Читать книгу The Biography of a Silver-Fox; or, Domino Reynard of Goldur Town - Ernest Thompson Seton - Страница 7

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T is a matter of wide belief among hunters that a Fox never harries the barn-yard next his home. He has no desire to invite vengeance from the near neighbor, so goes by preference to distant farms for forage. This may have been why the Jukes’s barn-yard escaped while the Bentons’ was raided again and again. Old man Benton had not large patience, and his little store was more than gone when a quarter of his fine hens had disappeared. He reckoned that he “would cl’ar the farm of shooting-irons if the boys didn’t make out somehow to protect the chickens.”

Si and Bud Benton were walking on the hilltop the next Sunday when they heard the voice of the Jukes’s Hound on the trail of a Fox. Boys and Hound were not on speaking terms, so they did not interfere. They watched the valley below, saw something of the chase, and were delighted to note the ease with which the Hound was disposed of when the Fox was tired of the run; it would make a capital story to tell the post-office crowd in presence of some of the Jukes.

But even while they watched, the Fox reappeared, carrying a snow-white hen and made across the valley. Benton’s prize Dorkings were the pride of his heart; there could be no doubt that this was one of them, and that the Fox was taking it home. The whiteness of the victim helped the boys to keep sight of the Fox through the brushwood to the very hollow of the den, and half an hour later they were standing beside the doorway, amid snow-white thoroughbred plumes. A big pole was used to probe the hole. The curve of the burrow prevented it touching the cubs, though they were terribly frightened, and their parents ranged the near woods, vainly seeking some way of helping them. Their earliest thought was of mother omnipotent; but this was the beginning of disillusionment: here were creatures of whom even wonderful mother was afraid.

Though it was on the Jukes’s farm, the Benton boys decided to come next day and dig out the Foxes. But the mother instincts were aroused. The home had become a place of danger. At once she set about preparing a new den, and at dawn began to move her family.

Among the country folk, when it is decided to save only one of a litter of kittens, there is a simple, natural way of selecting the best. The litter is left in the open field. The mother soon finds her young, and begins carrying them back to the barn; and it is believed that the first that she brings is always the best. There is at least one good reason for this: the liveliest will get on top of the pile and force itself first on mother’s notice, and so be first brought back. Thus it was now. The mother Fox was met in the tunnel by the liveliest cub, the eldest and strongest, him of the domino face, and she carried him first to the safety of the new home. At the next visit his most vigorous sister, and at the third a sturdy little brother, were taken away. Meanwhile the father was wholly occupied with sentinel duty in the neighboring hills, and day was beaming when he gave the warning just as mother ran off with number three.

The Benton boys had come armed with shovel and pick to dig out the family, and ordinarily would have succeeded in an hour; but three feet from the entrance their progress was barred by a great ledge of rock. They were debating what to do, when the sound of a blast from the quarry in the hills suggested a plan. One of the boys went for a charge of dynamite. This, with fuse and cap, was fixed in a cranny of the rock. In a minute there was a fearful shock and blast, the hillside trembled in a cloud of dust, and then it was seen that the upheaval had not opened the den, but had buried the tunnel in broken rocks, and that the cubs within were doubtless crushed and stifled. The shock had made a tomb of the home, and the boys went away.

That night, had they been there, they might have seen father and mother Fox clawing out the earth and vainly mouthing the broken granite in their efforts to reach the home den. The next night they came again. On the third night the mother came alone, and then gave up the hopeless task.