“The gray fox was leading bravely.”[Frontispiece]
“Zigzagging nimbly, he strove to elude his pursuer”[41]
“What was this upon his bridge!”[102]
“The King stopped long enough to throw back his head and give one terrifying scream of victory”[143]

THE RACE OF THE SWIFT

THE RACE OF THE SWIFT

A HALVED moon was shedding a faint glow over the rugged knob country. The twisted, broken, distorted ground, with its spasmodic growth of blackberry, sassafras, and juniper bushes, seemed the center of desolation. But something was living, moving, in the midst of this loneliness. Creeping along a ragged fence line at the base of a knob went a stealthy figure. Sharp-muzzled, keen-eyed, lean of body and wiry of limb, the object moved forward at a swift trot. The night was young. Scarcely had the salmon tints which the sun had left in the west disappeared. Through the pure, lambent air the rolling tones of the farmer could be heard as he called his pigs home. Above the high hills gleamed the timid tapers of the early stars. A low breeze was chanting a gentle vesper among the pines and oaks upon the knob-side. A blundering rabbit butted blindly through the weeds on the creek bank; a bullfrog, fat and inert, bellowed forth his thunderous note; a muskrat splashed softly from a half-sunken log and spread his flat paddles to propel him to his hidden home. A whip-poor-will’s heart-broken tones came from a point further down the hollow. Nature was saying that the day was gone.

The she-fox trotting by the worm-eaten fence stopped abruptly. The fence was curving around the knob, and this did not coincide with her purpose. She stopped with one fore foot upheld, and ears pricked attentively. The sounds she heard were familiar, legitimate; a part of her nightly life. The she-fox was painfully attenuated. Her tawny body was barred with bulging ribs; there was a gaunt, starved look upon her bony face. The two rows of teats along her belly were clean and bare—even moist, for ten minutes ago a half dozen tiny tongues had striven vainly to draw nourishment from them. But she had none to give. For two days and nights she had tasted food but once, and during that time her hungry brood had insistently drawn her very life from her hour after hour. She had given it freely and without grudge, licking caressingly first one baby form and then another; had even borne unflinchingly the sharp nips from little teeth when the milk would not flow. The night before she had ranged for miles, though so weak that only the deathless strength of her mother-love sustained her in her quest. Not far from her home was a place where human-people lived. But they were wary, and placed their hens and chickens under lock and key at the going down of every sun. Thither had she gone first, because it was the closest, but not a feather could she find. At the corner of the hen-house she stopped and sniffed eagerly. Beyond the white-washed planks were scores of fat fowls, and the she-fox knew it, but they were safe from her long, white teeth. She listened. The sound of rustling feathers and drowsy clucks smote her ears, and the saliva of famine dripped from the loose skin of her lower jaw. Emboldened by desperation, she walked around the building. At the bottom of the door a hole had been cut, so that the fowls could enter when the door was shut. But this was secured by a plank, which in turn was held in place by a heavy stone. She could not move it, because she was weak from fasting. Thrusting her sharp, black nose into a crack about an inch wide between the planks, she drank in the ravishing odor of many a choice pullet. Suddenly realizing that this course was worse than futile, she turned, vaulted the fence enclosing the cow-lot, swerved around a prostrate, ponderous figure sleepily chewing its cud, and vanished in the direction of the stable. Here, likewise, her investigation was fruitless, so she gave up and turned her head towards another farm-house, five miles away.

The journey, which ordinarily would not have caused the least fatigue, came near to overcoming the dauntless forager. Near her destination she tottered to a brook and sank in the cool water, lapping it at intervals. This brought back some of her strength, and she essayed to complete her task. Through the orchard she trailed; then suddenly her delicate nostrils conveyed to her subtle brain some welcome intelligence. Stopping about twenty feet from the yard fence, she reconnoitred. A big walnut tree grew close to the fence, and upon the limbs of this tree were some huge, shapeless knots; knots with convex backs and drooping tails; turkeys! The eyes of the starved raider glowed green and blue. Here was a feast. Strength for her, and life for her little ones back in their rocky den, crawling blindly about and wailing piteously for food. Softly as a moonbeam she crept forward, then came to a halt in dismay and sank upon her haunches. The plank with strips nailed across it, by the aid of which the turkeys gained their roost, had been removed and lay there upon the ground before her, to mock her baffled hopes and her bitter despair. With a keen sense of distances, she measured with her eye the height of the lowest limb from the ground. It was not far; she had made greater leaps time and again. But now her leaden, paralyzed limbs could scarcely carry her pinched body over the ground. To make the effort would be suicide. The dog-pack were sleeping somewhere near by, and their sleep was light! A cracking twig would rouse them, and that night she could not lead them. There were babies at home who needed her; she dared not make the attempt. One of the knots on a limb moved cautiously, then toppled. The watcher sprang forward eagerly, to again meet with disappointment. The sleepy wings flapped once or twice, a new footing was secured, and the head of the restless turkey receded into the neck feathers as the fowl relapsed into slumber. After a few moments the dull red shadow on the ground moved on again, hunger-mad, yet crafty. Into the confines of the yard crept the fox—up to a long, tall bench by the kitchen door. The scent of something strangely like fresh meat had reached her. There was a vessel of some sort covered with a piece of wood on the bench. To leap up and muzzle off the cover was the work of a second. And there was the dressed carcass of a chicken soaking overnight to serve as a breakfast for the human-people in the morning. Quickly as a star twinkles she of the forest-folk had the spoil in her strong jaws. Softly as a shadow falling she dropped to earth; swiftly as the wind she glided through the long corn rows growing in the garden back of the house, and was soon a mile away, safe, because unpursued. Then she sank upon her belly, and ate, and ate. Crunched the tender bones and the juicy flesh, impregnated as they were with salt, and gradually she felt the glad elation of returning strength. Through her worn, famished body renewed life was running, although the edge of her hunger had barely been removed. She lay quiet for a while, gathering together the taxed forces of her being, and thinking of the miles stretching between her and the little ones. But before the shadows upon the hill-tops turned into the misty halos of morning, six tiny forms lay at their mother’s breasts, well-fed and asleep.

Now another day had come and gone, and she was as bad off as before. Her mate, who had bided with her until the babies came, had tired of her and gone to seek a fairer wench, leaving her unaided to provide for the offsprings of their wild, free love. She had planned and worked, plotted and slain. The floor of the den was covered with feathers and sprinkled with broken bones—dry bones which she had cracked in desperation while searching for sustenance. It was a fight all the time. Fight for food; fight to live. So when the night had barely come, and the salmon tints in the west were yet a shadow, the she-fox nosed her importunate progeny into a whining heap at one side of the den and slipped softly without and moved down the hill-side, her waving tail like a smouldering torch in the gloom of the woods.