So Sharp Eyes was sold to the very hunter from whose trap Don had helped him to escape, though the fox did not know this was the same man and the dog who had chased him. The dog was sniffing and snuffing around the trap.
“Come away from there, Skip!” ordered his master. “You can’t chase that fox. I’ve got him safe now.”
So the hunter paid Tom a goodly sum of money for the silver fox, and took him away in a box, into which he was turned from the trap. The rooster was let out of his side of the trap, being no longer needed for bait. And my! how gladly that rooster crowed! He must have felt, all the while, that he was going to be eaten by the fox.
As for Sharp Eyes, the hunter carried him away through the woods, to his own log cabin, putting him in a strong box, on a wagon drawn by a horse.
“Well, I wonder what will happen to me next,” thought the silver fox. “I seem to have gone from one trap to another. But this one is larger than the one where the rooster was.”
This was not really a trap, it was a box, and it had some soft straw in it on which Sharp Eyes could lie down. And he was so tired, and lonesome for his own folks, that he stretched out and tried to sleep. But it was hard work, for the wagon jolted over the rough roads of the forest. Sharp Eyes had been sold, and was going to have some new adventures, but just what kind he did not know.
CHAPTER VIII
SHARP EYES GOES TRAVELING
For many days, weeks and months Sharp Eyes was kept shut up in a box at the cabin of the hunter who had bought him from Tom. The silver fox was not kept in the same small cage in which he had traveled through the woods. The hunter knew better than to do that, for he wanted the fox to be well and strong, so his fur would grow thicker and longer and more fluffy as Sharp Eyes grew.