A faint Yap-yah of a Fox was heard on the piney hillside, as he lay down on the hay in the loft, but there were no signs of life on the snow. He had come to wait all night if need be, and waited. The lantern might allure, it might scare, but it was needed in this gloom, and it tinged the snow with faint yellow light below him. An hour went by, then a big-tailed form came near and made a little bark at the lantern. It looked very dark, but it had a paler patch on the throat. This waiting was freezing work; Josh's teeth were chattering in spite of his overcoat. Another gray form came, then a much larger black one shaped itself on the white. It dashed at the first, which fled, and the second one followed but a little and then sat down on the snow, gazing at that bright light. When you are sure, you are so sure—Josh knew him now, he was facing the Silver Fox. But the light was dim. Josh's hand trembled as he bared it to lay the back on his lips and suck so as to make a mousey squeak. The effect on the Fox was instant. He glided forward intent as a hunting cat. Again he stood in, oh! such a wonderful pose, still as a statue, frozen like a hiding Partridge, unbudging as a lone kid Antelope in May. And Josh raised—yes, he had come for that—he raised that fatal gun. The lantern blazed in the Fox's face at twenty yards; the light was flung back doubled by its shining eyes; it looked perfectly clear. Josh lined the gun, but, strange to tell, the sights so plain were lost at once, and the gun was shaking like a sorghum stalk while the Gopher gnaws its root. He laid the weapon down with a groan, cursed his own poor trembling hand, and in an instant the wonder Fox was gone.
Poor Josh! He wasn't bad-tongued, but now he used all the evil words he had ever heard, and he was Western bred. Then he reacted on himself. "The Fox might come back!" Suddenly he remembered something. He got out a common sulphur match. He wet it on his lips and rubbed it on the muzzle sight: Then on each side of the notch on the breech sight. He lined it for a tree. Yes! surely! What had been a blur of blackness had now a visible form.
A faint bark on a far hillside might mean a coming or a going Fox. Josh waited five minutes, then again he squeaked on his bare hand. The effect was a surprise when from the shelter of the stable wall ten feet below there leaped the great dark Fox. At fifteen feet it paused. Those yellow orbs were fiery in the light and the rifle sights with the specks of fire were lined. There was a sharp report and the black-robed fur was still and limp in the snow.
Who can tell the crack of a small rifle among the louder cracks of green logs splitting with the fierce frost of a Yellowstone winter's night? Why should travel-worn travelers wake at each slight, usual sound? Who knows? Who cares?
And afar in Livingston what did the fur dealer care? It was a great prize. Or the banker? he got his five hundred, and mother found it easy to accept the Indians' creed: "Who owns wild beasts? The man who kills them."
"I did not know how it would come," she said; "I only knew it would come, for I prayed and believed."
We know that it came when it meant the most. The house was saved. It was the turn in their fortune's tide, and the crucial moment of the change was when those three bright sulphur spots were lined with the living lamps in the head of the Silver Fox. Yes! Josh was a poacher. Just once.
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David Starr Jordan (1851—) was for many years president, now president emeritus, of Leland Stanford Junior University, and is known internationally for his books on science and on the prevention of war; he also is author of several books for children. The story that follows is taken from his Science Sketches, by permission of the publishers, A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. It may stand as a perfect illustration of the modern informational story based on recognized scientific facts. "The Story of a Stone," from the same book, is equally good. These stories may be taught in the seventh or eighth grade.