Run with the Wind

by Tom McCaughren

  It was also lambing time on some farms. Stray dogs were savaging ewes, and hooded grey crows were gathering to see if they could pick off any new-born lambs. Whatever temptations Old Sage Brush’s group had in that respect, they knew they had to be extremely careful not to bring the wrath of the sheep farmers down on their heads, and so they continued to avoid the farmers as much as possible.

  Everywhere rooks were nesting high in the trees while some perched precariously on wires at the sides of the roads. The purpose of their roadside vigil seemed to be the worms that were knocked up to the surface of the grass verges by passing vehicles. Next autumn it would be barley and wheat falling from passing lorries. In the meantime, enough of the rooks were killed on the roads to provide occasional pickings for the foxes. Much more worthwhile were the rats and field mice, occasionally a hedgehog to vary the diet, and of course, beetles for dessert!

  Skulking Dog lay on his belly and watched a big dung beetle at work in a cake of cow dung. They were resting in the corner of a field, and on the dead branch that lay across a gap in the hedge, Fang could see the squiggly scars he knew to be the work of a bark beetle. Clawing off a piece of bark on top, he was rewarded by the discovery of a squirming patch of larvae, and the vixens gathered round to share it.

  Old Sage Brush was worried about Skulking Dog, and he told Black Tip and Vickey about it.

  ‘He’s brooding all right,’ agreed Black Tip. ‘Probably misses his old way of life — and the chicken farms.’

  ‘What do you think, Vickey?’ asked the old fox.

  ‘I think what he needs is a nice vixen to look after him.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Old Sage Brush. ‘Well, we’ll see what happens. Maybe we’ll find a nice mate for him this time. Meanwhile, Black Tip, keep an eye on him for me in case he gets himself into any more trouble.’

  Black Tip undertook to do this, although he soon found it easier said than done. There was much work to do. Fox paths, for example, had to be checked out, especially where they went through road-side hedges. Trappers knew well that foxes were in the habit of using the same places to cross roads, and it had become a favourite trick of theirs to put choking hedge-traps at these particular points. Hunting took up a lot of time too, and they all had to take their turns at it, including Skulking Dog. Even when Black Tip and Skulking Dog went out together, it wasn’t always possible to stay together. Old Sage Brush readily accepted this when Skulking Dog got into trouble again. He realised he had been asking Black Tip to do the impossible.

  It was a dark night when it happened. Clouds once again obscured gloomglow, and they couldn’t follow the brush, but it was a good night for hunting. Scents were strong and it was the turn of Black Tip and Skulking Dog to forage for food. Everything went well until they arrived at an area of scrub-land that clearly held the scent of pheasant. This was a welcome break, because after the shooters had stopped coming to the fields, they had found pheasants very scarce. There was no point in going into the undergrowth together, so they split up and approached it from different directions.

  Black Tip was getting the scent of the pheasant very strongly when the call of a strange fox halted him in his tracks. He recognised the love call of a vixen and it had come from away over on the other side of the scrub, somewhere in the direction Skulking Dog had gone. Normally, Black Tip wouldn’t have worried. It was the possibility that Skulking Dog might get into a fight with another dog fox that caused him some concern. If he got injured, like Fang, they might have to go on without him.

  Skulking Dog had been about to enter the scrub from the far side when the love call of the vixen turned him back. He listened. There it was again. A surge of excitement swept through his body, and throwing caution to the wind, he responded to her call, and set off to pay his respects, the pheasant and all thoughts of food forgotten.

  Beyond the scrub was a piece of commonage, and it was from there that the call of the vixen had come. Skulking Dog heard it again. It was nearer this time, and he hurried towards it. So occupied was he with the thought of finding a mate, that he failed to see the shadow of a car parked in off the road. Suddenly a powerful light cut through the night, catching him in its glare. Blinded for a moment, he turned to run. Several explosions shattered the stillness of the night, and a hail of shots ripped into the grass beside him.

  As Skulking Dog streaked into the darkness beyond the circle of light, a man shouted: ‘Missed it. ‘They had no way of knowing that they hadn’t entirely missed. One of their shots had caught Skulking Dog on the rump, injuring him, not seriously, but enough to cause him severe pain. Moments later, Black Tip was beside him. There was no sign of pursuit, and with Black Tip helping him whenever he could, they returned to where the others were waiting.

  Old Sage Brush was annoyed with himself. He had forgotten all about the love calls of death. Imitating the call of a vixen to attract a dog fox was a fairly new trick man had thought up. It struck at the very nature of the fox, preying upon his natural instinct to mate and survive. Obviously Skulking Dog hadn’t encountered this trick before, and the least the old fox felt he could have done was to warn him.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ consoled Black Tip. ‘I’m the one to blame.’

  ‘You couldn’t help it,’ said the old fox. ‘What I asked you to do could not be done by any fox.’

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ said Black Tip. ‘You see, I knew of this trick. Not the love call, but something similar. Once I was almost caught the same way, only then man was imitating the squeal of a trapped rabbit. I thought I was going to get an easy meal. Instead, I almost ended up just like Skulking Dog.’

  ‘We’re all to blame for not being more careful — me, you, Skulking Dog, all of us. Man may not be a fox, but he has a lot of cunning. We never know what he’ll think up next.’ The old fox paused. ‘Anyway, how is Skulking Dog now?’

  Black Tip went over to where Skulking Dog was lying in the bracken. Vickey and She-la were attending to his wounds.

  ‘How is he?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m all right,’ growled Skulking Dog.

  ‘You’ll be all right when I get these pellets out of your back,’ said Vickey firmly.

  Skulking Dog had taken some gun-shot along the top of the back, and Vickey knew well what he must be suffering. Now she did for Skulking Dog what Black Tip had done for her when she had been wounded in the hind leg back in the meadow near Beech Paw. One by one she located the pellets. They were as numerous, she thought, as seeds of goose grass in summer, and clung many times more tightly. Skulking Dog suffered in silence while Vickey patiently got her teeth behind each one and gently eased it out through his torn skin.

  ‘There you are, that’s the last of them,’ she announced finally. ‘A few days rest and you’ll be all right.’

  Skulking Dog scrambled to his feet. ‘There’ll be no few days rest for me,’ he told her. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my legs, and the sooner we’re on the move again, the better.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ said Old Sage Brush. ‘But we still have to eat, and you can rest up until Black Tip and Fang go out and find us some food.’

  ‘Can I go too?’ asked She-la.

  ‘Another time,’ said the old fox. ‘I’d rather you helped Vickey make doubly sure there are no pellets left in Skulking Dog, and clean his wounds thoroughly. We don’t want to lose him.’

  ‘Mark my words,’ said Vickey. ‘What Skulking Dog needs is a nice vixen to look after him. It would make a new fox of him.

  Foxes — male or female — were few and far between. They were now in an area of rich pastures, where cattle grazed and horses neighed and whinnied and galloped around the fields. There were several big houses in the district, and around each sprawled a profusion of undergrowth that promised both cover and food. Rooks were swarming around the tree-tops and wood pigeons flapped in and out of the bushes as they tried to settle on flimsy branches. Down below, leaves of wild arum were sprouting among the dead leaves and withered grass, but it w
ould be a long time yet before their flowers — the lords and ladies of the undergrowth — would venture out.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely,’ smiled She-la. ‘There are beetles beneath the leaves and birds in the bushes.’

  Vickey nodded and sniffed. ‘And a strong smell of pheasant in the wind. It is nice, isn’t it?’ Everything seemed to be better here than ever she had seen before. The cover was thicker, and the food plentiful. Even the weeds were taller, she thought, gazing up at the towering stalks of giant hogweed, easily twice the size of those she had seen in the hollow the day Black Tip and Fang had fought for her back at Beech Paw.

  ‘You know we can’t stay here,’ said Old Sage Brush.

  The vixens looked at him in surprise, and Skulking Dog who was with the old fox answered their unspoken question, saying: ‘Don’t you know? This is the Land of the Howling Dogs.’

  All foxes had heard of the howling dogs. Even those who hadn’t been chased by them had nightmares about them.

  ‘Skulking Dog was reared not far from a place with howling dogs,’ said Old Sage Brush.

  ‘And many a good run I gave them,’ said Skulking Dog.

  ‘So did I,’ said the old fox. ‘But not any more. I’d be an easy catch for them now. So would Hop-along, and I doubt if all the cunning in the world could save us.’

  ‘Then we must move on quickly,’ said Vickey. ‘Let’s tell the others.’

  When they joined the others in deeper cover, they found that they already knew about the howling dogs as they had a visitor. He was a local fox who had become aware of their presence and come to warm them of the danger.

  ‘But what is the secret of your survival?’ asked Vickey. It was a question she had decided to ask every fox she met. ‘I mean,’ she added, ‘if the howling dogs are so dangerous, why have they not caught you?’

  ‘Because,’ said the stranger, ‘like the great running fox in the sky, I never stop running long enough to give them the chance.’

  ‘Tell me, Running Fox,’ said Vickey, who loved putting names on her fellow-creatures, ‘when are the howling dogs likely to come again?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say. There is a man many fields away. He sets choking hedge-traps, and I know he has a fox in a cage. Soon he will let it out for the howling dogs.’

  ‘Oh, how horrible!’ said She-la. ‘Will it get away?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Running Fox. ‘It’s a stranger in this area and doesn’t know the tricks I know. I doubt it.’

  Needless to say, no reputable hunt will capture a fox and let it out in strange surroundings for the sake of a chase. In this case, however, one member of the hunt, wishing to impress a visitor, had paid a local trapper to get a fox and let it out in a certain piece of woodland where the hounds would almost certainly come across it.

  Old Sage Brush sighed. He hated the thought of leaving another fox to the mercy of the howling dogs.

  ‘Let me have a look,’ said Skulking Dog. Old Sage Brush hesitated.

  ‘I’ll show him the way,’ offered Running Fox. ‘There’s an empty badger set in these woods. If you lie low there and take care not to be caught in the open, you should be all right.’

  Old Sage Brush agreed and Running Fox led them to a set that was well concealed by the glossy green leaves of a clump of rhododendron bushes. Soon the old fox, Hop-along, She-la and Vickey were curled up in the central chambers, with Black Tip and Fang in chambers that allowed them to guard the entrance and exit.

  As darkness fell and gloomglow spread across the countryside, Running Fox led Skulking Dog into the silent fields, past groups of cattle lying in the grass chewing their cuds, over meadows and through woodland, until they came to a small house at the end of a long lane. From the safety of a high bank at the back, Running Fox showed him a shed and told him: ‘The fox is in there. The door is tied with wire, and there are fun dogs in the house. I don’t think it would be wise to go any nearer.’

  Skulking Dog was thinking hard. He had yet to show Old Sage Brush that he had learned to use his cunning, but think as he would, he couldn’t imagine how he might release the fox.

  ‘There’s a big house not far from here,’ said Running Fox, ‘and it has no fun dogs. We can hide there until we decide what to do.’ He smiled, and added: ‘In the morning I’ll introduce you to some other foxes there.’

  ‘Vixens?’ asked Skulking Dog hopefully.

  Running Fox smiled again. ‘You’ll be the best judge of that, and if they are you can have one — if you can catch it!’

  Skulking Dog was intrigued, but he didn’t inquire further about it. He knew Running Fox was teasing him a little bit, and that he wasn’t going to learn anything more about it until they were at the big house.

  They were going to a house that used to be the mansion of a wealthy estate owner. The estate had long since been divided among local farmers, and the house itself was being used by the Government as an energy research centre. When the oil-producing countries of the Middle East had pushed up their prices, several projects had been undertaken to explore the possibilities of alternative sources of energy. Windmills had sprung up in various parts of the country and some scientists were concentrating their efforts on solar energy. It was for this purpose that research workers had moved into the big house. Dogs and cats they considered a nuisance and a waste of time, a fact that local wildlife, like Running Fox, soon came to appreciate.

  A short time later, Running Fox and Skulking Dog stole among the outhouses, and after feeding on some of the many mice that had over-run the place, they settled down in the comfort of a burst bale of straw.

  ‘In the morning,’ whispered Running Fox, ‘I’ll show you the other foxes I was telling you about.’

  Shortly after dawn, Running Fox took Skulking Dog into the lawns of the old mansion. A weed called winter heliotrope had encircled the lawns with a carpet of broad green leaves. Its flowers had now keeled over, as if the winter had proved too much for them, but their unique fragrance, which once had brought them from Italy to the gardens of Europe’s wealthy, still left a scent of almonds in the air.

  Nice though this was, Skulking Dog snorted to expel it from his nostrils, for something else had stopped him in his tracks, something he couldn’t smell and couldn’t comprehend … indeed he was stunned by what suddenly confronted him — rows and rows of grotesque-looking foxes, each one eyeing him from the centre of a warped silvery screen.

  Skulking Dog, of course, hadn’t the faintest notion what these strange objects were. In fact, they were rows of gigantic aluminium mirrors, originally intended to reflect the sun and concentrate its rays so that its energy could be collected and stored. But the great mirrors had warped and, abandoned by the researchers, they now stood idle, reflecting only distorted images of the lawns and everything in them.

  Frightened, Skulking Dog drew back. Running Fox grinned. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘These foxes won’t harm you.’

  ‘Who are they?’ whispered Skulking Dog.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Running Fox, who was obviously enjoying himself very much. ‘And don’t get excited, whatever you do.’

  Slowly they advanced towards the large mirrors, and as they did so, Skulking Dog saw the other foxes also advance and become huge and menacing.

  Skulking Dog, needless to say, had often seen his own reflection in water. But he always felt on top of that situation, and anyway, it would disappear whenever he bit the water. However, when he bared his fangs and snapped at these foxes, they snapped back with even bigger fangs.

  ‘Take it easy,’ hissed Running Fox. ‘It’s only ourselves.’

  Skulking Dog moved his head to one side, and so did some of the foxes in the mirrors opposite.

  ‘Now, look at the others,’ said Running Fox. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘But you’re all sorts of shapes.’

  ‘And so are you,’ laughed Running Fox. ‘That’s what those things do to you.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Skulking Dog. ‘We’re wasting our tim
e. Let’s see what we can do to help this other fox.’

  As they crossed the fields on the way back to the trapper’s house, Skulking Dog stopped.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Maybe we haven’t been wasting our time. I’ve got an idea.’

  The idea appealed to Running Fox and while he went on to the trapper’s house to wait in the hope that he might be able to get a message to the fox in the shed, Skulking Dog returned to the badger set and told the others of his plan.

  ‘If it doesn’t work,’ said Hop-along, who was always worried about anything that depended on having to run, ‘then you’ll all be killed.’

  ‘At least,’ said Black Tip, ‘you’ll have Running Fox to show the way.’

  ‘And don’t forget,’ said Fang, ‘Skulking Dog has experience of this sort of thing.’

  ‘Still, you must take great care,’ warned Vickey.

  ‘Vickey’s right,’ said She-la. ‘It would be a pity to come all this way just to end up as food for the howling dogs.’

  There were clearly great dangers in the plan. At the same time Old Sage Brush didn’t want to disappoint Skulking Dog. It was a good idea, and Skulking Dog undoubtedly had the courage to carry it through.

  As he pondered on what to do, the old fox thought of the days when he had been able to lie and watch small flies creeping into the flowers of wild arum, there to be trapped until they could carry away the pollen. And so he expressed his approval in one of his quaint sayings.

  ‘If a flower can catch a fly,’ he told Skulking Dog, ‘who is to say what the fox, with his cunning and speed, cannot do to the howling dogs?’

  It was some time next morning when Running Fox came to tell Skulking Dog that the riders were gathering for the fox hunt, and he felt they should be on their way if they were to get into position in time. He had succeeded in getting a message to the fox in the shed when the trapper had gone out with his dogs to take in his choking hedge-traps.