“They are not as big as a rooster or a wild turkey,” said Sharp Eyes, “but they will do for a start. We can’t catch big things every day.”
Twinkle and Winkle were quite delighted with the mice. They were the first things they had caught, except some grasshoppers, and they felt a little bit proud of themselves.
From then on the little foxes hunted every day. Twinkle and Winkle soon learned to do nearly as well as Sharp Eyes, but their brother could always see things in the woods before they could.
His eyes seemed to grow sharper and brighter each day, and he could tell a turkey, a partridge or other wild bird a long way off, so that even his father used to say:
“Sharp Eyes is the best hunter of us all. He is a fine fox!”
Not far from where these foxes lived was another family, not quite the same kind, though. One of these foxes, named Red Tail, as he heard Sharp Eyes tell of having caught the rooster, said one day:
“You had better look out for yourself, Sharp Eyes.”
“Why had I, Red Tail?”
“Oh, because,” was the answer, and that was all Red Tail would say just then.
“Pooh! I s’pose he means a hunter might shoot me,” said Sharp Eyes. “But I’m not afraid. I’m going off in the woods now and see what I can find for dinner.”