Run with the Wind

by Tom McCaughren

  So, the little brown hen was happy again — and so also were the occupants of the badger set across on the other hill. The foxes ate their fill and then, turning their backs to the brush, they made their way back home to Beech Paw.

  Six

  Hop-along’s Dream

  There was no gloomglow and no running fox in the sky. Snow clouds covered the moon and the stars, and snow swirled around the fields and farms of Beech Paw. In the quarry above the meadows, the foxes snuggled down in the warmth of their earth, and no swirling snow or freezing winds found their way in.

  Old Sage Brush had decided they had earned a rest. His plan with the little brown hen had worked out so well that they had not drawn any danger upon themselves, a point he was quick to impress upon the others, especially Skulking Dog. The men at the hatchery weren’t even aware that they had lost any poultry, so there was no pursuit. As an added precaution, Old Sage Brush had also insisted that they follow the badger’s example, and not leave any chicken remains lying around where the men might see them.

  ‘That has got more foxes killed than anything else I know,’ he said. ‘Except, of course, the choking hedge-traps. You might as well leave a message on your doorstep saying Foxes in Residence. It’s suicide.’

  The others listened attentively. Vickey snuggled in beside Black Tip, and She-la was enjoying the company of Hop-along with whom she had now mated. Fang and Skulking Dog would have to look elsewhere for vixens, but for now they were content to lie and listen to the old fox. The admiration of the little group for Old Sage Brush had grown immeasurably with the success of the hatchery raid. They had never seen anything like it before. To get so many hens out would have been an achievement in itself. To do so without having to go there themselves, or without bringing dogs or shooters after them, was nothing short of genius. It would be told and retold and end up in foxlore, an example to those who had forgotten that the great god Vulpes had endowed them with something special.

  ‘And that,’ said the old fox, ‘is cunning. You wouldn’t think it, to look at the state we’re in today, that we’re supposed to be cunning. You’d think man is the one who’s cunning.’

  ‘He’s been cunning enough to destroy many of us,’ observed Black Tip.

  ‘Yet,’ said Old Sage Brush, ‘man speaks of the fox as the cunning one, I believe. I’ve heard it said that he talks of being “as cute as a fox”, or of trying to “out-fox”. But are we cute? We’re being shot to death and choked by the thousand. I believe man tells his children stories about wolves, then reassures them there is no such thing as a wolf in this country any more. He tells them stories about foxes too. Will he soon be assuring them there is no such thing as a fox?’

  ‘We know what you say is true,’ said She-la. ‘And we know you have great wisdom. But if one such as you can be blinded by man, what hope is there for the likes of us? How can we hope to survive?’

  ‘You have just got a great lesson in how to use the cunning Vulpes has given you,’ replied the old fox, ‘and it has been a cheap lesson. I paid dearly for mine.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell us about it if you don’t want to,’ said Black Tip.

  ‘I don’t mind. If it was a lesson for me, so too it can be a lesson for you.’ Old Sage Brush nestled his grey head between his forefeet. ‘It happened during my last breeding season.’ He sighed. ‘I can see myself in all of you. I was a young fox then — strong and independent, like you Black Tip, ferocious, like you Fang, and foolhardy, like you Skulking Dog.’

  Skulking Dog lowered his head, and sensing that he had hurt his feelings, the old fox added quickly: ‘Not that I’m saying you’re foolhardy now, Skulking Dog. I’m hopeful you’ve learned your lesson. When I learned mine, I was all of these things, and so I became severely handicapped, like you Hop-along.’ As he continued, none of the other dog foxes felt offended by what he had said. Strangely, they felt privileged to be identified with him, if only in a negative way. He went on: ‘No badger set or rabbit burrow would do me, and so I had to scrape out my own earth in a sand pit on the side of a hill covered with gorse. An old fox I knew had warned me never to make my home in a sand pit, but I was too proud to take his advice. I found the sand easy to scrape and easy to shape.’

  ‘We had a nice earth,’ he recalled, ‘and we had a fine litter — three in all, two dogs and a vixen. I loved them with all the love a father can give. They were cuddly and very playful, and if a father can have a favourite, I suppose I must admit it was the little she-fox, Sinnéad. She was born with a small white mark on her forehead and was the cutest little thing you ever saw. But I loved them all and hunted hard to make sure they wanted for nothing.’

  He sighed. ‘Unfortunately, I went back to the same farm too often. The men came from the farm with their guns and their fun dogs, and long sticks. Unlike the badger, I hadn’t thought of putting a back door in my earth. The small fun dogs came right in and cornered us.’

  ‘So that’s why you wouldn’t let us block up the back door of the badger set?’ said Vickey.

  ‘What did they do with the long sticks?’ asked Hop-along.

  ‘I’m afraid they were more cunning than I was,’ continued the old fox. ‘They sank the long sticks down through the sand to find out where we were. They kept pushing them down, poking and probing. The end of one stick was right at my head. It kept jabbing at my eyes and my face, but I knew if I snapped at it the men would know they had located us. For what seemed an eternity, I endured the jabbing pain, the choking sand and the snapping dogs, until at last little Sinnéad could bear to see me suffer no longer. She sprang from behind me and grabbed the end of the stick. How could she know that was exactly what the men above wanted? It told them where we were and they dug down. My vixen and two dog cubs were shot where they lay. Sinnéad and I made a run for it. The blood was streaming from my eyes, and as I crashed headlong through the undergrowth I could just make out one of the men diving after Sinnéad and catching her. It was the last thing I ever saw’

  Old Sage Brush paused and sighed. ‘Poor Sinnéad. She’d have been a nice mature vixen now, like you Vickey, or She-la. But it wasn’t to be.’

  Outside the quarry, the cold wind drove the snow across the hillside. Inside, the younger foxes curled up and went to sleep, secure in the earth and in the company of one who had learned so much the hard way.

  In the days and nights that followed, the weather showed a slight improvement, and once again they made their way northward along the valley. The younger foxes were learning much from Old Sage Brush. At the same time, Vickey let it be known that he felt perhaps they were beginning to rely too heavily upon his cunning and experience, and that he wished to find out just how much they had learned.

  Several times Vickey and the others asked Old Sage Brush about Sionnach, the Great White Fox he had spoken of back at Beech Paw. However, it was a subject on which he would not be drawn further. ‘Some things I can show you — others you must see for yourselves,’ was his reply, and no matter how many times they asked him, that was all he would say.

  The days were getting a little longer now, and occasionally the sun would appear for short periods. It gave a new life to the air, although there were few signs that it was finding its way down into the soil. Only bunches of cow parsley braved the cold to give the barren ditches a new mantle of green and a suggestion of spring. Otherwise the winter lingered on. Fortunately, the frosty nights also gave the foxes a clear view of the running fox in the sky, and so long as they could see the brush they knew which direction they were going.

  It was in a most unexpected way that they were brought to a halt. They had found a stream where they could refresh themselves and rest before continuing their nocturnal travels. There were no dogs to be heard, nor was man to be seen, although his traces were clearly apparent. Pieces of plastic fertiliser bag flapped in the hedgerow, and a green bottle lay discarded to litter the stream. It was a slow-moving stream with hardly any banks, which made the water easy to get at. Having s
laked their thirst, they took cover beneath the hedge.

  Later, as they slept, darkness closed around them and the moon crept across the sky. Whatever about the others, Hop-along began to dream, and it was a dream that reflected a worry that was now beginning to occupy his mind. How was he, a fox with only three legs, going to prove himself to Old Sage Brush? Above him, the moon was big and bright, and smiling, as if it and it alone was sharing the secrets of his slumber. If it was, it saw Hop-along’s secret thoughts slipping silently out of the hedgerow, across the stream, and into the fields beyond …

  In a way that can only happen in dreams, Hop-along suddenly found himself with his friends in fairly high country, and it was no surprise to them to come upon a hare sitting in the moonlight. Foxes, of course, will kill a hare if they can, but this one showed no fear of them. Instead he sprang up with a sudden thrust of his hind legs in a spectacular leap across the moon. When he landed, he scudded around and, sitting back on his haunches, bared his buck teeth in a twitching grin. It was clear from his behaviour that he wasn’t playing with them. He was inviting them to come and get him.

  The foxes, it must be said, had no reason to fear the hare. They knew he could out-run them with those powerful hind legs. Yet if it came to a standing fight, the fox would win. Why then was this hare so brazen as to take on several foxes?

  The hare hopped warily around. ‘Which one of you calls yourself leader?’ he asked in a very lofty manner.

  Old Sage Brush stepped forward, and the hare laughed. ‘You?’ he sneered. ‘You call yourself leader? You are too old. There would be no victory in fighting you.’

  Hop-along knew that this hurt the old fox’s feelings, and the others knew it too, but Sage Brush wasn’t prepared to let himself be goaded into a fight he couldn’t win, so he said: ‘Then, let me name one who will take up your challenge on my behalf.’

  ‘By all means,’ sneered the hare. ‘If you can find one strong enough.’ So saying, he gave another impressive leap across the sky.

  ‘Fang is my strength,’ said Old Sage Brush. ‘But our weakest is strong enough to put you in your place, you overgrown rabbit.’

  ‘Ho-ho,’ laughed the hare in mock glee. ‘An overgrown rabbit am I? We’ll soon see about that.’ Thereupon he made a fierce warning sound by grinding his teeth. They could hear the sound being picked up and relayed by other hares across the hills, and in what appeared to be no time at all, hundreds of hares had bounded over the stone walls and gathered around in a huge circle to watch them.

  ‘They say I’m just an over-grown rabbit,’ announced the big hare who had called them. The other hares ground their teeth and grinned widely at the idea. ‘Me, Lepus, Leader of Hares, an overgrown rabbit,’ he continued. He gave several more long leaps, then turning again to his fellow hares, appealed to them, saying: ‘What will we do with them?’

  ‘Kill them!’ cried the other hares. ‘Kill them!’

  Lepus bade them be quiet. ‘I am not only the leader of the hares. I am a great hare. No, I will not kill them — not yet.’

  He turned to the foxes and told them: ‘I am Lepus the Great. I can jump higher than any other hare. So here’s what I will do. If you can prove yourselves worthy by jumping higher than I can, I will let you go.’

  The other hares ground their teeth and grinned and rubbed their front feet together in glee. They knew no other creature could jump as high as Lepus.

  Hop-along knew, as all the foxes did, that they could not possibly jump as high as any hare, not to mention Lepus. Even the strongest of them knew it. They turned to Old Sage Brush. The old fox knew it, but he said to Lepus:

  ‘You have laughed at me because I am weak. But there is one of us who is weaker, and it is he who will take up the challenge.’ So saying he turned to Hop-along and told him: ‘Hop-along, it was you who brought us here, so it is you who must out-jump the hare.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Lepus indignantly. ‘You dare to put up a three-legged fox against Lepus the Great. That would be no contest.’

  ‘Of course, if you are afraid …’ replied Old Sage Brush.

  ‘Afraid?’ said Lepus. ‘I am afraid of no fox, and certainly not one with three legs. Let the contest begin.’

  Silence descended on the hillside, and Hop-along’s heart sank. The old fox, he realised, was offering him no words of wisdom, no thoughts of cunning, and he’d have to think his way out of this one himself. It was plain they couldn’t out-run the hares, and anyway, they were surrounded. And being out-numbered, they couldn’t fight. He also knew he couldn’t jump half as high as Lepus. So he lay down and put his head on his paw and thought about it.

  Maybe, he thought, his hind legs had become stronger than any other fox’s because of his handicap. But then, what was it that Old Sage Brush had said back at Beech Paw? He had said it wasn’t a question of strength; that if it was, a bull could catch a hare. If that was so, there must be some other way to deal with this hare. But what was it?

  As Hop-along lay there and thought about what he was going to do, he glanced up and saw that something seemed to have taken a small bite out of the wide eye of gloomglow. He had no way of knowing that he was now seeing what man calls a partial eclipse. All he knew was that the eye of gloomglow wasn’t as round and full as it had been when it had crept into the sky. Then he looked at the big staring eyes of Lepus, and he had an idea. He had noticed that, unlike foxes, hares had their eyes in the sides of their heads, instead of in front. The reason for that, he thought, was probably to enable them to see danger coming from either side, and it occurred to him that if that was so, they might not be able to see forward or upward as well as foxes.

  Hoping he was right, Hop-along waited until the moon had gone behind the clouds. Then he got up and hobbled over to Lepus. ‘I accept your challenge,’ he told the leader of the hares. ‘You jump first so that I may see what I have to beat.’

  ‘Ha!’ laughed Lepus. ‘And so you shall see.’ With that, he gave a mighty leap into the night sky and landed about fifteen feet away. ‘Now,’ he said proudly, ‘beat that.’ The watching hares grinned widely and rubbed their forefeet together again.

  Hop-along’s friends had been listening and watching in silence. They knew well he could not possibly jump as high. At the same time, they realised he must have something in mind, so they stayed silent.

  ‘Well?’ taunted Lepus. ‘Why don’t you jump?’

  ‘In a moment,’ said Hop-along, keeping a sly eye on the moon. ‘I’m just collecting my strength.’ He could see the moon was still behind the clouds. ‘True,’ he went on, playing for time, ‘you have made a great leap, almost as high as the wide eye of gloomglow. But I will do better. I will jump so high that I will take a bite out of the very eye of gloomglow.’

  The hares laughed and cocked their heads to one side to try and see the moon. It was just beginning to edge its way from behind the clouds, the shadow of the eclipse still hidden from their view. Hop-along crouched low into a ball, launched himself into the sky with all the strength he could muster, and snapped his teeth with an almighty bark. The moon had now come out from behind the clouds, and even the hares could see that a bite had been taken out of it. Frightened, they cowered back and screamed as if in agony. Hop-along’s friends, on the other hand, jumped forward and barked in sheer delight at his success.

  True to his word, Lepus silenced the gathering of hares, and said: ‘Hop-along, truly you are a great fox. Never before have I seen any living creature do such a thing. You are all free to go now, and in honour of your great achievement, if there is any favour we can bestow upon you, you need only ask.’

  Hop-along thanked him, but explained that the greatest gift they could have was their freedom, and now that they had it, they were anxious to move on. Lepus wished them luck, and the gathering of hares sent them on their way with a great cheer.

  When they had left the hares and the high country well behind them, the foxes stopped to regain their composure and to rest.

 
‘You have done well, Hop-along,’ said Old Sage Brush. ‘That was truly a trick worthy of Vulpes himself.’

  The others congratulated him too and wanted to know how he did it. What magic had he wrought to take a bite out of the eye of gloomglow? they asked.

  ‘No magic,’ replied Hop-along. ‘It’s thanks to our leader, Old Sage Brush, that I was able to do it. Hasn’t he taught us to use our cunning instead of our strength? I realised he knew I could not win by strength. So I did what he told Black Tip and Skulking Dog to do back on the hill. I lay down to see all that I could see, and I knew that I could see more than the hares. Knowing that we had faith in our own survival, the great god Vulpes did the rest …’ There the dream faded from Hop-along’s mind.

  A short time later, on the banks of a slow-moving stream, Hop-along and his fellow-foxes woke up and looked around them. Pieces of plastic fertiliser bag flapped in the hedge nearby, and a discarded green bottle littered the stream.

  ‘What had happened?’ he asked himself. Had they really been away in the Land of the Hares? Had he really out-jumped Lepus the Great? Or had it all been a dream? He looked up at the moon, but it only smiled back and told him nothing. Then he looked down at the place where his paw should be, and he knew it had to be a dream. However, he also knew now that he was learning from Old Sage Brush.

  Rising quickly, they crossed the stream and slipped away into the fields beyond.

  Seven

  Prey of the Howling Dogs

  The running fox in the sky was now beginning to lean over backwards on its brush. The nights were still frosty, but there was a slight suggestion of warmth in the sun. The farmers had done much of their ploughing, and that was a good thing. It attracted more wildlife into the fields in search of food, and that in turn gave the foxes greater opportunities to hunt. They might well have wondered where all the new birdlife came from as the weather improved, but they didn’t. They were just glad to see it.