He was too much excited to aim well; the bullets went wild and the fox went on. The farmer, however, would not believe he had made a clean miss. Out to the fields he ran to see if a tuft of fur could be found on the ground.
He was walking around and around, growing more and more angry because where the fox had been he found only the white feathers of his pet hen, when out from the woods burst a neighboring farmer.
“Ben,” this man called, “Ben, get your shovel, quick! I’ve just found the red fox’s den!”
CHAPTER II
THE DEN
When the fox was making her wild rush to the woods, with the white hen held high in her strong jaws, she was thinking more about the four hungry pups in the home burrow than about the fuss she had left behind in the farmyard. In the friendly shelter of the woods, however, she began to feel very uneasy about it all. Everything had certainly gone wrong.
She laid down the limp body of the hen and looked back. Through the laurel and the straight trunks of the pines she could see the flat stretch of the fields she had just left. Ben Slown’s hurrying figure was there, but too far back to worry her now. There were no dogs loose, nothing else moving except three crows that were circling to find out what had happened to arouse the farmer.
“A gray squirrel was watching her”
Ahead of her lay Oak Ridge and the Swamp. What breeze there was came from that direction, laden with the smell of sweet fern. Still she felt uneasy. Her quick ear caught the scratching of claws on bark—a red headed woodpecker was examining a dead oak; that was all right. So also was the barking of a gray squirrel which was watching her from the limb of a pine. But why were the blue jays calling so loudly on the Ridge? Perhaps some enemy was near the pups.
Quickly picking up the hen she galloped towards the Ridge in that wonderfully silent way known only to the wild things.