Red Ben, the Fox of Oak Ridge

by Joseph Wharton Lippincott

Although Blackie was coaxing him, his caution held him back. He climbed down the same way he had come up and trotted away, not however without first taking a last jolly romp with Blackie and giving a good growl of warning to her disagreeable, black companion. He had three mice for supper. They had been overtaken by the snow away from home, and were rushing back in long leaps when he found them. As soon as dawn came he was again cozily hidden in the thicket.

Later in the morning he noticed excitement among the foxes and saw a boy wheeling a barrow laden with things which he put in the pens. He saw that this boy somehow entered without climbing over the wire.

Red Ben was exceedingly interested in this, so interested that he did not note how carefully the boy walked around Blackie’s pen, looking at the tracks in the snow, nor how long a time he spent fixing something in the pen. Red Ben, indeed, had not yet learned that snow holds footprints and tells the story of the night travels of every creature that touches it. How, therefore, could he guess that everything about his visit was plain to this wide awake boy, who, thrilled by the idea of a big, wild fox being near, was plotting to catch him?

The sun melted very little of the snow, so when he started out that night, the ground was still white and cold. He hurried to Blackie, who frisked about in great excitement at seeing him again. Eagerly he tried the spot where the boy had entered with food and water, but of course was stopped by the peg on the door. Blocked in that hope, he turned to the ladder, and soon was once more on the shed roof, looking down at Blackie’s companion, who was in his usual disagreeable, jealous mood.

It was then that he noticed, for the first time, a ladder leading from the roof into the pen—a ladder very much like the one he had just climbed. He went towards it cautiously. It had not been there the night before. There was also about it the scent of the boy, but no more noticeably than on other things, such as the gate. Still, he feared it.

Perhaps he would have left the place without venturing to set foot on it, if at that moment Blackie had not given a shrill whine of fear. She was crouching in a corner of the pen with the black fox standing menacingly before her.

Down the ladder sprang Red Ben, his heart fairly afire. Before the snarling black knew what had happened, he was rolling in a whirlwind of snow, with jaws like iron closing on his furry neck. His snarl suddenly changed into a whine of abject fear; then Red Ben let him up.

However, the black one was treacherous. He sneaked around the pen, and when Red Ben was looking with wild eyes at the ladder which had suddenly fallen, rushed up and caught him in the flank. Down went Red Ben, but so quickly that the other was also thrown off his feet.

How they fought, there in the dark, on the trampled snow! How fur flew! Little tufts of it dotted the yard; black tufts they were, worth many dollars apiece. But what cared Red Ben?—as soon as the ladder fell he knew he had been trapped—he, who had laughed at all the traps on Oak Ridge. Bitterly he fought until the black one had more than enough and cowered like a scared rat in the farthest corner of the shed. Then Red Ben let loose his muscles in the wildest leaps and the most frantic rushes of his life. Madly he ran around and around the enclosure, or up the quivering wire.

Blackie could not be made to understand what was the matter. She was a ranch bred fox; this was her home. But to Red Ben, reared in the wild tangles of the Ridge and Swamp, freedom meant everything. He would have it!