The little raccoon, however, had hardly got by, when Red Fox caught sight of one of his own irrepressible litter stealing up swiftly on the trail. It was the biggest of the whelps, this one, a particularly sturdy and well-grown youngster, who bid fair to one day rival his father in size and strength. He had none of his father’s wisdom, however, or he would not have been following the trail of the whole raccoon family. Red Fox was exasperated at this exhibition of blind, headlong rashness. He saw himself, in a moment more, being drawn into a bloody and altogether unprofitable contention with the big raccoon,—perhaps with her mate also. This was not to be endured. Darting from his hiding-place he stood across the runway, and turned a face of censure upon the foolish puppy. The look and attitude, together with a faint murmur of a growl, conveyed plainly enough to the youngster all that was necessary for him to know. Sullen and unconvinced, the youngster shrank back, turned, and went trotting reluctantly homeward, probably telling himself that his father had some hidden motive for his interference. When he had disappeared up the runway, Red Fox turned his head, and saw the big raccoon just vanishing in the other direction. She had been back to look after her dilatory offspring.
A few days later another of the ambitious puppies, starting out about sunset to follow the trails alone, got himself engaged in an enterprise too great for him. Under a rock on the edge of a little grassy, steeply sloping glade, where the red-gold light fell richly through the thin tree-tops along the lower edge, the youngster had found a woodchuck hole. Very proud and aspiring, he crouched beside it like a cat and waited for the occupant to come out. In a few minutes the occupant did come out,—grumpy woodchuck with a good appetite, starting out to forage for his bloodless evening meal of herbs and roots. The moment he emerged, the rash young fox pounced upon him, expecting an easy and speedy victory. But the woodchuck was no whit dismayed. His squat, brown body, rather fat and flabby-looking, was in reality a mass of vigorous muscles. His long, gnawing teeth, keen-edged as chisels, were very potent weapons. And there was not a drop of craven blood in his sturdy little heart. With an angry, whistling sort of squeak, he turned savagely upon his assailant and set a deep, punishing grip into his neck.
The young fox was startled, and let go his hold with a short yelp at the unaccustomed pain. He was game, however, and reached straightway for another and more effective hold. He bit and bit, slashing his antagonist severely; while the woodchuck, satisfied with the grip he had gained, held on like a bulldog, worrying, worrying, worrying. For perhaps three or four minutes the two thrashed around in the rose-lit grass before the hole,—the inexperienced puppy working desperately and rapidly tiring himself out, while the crafty old woodchuck held on and saved his breath, biding his opportunity. A minute or two more and he would have had the little fox at his mercy, bewildered and exhausted. But just at this critical point in the fight, when victory was already within his reach, he relaxed his hold, violently shook himself free, and darted like a brown streak into his hole.
The old fighter’s cool and watchful eyes had caught sight of Red Fox, slipping swiftly and secretly up along the grassy edge of the glade to his offspring’s rescue. Very well did Red Fox know the woodchuck’s prowess, and he was not dissatisfied with the fight that the youngster had put up. He licked the youngster’s wound approvingly, and then settled himself down by the hole to watch for the woodchuck to come out again. He was willing enough to avenge the youngster’s wound and at the same time dine on plump woodchuck. But he waited in vain. This was a woodchuck of experience and craft. Some eight or ten feet away, behind a thick clump of weeds that grew against a log, he had another doorway to his dwelling. Here, with just his nose stuck out, he himself kept watch upon Red Fox, moveless and patient. For a good half-hour Red Fox watched the first hole, while the woodchuck peered forth from the other; and the coloured sunset faded into the grayness of the dewy forest twilight. Then Red Fox, growing tired of inaction, went off on another and less monotonous quest. The woodchuck stayed indoors for a good hour more, then came forth confidently and went about his harmless business, an enemy to none but grass and leaves.
“SETTLED HIMSELF DOWN BY THE HOLE TO WATCH FOR THE WOODCHUCK TO COME OUT.”
As the summer drew past its full, there crept over all the Ringwaak country a severe and altogether phenomenal drought. For weeks there was no rain, and all day the inexorable sun sucked up the moisture. The streams shrank, the wells in the settlement grew scant and roiled, the forest pools dried up, leaving tangles of coarse, prostrate weeds and ugly spaces of scum-encrusted mud. Under this mud, before it dried, the water insects and larvæ and small crustaceans buried themselves in despairing disgust. Many of the frogs followed this wisely temporizing example; while others, more venturesome and impatient, set out on difficult migrations, questing for springs that the drought could not exhaust. The fields down in the valley, but yesterday so richly green with crops, became patched and streaked with sickly grayish yellows. The maples, and poplars, and birches all over the wooded uplands began to take on autumn tints long before their time,—but with a dull lack-lustre, instead of the thrilling and transparent autumn brilliancy. Only the great balsam poplars, and elms, and water-ash, growing along the little chain of lakes far down the valley and striking roots far down into the damp, kept their green and defied the parching skies.
With this travail of inanimate nature all the furred and feathered life of the wild suffered in sympathy. The stifling and devitalized air set their nerves on edge, as it were. They were harassed with a continual vague discomfort, and could not tell what ailed them. Their old occupations and affairs lost interest. They grew peevish, resentful, quarrelsome. Instead of minding each his own business, and quietly getting out of one another’s way, they would choose rather to go out of their own way to assert their rights; and so there were frequent unnecessary battles, and bloody feuds sprang up where there had of old been a prudent tolerance and respecting of claims. With certain of the animals, indeed, this state of overtense nerves went the length of a kind of madness, till they would run amuck, and blindly attack creatures whose wrath they could not hope to withstand for a moment. For example, a bear, shuffling sulkily down to seek a wallowing-place in some shrunken pool of the brook, was met by a red-eyed, open-jawed mink, which darted at his nose in a paroxysm of insane fury. The little maniac clung to the big beast’s tender snout till he was battered and torn to pieces. Then the bear, injured and furious, hurried on to the brook to bury his bleeding muzzle in the wet mud, for the drawing out of the poison and the assuagement of the pain. The blood of a bear not being very susceptible to such poisons, he was soon none the worse for the strange assault; but some other animals, in a like case, would have probably found themselves inoculated with the assailant’s madness.
“THE LITTLE MANIAC CLUNG TO THE BIG BEAST’S TENDER SNOUT.”