At the foot of a great boulder, high up on Carboona, Baltook, the Silver Fox, had his den. It was a wonderful look-out place from which to observe the world, and Baltook was a first-class observer. What his piercing eyes didn't see, or his sharp ears detect, was caught by the amazing keenness of his nose. When the forest people glided softly from the good green gloom of the trees, Baltook marked them the moment they appeared. Below the level of his den went the runways of half the lower world. Deer, badger, mink, hare, opossum, took their ways delicately along the trails, and, all unconsciously to themselves, were instantly noted by Baltook's gleaming eyes. But whatever fine housings of hair or fur they wore, they paled before the splendour of Baltook in his wonderful black robe powdered with silver hairs.
No other fox on all Carboona had such a coat as he. Even in shadow it was beautiful; and when the fine machinery of his muscles moved beneath it in the sun, it rippled silver lights. And Baltook was as splendid as his coat. Certainly, his mate, Boola; the Cunning One, was convinced that he was lord of all the foxes; and as for the cubs, they would have been equally convinced, if it had not been for a drawback which they couldn't help, and that was, they were too young to have any views about it at all. Besides, up to the present, they had had to do chiefly with their mother, and it was only recently that their father had appeared to be a person of great importance as the bringer of choice food, which they were allowed to worry and chew and swallow like the shameless little Greedinesses they were. And when they had finished a meal, they simply went to sleep, and slept and slept and slept, till they seemed to be furry lumps of warm fat sleep, all neatly rolled up with their noses under their tails.
One day, Baltook was sitting on his favourite look-out place on Carboona about a dozen yards from his den, gazing down into the green and golden depths of the drowsy afternoon.
To all outward appearances, the world looked pretty much as it had done for the last ten thousand years. So had the hemlocks looked, so had the spruces, ever since the first fox had made his earth upon Carboona, and the world of the foxes had clashed with, that of the lynxes, and the old hatred began. But Baltook was not thinking of lynxes today, not indeed of anything else in particular. He had just feasted off a very plump rabbit, and inside the den, the family was busy wrangling over the bones. So the possibilities of other game did not tickle his brain, although his nose kept up a series of fine wrinklings, just from force of habit, to find what sort of folk might be walking down the wind.
Yet in spite of everything looking so thousands-of-years-the-same, something very important was happening, after which Carboona would be never quite the same.
There were strangers walking in the wind!
If Baltook did not scent them, that was no fault of his nose. If you sit very high up you cannot expect your nose to tell you what is happening very far down. It is along the level of the runways that the nose does its business; and Baltook's nose forgot to be very busy, even where he sat.
Down, down, down, through the vast forests of spruce and fir, with here and there a sycamore, or some huge hemlock that seemed to have hugged five hundred winters to its old black heart, the strange folk came journeying on scarcely-sounding feet. The forest was so thick, and the ground so springy with fir-needles, that Baltook's eyes and ears gave him no more warning than his nose. Yet a vague murmur of softly-padding feet was audible,—to ears near enough to catch it—the ears of the little peoples that live close along the ground.
At the doorways of little underground dwellings between the twisted fir-roots, small furry bodies, with long tails, and eyes like sparkles of black dew, crouched quivering with expectancy, as the murmuring sound went by. To them, it was like the boom of walking thunder, far away, but drawing nearer. And the tiny eyes brightened, and the tiny whiskers twitched as two enormous shapes went glimmering past their doors. And for a long, long time afterwards, the little under-root dwellings were stuffy with uneasy people who comforted themselves together in the good grey gloom.
Immediately below the spot where Baltook sat, the lowest fringe of forest ended in a dried stream-course, filled with boulders. From a spring on the nearer bank, a narrow thread of water trickled into a pool. Above the spring the ground was rocky and clear of trees; and between the rocks the grass was short and fine, showing that deer and rabbits found it good grazing ground. (Baltook could have told you all about the rabbits, but he did not dare to meddle with the deer.) Within this open space, as the silver fox looked dreamily down, there appeared, to his utter amazement, two unexpected shapes.