"Let him bite," said Tom. "I'll resk him when once I get these two bread-hooks on him. And he can't smell me through the mouse-nests either."
That night we set ourselves to put the stratagem in operation. With the dusk we stole out into the field where the stone-heaps were, and where we had oftenest heard foxes bark. Selecting a nook in the edge of a clump of raspberry briars which grew about a great pine-stump, Tom lay down, and I covered him up completely with the contents of the big basket. He then practiced squeaking and rustling several times to be sure that all was in good trim. His squeaks were perfect successes—made by sucking the air sharply betwixt his teeth.
"Now be off," said Tom, "and don't come poking around, nor get in sight, till you hear me holler."
Thus exhorted, I went into the barn and established myself at a crack on the back side, which looked out upon the field where Tom was ambushed.
Tom, meanwhile, as he afterward told me, waited till it had grown dark, then began squeaking and rustling at intervals, to draw the attention of the fox when first he should come out into the clearing, for foxes have ears so wonderfully acute, that they are able to hear a mouse squeak twenty rods away, it is said.
An hour passed. Tom must have grown pretty tired of squeaking. It was a moonless evening, though not very dark. I could see objects at a little distance through the crack, but could not see so far as the stump. It got rather dull, watching there; and being amidst nice cozy straw, I presently went to sleep, quite unintentionally. I must have slept some time, though it seemed to me but a very few minutes.
What woke me was a noise—a sharp suppressed yelp. It took me a moment to understand where I was, and why I was there. A sound of scuffling and tumbling on the ground at some distance assisted my wandering wits, and I rushed out of the barn and ran toward the field. As I ran, two or three dull whacks came to my ear.
"Got him, Tom?" I shouted, rushing up.
Tom was holding and squeezing one of his hands with the other and shaking it violently. He said not a word, and left me to poke about and stumble on the limp warm carcass of a large fox that lay near.
"Bite ye?" I exclaimed, after satisfying myself that the fox was dead.