Vulpes, the Red Fox

by Jean Craighead George

  “Still didn’t get that old prince,” he murmured. “Still can’t outwit him.” Somehow he felt that no one ever would.

  Jim Gordon stretched out on the bunk in his farmhouse. He was too tired to get up and prepare supper. He smiled to himself as he thought that a slim little fox had worn him out. Gordon dropped to sleep thinking of the clever animal that had outdone them all.

  The next morning he went over to Buck’s to inquire about Joe and Brownie.

  The old Red Bone had not moved from his spot. Buck was gone when Gordon knocked at the door.

  “He’s out hunting for Joe,” May said. “He is sure something happened to that dog and it kind of knocked the spirits out of him.”

  “Which way did he go?” Gordon asked. May pointed down the road and the young man strode off to help in the search.

  Vulpes had returned to the laurel slick and slept away the night. He had not even looked for food. At dawn he skirted the near-by woods for mice and rabbits. He heard Fulva running along the stream toward the river. For several minutes he listened to her light feet flying along the leaves. Then he turned away from Muddy Branch and left the area. Vulpes returned to his early homeland. He had enough of the hunt.

  He did not wait for Fulva. It was early winter and he was willing to spend the next few months by himself. Later he would come back to her again. Now, however, he wanted to be alone and free in the winter hills. His resilient muscles carried him effortlessly away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  YEARS LATER THE PEOPLE of the Potomac still talked of the big hunt. Some retold the stories that Buck Queen and Will Stacks had told and elaborated on the events. Others said they had seen Vulpes at night wandering along the farm stealing chickens and pigs and lambs. Others said that they had heard him call at night and that his voice resounded from mountain to mountain. Many were the tall tales about Vulpes, the Red Fox. He had become famous, and it was reported by those who had never seen a fox that he was as big as a setter and wild as a timber wolf.

  But Vulpes had spent these years quietly in the Muddy Branch region. He returned to his favorite haunt each spring to seek Fulva and they had raised many families in the seclusion of the glades and beech trees. Little disturbed his life after the big hunt and but for casual races with the young pups, Vulpes had no real challenging sport.

  For Brownie had dropped from the hunts after the now famous thirty-six-hour chase. Buck knew that his dog was no longer equal to the demands of the fox hunt, so he used Brownie for night work on coons and possums.

  One night Buck was out in the woods with Brownie after a coon whose tracks he had noticed down in the flats that day. Brownie still had his keen nose and quick instincts and did not need his old endurance on these hunts.

  Buck and Brownie followed the road leading to the flats and turned off below the gate that enclosed the next property. They started up a hill, the dog working through the area they were covering to find the coon. Suddenly the hound hit Vulpes’ trail. He bayed and started off in pursuit. Buck called to him and he circled back reluctantly and made an effort to trail the coon. But his love of the hunt was too great. He started off on Vulpes’ scent once more and wound down through the woods. Buck called, and then stopped to listen. He was sure it was Vulpes that Brownie was chasing for the old hunter understood his hound perfectly. Buck turned to retrace his steps as he heard the baying of the Red Bone die away in the hills. The dog would do this only when alone. If he were with a pack he would never have attempted the chase because he could no longer lead. He had spent himself on the big hunt. Buck left the hound and the red fox to their woodland paths and wandered slowly home, the thrilling sound of the hunt ringing softly far away.

  Vulpes heard Brownie while stalking a rabbit in a field. He stood still and his ears twitched forward. The strong giant fox, now in the prime of his years, turned his head in the direction of the baying. He knew it was Brownie and that he had come trailing him through the woods for the love of the chase. The great fox waited and then started out slowly to lead his friend down the hills and over the glades of their youth.

  The hound was lumbering along puffing hard on the hills and rushing down them in such a way that he caught his breath. Vulpes remembered their old games and he waded shallow streams for a few yards to give the dog a rest and to challenge him with their old sports. Brownie worked out each puzzle quickly, for he knew just what the fox would do. For several hours they played, Vulpes crossing fallen trees, Brownie picking up his trail on the other side, Vulpes backtracking on his trail, Brownie finding the spot where he had vaulted to one side. Then the dog felt his age and the old pains shot through his legs again. He slowed down and finally came to a stop. With a last resounding bay, he turned to go home.

  Vulpes heard him give up the hunt and ran back over his trail to the knoll of the hill where he could see the dark shadow of the Red Bone limping off through the woods. He put his head down and barked his slurring yap. Brownie halted to look back a moment, but then moved on. The fox came a few yards closer and sat down in the leaves. He watched the hound until he disappeared in the night, and his scent was carried off by the wind.

  Vulpes got up and resumed his search for food.

  Brownie came up to Buck’s door about an hour after the old hunter had fallen asleep and barked as he had always done when returning from a fox hunt. Buck had dropped off to sleep in his big chair by the fire, waiting for his dog to come home. He came out and patted his head. Brownie’s food was ready and Buck led the dog back to his kennel. As they went, Brownie lifted his head high as he passed the kennels of the younger dogs who had been awakened by the commotion and had stepped from their doors to inquire into the reason.

  “Good old Brownie,” Buck said as he tied the dog to his leash. “You love to run that fellow, don’t you? ’Deed you do, Brownie, ’deed you do.”

  The next night Will Stacks came by to visit Buck. He brushed his feet clean on the doormat and walked out of the cold night into the warm kitchen.

  “Good evening, May,” he said as he dropped his coat on a chair.

  “Good evening, Will. Go right in. Buck is in by the stove.” The two men took seats by the fire and puffed away on their pipes in silence.

  “Heard from that big old red fox last night,” Buck began.

  “Is that so? I reckon he’ll be around for a long time. I still haven’t been able to set a trap that’ll fool him.”

  “Old Brownie got him up,” Buck went on, pursuing his own trend of thought. “Yep, he got up a fox, and just as sure as I’m alive it was that old Vulpes we chased on the big hunt. Brownie lit out after him like I haven’t seen him do in years.”

  Will sat quietly thinking of the beautiful wild creature that had figured so deeply in the lives of the men.

  “Noticed a lot of gray foxes lately,” said Buck. “Seem to be coming in in big numbers the last year or so.”

  “I’ve noticed that myself,” the trapper agreed. “Get an awful lot of them. So many I’m wondering if it’s worth trapping any more. Getting old, I guess, but it seems like too much trouble to take just to get a gray fox.”

  “Wonder what the reason is?” asked Buck.

  “Well, I don’t know, but it may be that a lot of these wealthy city people buying up the woodlots and moving in has something to do with it. That’s the red fox’s territory, you know, and people living right on top of ’em doesn’t please ’em any. They aren’t buying those old wet bottoms where the gray fox lives, and I guess that’s why they’re getting by better.”

  “Well, that just might be right,” said Buck after a pause, “but I don’t know. We just don’t know all the answers, do we, Will?”

  “Sure don’t.”

  “I hear Charlie is right bad off. A very old and feeble man now. All the old fellows are gone except you and me, Will.”

  “Yes. Well, I guess we’re still a match for most of ’em. I’ll bet we could still outwalk that young Gordon on a hunt.”

  “I would li
ke to get hold of one more good dog man,” said Buck, thinking about the hunt. “I want to raise me some more good hounds. One more like old Brownie or old Joe and we could get that red fox.”

  “Did I tell you about the time I tracked Vulpes?” Will asked.

  “Don’t remember that you did.”

  “I’ve been tracking him in the snow. I’ve been doing that a good bit, Buck. Want to find out all I can about that old dog fox. Figure if I learn that one, I’ll be able to match the best of ’em.”

  “Tracks in the snow sure tell the story, Will.”

  “I jumped him one day after following his footsteps for about a mile. He had checked each squirrel digging, investigated each burrow and tuft of grass. He sure is a thorough-going critter. He doesn’t miss a trick. Then, all of a sudden, I stirred him from a sleep in that old laurel thicket near Muddy Branch and he glided out of there just like an arrow. Well, I tracked him a while longer and then turned to go home.

  “Soon I noticed fox tracks alongside my footsteps that I had left while going the other way. And do you know, Buck, that old fox was trailing me while I was trailing him! I don’t think I would have ever caught him.”

  “That’s a clever animal, Will. He sure is a cunning thing.”

  Buck was laughing pleasantly when a knock at the door aroused the two men. They heard May welcome Jim Gordon.

  “Evening, Mr. Gordon. How’s that boy of yours?”

  “He’s fine, big enough so that I can come out to the farm and bring him along,” smiled Jim. “It will be nice to have more time out here again.” Jim sat down with the other men. He had married since the big hunt, and had not been on a chase since that one several years before. However, Gordon had made use of the experience and had told the story of Vulpes, the Red Fox, over and over to his friends, enlarging it word by word until some listeners thought the whole story was fiction.

  “Remember that old …”

  “Vulpes?” finished Stacks. “Sure do. See him every now and then.”

  “Do you think we could try once more to get him?” the young man asked.

  “Well now, we just might do that,” Buck said. “The dogs I’ve got are getting to be right good hunters. Not the equal of Brownie or Joe, but they’ve learned a lot and are fairly good hounds, particularly that young Billy Sunday hound, Trigger.”

  “I sure would like to go out,” Gordon said.

  Vulpes stirred, then he dropped easily to the ground and stretched his muscles. He had been curled up on a dry bed of needles carpeting a rock slab beneath a scrub pine. The pine grew on a rugged bluff overlooking Muddy Branch. Just what awakened him is hard to say. With the caution that made him famous he always slept lightly. His naps were frequent but irregular and short. Roused from his slumbers, he found he was hungry and had automatically taken up the search for food without further thought. Even as he dropped from the rock his keen nose was testing the air for scents of possible food or danger. His wants were few and simple and his action direct. He set out immediately and trotted silently down the hill to cross the stream on the aqueduct where it flowed beneath the canal. On the other side he set his course to work upwind toward the farmlands. His zig-zag track carried him to every spot his alert senses detected as possible sources of food. As he moved, his ears picked up the sounds on either side, his nose told him what to expect far ahead, and his eyes told him the way. He realized he was not alone.

  The night woods seemed filled with hunters. Vison, the mink, scouted the stream with a relentless fury that sent chills of terror through his hapless victims. Procyon, the raccoon, watched from his retreat in a hollow tree. After Vulpes had passed beneath him, the inquisitive Procyon descended to the ground and followed him toward the farms. Near the margin of the woods Vulpes caught the musky odor of Mephitis, the skunk. Mephitis was moving slowly and deliberately across an old abandoned orchard, stopping to dig and root in the sod every now and then. Few animals bothered the skunk and he moved without fear.

  Tamias, the chipmunk, and Marmota, the wood-chuck, were hibernating in their burrows, but most of the animals were active. Vulpes played his part in this activity. Each was intent on securing his own food or prey. This was the normal cycle of the wild. Hunters and hunted, food or prey. Some must perish that others might live. Some found food in plants. The carnivores lived upon the herbivores; and so the cycle went on. Those best able to cope with the world they lived in and satisfy their simple demands, survived.

  For the present, Vulpes was the hunter; perhaps in the morning he would become the hunted.

  The night was cool, quiet and pleasant with the melody of tragedy that always hung over the woodland, coloring the scene with sad beauty. The moon rose to spread its yellow light across the white snows, leaving black linear shadows that raced across the woodland as the clouds blew along the heavens. As the moon rose higher in the skies the jet-black velvet of the heavens with its sparkling blue-white stars, paled before it.

  A heavy blanket of snow dampened all sounds. No leaves were free to rattle across the woodland floor. The snow lay on the tangled mats of the dormant honeysuckle and weighed the vines down. The thick white cloak made grotesque figures that stood motionless on the woodland floor. Black pools of water at the foot of snow-rimmed falls in the tiny streams heightened the effect of the ghost-like forest. This was the woodland of the wild. So unlike the same woodlot during the day. When the protection of the vale of darkness hung over it, the wild creatures of the woods came out from their hiding places to carry on their life. At night the woods became a primeval forest.

  Vulpes moved to the fence line that marked the farm land border. Here in the old and long-ago-abandoned orchard he caught a mouse. He kept on until he had caught a rabbit. His hunger satisfied, he returned to his lair and fell asleep.

  “Oroowoooooo, orowoooooo, oroowooo, oroowoo uoo,” and Vulpes knew the hounds were after him. He roused himself from his slumber and walked through the woods ahead of the chase. The clean air filled his lungs and the fox pranced as he wound through the trees, glad that the winter sports were beginning again and that the hunts were on.

  Vulpes loved these days, but he was never unaware of the threat of the hunter and his gun. Too often he had heard the report of the shotgun blast its way through the trees to know that this was not all pleasure. But though at times he felt uneasy during the hunt, his knowledge gained on past hunts gave him confidence. He knew the trails Buck Queen took even as Buck Queen knew his. He knew that when Buck brought his friends he would station them throughout the woods and then it was time for him to leave.

  He thought he would circle down to Muddy Branch and possibly lead the hounds off toward Sugar Loaf.

  “Oroowoo, orouwooooo,” the baying of the hounds sounded nearer. Vulpes looked up at the wind-filled sky that sparkled through the limbs of the trees and turned to wind through the valleys.

  Buck had placed Will Stacks and Jim Gordon at stations that were along the probable route of the fox.

  After he had turned the dogs loose early that morning, he had climbed into his car with Stacks and Gordon and had started down River Road to Muddy Branch. When they came to the ford where the creek crossed the pike, the hunters parked the car, and followed an old logging trail through the woods. The three of them had walked silently up a creek bed after turning off the road and Buck had placed his two friends.

  He went alone to find his own station. He carried his gun slung through his arm and walked swiftly. Buck passed through a low valley that had been cut out by a stream. He came onto a large flat pocket rimmed by four hills that rose above it. The pocket glade was open and Buck could see much of the woodland floor. A dense patch of laurel covered one of the hills and blotted its earthen base from view. The hills above him were canopied with tall straight trees that stood in the hollow. It created a natural amphitheater.

  Buck left the stream and took his stand by a white oak a few feet from the water. It was a tall slender tree, only about a dozen inches wide. Buck l
eaned against the gray bark. He set his gun in front of the tree where he could easily reach it. His left thumb was hooked in a ragged buttonhole of his coat. His hat was pushed back from his head, and he watched the valleys like a hawk. He was part of the tree, so silently he stood. Only the searching turn of his head belied his presence.

  A quiet hush settled over the valley while Buck waited. A red-shouldered hawk swooped over the top of the trees and took his perch high above the glade. From here he surveyed the woods around him. The hawk had hardly settled himself before a party of blue jays saw him and came screaming through the trees to attack the giant bird. Their annoying chatter and fussing and their persistent diving attacks forced the good-natured Buteo to leave his perch. He lifted himself off the limb tops, drifted out into the wind and circled away.

  A moment after the blue jays had bullied the hawk into leaving, they darted over the hill and set up their chatter beyond the hollow. Buck watched them carefully. He listened closely as they went through the tree branches across the crest of the hill. Then he noticed that they were directing their attacks at something on the ground.

  He could not see what it was but he closed his fingers around his gun.

  They fussed around the far edge of the laurel patch for some minutes, then lost interest and flew off toward the fields and farms beyond.

  Buck noted all these details very closely, for his life in the open had taught him to be observant. Noting things like this and threading them into the pattern of the woods and the wildlife that lived there was compensation enough in itself for Buck. He was happy just to spend a day in these surroundings with the anticipation that comes with the hunt. Even if he brought home no game he did not care. Hunting in the manner in which he did it was a sportsman-like way and was only possible to those like himself who were students of the woods and fields. While he stood motionless, contemplating the meaning of the screaming jays, he wondered if it might be a fox.