Redcoat/Chapter 9
BY the Autumn when Redcoat was nearly four years old, the fall after the Red Flower went mad, and drove him and his family out of his beloved spruces, his fame had gone abroad through the countryside until his was the most coveted brush in four counties. Not only was he the largest and most beautiful fox on the mountain range, but he was also the cleverest, if one could believe all the stories he heard about him, which one could not. Hunters and fishermen are so apt to spin yarns when a company of good fellows get together, that it is often hard to disentangle truth from fiction. That is why the naturalist has to discard so many good stories about animals. But there was no discounting the fact that Redcoat was a wonder. He had given hounds and men many a long futile chase.
Few members of the Meadowdale Fox Club had really seen him, although many of them said they had. Almost any fox seen at a distance was surely the great red fox. It made it seem more exciting to tell it in that way. It was not an unheard of event to see just an ordinary fox, but to see the clever one, the Phantom Fox of the mountain, was quite another story. Several of the Fox Club had shot at him, or thought they had. According to their accounts he had been mortally wounded many times, and had only escaped by the tip of his brush. But as a matter of fact, he had never been wounded more than to get an occasional scratch, which did him no harm. Most of the members of the club, if we could believe their stories, had come very near to "bagging" him. If their gun had not missed fire, or they had been just over the top of the next ridge, they would have surely gotten him. But, there had always been that little "if."
So Redcoat still possessed that much coveted brush, and still barked defiance at the farm dogs from a safe distance when he wanted to discover if they were at home, and played with the fox hounds in an amazing manner.
His stratagems in eluding the pack had often been described by the members of the club at their banquets at the clubhouse on the bank of the river; the river that ran through the meadows where Redcoat hunted mice; the river which with very thin ice had saved the wary red fox more than once. The old dodges such as back-tracking, and then jumping upon a boulder and then away by a series of leaps from stone to stone, was too old to need description. But Redcoat had several variations of that dodge, which were most successful. There was the old dodge of making a fox and geese track of the trail, and then leaving it by a back track, or running in the brook, and upon the railroad track. This latter dodge was a favorite strategy and one that had often non-plussed the pack. Then he would run in a skunk's track, if he could find one, until the pack could not tell whether they were following a skunk or a fox. He would run in the main traveled road of the rabbit warren in hopes that the pack would leave him for rabbits, which they sometimes did.
When he was hard pressed he always took to his favorite mountain. Here he was at home. Here he knew all the winding devious paths along the sides of the slippery mountain. He could run for an eighth of a mile upon trap rock, which nearly always threw off the pack. More than once he had led the pack into very dangerous positions when the mountainside was smooth with a glare crust. His cunning in this particular was almost unbelievable. In fact, one could not believe many of the stories told about him, and that is the trouble in tracing the real history of Redcoat. The more wonderful had been Redcoat's ruse, the greater the exploit of the hunter, so they usually embellished their tales most lavishly. One hunter even went so far as to declare that Redcoat had smeared his paws with the oil upon the switches along the railroad track, in order to cover up his own scent. Probably the member of the club who knew the most about Redcoat and who had seen him most frequently was Bud Holcome, but he always kept his counsel, for he had designs upon Redcoat himself, for was not that wonderful red robe to be Kitty Mason's Christmas present? So, Bud did not want anyone else to get the celebrated fox, and he evaded all inquiries about the Phantom Fox. But Bud knew full well that Redcoat's headquarters were in the little clump of spruces, for he had seen him bringing away his family at the time of the great fire. He had also seen him in the meadows upon the farm on moonlight nights, and likewise on going to school he had on two or three rare occasions seen the great runner flashing across the fields. Then, there was that dramatic occasion when Bud declared that Redcoat had thrown Racer over the cliff. But Mr. Holcome always classed that with the rest of the wild fox yarns. Only Racer himself could have told all about that incident, and he kept his counsel. Bud also told no one that he had trapped Redcoat and been outwitted by him.
Thus it happened that in the Autumn of which I write the Meadowdale Fox Club went into solemn conclave and mapped out a campaign which it was confidently predicted would put that much coveted brush upon the walls of the clubroom along with other trophies of the chase.
Two days before Thanksgiving the first snow had fallen, and it was an unprecedented storm, for the time of year. When the great feathery flakes finally ceased to sift down upon mother earth, fifteen inches of soft wet snow covered the ground. It furnished a condition that made fox hunting ideal. That is, it was ideal for men and dogs, but very hard for the poor fox. The long legged hounds could run easily in the deep snow, compared with the fox who is very susceptible to wet snow and who prefers to run upon a thick crust or on a hard surface. The pines and spruces were loaded to the breaking point with the new snow and every little bush by the roadside had become glorious, while, in the words of Lowell, "every twig was ridged with pearl."
Thanksgiving morning dawned bright and beautiful, but an hour before daylight the Meadowdale Fox Club had been astir. A Bugler had gone from house to house arousing the hunters at four o'clock, so that half an hour before sunrise the club members had taken their positions and had let loose the hounds.
I do not know whether it was because it was Thanksgiving Day, a day of chicken and turkey, that Redcoat had sensed, and so had felt the chicken hunger himself, but certain it was that he had started forth that morning to secure chicken for himself and his family. He had passed around to the west end of the mountain and then descended into the valley. He had gone a mile or so to the south and had then struck off in towards the river, where there were several farmhouses with good roosts of chickens. Redcoat had dined at their expense before and he knew the lay of the land well. While he had been prowling about the farmhouse in question picking up his chicken, the hounds had picked up his fresh track where he had crossed the road and came after him full cry. The club had also deployed along the roadway, for they knew Redcoat would have to cross it to get back to his mountain, to which refuge he always fled when hard pressed. So, the roadway was picketed with men armed with shotguns, one every forty rods, and they stretched out for nearly two miles, so the culprit was seemingly cut off from his retreat.
Redcoat heard the pack afar off. It was a clear beautiful morning and sound carried a long way. He knew at once that it would be a long hard race. For the first quarter of an hour he clung stubbornly to his chicken as his Thanksgiving dinner had cost him much trouble. But finally seeing that it weighted him down, and that the running was very hard, he hid it in a clump of bushes and gave all his attention to extricating himself from his dilemma. He did not yet fully appreciate the seriousness of this morning run, but it was soon borne in upon him.
First he led the hounds for a mile further down the river through a rough pastureland. Then he doubled back towards the road. By great good luck he approached the road where there was a long level stretch, so he discovered the first two hunters standing with thunder sticks in readiness waiting for him. He veered off towards the river, trying the roadway further up, but here his good nose told him another hunter was waiting, although he did not see him. For a mile he skirted the roadway, trying to find a place where it was not guarded. Once he drew the hunter's fire from long range but it did no harm. So, he finally doubled back southward and went all over the long hard run again. Perhaps the men would get tired of waiting and go home. But they did not. Four different times Redcoat ran the length of the half circle which inclosed him between the river and the roadway, and each time that he came back to the road he found the hunters still waiting for him. Each time he made the circle the pack closed up the distance between him and it. The snow was wet and heavy, and finally Redcoat's beautiful brush dragged in the snow behind him, as he was so tired that he could no longer hold it up. Neither did he now run with the free gallop that he had assumed at the start. His pace had now slowed down to a dog trot.
On the fifth lap of this weary race, which was now telling upon Redcoat and taking his utmost strength, he entered a small woods of pines which was about a quarter of a mile in length, and perhaps twenty rods wide with the further end resting on the bank of the river. Redcoat ran along the south side of the woods, keeping just inside the cover. His plan was to come back on the north side, doubling back on himself, but keeping out of sight. In this way he would get a half mile run in the cover and here he hoped to gain on the pack. But unluckily, when he was doubling back, one of the hounds in the pack happened to spy him through an open spot in the woods and gave chase. The whole pack at once abandoned the old track for the new and poor Redcoat lost more than half of the distance which he had held upon the pack. This put him in a desperate plight. He was being rapidly run back towards the roadway, and with the pack only about a hundred yards behind. Something must be done at once. He must shake the pack off immediately, or he would run into one of the hunters, or the pack would catch him. Either happening would be fatal.
This time Redcoat approached the road farther south than he had before, under a little cover of brush. Perhaps he might find a place where there was no hunter in sight. He must depend upon his good nose to warn him in advance. As he neared the roadway, with the pack so close behind in full cry, he heard a squeaking and a tinkling which he knew the teams that men drove sometimes made. It was almost at the point where he had planned to reconnoitre the road. Cautiously Redcoat advanced and peered through the bushes. The sounds he had heard were made by a logging team. In fact a load of logs was passing in the road not thirty feet away. As the end of the load passed by and Redcoat heard the cry of the pack coming so desperately near, a plan which was like a flash of hope in his consciousness came into the quick wits of the red fox. If he could only break the trail. If he could get back the distance he had lost. He could see his beloved mountain not over a mile away.
The end of the load was passing and Redcoat noted that the bottom log on the load stuck out about three feet further than the rest of the load. The quick witted fox saw his chance and took it. As the load passed, he trotted quickly forward and sprang lightly on the projecting log and flattened himself down upon it. His red coat was quite the color of the reddish brown bark of the logs and he blended nicely with the load and was so low down the driver could not see him. The team moved slowly along the road, while the cries of the hounds came rapidly nearer. A hundred feet further on, the log team rounded a bend in the road which hid it from sight and Redcoat breathed easier. He only wanted just a little more. Another hundred feet and he espied a clump of bushes beside the road. As the sled passed it, the fox sprang lightly into the bushes. Then, keeping the bushes between him and the driver of the team, he ran for the mountain with all his remaining strength.
When the pack came to the road, the full throated cry resolved into excited yelps and finally the hounds were silent. At first the dogs overran and not finding the track in the field beyond, came back to the road and went a hundred yards in the wrong direction. Then they came back to the starting point and went in the right direction till they found the scent, but by this time Redcoat had covered half the distance between him and his retreat and he reached the mountain a quarter of a mile ahead of the pack. He picked his way carefully up the mountainside where it was very steep by his favorite pathway that led along a precipitate cliff to the very spot where he had tumbled the Holcome greyhound over the precipice. Here he stopped upon the old shelf to rest and watch the pack. They would not venture to climb along that narrow way with the soft snow underneath. In fact, they were already quitting. When Redcoat had satisfied himself that he had gotten rid of his pursuers he yawned and shook himself and started for his beloved spruces. He had escaped. He had outwitted both men and dogs, and was satisfied. But it had been a long hard run and a close call. He would be careful how they cornered him in that way again.
The club never knew just how it happened. It was probably more of that Redcoat's deviltry, for when they had thought they had him for sure, he had slipped through their fingers. But wait, there were more hunts coming. They would get him next time. So the hunters waited and bided their time.
The second great fox hunt was like the first, only it was more spectacular and more inexplicable to hounds and men.
For several days after this first narrow escape from the hunters, Redcoat kept to his mountain. When he finally did venture forth, it was to go to the south. Long experience had taught him that the hunters did not as often try the country south of the mountain. The men and dogs had combed the region to the north and west of the mountain for six days without starting the Phantom Fox, although they had started two or three other foxes and secured one brush. But they had their hearts set on securing the wonder fox, so kept right on trying.
Just a week from the day of the first great run, Redcoat again got the wanderlust and went to the farming district south of the mountain. There was often very tasty refuse thrown out from the farmhouses at this time of the year. For men were eating chickens and what they left was often a good meal for a hungry fox.
Again Redcoat was unlucky, for once more the pack took his track half an hour after he had passed the roadway leading parallel with the mountain and came after him full cry. The men employed the same stratagem they had done the week before, for they deployed along the road, an eighth of a mile apart, so as to head him off from the mountain. Once again Redcoat tried all his old ruses to throw off the pack, but it clung to his track like a burr and refused to be dislodged.
Again the running was very hard, for the deep snow of the week before was still there and six inches more had been added to it. There had been no freezes hard enough to make even a thin crust, so it was a case of straight hard running, with the victory to the one with the longest legs and the best wind. Redcoat's wind was just as good as that of any hound, but his legs were not as long; besides a pack had an advantage over an individual, for always some one of the pack which was spread out fan shaped would discover a loop in the trail and cut across. For this reason, Redcoat did not dare backtrack very much, but confined his running to long gradual turns. Short sharp cuts he soon found were very costly.
For hours the desperate relentless grilling went on. There was no chance to stop for a few minutes to get one's breath or courage back. Several times Redcoat tried the roadway, but he always found it well guarded. He only dared to reconnoitre it at the open spots for fear he would run directly into a hunter. Yet, not withstanding his caution, he finally did encounter a hunter. He ran full upon one of the sentries who had been posted outside the roadway upon a commanding hilltop. It was only by the most desperate running and the wildest jumping and all sorts of jack rabbit stunts that Redcoat saved his brush, but even so the man fired twice. Twice the terrible thunder stick spoke to Redcoat in that awful voice, and each time the small pellets fell like hail about him. The second time he felt a sharp daggerlike pain in his shoulder and discovered to his great consternation that he could not use his right fore-leg. He was badly wounded and would have to run as hard and as far as he could on three legs. This was the beginning of the end. It was only a matter of perhaps half an hour, for the pack had been gradually gaining on him as it was and with one good fore-leg gone the race was hopeless. As this fact was born in on Redcoat he gazed longingly at his mountain, dreaming in the distance. Again Redcoat turned southward, running on three legs. This retarded his speed by twenty-five per cent. Not only that, but it also made the remaining good fore-leg sink deep in the snow as he bore his full weight upon it. Fifty rods of this three legged running tired him more than a mile on all fours. Soon his tongue was out full length and he was panting and wheezing and all the time the pack was drawing closer and closer. The sound of its perpetual baying was to his overwrought nerves like the crack of doom and filled him with such fear as he had never known before. This would never do. He must turn back and try the road again at another point. If he could not reach the mountain at this attempt he was lost. He might even not be able to make this stronghold though he crossed the road safely. So Redcoat turned to the heavily patrolled roadway, knowing it was his only hope.
He approached the road by a thin cover of bushes just as he had done the week before and once again he heard the low sweet tinkle of bells, as he had in the first instance, but this time it was not a load of logs, but Kitty Mason driving her father's horse in a light sleigh. Just as the team neared the clump of bushes which fringed the roadway, Kitty was amazed to see a great beautiful red fox flounder out of the cover and fall in the road just ahead of her horse. There was blood on its shoulder, and Kitty divined at once that he was badly wounded. The fox was not dead but he lay panting with his breath coming in quick hard sobs like those of a child that is trying not to cry. Then the import of the two shots which the girl had just heard, and the cries of the oncoming pack came home to Kitty. The men and the hounds were after this beautiful creature to take away the only thing he valued in the whole world, his life.
At the sound of the oncoming pack, an overwhelming sense of the brave struggle this wild creature was waging against the men with their guns and dogs came over the girl and her sympathetic woman's heart felt a great wave of compassion. They should not take this beautiful creature's life if she could help it.
It did not matter that the fox represented her future muff and that she had abetted Bud Holcome for months in his capture of the fox. For the first time, she now saw the whole matter from the standpoint of the hunted and a great repulsion against being a party to the killing of Redcoat came over her. Without considering what she was doing, or how to accomplish the daring plan that had come to her, and without any fear that he might bite her, Kitty sprang from the sleigh and catching up the warm blanket, hurried to where Redcoat lay panting in the snow. Without a particle of fear she dropped the protecting blanket over him and picked him up in her arms and quickly deposited him in the bottom of the sleigh, pushing him as far as possible under the seat. As the back of the sleigh was closed he could not escape and he was too spent to resist or to put up a fight if he had wanted to. Besides, he did not want to, for something that was wiser than he, told him here was a protector. Some one who had come to deliver him.
"All right, Mr. Fox," cried the spirited girl as she prepared to drive the gauntlet of the hunters. "They will have to reckon with me and the horse whip before they get you. You just keep quiet and we will give them the slip." With this assurance she whipped up the horse.
They were barely a hundred feet away when the hounds broke into the roadway in full cry. But again their baying was resolved into perplexed yelping and finally died away.
Twenty rods further on Kitty encountered the first hunter who was standing a few rods away from the road waiting with cocked gun.
"Miss Mason," he called as he saw her. "Did you see anything of the fox?"
"What fox?" inquired Kitty innocently.
"Why the fox that the hounds are running."
"What, are the dogs running a real red fox? How exciting," she shouted back.
"Well, I guess you don't know any more about the fox than I do," returned the hunter. "If you see him tell the men further down the road."
Two other hunters hailed Kitty and about the same questions and answers were exchanged and they found out as little as the first one.
When she was far enough away not to create suspicion, Kitty put the horse into a gallop and did not let him slow down until she reached a wood road branching off from the main traveled road and running up into her father's wood lot. Up to that time, she had not known just what she would do with Redcoat, but the sight of this branch road gave her the clue. She slowed down the horse and drove for half a mile into the deep woods, going for a quarter of the way up the south slope of the mountain towards which Redcoat had been straining his every energy when she had discovered him. At the end of the road there was a turntable or circle where the woodsmen had turned the teams about. Here Kitty stopped and got out of the sleigh and cautiously lifted up one corner of the blanket. At the move Redcoat lifted his beautiful head and looked at her furtively, but made no move to get out. Then she uncovered him as much as she dared to without getting her hands too close and stepped back four or five paces from the sleigh.
Redcoat slowly arose and stood looking at her and she saw to her great delight that he partly rested his weight upon the injured paw. In fact, the injury had been only temporary. A shot had struck a large nerve and had then buried itself in the flesh. The lameness had been caused by a partial paralysis which had now partly passed. Redcoat stood looking curiously at the girl for several seconds. "It is all right, old chap," she said in a low musical voice. "I won't hurt you. Now run along and don't let them get you again."
Redcoat hesitated for another few seconds and then jumped lightly down upon the snow, and trotted slowly into the thicket, but just as he was about to pass from sight, he turned and looked back, and again Kitty thought, just as she had when he looked back at her with the pup in his mouth, that he wagged his tail in friendship and gratitude, but she was not quite sure.
Bud Holcome, who had been one of the hunters, was glad when Kitty called him that evening over the telephone. He was always glad to hear the girl's voice. But this night she sounded very serious.
"Bud, listen," said Kitty, when the usual salutations were over.
"I want you to get this straight, if you don't ever understand anything I say to you in the future. You know that you have been trying to get the big red fox for my Christmas present. Well, listen. I don't want him, and what is more, if you ever trap him, or shoot at him, or so much as harm a hair of his coat, I will never have anything to do with you again. I mean it too, Bud."
"Well, I'll be blest," ejaculated Bud as he hung up the receiver. "If girls aren't the limit. One day they want a thing, the next day they don't."
There was an unwritten law in foxdom that the foxes on the east side of the river should not venture across to the meadows on the west side unless the ice on the river was strong enough to bear them. The foxes on the west side might hunt mice in their own meadow because when they were started by the hounds they could flee to their own mountains to the westward, but these same meadows were a death trap to the foxes from the east. This tradition had perhaps come naturally to Redcoat but it had also been dinned into him by several close calls he had experienced on the west side of the river.
One December morning, about two weeks after his rescue from the pack by Kitty Mason, Redcoat ventured across the river. The mice had become scarce on the east side and there were always plenty on the west side. These meadows were elliptical in shape, resting in a great bend of the river. They were two miles long and a mile in width. Close to the river for the entire distance there was a fringe of bushes about a hundred feet deep. This was the only cover on the meadows, and even this cover had half a dozen gaps in it and it was at these gaps that the fox hunters always took their stand. When the foxes were started out on the meadows they usually ran in the open for a while. The meadow was slightly undulating in places, but most of it was very level. This made backtracking and snarling up the track very dangerous on the part of the foxes, for the hounds would often see them half a mile away and cut across the labyrinth of trail that the fox had been several minutes in making, so sooner or later the foxes always took to the cover along the river's edge and here they could not run for more than thirty or forty rods without encountering one of the hunters at a gap in the bushes.
As ill luck would have it, the Meadowdale Fox Club had gone hunting on the west side of the river this morning. They had temporarily given up trying to capture the Phantom Fox after his two miraculous disappearances.
But, on this morning the hounds started the old rogue on the west side and for an hour he gave them a lively race, back and forth over the meadows, going in large circles, but even so the hounds cut across on him several times and he was soon hard pressed. He had seen no hunters with their thunder sticks but felt intuitively they were waiting for him in the cover close to the river. Finally, he was so hard pressed that he entered the bushes warily at the south end but he had not gone two hundred feet when his good nose told him there was danger ahead and peering out from the bushes he saw a man with the thunder stick standing upon an old log commanding the open spot perfectly. Immediately in front of the man was a fringe of low bushes three or four feet high over which he was peering. This was Redcoat's only chance to cross. He hesitated for a moment but the cry of the pack behind was getting dangerously close to him, so he crept cautiously forward and passed the waiting hunter in the underbrush, going within twenty feet of him, so quietly that the hunter heard not a sound. A few minutes later, when the hounds came out of the cover and trailed the fox almost under the man's nose he was thunderstruck and could not believe they were on the right scent until he went into the bushes and found the fresh fox track. Meanwhile, Redcoat had again taken to the meadows and was running northward as fast as his fleet limbs could carry him. Away at the northern end of the meadow the city extended almost down to the river, and here the railroad crossed upon one bridge and automobiles, teams and foot passengers on another bridge a hundred feet further north. As Redcoat raced back across the meadows, the pack in full cry behind him, he saw first the slender trail over which the great thunderer crossed the river and the other bridge above it.
Ordinarily the ice on the river would have been several inches thick, but this morning it had been just strong enough to hold Redcoat when he had crossed and as the water was rising the ice had entirely broken up in two hours' time and there was no chance of returning to his beloved mountain by crossing on the ice.
As Redcoat came to the north end of the meadow he noted the trail by which the thunderer crossed and the thought came to him there was a way over, yet in order to reach it he would have to run almost into the haunts of men. He could see them passing on the traffic bridge above the railroad bridge, and over the city was the chimney smoke of hundreds of houses. It was a great chance, but the pack was now only about a hundred yards away. Then, on the clear morning air, plainly heard above all other sounds, came the long shriek that the thunderer made when crossing the trails of men, and Redcoat plainly saw in the distance the trail of smoke that the thunderer always left in passing.
Did the red fox think this all out carefully, the time it would take him to reach the bridge and cross, and the time it would take the thunderer to reach it and the pack also, or rather was it just an intuition, a daring chance that he took, just as he had gambled with life so many times before? One look back at the pack decided Redcoat and he raced for the railroad bridge with a great burst of speed. Foot passengers crossing on the other bridge stopped and watched excitedly to see the beautiful fox trotting rapidly over the bridge, and they were still more amazed when the pack, a dozen strong, reached the end of the bridge and followed after the intrepid fox. Redcoat himself was two-thirds of the way across and the pack a third of the way across when the train reached the bridge. Then there was a great tooting of the whistle and a clanging of the bell and a shouting of excited men and boys on the foot bridge as one by one with yelps of fear the hounds leaped into the river. Most of them leaped before the engine struck them and those that didn't were brushed off without being hurt as the train was running very slowly. As Redcoat reached the further end of the bridge he looked back for a moment and saw that the thunderer had swept the last of his enemies, the fox hounds, into the river and was now coming after him. So, belly to earth, he galloped away over the meadows on his own side of the river to his safe refuge on the mountainside.
A member of the Meadowdale Fox Club who was watching him through a glass said as he looked back over his shoulder at the discomforted pack he grinned like a Cheshire cat, but I am afraid the hunter distorted the fox's countenance to suit his own whim and to make the achievement of Redcoat seem even more diabolical. But, one thing was certain; never again would this particular pack of hounds be persuaded, either by coaxing or threat, to follow the trail of the Phantom Fox. They had had enough of a fox who could summon the thunderer to his aid and sweep them into the river in that way. Ordinary foxes they did not mind running, but this one was not for them.