The Way of the Wild

by F. St. Mars

The chain-trail of the moorhen reduplicated itself. It was joined by that of a water-rail—they saw his ruby eyes and rat-like form in passing. The fourfold track of a rabbit led the way ahead of them, as if pointing the path, to be joined by the broken footprints of another rabbit, and then by the track made by the longer leap of a hare, fourfold also. The delicate lined marks left by a wood-mouse now kept company with the others, and anon the little fairy imprints of two field-voles—short-tailed field-mice, if you prefer. They crossed the track of another rabbit going, at right-angles, down to the water to drink, and then the little, busy tattoo of bank-voles. Another hare's trail, and more rabbits' tracks, began to meander about, but all heading more or less one way—the way they were going. And then they stopped dead at the smudged groove and ancient and fish-like scent of an otter. Moreover, they had scarcely got over that than they came upon the dog-like tracks, and the smell, like nothing else, of Reynard, the fox; and, with nerves fairly tingling now, and eyes everywhere at once, they arrived at last—as the converging trails seemed to say they would—at the towering, smudged blur against the sky, which was the farm-buildings.

The black rat peered under the lower rung of a gate into a straw-yard, and heard the rustlings of little folk—field-vole, bank-vole, and wood-mouse—who had gone before him. There was no sign of the others; but that was not strange, for the hares and the rabbits had probably gone round to the kitchen-garden, for which they were making in their extremity of hunger; and the otter and the fox were, most likely, keeping each other off the fowlhouse.

Wherefore, plucking up courage, the black rat skipped into the yard, and made straight for the manger, where, in the inky blackness under the open-sided roofs, he could hear the long-drawn blowing and sigh of fat cattle lying down.

A pale moon came out behind him, and showed him tripping lightly over a bullock's broad back. Then he was up on the manger-edge, had paused to make sure, and was down in the manger, picking up crumbs and dust of linseed-cake and chaff. Three mice were doing the same thing, but fled at his approach; but he did not trouble about that, for the cattle had not left even him and his wife a full meal, having blown what was left of the chaff away, and licked up practically all of the cake-crumbs and dust. However, it was better than nothing.

The rat's natural curiosity was awakened, and his comparative warmth in this place, out of the razor-edged wind—oh, what a relief to be out of that infernal sawing blast!—made him explore. And he ran along the edge of the manger to a hole in the wall, which led—the peculiar and indescribable smell said so—through to the pig-sties. But here he stopped, and his wife behind him stopped. Some one was coming through from the opposite side—some one who smelt very much worse than any pig.

Next instant both black rats had gone off together like sparks—if ever sparks were black—and the brown rat, coming through the hole, wondered what on earth had happened. Then he sniffed at their trail, tried, but found it impossible, to follow, and passed on. He would have felt great pleasure in slaying them if he could, and they knew that.

The black rat now essayed to cross the yard to the stable. He could not very well stop there—up among the rafters, that is—all night, so he came down, and, with his wife following him, gingerly rustled out upon the partially snow-covered straw.

Then he got a shock that turned him into a winking series of black streaks.

Then he got another shock which turned him, literally, into—well, into black lightning. You never saw anything like it in all your life. You never would have believed that any living beast could have so frantically and so furiously got itself about from place to place so instantaneously. It was—dazzling. It made you blink. It was It in the agility line, and no mistake.

Firstly, the brown rat, having hidden up in some black corner, with brown-rat cunning, came hopping out instantly—nay, charging—on the black rat's trail. And there was murder in his wicked, little, glinting eyes at he came.