The Fox and the Hound (25 page)

The ducks were so close in that now the vixen pup, who was rubbing first one shoulder and then the other in the soft sand, could have reached them with a single bound. At such close range their smell was strong, and the luscious scent made her mouth water. She now thought of the ducks as food rather than as playmates. She crouched, the tip of her brush twitching like a cat’s tail.

Most of the flock at once sensed the change, and hastily swam away. One drake, only a yard from the crouching fox, was scratching his head with one foot. His eyes were closed. The vixen sprang. There was a series of terrified quacks, and the. vixen hauled her catch ashore, straining with all four feet to keep the drake from dragging her into the pond. She had him by the base of the neck and could not shift her grip without letting him go, yet with that hold she could not kill him. The drake would have eventually tom himself loose and escaped, but the mother vixen came to her daughter's help and broke the struggling drake's neck with a sharp twist. Even then the pup did not know what to do next, and the mother had to break open the drake for her. From then on, the young vixen would deliberately go into her dance to lure ducks ashore, and never made the mistake of crouching before she sprang. She especially liked the wings, and chewed off the feathers near the nubs, leaving the sheared ends scattered in a circle around her.

It had been a warm, dry spring, and many of the housing developments had planted little truck gardens, so there were plenty of rabbits about. Even though Tod and the vixen often killed a dozen rabbits a night, burying those the pups could not eat, they still made no impression on the population. As a result, hawks and owls began to move into the area in great numbers. Often during their hunting, the foxes would hear the prolonged, agonized screaming of a rabbit in the grip of great talons. Assured of an easy meal, the parents would instantly dash toward the sound, drive off the winged predator, and appropriate the catch. The pups soon learned to do the same, and always had one ear cocked for a rabbit's scream. The parents had trouble teaching them to hunt live rabbits, as robbing the raptors seemed to the pups a much easier way of making a living.

The pups were now hunting mainly on their own, although the family still used the den area as a rallying ground, for the litter were not entirely independent. First one and then another of the pups failed to turn up at the family get-togethers. This vaguely worried the vixen, although Tod paid no attention to the truants. When winter came he would have to drive the male pups, at least, off the range, so the sooner they left of their own volition, the better.

Tod was trotting along a timbering slash with a rabbit in his mouth, looking for a good cache spot, when he heard the distant squeal of a rabbit. The sound was far away - although Tod could spot the position of a mouse's squeak with great accuracy, he had difficulty establishing the location of distant noises - and he ignored it. But the cry was repeated over and over again. At last Tod could resist the appeal no longer. He made a quick job of burying the rabbit, leaving both ears protruding from the hastily shoveled-in earth, and loped off to investigate.

Even so, he was still ultra-cautious. He slipped from one cover to another, stealing along behind tangles of blackberry bushes and taking advantage of every depression that offered a chance of concealment. Somehow the squealing of this rabbit did not sound exactly right, and Tod had a keen ear for such matters. He circled the spot carefully, and as he came downwind of the noise he tasted the taint of man in the air.

Even so, Tod did not run. His curiosity was even stronger than his fear. He sneaked through the cover toward the sound, taking elaborate precautions. Finally he reached a spot near whence the sound was proceeding. A slight motion caught his eye, and he instantly dropped and lay immobile, but his eyes were busy. There was something there and it was alive and it was not a rabbit.

Tod had to watch for some time before he recognized the Man. The Man was sitting behind a small bush, and kept almost as motionless as did Tod, but at intervals he raised something to his lips. When he did, there came the scream of a rabbit. After a few calls, the Man lowered the object, and waited. Then he repeated the performance. It was only when the Man moved that Tod was able to identify him, except by smell. Otherwise, he blended in with the bush.

If the Man was patient, Tod was equally so. He would have lain and watched indefinitely, trying to decide what the Man was doing, but he did not have long to wait. There came a rustling in the undergrowth, and one of his half-grown pups burst out into the open, looking around eagerly for the rabbit. With one swift, easy motion the Man raised a gun beside him, and fired. Tod never twitched a whisker at the explosion as he saw the pup leap stiff-legged into the air, whirl around, drag himself a few feet, and then collapse. The Man walked over to the dying pup and pressed the life out of him with one booted shoe.

Tod had seen enough. He wiggled backward away from his lookout position, then turned and glided away through the cover. Not until winter set in with full force, and made hunting difficult, did he pay any attention to rabbit screams.

A few weeks later there was only one pup left. Tod knew well what was happening to them, but there was no way he could convey his knowledge to the vixen or to the remaining pup. The vixen was frantic, and spent long hours following the trails of the missing pups through the woods, trying to locate them. Tod knew it was useless, yet only by ignoring the calls himself and refusing to join her in the tracking could he attempt to transmit his knowledge.

One evening while Tod was investigating one of his scent posts he heard the agonized scream of a fox pup. It might be his or some other pup, but Tod never hesitated. He raced toward the sound madly, his mane standing up with rage and his teeth bared, knowing only that the pup was in desperate straits, perhaps in the clutches of a dog or an owl. He struck a game trail through the forest and Bashed along it, for the first time reckless of possible danger. The sound was growing louder every second and he had almost reached the spot when he saw the vixen cut in front of him. She, too, had heard the tortured cry and was racing to the rescue.

Ahead were a clearing and the remains of a lumberman's cabin. It was from this clearing the cry was coming. The vixen exploded out of the cover and paused for a moment to look around, standing with one forepaw upraised and her ears cocked. Instantly there came the stinging crack of a riffe. The vixen dropped where she stood, dead before she hit the ground.

Tod turned just in time. The plaintive cry of the pup still continued, and in spite of his terror, Tod circled the clearing. Now, together with the scent of the gunpowder, he could smell the Man. Tod saw him walking now. He went over and picked up the vixen. Then he went to a square box that had a spinning turntable on top of it and lifted some stick-like object. At once the noise of the pup's crying ceased. The Man then took a Bat disk from the turntable, blew carefully over it, and replaced it. He pressed a button on the side of the box, and the pup's crying continued.

Tod now could tell that the sound of the crying was coming from a large horn-shaped thing lying some distance from the box. He lay watching and listening until the record was over. At last the Man put the record carefully in an envelope, disconnected the amplifier, and carried it and the phonograph to a car. Taking the vixen's body with him, he drove away.

Tod had no idea what was going on, but by listening intently he was able to realize that the crying was not precisely the sound made by a fox pup in pain. It had an artificial quality coming from the horn, and he could also pick up slight surface noises from the record. In the following weeks he heard the pup's crying repeated several times in different parts of his range, but after listening a few seconds he was able to identify the recording. He was never fooled again.

When winter came, the traps reappeared; but Tod was trap-wise now, and regarded the trapline as a source of food rather than as a menace. Several times he was chased by small packs of dogs from the housing developments, and Tod actually enjoyed fooling these idiots. He would perform some simple trick to give himself a brief lead and then lay down a perfect cat's cradle of tracks, only to jump clear at the end and canter off to the top of a little hill where he could watch the fun. As the baffled dogs ran in futile circles trying to unravel the maze, Tod would sit in plain sight, watching them and grinning broadly. As the curs' bafflement increased, he could no longer contain himself; but would stand up on his hind legs to see better, and prance with delight at their frustrated rage. When they showed signs of giving up in discouragement, he would run a few paces down the hill and give his short, sharp bark to attract their attention. Then as the pack took after him in full cry, he would whisk away to repeat the trick elsewhere. The dogs usually grew tired of the game before Tod did.

The first snowfall came early that year. Tod was lying up on the hogback ridge under the black oaks and did not even take the trouble to move as the flakes came drifting down, except to bury his nose deeper in his brush-blanket. When dawn came, he found two inches of soft snow covering the ground that scarcely impeded his movements at all. He went hunting and caught a rabbit sleeping too tight in a raspberry thicket where the bunny had been shielded from the storm. Full and content, Tod returned to his old lying-up place under the dead pine, and dozed off.

He lay fast asleep, unmindful of the noises around him. A squirrel ran along the dead pine, his claws scratching loudly on the bark, but Tod slept on. A buck and two does trotted past, and Tod never moved a muscle. From the woods came a loud snap as a dead limb cracked in the frost. Tod was too fast asleep to hear it. The noises of humans came: men shouting to each other on a farm, the sound of an ax in the woods, the swish and roar of cars on a highway. Tod was dead to the world.

Then came a faint - oh, so very faint - grinding sound: the sound of snow packing under the gentle tread of a man's boots. Tod was gone in a wink, He did not stop to look back; he did not worry about heading into the wind. He went all-out, for he knew that sound meant danger. In seconds he was over the nearest ridge.

Once he was protected by the ridge, Tod slowed down and swung around to watch his backtrack. It was possible that the human meant no harm and would not follow him. The man had come from downwind or Tod would have scented him long before he heard him, so Tod had been running upwind. He had to circle to get downwind of the intruder so his nose could help his eyes.

A fleck of snow leaped up beside him, and with it came the report of a gun. Tod shied sideways. The shot came from his side of the ridge, so it could not have been fired by the man he had heard; but beyond that, Tod did not know from where it had been fired. At random, he swerved to the left. As he did so, he caught the unmistakable scent of man right ahead. Tod turned again and ran back. There was something standing on a rise of ground ahead, but whether it was a man or not Tod could not tell, and the wind was against him. As he ran toward it, he saw the figure move to bring up a gun, and Tod instantly recognized it as a human. There were three men, one on either side of him and one following. Again Tod turned and ran in his original direction, going all-out.

Another shot, and a hole appeared in the snow almost under his nose. At the same instant, Tod could smell the hot metal and stench of powder. He ran as he had never run before. Another shot sounded far behind him, and where this bullet went he had no idea.

Tod ran for nearly a mile before slowing down. This time he jumped on a stump to watch his hack track. He watched for half an hour, and when nothing moved he decided the men had given up the pursuit. He started off to look for another lying-up place, zigzagging back and forth as he quartered the area to find a good spot. At last he picked a location at the base of a coke cherry where the wind had left a spot fairly free of snow. He curled up but still continued to watch the back trail.

An hour passed and Tod dozed off again. Then he heard the angry scolding of a jay, and was instantly alert. He saw the figure of man moving on his left and almost at the same time another coming up on his right. Tod watched them without moving. The men came on and on. Then he saw, farther away, the third man. This man was following his track in the snow.

Tod had a wide range of vision, so he could watch all three men at the same time without moving his head. The tracker came to where Tod had begun his zigzag, and stopped. He waved his hand to the others and pointed down. They waved back and started forward while the tracker stood still, waiting until they were well advanced.

Tod saw the man on his left suddenly stop, stare at him, and then start to raise his gun. Tod waited for no more. He ducked around the tree and started running again. This time there was no shot.

Tod went nearly three miles before lying up. He deliberately chose a hazel thicket heavily overgrown with wild rose, and hid in the heart of it. For a long, long time he remained awake and listening, but finally, deciding the chase was surely over, he fell asleep.

Here there was no jay to scream a warning. Instead, he heard the crackle of the bushes on either side of him. Tod waited only long enough to make certain of the men's positions and that the tracker was with them, before slipping away. This time he did not rely on half measures. He kept right on going; and when he did finally lie up, he broke his invariable rule of always going into the wind to make a great U and lie up where he could not only see but also smell his back trail. Even so, he lay awake until it was almost dark, but the men had given up.