Master Reynard: The History of a Fox

by Jane Fielding; J. C. Tregarthen

What a weary journey it was over the snow! How I floundered through the deep drift that separated me from my cover, and how glad I was to reach the friendly shelter of the brake! It was good to be screened from the eyes of the countless wild-fowl who had watched the fight, and whose cries had sounded like jeers as I tottered across the wide ice-field. There is little bark left in a fox when the quacking of ducks disconcerts him and makes his brake a welcome refuge.

I sat down under the furze, brushed the bloody feather from my muzzle and licked my paws, which had been cut by the sharp-edged ice in my mad struggles to get out of the water. Though dawn was some two hours off, I had no heart for any more hunting; so I made for my lair, which I reached by way of the brambly thicket above the quarry, and, after shaking my coat again, crept to where my snug kennel lay under its double roof of gorse and snow. There, hidden from all eyes and from the bright lights of the frosty sky, I curled up in the cup of dry spines with my brush about my nose, and heedless of the gale that raged above but could not reach me, forgot my troubles in sleep.

The hounds drew the tor wood once, and only once, after the thaw, and did not pay a single visit to our brake, though the earth was stopped three times before the end of the season. The explanation is probably to be found in the heavy rains which flooded the fen and made the country unfit for hunting; big pools were found where none were seen before, and the springs which broke out in many new places, together with the surface-drainage of rain and melted snow, not only kept them full, but seemed to turn every bit of spongy ground into a quagmire.

Left to myself, I was as happy as a fox can be, and, forgetting the hardships I had passed through, looked forward with pleasurable anticipation—as, indeed, every wilding does—to the golden days of summer, when troubles are few and delights many. Yet the tamarisks had hardly begun to feather before there was brought into the countryside a hound which proved the most terrible enemy that ever shadowed my life.

That the farmer had need of a more watchful guardian for the poultry yard than old Shep I knew well enough from the serious losses he had sustained. Besides fowls and ducks, even geese and turkeys had been carried off, some by day under cover of mist and drizzling rain, but mostly at night. I had seen foxes returning from that direction with birds in their mouths; I had actually come on the caches, both inside and outside our brake, where they had buried what they could not take away; and this wholesale plundering caused me great anxiety, because I knew it would lead to reprisals. But I never dreamt in my most troubled moments of the scourge that was being prepared. Even had I known that old Shep was to be superseded and another farm-dog put in his place the news would not have alarmed me in the least, because of the contempt I felt for the few specimens I had seen. But I was now to learn that there are farm-dogs and farm-dogs.

As soon as the new dog was led home I came on evidence of his work. I found the body of a fox near the gap of a reclaimed field that had recently been filched from our cover, and could see by the fang-marks in his chest that he had been murdered. Now it was impossible that old Shep should be the culprit. He was always asleep at midnight, and bore a good character amongst us for utter harmlessness; yet everything pointed to his guilt. A double trail led from the warm carcass towards the farm buildings, and one was the trail of a dog. I walked slowly up the hill, trying to unravel the mystery, and had scarcely passed over the crest when a loud bay, very different from old Shep's, broke the stillness of the night and explained everything. Whilst I listened it was repeated again and again, and its meaning was unmistakable. It was a warning to the fox from the new guardian of the farmyard that the days of robbery without punishment were past, and that a new régime had begun. I yapped no reply, for it was best to let this dangerous customer believe that the fox he had killed was a stranger to the district, and that none frequented the wild within reach of his voice.

I was very miserable now. Putting all together, I was convinced that the newcomer would prove a dangerous enemy; and yet I felt that I ought to see him, for I recollected my mother's story of the fox who, like the otter in the quaking bog, judged the jackass by his bray, and suffered agonies until he cast eyes on him.

The opportunity offered a few days later without my seeking it. On a lovely spring morning such as Nature often lavishes on her wildlings, I lay stretched out amongst the scattered furze-bushes enjoying the warmth of the sun, without a thought of any intrusion on the peaceful scene. The lambs were bleating in the field next the dunes, the rooks cawing in the leafing elms, and the farm-boy, whom I could not see for the thicket of blackthorns at the foot of the croft, was singing the drowsy song he sang always at his work. A magpie on the tallest of the blackthorns seemed unusually interested in either the boy or his work; but I thought nothing of that. Presently, however, to my surprise, it began mobbing some creature. Then I rose to my feet, almost expecting to view a fox, when, to my amazement, I saw a huge dog leave the thicket and come into the open. It was the new hound, and the sight of him made me catch my breath. What struck me most—for without it, size and strength of jaw signify nothing—was the speed I read in his long muscular limbs. He moved with an ease I had never seen in any other dog. Had his hind-quarters sloped like mine, I should, like the magpie, have taken him for a denizen of the wild; but the defect betrayed him as the servant of man.

My curiosity was excited, and I would not steal away to the near brake until I had discovered what his business was. It was of the simplest. He stopped about half-way up the hill at a spot full in the hot sun, turned round two or three times as I do to make my bed, and laid himself down amongst the tussocks of grass. I watched his bloodshot eyes blink in the blazing light; noted his restlessness, the twitching of his cropped ears, and the quivering of his great nostrils, even whilst he seemed to doze; studied his huge bull-terrier head, raised when a yellowhammer settled on the golden bush behind him; shuddered at the array of crowded teeth when he yawned.