When, somewhat early in the morning, the Boy came to the stall with a dish of water and a tempting piece of ruddy fresh meat, Red Fox gave him one long look of implacable disdain, retreated with dignity to his corner, and ignored the visit resolutely. He was hungry, and very thirsty; but in the visitor’s hated presence he scorned to show either of these needs. When the Boy approached him too closely he would show his white teeth, and a deep, lambent green colour would come into his eyes, almost opaque and seeming like a film drawn over the whole iris. This was a signal meaning “keep off!” and the Boy, understanding it very well, obeyed. As soon as he was gone, Red Fox lapped up the water greedily, and fell upon the raw beef. He had no intention of starving himself, but he was not going to give the Boy the satisfaction of watching him eat.
And now began for the unhappy captive four weeks of monotonous vain longing. Twice a day, in the early morning and in the first of the twilight, he would go through his efforts to escape, testing the chain link by link, and then hopefully burying it in the chaff. Only the attempt to pull the collar over his head he never repeated, so great was his horror of strangling. Meanwhile the Boy was unremitting in his efforts to win the confidence of the splendid captive. Dainties to eat, fresh water twice a day, gentle conversation, quiet, gradual advances, all were faithfully and discreetly tried, but all in vain. At the end of the month the scorn in Red Fox’s eyes was as clear and uncompromising as ever, his glare as greenly menacing and his teeth as implacably displayed, whenever his gaoler came too near. Then, reluctantly, but on his father’s advice, the Boy made up his mind that the tameless captive must be sold.
About this time—for the fame of Red Fox and the story of his capture had spread far beyond the Ringwaak neighbourhoods—a well-dressed stranger appeared at the settlement and asked to see the illustrious fox. The Boy proudly did the honours, and with regret acknowledged his failure to tame the beautiful and sagacious beast. The visitor presently made an offer to buy.
“What do you want him for?” asked the Boy, doubtfully.
The stranger eyed him with care before replying, and understood something of his attitude.
“To sell to some big zoological gardens,” he replied, easily, “where he’ll be thoroughly appreciated.”
Much relieved, the Boy agreed at once, and pocketed a price beyond his wildest hopes. Had he known, however, the purchaser’s real purpose, he would have rejected any price with indignation, and even counted upon Jabe Smith’s backing in the matter. Red Fox was destined, not for a brilliant “zoo,” where he would be a prisoner, indeed, but pampered and admired, but for the depleted coverts of a Hunt Club in one of the great States farther south, where his strength and cunning might be expected to give phenomenal sport before the hounds should finally tear him to pieces. The backwoodsman as well as the Boy had a kind of primitive horror of the formal sport of fox-hunting, which seemed to them a regulated and long-drawn cruelty. It is probable, however, that if they had consulted the wishes of Red Fox himself, that self-confident and indomitable animal would have elected to go with the stranger, choosing the alien coverts with all their loud and appalling perils rather than the hopeless security of the “zoo.”
As it was, however, every one was pleased. The Boy and Jabe had their money; and Red Fox, in his openwork, strong-barred crate, was glad of any change that meant getting away from the gloomy box-stall in the barn. Where there was change there might come opportunity; and at least he was once more moving in the moving sun and air.
The journey from Ringwaak settlements to the nearest railway station was some fifteen miles of rough going in an open express wagon which carried the mails. The crate containing Red Fox and his misfortunes was lashed securely on the top of some heavy boxes, so he could command a view of the bright-coloured, russet and crimson world which he was leaving. Curled up on the bottom of the crate, his watchful eyes stared forth intelligently through the bars, missing nothing, but revealing nothing of the emotions astir behind their clear depths. For a little while the road led through familiar woods and fields. Then these grew strange, but the rampiked, ridgy summit of old Ringwaak, his landmark all his life, remained in view. Then the wagon topped a range of steep uplands and dipped into the rugged wilderness valley of the Ottanoonsis, and Ringwaak was hidden from view. Now, for the first time, Red Fox felt himself an alien and an exile utterly. As the granite rocks, and scraggy white birches, and black patches of hemlock, and naked, bleak, dead trunks closed in about the narrow road, the captive felt for the first time that the old range, and the den on the hillside, and his slim red mate, were lost. For a time his faith in his own wits failed him, and he sank his nose between his paws in despair.
After what seemed to the captive, and hardly less to the well-dressed stranger on the seat beside the driver, an interminable age of jolting, the lonely little backwoods station, a mere red-washed shanty, with a tall water-tank near by, was reached. Here the stranger gave Red Fox a drink, and a liberal chunk of fresh meat to amuse himself with, but made no attempt to cultivate his good-will. Unlike the Boy, he had no wish to conciliate or subdue the captive’s wildness. At last, after an hour’s wait, the train came roaring and clattering down the rails; and Red Fox, in his crate on the platform, shrank back against the bars with starting eyeballs, imagining that the end of all things had come upon the world. When the loud monster had passed him and come to a stop, and he found himself still alive, he was trembling so that he could scarcely stand up; and it seemed a matter of small importance when his crate was thrust into what was evidently a part of the monster, and he was whirled away with sickening motion and bewildering tumult. Not till he had been travelling for nearly a day could he bring himself to eat or drink. Then, little by little, seeing that men lived and were content about him, seeming to have no dread whatever of the monster, he recovered his equanimity and resumed his wonted courage. The process, however, took him another good twenty-four hours, and then, just as he was finding himself master of the situation, the train came to a long stop, and his crate was lifted from the car. Once more he was put into a wagon, and taken for a drive,—first through a wilderness of crowding houses set thick together like trees, then through a pleasant country of gardens diffusing into farms, and at last into a rougher region of pasture fields, and swamps, and thick-wooded knolls. Presently the wagon stopped in front of a low, wide-winged, imposing red structure, where men lounged on the spacious porch, and saddled horses stood before the steps. Here the crate was lifted down, and the stranger began enthusiastically pointing out Red Fox’s beauties and distinctions to a knot of men who had come forward to inspect the heralded prize. Their admiration was unstinted.