Читать книгу Haunt Fox - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 3

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It was a night so dark that only the unwise, the very young, or the desperately hungry ventured far from the thickets, swamps, and burrows where wild things find shelter in times of stress.

The sky was full of murky clouds that surged and rolled like the waves of some fantastic black sea. A brisk wind blew through the leafless maples, birches, and aspens, and rattled the shriveled leaves that still clung to the gnarled oaks and the smaller beeches. Copses of hemlock and stands of pine bent their heads in the darkness and seemed to whisper among themselves.

Through this moonless, starless, dangerous night traveled two young foxes. They were Star and his blood brother, Brush.

They were among the very young, for only one spring and summer had passed since their birth in a hillside den. The summer had been a good and joyous time, a time of play and growth. Star and Brush, much like any young puppies anywhere, had scuffled and wrestled with each other and with their three sisters. Later they had followed their mother and father away from the den and had, after a fashion, learned to hunt. They knew a great deal about mice and rabbits. They had been taught something about low branches where night-roosting birds might be found, and they knew a little of the splay-footed snowshoe hares that were so fast and hard to catch. Star and Brush knew just enough to take care of themselves and, providing a good deal of luck remained on their side, to survive in the wilderness.

From the day they had been born, they had been together. Always, when all five cubs had a free-for-all scramble, it had ended up with Star and Brush, side by side, defending a rock, a bit of grass, or a tiny hemlock at one side of their den. They had hunted together when they first followed their father and mother on hunts and they had never strayed apart since.

They didn't know where their mother and three sisters were and that was as well for them, because the stretched pelts of all four hung on drying boards in Dade Matson's fur room. Fox pelts were not yet prime, but there was a two-dollar bounty on every fox caught and it was said in the hills that Dade Matson would do anything for money except work.

The father of the brood, a big, dark-colored, handsome dog fox of extreme wisdom and cunning, knew all about what had happened to his mate and daughters. Now he had gone off by himself to become a wandering, surly, lonesome creature. Already old, as a fox's age is reckoned, he would never take another mate. And he wanted nothing more to do with his sons, for within the dog fox lived an ancient fear. For years he had reigned supreme among his kind. But it is an unchangeable law that, no matter how mighty one individual may become, he cannot rule forever because the young will take the place of the old. Therefore the old dog fox hated and feared his sons and chased them every time their paths crossed. The only reason he never caught and killed them was because they could run faster than he.

Star and Brush were abroad because they were hungry. Had they been older and wiser they would have borne the pangs of hunger, as their father was doing, and stayed near some thicket or burrow where they could find shelter in a hurry. But nothing in the experience of either had taught them that yet.

Star walked a little ahead of his brother as they skirted a laurel thicket where they hoped to find an unwary rabbit. Already almost as big as his father, needing only time to achieve full adult strength and sturdiness, Star had fur much darker than that of the average red fox. His brush, or tail, was so long and so well-furred that it seemed to be a graceful extension of his body. His black-tipped ears were pointed, like those of a police dog, and within his eyes glowed a great intelligence that would one day be wisdom. Squarely in the center of his chest was a star-shaped white spot.

Brush, his brother, was slightly smaller, lighter-coated, and not as strong. Nor did he have that indefinable quality that marked Star as a born leader of his kind.

Star halted in his tracks and used his pointed nose to sift the air currents that swirled about him. He had caught the faint odor of roosting grouse. Just behind him, Brush stopped too. Brush waited for Star to make the first definite move, but for the space of perhaps two minutes Star did not move at all.

They were near a little swamp wherein grew aspens, hemlocks, birches, laurel and rhododendron, and a few pine trees. Star knew that the grouse were in the swamp, but he could not determine exactly where they were. He remained poised, all four feet resting lightly, as he strove to analyze the wind currents.

Mingled with the scent of the grouse was that of a doe deer who was also feeding in the swamp. There was a stale odor of rabbits that had played some hours past, the smell of a skunk that had been abroad lately but was now sleeping under a hollow stump, and the fetid odor of a hibernating bear. Star sifted all the smells carefully.

He was not interested in the doe; she was too big to be pulled down by foxes. The skunk, he knew from sad past experience, was better let alone, and the bear held no promise of anything. But the grouse did.

Star tilted his nose, sifting the various wind currents. He caught the grouse scent firmly and began to follow it. But he did not know how to keep it in his nose, and a second later the odor was again lost. Star stopped short. He swung around to touch noses with his brother.

When Star started out again he went in a straight line, still keeping the wind in his nose. Though he was not an expert hunter, he knew enough about grouse to know that they would be roosting, on a night like this, in some shelter where the wind could not strike them directly.

He was right. They were in a thicket of hemlocks, where little trees grew so closely together, and were so thickly plastered with needles, that not even the roughest wind could reach the center. With Brush his silent shadow, Star slipped into the thicket and threaded his way among the small trees. The scent was strong enough now so that there was no mistaking it.

But Star had his first feeling of failure long before he reached the tree in which the grouse roosted. The steady current carrying the grouse's scent came from high up. Therefore, the birds must be out of reach.

Star came to the tallest hemlock in the thicket and verified what he already suspected. Low enough so that surrounding trees broke the force of the wind, but high enough so that no ground-prowler could possibly reach them, the five roosting grouse were comfortably asleep on a branch.

In spite of their disappointment, the two young foxes made no noise. If the grouse thought themselves safe, they would continue to roost in the hemlocks. Some other night, they might choose the lower branches and thus put themselves within striking range.

Star paused once more to sniff noses with his brother, then hesitated uncertainly. The wind was driving very hard. A few snowflakes whisked along on it and pattered crisply against frozen foliage. Star had an uneasy foreboding, but did not know, as more experienced creatures would, that a mighty storm was in the making.

Ahead of them the leaves rustled, and Star leaped high to come down on the moving leaves with both fore paws. It was an approved way of catching mice, but Star had yet to perfect the technique. The mouse that had rustled the leaves slipped between his paws and dived into a subterranean burrow. Star sniffled at the warm scent and licked hungry chops.

Brush edged impatiently past, and Star made no move to take the lead again. Turning from the line of march Star had set, Brush slid under a rusting wire fence and started uphill toward a patch of laurel. Star followed willingly. The hilltop was the home of numerous snowshoe hares and, though they had yet to catch one, there was always the hope that somehow they might. The snowshoes, who almost never sought protection, would be abroad even on a night like this.

Trotting so smoothly that they almost seemed to flow along, Star and Brush reached the top of the hill and entered the laurel thicket. For a few minutes, because so doing enabled him to take an easier route, Brush led them with the wind instead of against it. Star nervously flicked his alert ears and slowed his pace a little. They passed beneath a wind-felled tree with a crooked trunk.

Disaster struck so suddenly that it appeared, was upon them, and had overwhelmed Brush, before Star fully knew what was happening. Then he did know, and all in a split second he leaped away. Tail curled tightly against his haunches, his eyes wrinkled as his face formed a savage snarl.

Facing him, and no more than a yard away, was Stub, the wild cat. An old and evil pirate of the hills, for the past two weeks Stub had made his lair in the heart of the laurel thicket and lived on the snowshoes. He was a cunning hunter, a creature that was never seen until he struck, and then he killed so swiftly that his victims seldom had anything except a fleeting glimpse of him. Tonight Stub had been crouching on the fallen tree, waiting for a snowshoe, but a young fox was even more acceptable.

He stood with both front paws on the inert form of Brush, growling under his breath and looking with his yellow cat's eyes at Star. He was not afraid. Stub, who could attack and kill a full-grown deer, feared nothing except Dade Matson.

There was born in Star a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the wind or the cold night. At the same instant, though he gave ground, he felt an anger rising to hatred for this thing that struck so silently and so lethally. Yet he dared not fight.

Star whirled suddenly and fled. He felt intense hatred, but at the same time he could not conquer fear. Stub had come from nowhere to strike and kill. Star's eyes were desperate, his jaws widespread, as he ran from the awful creature that had murdered his brother.

He did not halt until he had run clear out of the thicket and stood again at the foot of the hill. There, for a moment, he trembled. Then he gazed back toward the thicket, where Brush lay dead under Stub's taloned paws. Twice Star snapped his jaws, and the sound was like that of a snapping steel trap. Firmly in his brain he fixed the scent and physical aspects of Stub; he would know him when they met again.

The wind was waning, but now huge snowflakes drifted like oversized feathers out of the churning cloud banks. They fell so fast that, almost within a matter of minutes, the frozen ground became white and the frost-shriveled grass was hidden. This was to be the Great Snow, the most terrible storm in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. It would spill out of the sky until morning came again, continue to fall throughout the day, and while another moonless night blackened the wilderness. The first flowers of April would bloom again before the wild things could consider themselves safe, and the melting snow would reveal many a skeleton forlorn in wet leaves.

Now, Star knew only that the snow was unfamiliar stuff that made his paws cold. One by one he lifted them, held them for a few seconds against his heavy fur, and put them back down in the snow. Bewildered and uncertain, he stood still.

So far the night's hunt had brought only tragedy. But tragedy was something all wild things had to accept. They existed by violence and, almost without exception, all of them died violently. However, no matter what happened or who died, the living must still fill their bellies, and Star was very hungry.

He was also at a loss. Already, with Brush, he had visited the places where they had always found food, but had discovered nothing. The snowshoe thicket remained, but snowshoes were hard to catch under any circumstances and Stub patrolled the thicket. Star knew that he dared not risk a fang to fang battle with the big cat.

He slithered through a barbed-wire fence without touching the wire and trotted through the deepening snow toward the last place he knew. It was the farm of Jeff Crowley. Nestled in a valley between two gently sloping hills, the farm consisted of broad fields and pastures, a snug house, a comfortable barn, a poultry house, a pigpen, an ice-house, and various smaller outbuildings. But that was only its outward aspect. In addition, the farm had a thousand fascinations for a young fox.

More than once, lying concealed in some thicket, Star had watched, entranced, while Jeff Crowley's cows grazed in their summer-green pastures. Star had gone forward to sniff long and searchingly of their tracks after the cows were driven home to be milked, and, as he came to know them, he had even shown himself to them. They had only stared, mildly astonished at such a thing as a fox. Though they were huge and powerful creatures, they were not at all belligerent. Star had satisfied himself that there was no harm in the cows.

Many times, remaining hidden himself, Star had also gazed in entranced wonder as the men from the farm drove teams of horses about the fields. They plowed, or hauled crops, or cut hay, or did other unexplainable things which men and horses seemed always to be doing when they were together. But Star had never shown himself to the men; he had an inborn fear of human beings.

There was still much about the farm that Star had investigated only with his keen nose. These odors he had caught were far and away the most fascinating part of Crowley's farm.

There were the scents of chickens, geese, and ducks. Star knew the heavy odor of the pigs in their sty, and the tempting aroma of mice and rats in the barn and the granary. He had wrinkled his nose at the various, and to him unsavory, scents that drifted from the farmhouse. He knew the smell of wood smoke that came from the house's chimney and the acrid taint of coal smoke when coal was burned in the farm's forge. There was little about the farm that his nose had not told him, but he still did not know enough.

One of his traits, a very marked one, was a mighty curiosity about anything and everything. A leaf blowing in the wind, if he could not identify it from a distance, was enough to swerve him two hundred yards so that he might make a thorough investigation. Once, raptly intent, he had stood for a whole hour just watching the shadows in a sun-dappled pool. Again, he had lain beneath a tall tree for half a day because, high in the branches, a chickaree, or red squirrel, was occasionally flicking its tail.

So, as he investigated everything else, he longed to investigate the farm at close range and, possibly, find something to eat. But there had always been humans either present or close by and he was afraid of human scent. Even at night he had not dared go near this strange place which people inhabited. He padded uncertainly back and forth.

The snow fell very thickly, coming down so fast and in such huge flakes that Star blinked his eyes against them. Already the ground was covered almost halfway to his hocks, so that when he moved he left a furrow instead of a trail behind him. Again Star lifted his cold paws and warmed them against his thick fur.

After fifteen minutes he turned and trotted straight toward the barnyard. Into the wind he traveled, and when the wind shifted he changed his course to stay in it. As he advanced, he used his nose to keep him informed of what lay ahead.

Mingled with the stream of odors that came to him was one which he could not at once identify, and Star halted. It was, he knew, the odor of a dog. Many times Star had smelled the two shaggy farm dogs. But this was a new and unfamiliar beast. There was about it the fresh scent of a young creature not much older than Star himself, and there was nothing unduly menacing about the scent.

For the first time Star had smelled Thunder, fourteen-year-old Jack Crowley's gangling foxhound puppy. At the present time, sheltered from the wind and snow in a warm niche on the Crowleys' back porch, Thunder lay fast asleep, his paws twitching as he slept.

Star stalked into the barnyard. He snuffled around the barn where cattle contentedly chewed their cuds in warm stalls and draft horses shuffled their heavy feet. The stable's door was shut and locked, but enticing odors drifted through a slight crack which the door did not cover completely. Star drooled at the scents, for among them was that of mice which were scurrying back and forth to pick up bits of grain that the munching cattle and horses had knocked from their feeding bins.

Star went from the barn door to the pigpen, sniffed disinterestedly at four fat black and white pigs that never even stirred when he came near, then stiffened to attention.

Nearby was a squat shed with a closed back but an open front, and in it were stored a wagon, a hay rake, a plow, a disk harrow, and a light cart with a leather top. In back of these were some discarded boards and old machinery, including a broken cultivator. On the cross bar, four chickens had sought a night's roost. Ordinarily they would have been in the fox-proof poultry house with the rest of the chickens, but in the hurry to get things done before the storm that the Crowleys knew was approaching, nobody had had time to bother with four stray chickens.

Star stole into the shed and tilted his pointed nose, while a gleam lighted both eyes. Fat, stupid, domestic fowl, the chickens' eyes were closed and they were fast asleep. No danger had ever disturbed their lives and they expected none now. They were so close to the ground that Star had only to stalk forward, rear with one fore paw beside the chickens, open his mouth, and snap once. But in that second, something happened.

In the eye wink before death stilled it, the chicken Star grabbed uttered a strangled, piercing squawk. Not yet knowing what had happened, aware only that something was wrong, the other three hens began to cackle.

Star wasted no time. The heavy chicken weighed almost half as much as he himself did, but Star snatched it by the neck, threw the body over his back, and sped into the night. He had scarcely cleared the shed when the night was split by another sound.

It was a rolling bass roar, a thunder that rose even above the screaming wind. Thunder, the foxhound, had heard the chickens and at once had come awake. A stray breeze brought him Star's scent and Thunder accepted the challenge. Thus the ancient chase was on once more; the foxhound was in pursuit of the fox.

The desperately laboring Star took a firmer grip on his pirated booty and ran as fast as he could. But even as he ran he knew that Thunder was closing the gap between them.