CHAPTER PAGE I. [The Coming of the Red Fox] 13 II. [The Den] 20 III. [Learning to Hunt] 35 IV. [Other Woodsfolk] 45 V. [Gray Fox] 56 VI. [A Long Chase] 67 VII. [Red Ben Is Alone] 75 VIII. [The Woods Awake] 83 IX. [Studying the Enemy] 93 X. [Jim Crow’s Signal] 101 XI. [How Others Hunt] 110 XII. [Ben’s Hundred Dollar Fox] 121 XIII. [Red Ben Travels] 130 XIV. [Blackie] 138 XV. [Freedom Is Sweet] 153 XVI. [The Road to the Sea] 162 XVII. [The Other Fox] 172 XVIII. [Home Again] 183
Illustrations
[“Blackie instantly stopped”]Frontispiece PAGE [Fox track]18 [“A gray squirrel was watching her”]21 [“He became indignant”]39 [Coon tracks]40 [“Flying Squirrel, one of the very nicest of the woodsfolk”]52 [“Gray Fox was waiting to trap him”]61 [Red Ben]63 [Red Ben’s Mother]72 [The Mole]85 [Deer Mouse]86 [Shrew]86 [“’Possum fell over backwards”]90 [“They sat on their tails and held hands”]113 [“Muskrat was busy pulling up grass”]115 [“A turkey buzzard had been circling over him”]133 [“They tore at each other through the wire”]140 [“She stood on the threshold of the pen”]154 [“Two coons who were having a loud altercation”]163 [’Possum tracks]166 [“Holding to a limb with all four feet”]185
RED BEN,
The Fox of Oak Ridge
CHAPTER I
THE COMING OF THE RED FOX
In the state of New Jersey there are still thousands of acres of low-lying woodlands, called pine barrens, where man has done little except chop down a few trees. Slowly but surely, however, the farmers are each year pushing their clearings deeper into this section, gradually overcoming the last barriers which Nature sets up to protect her own.
Ben Slown was one of these farmers. When the forest had been cut, he built a square house and a square barn. He planted straight-rowed orchards, he fenced in square, flat fields. He succeeded so well in stamping out all the natural loveliness that other practical farmers came there to start practical farms like his.
Soon there was a village; but Ben Slown’s square fields and the edge of the wild, interesting Pine Barrens were never separated, because no plow could conquer Oak Ridge and Cranberry Swamp.
The Ridge was a long mound covered with laurel, pines and white oaks. Cranberry Swamp, on the other hand, was low, wet ground which bore a nearly impenetrable mass of greenery, largely made up of tall cedars, holly bushes and cat briars. Through the swamp flowed a little creek in whose deep eddies green waterweeds swung with the current, giving glimpses now and then of turtles and slender, watchful pike.
When Ben Slown first planned to come to the Pine Barrens, his friends gloomily shook their heads.