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 j
ay 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.
Tod now added the technique of still hunting to his list of dangers. He realized it was not the tracker who was the menace but the men on the Hanks. Running from the tracker, it was easy to ignore the presence of the two men ahead and on either side. So from now on when he was disturbed, Tod ran with an eye out to both the right and left.
In late November there was a heavy snow that seriously inconvenienced Tod until a crust formed and he could run across it. Even so, it was so deep that he was unable to dig down to his caches except with the greatest difficulty, and if it had not been for the garbage cans in the developments he would have been hard put to it to make a living.
He was returning one morning from a night of can pilfering when he heard a curious noise, Ding! Dong! it went. Then again, ding, dong, ding! Tod paused to listen, head cocked to one side, a dainty black foot raised, his ears straight up. The sound was repeated over and over. The constant repetition drove Tod mad with curiosity. He started toward it.
The sound was getting closer. It did not sound dangerous, and Tod might have kept on had he not noticed a ridge that offered him a better view. He turned off and made for the ridge. Even from this elevation he could not see what was making the remarkable noise. Ding, dong, ding, dong. It was coming through an alder swamp, not frozen solid. Tod decided to run down and meet it.
As he began to move, he saw the Man come out from among the alders and move forward across an open field. He was swinging something in his hand that gave off the ringing note. Tod watched him go by, and then, still fascinated, trotted down over the snow crust and followed in his footprints. The Man had a gun over his shoulder, but surely he could not be up to harm, behaving in this fantastic way. Consumed by curiosity, Tod pressed close behind the figure until they were scarcely twenty feet apart. So they traveled across the open field, the Man stopped at intervals to ring the bell and stare out across the flats; and each time he stopped, Tod also stopped and stared too, wondering what the Man could be looking for. When the Man resumed walking, Tod walked too, stepping exactly in his tracks.
The Man came to a road where a car was parked. With a groan, he opened the door, threw the bell inside, and then broke open his shotgun and unloaded it. He dropped the shells into his pocket, took a case out of the car, and carefully put the gun away. All the while, Tod stood not fifteen feet behind him, watching intently, turning his head from one side to the other the better to follow the Man's actions. What could he be about?
The Man replaced the gun case in the car and shut the rear door. Then he turned to open the front door by the wheel. As he did so, he saw Tod standing behind him, watching him with a friendly, interested expression on his lean face. The Man stood staring at the fox, and then lifted his head to survey the broad expanse of snow-covered meadow, unbroken except for his own footprints with Tod's dainty tracks in each one where the fox had been following him only a few feet away.
Then the Man began to talk. Tod, listening intently, thought he detected a note of irritation in the voice. The magical spell was broken. In an instant, Tod became a wild animal again. He turned and fled across the snow crust, going like a drifting cloud shadow. Even when he was safe over the nearest ridge, Tod was still unsatisfied. His curiosity was unassuaged. Whatever had that Man been ringing that bell for? It was an entrancing problem.
9
=====
Seventh Hunt - Coursing With Greyhounds
As the years passed, the countryside began to change, and Tod hated changes, especially changes like this. His was basically a world of sound and scent; and when the sounds and scents altered, he felt lost and bewildered. Also, although he could see considerable distances when on some elevation, in running his route he went from one fixed object to another because he was small and his view was cut off by bushes, hedges, and even tall grass. Now he found his familiar trails cut by highways, new buildings, and other strange objects, and he had no idea how to get around them to resume his old course.
Every year, scenting grew more difficult. Huge, stinking bulldozers had moved in, tearing the guts out of the land, and when they were finished they left great, glaring rivers of concrete over which poured a constant flow of traffic, filling the air with fumes that polluted all other odors. Most of the trees had been cut down, and the air was drier, hotter, and lifeless. Hunting grew increasingly difficult, for the animals not run over on the highways had migrated to more open country. The farmers had followed them, and nearly all the farms were gone now, their places taken by the housing developments or by gigantic factories that added their quotas of filth to the atmosphere.
The people who were moving in were unlike any of the people Tod had ever known. They came in great hordes, as though fleeing some terrible natural catastrophe, like animals running before a forest fire. As with all fugitives, there was an air of panic about them. Instead of going about standard tasks like the farmers, they rushed around in pointless activities, always in automobiles. They raised no food, they kept no livestock - except countless dogs - and as the houses increased, the groundwater level sank until the earth was hard under Tod's feet. There was an unpleasant taste to the streams; the fish were dead; and the wild plants that had once been a stable part of Tod's diet grew increasingly difficult to find.
Yet Tod lingered on. This was his beloved home, his range for which he had fought, the place where he had known so much happiness and so many triumphs. Changed though it was, there were still a few trees, a few bushes and a few rocks he could remember ever since he was a pup, and he clung to them. He could not be happy anywhere else. All the foxes of his generation were dead or gone, but he could not bear the thought of seeking a new range. He was too old to start life over.
Although most of the other animals had gone, there were foxes in plenty. They were not like the foxes of the old days; they were more like alley cats, for they had become complete scavengers. They looted garbage pails, hung around the dumps looking for scraps, and knew exactly when the newly built grocery stores put out their refuse. Not one of them could have caught a rabbit to save his life, or stalked a field mouse. Yet they proliferated at an amazing rate, often building their dens under garages or among the junkyards that now littered the landscape. At one time, it was highly unusual for a litter of fox pups to live through a winter; finding food was too hard, and trappers, gunners, and hounds took their toll. Now there was no trapping, the new people had no guns, and the packs had long since disappeared. On the other hand, food was plentiful, and even the most witless pup could find garbage in the dumps. So the foxes increased at an alarming rate even though they were mangy, rickety, and stupid.
Tod avoided this new generation. He hated the odor of slops that clung to them, and their skulking, catlike ways. Although in the rutting season he would breed the vixens - and often more than one - he took little interest in them or their progeny. The old thrilling courtship through the deep woods and the brave battles with worthy opponents were gone; these creatures were openly promiscuous, and none of the scrawny, flea-ridden males dared to stand up to him, although sometimes a number of them would attack in a gang if they could catch him in one of the maze of passages through the junkyards that they knew so well. As there was now no need for a pair of foxes to hunt together as a team or for the males to catch game for the vixens and their pups - food being provided free by a benevolent society - there was no bond between the couples except momentary sexual gratification. Once the longer a pair lived together, the better they learned to know each other's almost invisible signals, th
e partner's hunting methods, and the range. Now there was no need for communication; there was no hunting, no range. Therefore there was no need for monogamy.
Of the human beings Tod had once known by sight or smell, there was left only the old trapper who had tried for so many years to catch him, ever since the death of the Trigg hound so long ago. The trapper had only one hound left, old Copper, who lived in the shack with him, for the hillside where the barrel kennels had once been was covered with new houses. The trapper had nothing but a tiny patch of land left around his cabin, and on every side the new developments were pressing in on him. The trapper, Copper, and Tod were the last three living creatures in the district who could still remember the old days and loved them. Everything else was new, alien, and bent on destruction.
When winter came, the old man and his old hound would still set out after Tod through what little open land was still left. They usually started out after a night snowfall, and Tod had gotten to expect them. When he awoke in the morning to find a sprinkling of fine, powdered snow on the ground, Tod would run to the nearest hogback to look for the two. If they did not come, Tod would feel upset and go looking for them. He recognized them as dangers, but even so they were part of his life, and he missed them. Besides, they were the only danger left, and Tod enjoyed dangers as long as they did not become too dangerous.
When spring came that year, the rains did not come with it. Tod went to all the usual places where the first spring buds and long grasses had always grown, but this year he was hard put to find any. Even the tough, cleansing saw grass he depended upon to rid him of worms after the long winter diet of meat was rare. At least, he had the satisfaction of not having to share his finds with any of the other foxes. They knew nothing of these woods foods, and ate garbage winter and summer.
The Fox and the Hound Page 19
