Rufus M. (12 page)

That night after dinner Joey was reading the newspaper. Why, right on the front page, besides the war news, there were all kinds of stories about animals. A lady in Texas had a panther for a pet, a baby panther, and she wore it around her neck. In London a tiger had escaped from the zoo. Nearer home a deer had been seen in the woods on the Sleeping Giant. With animals anything was possible. Here were three different animals in three different spots in the world where you would hardly expect to find them. Maybe tomorrow there would be still another animal story in the paper. This story would tell how Rufus and Joey Moffat caught a fox, a silver fox, found wandering through the new sewer pipes in Cranbury.

All the Moffats were sitting or working around the kitchen range except Jane, who had run over to Nancy Stokes's house to learn "In Flanders Field" for school. They were going to learn the whole thing, every word, by heart. The thought of the fox or the wolf or whatever it was out there in the sewer pipes lent wings of fear to Janey's feet, and she practically flew over the fence from the Moffats' house to Nancy's.

Rufus was sitting in Mama's wicker sewing rocker right in front of the stove, reading. Rufus could read very well now. In fact, he could read as fast as any of the Moffats. Last week he had read a whole book in one hour. It was fine print, too.
Sink or Swim
was the name of it.

Sylvie was painting postcards at the kitchen table. She spent her free evenings painting Christmas, Easter, and birthday cards, and also everyday cards with pictures of sunsets and of ladies with wide hair ribbons around their heads. She took orders for these cards and received fifty cents a dozen or five cents apiece for them. The mail going out of Cranbury was full of sunsets and ladies now.

Mama was pressing the seams of a dress.
S-s-s-s-s,
hissed the steam, as her hot iron came down on the damp cloth. The smell of the dye of the material filled the kitchen.

Joey turned the pages of the newspaper to the lost-and-found column. No fox was listed among the lost. Mostly dogs were lost. He was glad that no fox was mentioned. If someone had advertised for the fox, then of course the Moffats would have to give it right back to that person. But if no one advertised, the fox was his!

The first thing to do was to build the fox pen. If he had one fox, Joey was certain it would be very easy to add others, and soon he would have several. No! He laughed to himself. The first thing that he had to do was to catch that fox.
I'm actin' as though I already have that fox.
Joey couldn't help grinning.
We just got to catch that fox out there,
he thought, running his hand through the hair that stood up like telegraph poles on the top of his head.
Supposin' he gets away!

But right now he felt as though a toothache were beginning. He went into the pantry to get a clove to put in his mouth. Just so it wouldn't get as bad as it was last night, that's all he hoped.

"Mr-r-r-r."

"Somebody let the cat out," said Mama.

Joey opened the door and out leaped Catherine-the-cat, disappearing into the night. Joey came back and stood over the stove, warming a piece of old red flannel and holding it against his cheek. After a while his toothache began to feel better. The flannel and the clove had helped.

Joey didn't say he had a toothache but everybody knew he had one. Mama and Sylvie studied plans in their minds about how they could get Joey's teeth tended to. The heat from the flannel and the clove really did help Joey right now, though, and he let his thoughts and dreams wander back to the silver fox.

"Hey, Rufe," he said.

"What," said Rufus, without looking up.

"Want to take a walk?"

"Don't go gallivanting around town at this time of the night," said Mama. "Rufus ought to be in bed anyway."

"We won't be gone a minute," Joey promised.

Rufus said, "Wait till I finish this chapter." But Joey gave him an urgent tug on his shoulder.
What's up?
thought Rufus. He looked at the page he was on, page seventy-three, and he closed the book. Rufus did not use bookmarks. He remembered the number of the page. He did not remember dates of fires and birthdays as Joey did, but he did remember the page he was on in a book. The two boys went out the back door.

"Thought I'd take a look at that fox out there," said Joe casually.

"Right," said Rufus. "Get my lasso."

Rufus found the rope and he and Joey went around the house to the street. The red lanterns and the gold flares of the flickering tar torches lit the streets and looked like a mosaic.

"This time are we goin' in after him?" asked Rufus bravely.

"Naw ... see if we can coax him out. He'll be hungry by now. I brought this piece of salt pork. Hope foxes like it. Hungry and frightened, that's what he'll probably be. He must be frightened or he'd have come out and tried to get back to the woods before this."

"Sure." But then Rufus added as an afterthought, "How do you know he didn't come out while we were having supper?"

"Well ... if he's a woods fox, he might have come out and run off to the woods, and that'd be all right. But," and Joey's voice trembled slightly with excitement, "he
may
be an escaped silver fox, the kind they raise for fur. If that's what he is, then naturally he's frightened and I don't think he'd have come out."

"Good you thought of the bait," said Rufus. Any kind of animal would suit him. All he wanted was to be sure and catch the animal so that crawling through the pipes would be safe again.

Now they had reached the corner. The watchman was dozing in front of a fire he had built in an old ash can. His chair was tilted against the shed and his cap was pulled down over his eyes. Joey and Rufus stepped quietly in order not to waken him. They stooped over and looked in the pipe. They saw darkness, nothing but darkness.

"Wish we had a flashlight," said Rufus.

"We'll borrow one of these lanterns for a second," said Joe. He climbed up on the dirt and picked up a red lantern. He held it close within the opening. The lantern cast a red, mysterious glow. "Some tunnel!" muttered Rufus, and he wondered how he ever had had the courage to crawl through, wolf or no wolf, fox or no fox.

But right now, anyway, they didn't see a fox or a wolf, either awake or asleep. So Joey replaced the lantern and

they ran down to the other corner. "Seems like he must still be in there," said Joe, beginning to doubt. All the same, they looked in hopefully, and in Joey's case at least, prayerfully.

"There they are!" yelled Rufus excitedly.

Sure enough! There were the eyes, shining golden in the dark.

"Thank goodness!" murmured Joey in relief.
A silver fox, a silver fox farm,
he thought.

"But be quiet," he cautioned Rufus. "He's scared already. We don't want to scare him more. I'll put the bait here at the entrance. And I'll get on top of the pipe and when he comes out to eat, I'll grab him around the neck, hold on to his jugular vein the way they do in Jack London, and you can slip the rope around him so he can't get away. Then we'll walk him home."

This plan sounded simple, as though it were bound to work. Rufus squatted down about a foot in front of the pipe and watched the eyes.

"They're comin' nearer," he said.

"Sh-sh-sh, don't talk."

He smells the bait,
thought Joey.

He can't see my eyes,
thought Rufus.
You can only see animals' eyes. Not mine. A 'uman's don't shine in the dark.
Rufus found comfort in this thought.

"The eyes are comin' nearer." Joe whispered it this time.

"He can't see us," whispered Rufus.

"Can smell us, though," muttered Joe.

"If he's hungry he'll come out," said Rufus reassuringly, "whether he smells us or not."

Joe watched the eyes. Weren't they coming now? Just a little bit nearer? Yes, they were! Joey imagined putting his fingers into that soft fur and holding the silver fox so tight he couldn't get away. The beginning of his fox ranch!
Oh, knock wood,
he prayed, feeling around in the dark for a plank,
that the real owner won't be found and that I can keep him!

Now the eyes were really coming closer. The night was pitch-black, with no moon and no stars. Only the feeble glow of the lanterns and torches. Up the street a way the purple carbon lamp cast an eerie circle of light. But Joey and Rufus were concentrating on these two phosphorescent eyes and felt they were the only lights in the world. They strained their own eyes, trying to see the kind of animal these eyes belonged to. In Joey's mind there was little doubt. A fox, a silver fox...

However, in Rufus's mind there were still many possibilities. A lion, a tiger, or a wolf. He thought of the picture of the sheep huddled together in a blizzard on the Moffats' sitting-room wall. They were huddled together not only to keep warm but because they feared wolves. Rufus looked away from the gleaming eyes for a moment and at the swaying lavender street lamp, and he saw moths and insects darting madly at it. A bat swooped swiftly by. All of a sudden Rufus felt scared. If this was a wolf in there, then what in the world was he doing here? That's what he wanted to know. Joey's talk of jugular veins was all right. But it was usually the wolf that did the springing for the jugular vein in real life; or at least in books.

He got up and climbed on the pipe behind Joe. "Hey, I can't catch him with you up here," said Joey.

"Let's go home," said Rufus.

"Not scared, are you, fella?" said Joe. "I'm ready for him. I'll catch him."

Joe bent over and looked in closely. The eyes were very near now, looking strangely wild and yellow.
Fox, all right,
thought Joe. Inch by inch the eyes drew nearer! Salt pork was just the thing, thought Joe. All animals like salt. And where'd they find a salt lick in Cranbury? Nowhere. Nowhere. That's where this salt pork came in handy.

Joey seemed so sure this was a fox, and a fox was not as scary as a wolf, thought Rufus. A fox in the nighttime was scary but not
as
scary. And murmuring, "I'm not scared," he resumed his position, lasso in hand. Phew! Those eyes were close!

"Still can't see him," said Joe.

"Let's get a torch again," suggested Rufus.

"No ... scare him away again."

They waited. They waited for what seemed the whole night. Nobody came along the street fortunately, for they might have ruined the whole business.

All of a sudden eyes came forward with a rush. Joey scrunched up his eyes, put his hands down, and caught hold of the animal right around its neck exactly as he had planned. His heart sank. This fur did not feel like fox fur. It was short! And the animal was too small to be anything but an ordinary...

Rufus slipped the lasso around it. "All right," said Joey. "Never mind the rope. Look what we caught." And he moved over to a lantern.

"Criminenty! Catherine-the-cat!" bellowed Rufus.

"Yeah, Catherine!" said Joey. And Catherine-the-cat it was, squirming and writhing and tying herself up in a ball. Joey set her down and she ran in the direction of home as fast as she could go.

"Criminenty!" said Rufus again.

But Joey began to laugh. "Some fox!" he said, and he laughed and laughed. Then he grew sober when he thought how he had figured on the animal being a silver fox.

Rufus began to laugh, too. And he didn't stop when Joey did. He kept laughing and he wished Joey would laugh some more, too. He laughed and laughed all the way home, louder and louder, hoping to make Joey laugh again.

But Joey didn't laugh any more.
Some fox!
he told himself.

"Settlement house!" said Rufus in disgust. "Why do they call it a
settlement
house?" He had come to the city cheerfully with Mama and Jane and Joey to watch Sylvie give a performance of "The Lollipop Princess," in the Settlement House for the benefit of the soldiers and sailors, even though he had already seen her in it at the Town Hall. He came because he expected to see Indians in a place with a name like that.

"Settlement House!" Rufus repeated. "I didn't see any Indians."