, and in the middle of the
bunch of dead grass that she grabbed was a field-mouse squeaking
his last squeak.

He was soon gobbled, and the four awkward little foxes tried to
do the same as their mother, and when at length the eldest for the
first time in his life caught game, he quivered with excitement and
ground his pearly little milk-teeth into the mouse with a rush of
inborn savageness that must have surprised even himself.

Another home lesson was on the red-squirrel. One of these noisy,
vulgar creatures, lived close by and used to waste part of each day
scolding the foxes, from some safe perch. The cubs made many vain
attempts to catch him as he ran across their glade from one tree to
another, or spluttered and scolded at them a foot or so out of
reach. But old Vixen was up in natural history—she knew
squirrel nature and took the case in hand when the proper time
came. She hid the children and lay down flat in the middle of the
open glade. The saucy low-minded squirrel came and scolded as
usual. But she moved no hair. He came nearer and at last right
overhead to chatter:

“You brute you, you brute you.”

But Vix lay as dead. This was very perplexing, so the squirrel
came down the trunk and peeping about made a nervous dash across
the grass, to another tree, again to scold from a safe perch.

“You brute you, you useless brute, scarrr-scarrrrr.”

But flat and lifeless on the grass lay Vix. This was most
tantalizing to the squirrel. He was naturally curious and disposed
to be venturesome, so again he came to the ground and skurried
across the glade nearer than before.

Still as death lay Vix, “surely she was dead.” And the little
foxes began to wonder if their mother wasn’t asleep.

But the squirrel was working himself into a little craze of
foolhardy curiosity. He had dropped a piece of bark on Vix’s head;
he had used up his list of bad words, and he had done it all over
again, without getting a sign of life. So after a couple more
dashes across the glade he ventured within a few feet of the really
watchful Vix, who sprang to her feet and pinned him in a
twinkling.

“And the little ones picked the bones e-oh.” Thus the rudiments
of their education were laid, and afterward, as they grew stronger,
they were taken farther afield to begin the higher branches of
trailing and scenting.

For each kind of prey they were taught a way to hunt, for every
animal has some great strength or it could not live, and some great
weakness or the others could not live. The squirrel’s weakness was
foolish curiosity; the fox’s that he can’t climb a tree. And the
training of the little foxes was all shaped to take advantage of
the weakness of the other creatures and to make up for their own by
defter play where they are strong.

From their parents they learned the chief axioms of the fox
world. How, is not easy to say. But that they learned this in
company with their parents was clear. Here are some that foxes
taught me, without saying a word:—

Never sleep on your straight track.

Your nose is before your eyes, then trust it first.

A fool runs down the wind.

Running rills cure many ills.

Never take the open if you can keep the cover.

Never leave a straight trail if a crooked one will do.

If it’s strange, it’s hostile.

Dust and water burn the scent.

Never hunt mice in a rabbit-woods, or rabbits in a henyard.

Keep off the grass.

Inklings of the meanings of these were already entering the
little ones’ minds—thus, ‘Never follow what you can’t smell,’
was wise, they could see, because if you can’t smell it, then the
wind is so that it must smell you.

One by one they learned the birds and beasts of their home
woods, and then as they were able to go abroad with their parents
they learned new animals. They were beginning to think they knew
the scent of everything that moved. But one night the mother took
them to a field where was a strange black flat thing on the ground.
She brought them on purpose to smell it, but at the first whiff
their every hair stood on end, they trembled, they knew not why-it
seemed to tingle through their blood and fill them with instinctive
hate and fear. And when she saw its full effect she told
them—

“That is man-scent.”

III

Meanwhile the hens continued to disappear. I had not betrayed
the den of cubs. Indeed, I thought a good deal more of the little
rascals than I did of the hens; but uncle was dreadfully wrought up
and made most disparaging remarks about my woodcraft. To please him
I one day took the hound across to the woods and seating myself on
a stump on the open hillside, I bade the dog go on. Within three
minutes he sang out in the tongue all hunters know so well, “Fox!
fox! fox! straight away down the valley.”

After awhile I heard them coming back. There I saw the
fox—Scarface—loping lightly across the river-bottom to
the stream. In he went and trotted along in the shallow water near
the margin for two hundred yards, then came out straight toward me.
Though in full view, he saw me not, but came up the hill watching
over his shoulder for the hound. Within ten feet of me he turned
and sat with his back to me while he craned his neck and showed an
eager interest in the doings of the hound. Ranger came bawling
along the trail till he came to the running water, the killer of
scent, and here he was puzzled; but there was only one thing to do;
that was by going up and down both banks find where the fox had
left the river.

The fox before me shifted his position a little to get a better
view and watched with a most human interest all the circling of the
hound. He was so close that I saw the hair of his shoulder bristle
a little when the dog came in sight. I could see the jumping of his
heart on his ribs, and the gleam of his yellow eye. When the dog
was wholly baulked by the water trick it was comical to
see:—he could not sit still, but rocked up and down in glee,
and reared on his hind feet to get a better view of the
slow-plodding hound. With mouth opened nearly to his ears, though
not at all winded, he panted noisily for a moment, or rather he
laughed gleefully just as a dog laughs by grinning and panting.

Old Scarface wriggled in huge enjoyment as the hound puzzled
over the trail so long that when he did find it, it was so stale he
could barely follow it, and did not feel justified in tonguing on
it at all.

As soon as the hound was working up the hill, the fox quietly
went into the woods. I had been sitting in plain view only ten feet
away, but I had the wind and kept still and the fox never knew that
his life had for twenty minutes been in the power of the foe he
most feared. Ranger would also have passed me as near as the fox,
but I spoke to him, and with a little nervous start he quit the
trail and looking sheepish lay down by my feet.

This little comedy was played with variations for several days,
but it was all in plain view from the house across the river. My
uncle, impatient at the daily loss of hens, went out himself, sat
on the open knoll, and when old Scarface trotted to his lookout to
watch the dull hound on the river flat below, my uncle
remorselessly shot him in the back, at the very moment when he was
grinning over a new triumph.

IV

But still the hens were disappearing. My uncle was wrathy. He
determined to conduct the war himself, and sowed the woods with
poison baits, trusting to luck that our own dogs would not get
them. He indulged in contemptuous remarks on my by-gone woodcraft,
and went out evenings with a gun and the two dogs, to see what he
could destroy.

Vix knew right well what a poison bait was; she passed them by
or else treated them with active contempt, but one she dropped down
the hole, of an old enemy, a skunk, who was never afterward seen.
Formerly old Scarface was always ready to take charge of the dogs,
and keep them out of mischief. But now that Vix had the whole
burden of the brood, she could no longer spend time in breaking
every track to the den, and was not always at hand to meet and
mislead the foes that might be coming too near.

The end is easily foreseen. Ranger followed a hot trail to the
den, and Spot, the fox-terrier, announced that the family was at
home, and then did his best to go in after them.

The whole secret was now out, and the whole family doomed. The
hired man came around with pick and shovel to dig them out, while
we and the dogs stood by. Old Vix soon showed herself in the near
woods, and led the dogs away off down the river, where she shook
them off when she thought proper, by the simple device of springing
on a sheep’s back. The frightened animal ran for several hundred
yards; then Vix got off, knowing that there was now a hopeless gap
in the scent, and returned to the den. But the dogs, baffled by the
break in the trail, soon did the same, to find Vix hanging about in
despair, vainly trying to decoy us away from her treasures.

Meanwhile Paddy plied both pick and shovel with vigor and
effect. The yellow, gravelly sand was heaping on both sides, and
the shoulders of the sturdy digger were sinking below the level.
After an hour’s digging, enlivened by frantic rushes of the dogs
after the old fox, who hovered near in the woods, Pat called:

“Here they are, sor!”

It was the den at the end of the burrow, and cowering as far
back as they could, were the four little woolly cubs.

Before I could interfere, a murderous blow from the shovel, and
a sudden rush for the fierce little terrier, ended the lives of
three. The fourth and smallest was barely saved by holding him by
his tail high out of reach of the excited dogs.

He gave one short squeal, and his poor mother came at the cry,
and circled so near that she would have been shot but for the
accidental protection of the dogs, who somehow always seemed to get
between, and whom she once more led away on a fruitless chase.

The little one saved alive was dropped into a bag, where he lay
quite still. His unfortunate brothers were thrown back into their
nursery bed, and buried under a few shovelfuls of earth.

We guilty ones then went back into the house, and the little fox
was soon chained in the yard. No one knew just why he was kept
alive, but in all a change of feeling had set in, and the idea of
killing him was without a supporter.

He was a pretty little fellow, like a cross between a fox and a
lamb. His woolly visage and form were strangely lamb-like and
innocent, but one could find in his yellow eyes a gleam of cunning
and savageness as unlamb-like as it possibly could be.

As long as anyone was near he crouched sullen and cowed in his
shelter-box, and it was a full hour after being left alone before
he ventured to look out.

My window now took the place of the hollow basswood. A number of
hens of the breed he knew so well were about the cub in the yard.
Late that afternoon as they strayed near the captive there was a
sudden rattle of the chain, and the youngster dashed at the nearest
one and would have caught him but for the chain which brought him
up with a jerk. He got on his feet and slunk back to his box, and
though he afterward made several rushes he so gauged his leap as to
win or fail within the length of the chain and never again was
brought up by its cruel jerk.

As night came down the little fellow became very uneasy,
sneaking out of his box, but going back at each slight alarm,
tugging at his chain, or at times biting it in fury while he held
it down with his fore-paws. Suddenly he paused as though listening,
then raising his little black nose he poured out a short, quavering
cry.

Once or twice this was repeated, the time between being occupied
in worrying the chain and running about. Then an answer came. The
far-away Yap yurrr of the old fox. A few minutes later a
shadowy form appeared on the wood-pile. The little one slunk into
his box, but at once returned and ran to meet his mother with all
the gladness that a fox could show. Quick as a flash she seized him
and turned to bear him away by the road she came. But the moment
the end of the chain was reached the cub was rudely jerked from the
old one’s mouth, and she, scared by the opening of a window, fled
over the wood-pile.

An hour afterward the cub had ceased to run about or cry. I
peeped out, and by the light of the moon saw the form of the mother
at full length on the ground by the little one gnawing at
something—the clank of iron told what, it was that cruel
chain. And Tip, the little one, meanwhile was helping himself to a
warm drink.

On my going out she fled into the dark woods, but there by the
shelter-box were two little mice, bloody and still warm, food for
the cub brought by the devoted mother. And in the morning I found
the chain was very bright for a foot or two next the little one’s
collar.

On walking across the woods to the ruined den, I again found
signs of Vixen. The poor heart-broken mother had come and dug out
the bedraggled bodies of her little ones.

There lay the three little baby foxes all licked smooth now, and
by them were two of our hens fresh killed. The newly heaved earth
was printed all over with tell-tale signs—signs that told me
that here by the side of her dead she had watched like Rizpah. Here
she had brought their usual meal, the spoil of her nightly hunt.
Here she had stretched herself beside them and vainly offered them
their natural drink and yearned to feed and warm them as of old;
but only stiff little bodies under their soft wool she found, and
little cold noses still and unresponsive.

A deep impress of elbows, breast, and hocks showed where she had
laid in silent grief and watched them for long and mourned as a
wild mother can mourn for its young. But from that time she came no
more to the ruined den, for now she surely knew that her little
ones were dead.

V

Tip, the captive, the weakling of the brood, was now the heir to
all her love. The dogs were loosed to guard the hens. The hired man
had orders to shoot the old fox on sight—so had I, but was
resolved never to see her. Chicken-heads, that a fox loves and a
dog will not touch, had been poisoned and scattered through the
woods; and the only way to the yard where Tip was tied was by
climbing the wood-pile after braving all other dangers. And yet
each night old Vix was there to nurse her baby and bring it
fresh-killed hens and game. Again and again I saw her, although she
came now without awaiting the querulous cry of the captive.

The second night of the captivity I heard the rattle of the
chain, and then made out that the old fox was there, hard at work
digging a hole by the little one’s kennel. When it was deep enough
to half bury her, she gathered into it all the slack of the chain,
and filled it again with earth. Then in triumph thinking she had
gotten rid of the chain, she seized little Tip by the neck and
turned to dash off up the woodpile, but alas only to have him
jerked roughly from her grasp.

Poor little fellow, he whimpered sadly as he crawled into his
box. After half an hour there was a great outcry among the dogs,
and by their straight-away tonguing through the far woods I knew
they were chasing Vix. Away up north they went in the direction of
the railway and their noise faded from hearing. Next morning the
hound had not come back. We soon knew why. Foxes long ago learned
what a railroad is; they soon devised several ways of turning it to
account. One way is when hunted to walk the rails for a long
distance just before a train comes. The scent, always poor on iron,
is destroyed by the train and there is always a chance of hounds
being killed by the engine. But another way more sure, but harder
to play, is to lead the hounds straight to a high trestle just
ahead of the train, so that the engine overtakes them on it and
they are surely dashed to destruction.

This trick was skilfully played, and down below we found the
mangled remains of old Ranger and learned that Vix was already
wreaking her revenge.

That same night she returned to the yard before Spot’s weary
limbs could bring him back and killed another hen and brought it to
Tip, and stretched her panting length beside him that he might
quench his thirst. For she seemed to think he had no food but what
she brought.

It was that hen that betrayed to my uncle the nightly
visits.

My own sympathies were all turning to Vix, and I would have no
hand in planning further murders. Next night my uncle himself
watched, gun in hand, for an hour. Then when it became cold and the
moon clouded over he remembered other important business elsewhere,
and left Paddy in his place.

But Paddy was “onaisy” as the stillness and anxiety of watching
worked on his nerves. And the loud bang! bang! an hour later left
us sure only that powder had been burned.

In the morning we found Vix had not failed her young one. Again
next night found my uncle on guard, for another hen had been taken.
Soon after dark a single shot was heard, but Vix dropped the game
she was bringing and escaped. Another attempt made that night
called forth another gun-shot. Yet next day it was seen by the
brightness of the chain that she had come again and vainly tried
for hours to cut that hateful bond.

Such courage and stanch fidelity were bound to win respect, if
not toleration. At any rate, there was no gunner in wait next
night, when all was still. Could it be of any use? Driven off
thrice with gun-shots, would she make another try to feed or free
her captive young one?

Would she? Hers was a mother’s love. There was but one to watch
them this time, the fourth night, when the quavering whine of the
little one was followed by that shadowy form above the
wood-pile.

But carrying no fowl or food that could be seen. Had the keen
huntress failed at last? Had she no head of game for this her only
charge, or had she learned to trust his captors for his food?

No, far from all this. The wild-wood mother’s heart and hate
were true. Her only thought had been to set him free. All means she
knew she tried, and every danger braved to tend him well and help
him to be free. But all had failed.

Like a shadow she came and in a moment was gone, and Tip seized
on something dropped, and crunched and chewed with relish what she
brought. But even as he ate, a knife-like pang shot through and a
scream of pain escaped him. Then there was a momentary struggle and
the little fox was dead.

The mother’s love was strong in Vix, but a higher thought was
stronger. She knew right well the poison’s power; she knew the
poison bait, and would have taught him had he lived to know and
shun it too. But now at last when she must choose for him a
wretched prisoner’s life or sudden death, she quenched the mother
in her breast and freed him by the one remaining door.

It is when the snow is on the ground that we take the census of
the woods, and when the winter came it told me that Vix no longer
roamed the woods of Erindale. Where she went it never told, but
only this, that she was gone.

Gone, perhaps, to some other far-off haunt to leave behind the
sad remembrance of her murdered little ones and mate. Or gone, may
be, deliberately, from the scene of a sorrowful life, as many a
wild-wood mother has gone, by the means that she herself had used
to free her young one, the last of all her brood.