Redcoat/Chapter 10
BY the time Redcoat was four years old he had reached his greatest size and weight. He had been just as tall and rangy when he was two years old, but not so heavy. Also his greatest cunning and knowledge of the ways of men had come to him by this time.
The three futile attempts of the Meadowdale Fox Club the Autumn before had so discouraged the hunters that they had left Redcoat very much to himself during the following winter. He had given other hounds some lively runs, but he always had been able to dismiss them whenever he was tired of the game so it had been just an amusing farce. Because of this fact, Redcoat's confidence that had been partly shaken in the Fall had all came back to him.
With his achievements of the Autumn before (and the hunters themselves had so added to his achievements when they gathered in their clubroom on winter evenings to spin yarns) he had well earned the title of the Phantom Fox.
Very early in the Spring there had come to the Meadow City a Virginian named Harold Denby. He was a daredevil cross-country rider, descended from an old Virginia family which had hunted foxes on horseback ever since the settlement of the colony.
As soon as the Virginian arrived in the Meadow City he was given a great banquet at the Meadowdale Fox Club. For several days previous Denby had been fed up on stories of the Phantom Fox, and at the club he heard much more about him. Accordingly, the Virginian Fox hunter's curiosity was aroused and with it was born an ambition to lead the Meadowdale Fox Club to a capture of the great Redcoat. After the banquet was over plans were formulated for another hunt which should be carried on in the true Virginian style. All of the best horses in the Meadow City were brought into action. These included ten fine polo ponies and as many more saddle and running horses from the different driving schools in the city. Some of these horses were also great high jumpers and had taken prizes at the fairs. Their riders were men who were used to hard riding upon polo fields and cross country. An entirely new pack was secured for this venture. And, with a dozen dogs and twenty mounted men the cavalcade set off one bright morning about the middle of March to capture the Phantom Fox. It was really a great show of force for so small an objective. Each one of the hounds was four times as heavy as the fox, while the horses were eighty or ninety times heavier than he. Besides, the cunning of twenty men was to be matched against the cunning of one red fox. Truly it was an uneven battle, but the battle is not always to the strong. For several days before the celebrated hunt, heavy spring rains had been falling. The great river was full to its banks and in some places overflowed the meadows, making small lagoons and ponds. Water stood in many of the hollows. But, two days previous to the hunt, winter conditions had returned to the land and all of the pools were skimmed over with anchor ice, while the ground on this clear, crisp March morning was as hard as steel. It was a wonderful morning for the chase for both hounds and horsemen. There were no crops in the meadows or on the uplands and conditions were ideal for the run.
Redcoat had been molested very little during the winter by hounds or hunters and he was quite confident that he could outrun or outwit any pack of hounds that ever trailed a fox. The three marvelous escapes he experienced the Fall before he had attributed to his own cunning instead of rare good fortune and this tended to increase his confidence, so ever since the snow had disappeared early in March he had prowled about the farms at will, barking defiance at the farm dogs whenever he saw them.
On the morning in question, he had gone around to the west side of the mountain and was reconnoitring the farms that lay in the valley parallel to the river. As in the other great hunts, the hounds took his track at the roadway which paralleled the river and the hunt was on. Twelve of the horsemen followed the pack and in addition to the deep baying of the hounds there was the sound of hoofs of the flying horses. The other eight horsemen were stationed in the roadway at intervals of about forty rods to head Redcoat off should he turn back towards the mountain. The plan was to run him down in the area between the road and the river, so the amphitheatre upon which this tragedy was to be inacted was about three miles long and from a mile to a mile and a half wide.
Redcoat was not at all dismayed when he heard the pack break into full cry on his trail. It was a glorious morning for a run. The clear cold air made the blood tingle in his veins and his muscles contracted and recoiled like steel springs. Belly to earth he ran for the entire length of the arena and the straining hounds and the racing horsemen gained only a little on him. Then, he turned to the north, thinking to come back to the point where he had been started and then cross the road to the mountain. It was a glorious chase but the pace was terrific and he did not want to keep it up too long. But, the eight horsemen in the roadway heard the hounds coming and as the country was very open they also saw the fox; so they formed in readiness for him. As Redcoat swept down upon the highway, running like the wind, the men all shouted and waved their caps and turned him back southward. Redcoat was much surprised that the men did not use their thunder sticks, as in the excitement he had run very close to them before he had discovered them; but he could see no thunder sticks, and in fact the men were not carrying firearms. Denby had insisted upon this, saying that it must be a fair race in the open and if the fox could get away by his wits or his fleetness he should be given a fair chance.
So Redcoat raced away to the southward again, with the hounds and the frantically galloping horses in hot pursuit. This time on the three mile lap they cut down his lead by nearly half, so when he turned back northward they were only about eighty rods behind. It was a terrific pace. Redcoat had never known hounds to run so before. In fact, this was a special pack noted for its fleetness, imported from Virginia for this chase. Behind the dogs were the men and the galloping horses urging the hounds forward. Thus it happened on the return three miles the dogs and horsemen cut the distance in half and Redcoat was only forty rods ahead when the horsemen in the roadway again headed him back southward. Oh, but it was desperate running! If he could only stop for five minutes and rest, but he could not for the pack and the thundering cavalcade were all after him. When he reached the southern end of the run again he was only twenty rods ahead, so he dashed into a small pine woods to see if he could gain a little by running among the trees. This ruse did help him and when he came out of the woods and once more headed northward he had regained the lost twenty rods and was once more leading by a furlong. But, the terrific pace was telling on him. His tongue was out and his brush was down, while his breath came in hard quick pants. It seemed to the straining fox that his heart must burst with the effort as he raced back northward with the hounds and the men gaining steadily upon him. He must break through the cordon in the roadway and get back to the mountain or they would surely catch him. As he neared the highway, the men divined his intent and the horsemen behind spurred forward to overtake him, while the men on the highway once again set up a great shouting to drive him back. In his confusion, Redcoat's wits seemed to forsake him. He completely lost his head and turned and ran straight towards the river. The eight horsemen who up to this time had waited to drive him back from the road now joined the rest of the party and the twenty mounted men and the hounds swept down to the river in a great semicircle, and poor Redcoat saw his only way of escape cut off, and in his desperation he ran out on a point of land that jutted well out into the river. There he stood panting and trembling, watching the oncoming hounds and the horsemen. They were too close upon him and too near together to try to break through their ranks, so he stood watching, impotent and fascinated by the danger that menaced him. When the hounds were a hundred feet away and the men two hundred, Redcoat remembered the river behind him. In times past it had often been his friend. Several times he had crossed on the thin ice where hounds could not follow, but there was no ice now; only a turbulent dark flood, foam flecked, and angry with the spring rains. If he had been fresh he might have swum the river under these conditions, but spent as he was the water did not look as terrible to him as did the horsemen and the hounds, so he whirled and plunged bravely into the river, while the pack swept down and out upon the point to see the fox fifty feet away swimming feebly on the dark water. Soon the horsemen were all lined up behind the yelping hounds to behold the tragic end of this wonderful red fox who had given them such a marvelous run.
But, fate and Mother Nature were kinder than the men and the pack, for when Redcoat was about two hundred feet from the shore, and his strength was all but gone, he noticed something floating down in the current just above him. He lifted his weary head and discovered a plank about ten feet long and two feet wide drifting rapidly towards him. He stopped swimming until it floated almost under his nose, then he wearily put out his forepaws and with great exertion climbed upon it. At this sight a great shout went up from the watching horsemen on shore and one of their number pulled out a revolver and began shooting at the fox.
"Here, here, Bill," cried Denby, "put up your shooting iron and let's play the game squarely. I stipulated we should not carry firearms and we'll stick to that agreement."
"That's so," chorused a half a dozen riders. "We'll play fair."
"I've seen many a great fox hunt in Virginia," said Denby, "but I never saw such a run as this. He's not a fox at all, he's a moose."
"If a man had the courage and strength for his size that that fox has," put in Billy Perkins the crack polo player, "he could eat up the world. Boys, I take off my hat to him."
"Well, he escaped us," said another member of the polo team, "but the rapids in the river below will get him. He never can run the rapids on that plank."
"There is something else that is going to get the whole of us," said Denby. "See that cloud yonder, boys." Even as he spoke a patter of hail was heard on the ground about them. This storm had been making up for the last half hour and was one of those sudden spring downfalls. With one accord the horsemen turned and trotted away, whistling for the hounds to follow, while little Redcoat drifted on his plank towards the rapids that all had said would engulf him. But here once again fate and nature were kinder than men, for the downfall of sleet that had sent the horsemen scurrying to cover, froze upon Redcoat's coat and for the time being froze him to the plank almost as though he had been glued down.
Redcoat was not as much afraid of the river as he had been of the horsemen and hounds, so he crouched with his nose on his paws and watched the swirling water, while his plank swept on to the rapids. Presently he was in among the eddying swirling currents, where dark rocks reared their menacing heads and white foam danced on the swirling water. He went so rapidly and the plank changed its position so often that it made him dizzy. He would be rushing straight at a rock with every seeming chance of striking it but just at the right moment the current would suck the little bark clear of the rock and it would go rushing on. The rapids were about two miles in length, but it seemed to Redcoat that he was a very long time traveling through them; it was really only twelve or fifteen minutes, but it seemed much longer than the two hours' run he had made before the hounds. But all hard things come to an end for those who have courage and endure. A good fighter usually sees the end of the battle. So Redcoat's plank finally swept out of the last of the whirlpools into comparatively calm water, and a quarter of a mile further down stream it lodged upon an island. When Redcoat first tried to free himself from the plank he found he could not move, but after half an hour his body heat thawed the frozen sleet upon his belly and he was enabled to go ashore on the island. Here he hid in the underbrush and rested for the balance of the day, and just before night closed down he swam ashore at a point where the island was not far from the mainland and the following day he made his way cautiously back to his mountain. His confidence was somewhat shaken and he was not eager for another run before the hounds and horsemen. But, once again he made the fatal mistake of believing that it was his own great cunning and fleetness that had saved him and not a bit of rare good fortune.