A Black Fox Running

by Brian Carter

  To have run straight through the trees and out into the field would have been too simple. He knew the brambly undergrowth would delay the hounds who were twice his size. Yet he moved swiftly, and once on the other side of the spinney, doubled back along the edge of the trees and entered it again. When he emerged and galloped through the cattle to the crossroads, the pack were coming off Hunter’s Tor. The foot followers had gone by road to the clapper bridge beyond Langstone. They had seen Wulfgar slink into the spinney but had missed his exit.

  Running along the lane was easy after the hard slog in the covert and the endurance test on the steeps above the Bovey. Although his tongue was flopped out Wulfgar carried himself as gracefully as ever, and he even allowed himself the luxury of chasing a rabbit that crossed his path.

  The morning was sweet with all the shades of brown rushing in glittering array to a sky of palest blue. Passing a cottage he sniffed the aroma of baking bread and the crisp smell of washing drying on the line. In the fields he pushed his nose over partridge-scented hollows and trails taken by other foxes. Then he realised the hound clamour had grown louder. Obviously the dogs found the open country to their liking and were gaining on him.

  A gang of labourers clamping mangolds under Narramore glimpsed him skirting the covert to hurry down into the Wray Valley. Less than two hundred and fifty yards adrift of the fox were sixty hounds crashing through the hedge and belling all the way.

  ‘Thicky girt black varx,’ the farmworkers called Wulfgar, speaking the Devon dialect. And ‘that great black fox’ took to the railway in the bottom of the valley, running on the nearest line so that the smell of steel cancelled out his own stink. But Lancer spotted him and spoke jubilantly, his long stride eating the distance between himself and the hunted animal. Wulfgar’s lips were twisted back in a grin of exhaustion. Brambles had spiked his right ear and the blood had clotted thick and dark. He left the track and crossed the farmland to the allotment gardens at the back of Moretonhampstead station. The hounds were less than a field behind him and their clamour carried for miles.

  Just after the war the Great Western Railway linked Newton Abbot to Moretonhampstead with a busy branch line. The little ‘prairie’ tank engine pulled a couple of carriages several times a day to the moorland town, climbing five hundred feet in the twelve mile journey.

  As Wulfgar tore through the allotments and chicken runs the 11.35 for Newton Abbot was preparing to leave. The driver had opened the regulator letting the steam from the boiler to the cylinder. The noise muffled the hound clamour, but Wulfgar could hear the dogs as he trotted up the track and sprang onto the running plate of the moving engine. It was entirely an impluse thing, motivated by instinct and sixth sense. With the hounds on his tail a fox will run anywhere to escape and of all the Hill Fox Nation Wulfgar was the great opportunist.

  He clapped down between the splash cover and the buffer beam and unloaded his smell in one final shudder of fear and excitement. The metal shelf shook and vibrated and the ‘prairie’ rolled on. Steam swirled around the fox and he pressed close to the boiler, his ears flattened and his brush twitching. An incredible acrid stench plugged his nose. Then the countryside was sliding by and the steam lifting. The wheels sang over the track and the pistons thudded below him. It was like riding on a stuttering peel of thunder but already it was too late for him to jump. The train was gathering speed with gasps of steam.

  If he could have looked back he would have seen the hounds milling about on the line and platform. The tantalising whiff of fox had ended abruptly in a maelstrom of smells – the reek of engine oil, metal, coal and steam. Even Lancer was baffled. He gazed at the rear of the train, which was vanishing into the distance, but his simple brain remained blank. He turned and let his nose guide him up Wulfgar’s scent to the railway workers’ gardens. A man in blue overalls yelled at him and Lancer sat down and scratched, driving his right hind foot into his jowl. Coming hard through the cabbages on a horse flecked with froth and lather the huntsman knew the fox had outwitted them for the seventh time in three seasons.

  Wulfgar’s claws were buried in grime. The sooty smell of the plate distressed him but it was better than the death smell of the hounds. His body was jarred by the roar and rumble of the engine. He licked a forepaw. On the road between the trees were glimpses of riders and horses – a flash of scarlet, hunched black shapes, the arching neck of an animal. A farmstead flew at him and disappeared. Whenever he raised his eyes to the dark blur of branches he felt giddy and insecure. Many seasons seemed to separate him from the hunt, but he had entered a strange future and might never rediscover the autumn where Stargrief and Killconey lived. Excitement tightened his stomach. He had a vision of Stargrief mumbling and farting in his sleep. The business of producing prophecy wasn’t noble and grand. And why did the old dog fox keep on about order and beauty? Such things were conspicuously lacking in their lives.

  He eased his chin between his forefeet. Where had Man come from? Where did he go when he died? – if he died? What was he? He wasn’t an animal, for sure. He was as weird as this metal house that thundered along on wheels making smoke like the white winter breath of foxes. Man could discard his coat and put on a new one whenever he chose. Did the answer lie in the Star Place? But what if there wasn’t a Star Place except in his head? He sighed. Every trail of thought brought him back to his own confusion.

  Presently the train would slow down or stop and he would get off. He knew the valley although he had never seen it from that level before. His own world had shrunk and he did not belong to it. The engine hooted and passed under the bridge by Wray Barton farm. An alarming moment of darkness and noise blotted out the day, then there was sunlight once more, splashed and barred with shadow.

  Scoble and Stray rushed across to the other parapet and watched the train pull away.

  ‘You saw un, didn you, boy? I idn goin’ mazed. You saw un?’ the trapper whispered.

  ‘On the side of the bliddy engine!’ Stray said. ‘Old Blackie on the bliddy train!’

  George Lugg joined them on the bridge.

  ‘What’s up, Leonard?’ he said.

  ‘What’s down, you mean,’ Scoble wheezed. And he thumped his chest and coughed and rasped up phlegm.

  ‘Old Blackie’s just gone down on the 11.35 from Moreton – bold as bloody brass, squattin’ on the plate above the engine wheels like he’s always riding on trains.’

  ‘Bugger off!’ Lugg exclaimed. ‘Tidn possible. Foxes is –’

  Scoble stopped him with a glance and said, ‘Us saw un – me and the boy. Us saw un.’

  ‘He’s magic, that old black fox,’ Stray said. ‘He can do anything.’

  ‘But Leonard seen un – magic or no magic,’ said Scoble. ‘One day soon I’ll blow his head off. His luck have got to run out.’

  ‘Maybe it idn luck,’ the boy said in a low voice.

  Wulfgar left the ‘prairie’ when it stopped at Lustleigh. The number of passengers could be counted on the claws on his front feet so he was able to lope off unseen and come down to the Bovey to drink. He was tired, stiff and very dirty, and his pads were cut and swollen, but the water refreshed him.

  Afterwards he crossed the river and lay in the bracken grooming his underfur and paws. The smell of the steam engine clung to every hair. He worked on them patiently with tongue and teeth. The breeze, which was bending the treetops, ruffled his brush and the keen beauty of Teg filled his thoughts. O foxes! O my blood brothers and sisters! Under the trees the shade was cold, the crisp tinge of autumn was on his nose. To live is to run. Always running – away from death, into death. Perhaps Man kills us to kill a memory. We are ghosts of Man the animal and he can’t live with the knowledge. O Teg! Breath of my breath, spirit of my spirit, sister of the sun and moon. He stretched and groaned and moved up the great slope of oak trees.

  In the evening the wind freshened and blew from the north. Wulfgar kennelled at Greator Rocks, in the cave under the holly tree. Throughout the night flocks of foreig
n birds whispered across the sky.

  THE YEAR TURNING

  The hunt returned a few weeks later and killed the vixen Redbriar. She died bravely under Lancer but her death did not go unnoticed by the Hay Tor Clan. The days were getting shorter and darkness fell quickly. There was bleakness in the light of the sky and in the countryside and in the hearts of the foxes. When the sun shone through the mists it was cold and yellow like a sparrowhawk’s eye. Morning after morning the hedges were white with frozen fog and the mires were held rigid.

  Wulfgar walked the banks of the East Dart above Dartmeet and ate salmon that had starved to death after spawning. Towards dusk a fresh wave of redwings dropped in the fields of Widecombe and huddled among the fieldfares and starlings. The blank sky darkened from time to time with new arrivals from the North. Then they were off again, heading for South Devon. A fall of light snow lifted and fumed on the wind, and at night the sleet rattled on the rowan trees, and the woods roared in a wind heavy with migrating birds.

  The fox looked up at the lights of the universe. The swift little Becca cut across his thoughts but the stars danced on. He crouched and dropped scats and left his smell on the scenting post beside the stream. In a bottom window of Leighon House a fir tree decorated with fairy lights glowed softly. He crossed the bare meadow, feeling the night press cold against his eyes. The quieter reaches of the brook were iced over. He sat beneath the oaks listening for voles. An owl screamed and a vixen took up its cry, sending long grinding shrieks down through the trees. From far-off corners of the night dog foxes answered faintly but Wulfgar did not add his voice to the chorus. The emptiness in his gut suited him, for lately Teg had crept back into his dreams and he would wake up and think of the cubs. ‘Oakwhelp, Nightfrond, Brookcelt, Dusksilver,’ he murmured, as if their names were talismen.

  Unlike the summer sun the stars were bright but cool. The dead are cold, he thought. It is the foxes, all the foxes – dead and reborn. Their spirits shine from cold bodies. The great field of the sky was full of foxes. Why did he ache for their comradeship and love yet flinch from joining them?

  Stargrief’s face parted the ferns. Stiff-spoked, the sun stood red between the treetops and the clouds. Daws jangled across the valley.

  ‘The meadow under the old farm was full of rabbits yesterday evening,’ said Stargrief. ‘The buzzard was busy till darkfall.’

  ‘You feel Redbriar’s death like a wound, don’t you, Old Mouse?’ Wulfgar said. ‘Every fox death hits you hard.’

  The animals had been conducting a wordless conversation beneath the chat, reading each other’s thoughts, deciphering the shift of images in each other’s eyes. A mature vixen would be difficult to kill, she would carry her determination to live right into death’s jaws. And the earth would claim her as it claimed all its children. Then the light would shine softly from the body of star gold, the new incorruptible fox-shape running the wilderness of eternity.

  Stargrief closed his eyes and raised his muzzle.

  ‘We are not more than shadows,’ he chanted,

  ‘flickering briefly on the moors.

  But the flickering is beautiful.

  Through drifts of hawthorn we pass.

  We drink the seasons

  and the seasons take us.

  The seasons are hounds

  and no earth or clitter-fastness

  can keep that pack at bay.

  We are no more than shadows.’

  ‘The moors are crawling with young rabbits,’ said Wulfgar before the Teg image could expand in a welter of melancholy.

  ‘Were they as stupid when Tod ran the fox trails?’

  ‘Rabbits are good at rabbit things,’ Stargrief said. ‘But perhaps their relationships are too intimate.’

  Wulfgar laughed and the spell of misery was broken.

  They trotted on to hunt the margins of the Becca Brook while Stormbully flapped over Holwell and held them with his intense gaze. The buzzard found the peak of his hill of wind and surfed down the far side to drop into the neck of the valley. But Shiv rippled away, sealing the entrance to the bolt-hole with the reek of mustelid. The year was turning. Frost, the woody breath of a bonfire, songbirds feasting on the hedgerow berries, a red sun in a white mist; nothing new yet enough refurbishing of the countryside to skin the eyes.

  Wherever trees banded together the pigeons came and went, and the clatter of their wings ruffled the silence. Wulfgar looked up and sniffed them as they flew over the Leighon Valley. A roving peregrine had accounted for one of their number. The foxes examined the feathers and blood splatters on the rock, which still retained the delicate smell of falcon.

  ‘Why does the summer die?’ asked Wulfgar.

  ‘Would you be happy in endless summer?’

  ‘No. No, Stargrief.’

  ‘What you really mean is why did Teg die.’

  ‘How could Tod let it happen?’

  ‘After all these seasons you can ask such a question? Teg’s death was part of your destiny.’

  ‘I’d rather have her than – than this.’

  ‘We have no more control over our lives than the leaf that uncurls, grows green, yellows and falls.’

  ‘I know,’ said Wulfgar in a changed voice. ‘But knowing doesn’t help.’

  ‘Grief is one of Death’s hounds. He runs wide and takes us by surprise, never killing, simply worrying the soft inner parts.’

  ‘I thought I’d lost him for good.’

  ‘The sun sets and rises again. It is an indisputable fact. Draw strength from it.’

  The hillside was the colour of a gull’s wing. A flock of starlings uncurled in the sky and fell onto the slopes. At Seven Lords Lands the foxes put up snipe. Rabbit runs criss-crossed the grass and droppings were scattered about like black peas. Wulfgar was stepping carefully over them when his head jerked up and his ears quivered.

  ‘Be still, Stargrief,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a dog on the road.’

  The dog, bounding along with the friskiness of a puppy, was a gangling creature, deep-chested and narrow round the shanks. Suddenly the starling flock rose in front of it and the dog barked and danced for a moment on its hindlegs like a bird trying to take off. Then someone whistled and it was gone. The returning hush had a cold ache to it.

  The foxes’ eyes met and Stargrief sighed.

  ‘We could be wrong,’ he said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The whistle.’

  ‘It was the sound the trapper used to make to call his lurcher. No other creature makes it. It is his just as Romany’s call is Romany’s call and your bark is your bark.’

  ‘Then he has another dog.’

  ‘A young one. And I don’t suppose it’s crazy.’

  ‘But he’ll teach it to kill foxes.’

  ‘That’s inevitable,’ Wulfgar said bluntly.

  ‘You ought to get that cough seen to,’ Bert Yabsley said.

  There was more irritation than compassion in his voice.

  Scoble had surfaced from a great bronchial eruption to wipe his nose and eyes on his sleeve. A bushy grey beard and hollow cheeks had added twenty years to his countenance.

  ‘The Luggs reckon you’ve got T.B.,’ Yabsley went on.

  ‘And they should know,’ Scoble wheezed sarcastically. ‘Dr Lugg and his young assistant, George – God’s gift to medicine.’

  He was panting like the lurcher pup that lay on the heap of dead conies and hares at his feet. White breath rose from man and animal. The morning was bitter but the wind was stealing round to the west.

  Yabsley and Scoble lit cigarettes and stood smoking in silence while the terriers rolled on the carcasses and ruddy light spread over Haytor Down.

  ‘They buggers in Palestine got Ernie Claik’s brother Norman,’ Yabsley said. It was not in his nature to be quiet for long.

  ‘Who got un?’ Scoble said, wrinkling his brows.

  ‘The bloody terrorists. Norman was a policeman out there. They’m flyin’ his body home. Atlee ought to pul
l out our boys and drop an atom bomb on ’em. That would make the buggers sit up sharpish.’

  Scoble had closed his ears. The big man’s words were as remote and meaningless as the cawing of rooks. Palestine didn’t belong to the real world of tors, rabbits and foxes. Anyway, he had never liked Norman Claik – he’d had too much mouth.

  The pain under his ribs swelled and he was suddenly bathed in sweat. When he coughed, his right lung kicked and hurt like it had been hit by shrapnel.

  ‘For Christ’s sake don’t gob on me,’ Yabsley grunted, turning away.

  The trapper stooped and tugged at the young lurcher’s ears.

  ‘Norman’s brother Perce is the railway rat-catcher, idn he?’ he said.

  ‘The one with the funny-tempered dog?’ said Yabsley.

  ‘A sour-gutted little Jack Russell,’ the trapper said pointedly. ‘But Perce is alive and Norman’s dead as these rabbits.’

  He dug his toecap into the pile of carcasses.

  ‘Not many of they Palestine blokes gets up the Bovey-Moreton line,’ Yabsley grinned.

  Like a bank of rain racing low over the tors the fieldfares swept overhead and on down to the fertile lowlands of the south.

  ‘Where do they come from?’ Scoble said.

  Bert Yabsley shrugged.

  ‘I’ve never seen so many,’ the trapper said. ‘’Tis like one of the plagues of Egypt – only ’tis birds not locusts.’

  ‘Old Herbie Thorpe says it’s the bloody atom bomb buggering up nature.’

  ‘And the Bible foretold that too,’ Scoble said.

  BECKAFORD

  The young lurcher did not last long. Scoble was in the habit of releasing it whenever he saw or smelt fox and soon it had grown accustomed to running wild on Haytor Down. Here late one January afternoon a farmer saw it disturbing his sheep. The man was out shooting crows and had no trouble in giving the dog the contents of both barrels. The body was dumped at the gate of Yarner Cott as a warning to the trapper. Scoble buried it by the ferrets’ hutch and never mentioned the animal again, although he often thought of it on his treks across the moors. Everything that went wrong could be blamed on the black fox. When the vermin was dead his luck would change. The loss of the lurcher merely deepened his hatred.