At first he was too busy catching his breath to notice, but gradually he became aware of a strange smell. It was a vaguely familiar smell that he had caught little whiffs of before, on the farm, around the chicken house and the shed where the ducks were shut at nights, but here it was very strong.
“Good afternoon,” said a voice suddenly.
It was a sharp, rather nasal voice, and, peering through the gloom under the floor of the shed, Martin could see a sharp long-nosed face staring at him.
“Good afternoon,” said the fox once more, “or do you not think that this afternoon is good?”
Martin found his tongue.
“No,” he said, “no, I don’t. You see, I’ve just jumped out of a fourth-floor window and nearly hanged myself on a tree and almost been chewed up by a large hairy dog and narrowly missed being run over by a car and now…”
“…and now you think you’re going to be eaten by a fox.”
“I hope not,” said Martin in a small choked voice.
“You’re not,” said the fox. “We don’t. I’m afraid we don’t care for the smell of cats.”
Martin could not think of anything to say to this, in view of the awful rank stink with which the air was filled, so he said nothing.
“What’s your name?” said the fox.
“Martin.”
“Mine’s Smart. Alec Smart. Anyway, what have you been up to, Martin? Sounds like you’ve used up four of your nine lives in one day.”
“I’m trying to get home, Mr. Smart,” said Martin.
“Call me Alec. Where’s home?”
“I live on a farm, Alec.”
“What are you doing in the middle of the town, then?”
“A lady came to the farm and took me away in a box.”
“You were kitnapped,” said Alec Smart, grinning. “And now you’ve escaped. Whereabouts is this farm of yours?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m acquainted with most of the farms around this town. Tell me something about it.”
“It’s got cows and pigs and sheep and hens and ducks and a black-and-white collie dog. And cats of course, my family.”
“Big deal,” said the fox. “Could be any one of a dozen.”
“Oh, and there are some rabbits,” said Martin. “Three big white rabbits with pink eyes who live in three hutches at the bottom of the garden.”
“Now you’re talking,” said Alec. “Not every farm would have them. Tell you what, I’m not doing anything particular tonight. I’ll pop out of town and have a look around if you like. Haven’t had a night out in the country for ages. I could do with a breath of fresh air.”
So could I, thought Martin, wrinkling his nose.
“It’s very kind of you, Alec,” he said.
“Think nothing of it,” said the fox. “White rabbits, did you say?”
“Yes.”
“Big ones?”
“Yes.”
“With pink eyes?”
“Yes.”
“Three of them?”
“Yes,” said Martin. “Do you think that that information would help you to find my farm?”
“It certainly gives me something to get my teeth into,” said the fox. He yawned, showing a lot of sharp ones.
“Time I got a bit of shut-eye,” he said. “And you must be tired after all that dicing with death. Why don’t you take a catnap?”
I couldn’t sleep under here, thought Martin, not in this stink.
And as if reading his mind Alec Smart said, “Jump upon the roof of the shed. It’s a nice day—you could do a bit of sunbathing.”
“Yes, right, Alec,” said Martin. “I will.”
“By the way,” said Alec, “before I forget. Supper is served every evening at dusk. Over in that corner, by the woodpile.”
“Supper?”
“Two saucerfuls. One of milk, one of Champion Bow-Wow.”
“You mean the humans who live here actually feed you?”
“They do,” said Alec, “though they believe they are feeding a hedgehog that lives in the woodpile. After they put the food down, just wait till they’ve gone and then help yourself.”
“But what about you?”
“Oh, I shall eat out tonight,” said Alec. “Grab myself some takeout.”
“Doesn’t the hedgehog ever get what they put out?” asked Martin.
“He does not,” said Alec. “He knows better. It’s a protection racket, you see.”
“What does that mean?”
“A little business arrangement between me and my spiny friend. I get his milk and his meat.”
“And what does he get?”
“He,” said Alec Smart, “gets his life. He owes it to me. I spared it.”
“How?”
“Caught him one night as he crossed the lawn. Tipped him over on his back.”
“Why?”
“Always bite a hedgehog in the belly,” said Alec, “unless you want a prickle sandwich. As I was saying, I tipped him over and I was just going to unzip him when he squealed out, ‘Mercy! Mercy!’ ”
Oh, thought Martin, oh, Drusilla! The first words you ever spoke to me!
“So you spared his life!” Martin said. “How good of you, Alec!”
“Wasn’t good at all,” said the fox, “it was quick thinking. No more hedgehog, no more food put out. ‘Get this, piggy,’ I said to him, ‘from now on what’s yours is mine. Just let me catch you with your snout in one of those saucers and you’re a goner, understand?’ ‘Oh, yes, sir, yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll never touch a mouthful again.’ And he never has.”
“But the people still think that he’s eating what they put out?”
“They do,” said Alec. “Very easily tricked, you see, humans are. They know that whenever a hedgehog has finished eating or drinking out of a saucer, it always turns it upside-down in case there’s a worm or a beetle underneath it. So when you’ve finished tonight, remember to tip the dishes over.”
—
All that afternoon Martin slept on the sun-warmed roof of the garden shed. He woke at twilight when a woman came across the lawn carrying two saucers and put them down by the woodpile.
Martin waited until she had gone back into her house, and then he got to his feet and stretched himself. He jumped down and looked into the space beneath the shed.
“Alec?” he called, but there was no answer, so he walked across and polished off the milk and the Champion Bow-Wow, remembering to tip both saucers upside-down afterward.
What a cunning fellow that fox is, he thought as he sat by the woodpile cleaning his face. If anyone can find the way to my farm it’s old Alec Smart.
16
All the smells of home
What a cunning fellow I am, said Alec to himself. He stared hungrily at the three rabbit hutches at the bottom of the garden. This was Martin’s farm, all right. Already the fox had visited a number of others, quickly, efficiently, not allowing himself to be distracted by thoughts of hens or ducks or geese or turkeys. He simply checked to see that there were no rabbit hutches in each garden, and then moved on, loping easily across the fields.
Now here was journey’s end.
The moon was shining brilliantly, and as he padded down the lawn he could see three pairs of eyes shining red in its glow. For a few seconds the rabbits stared in horror before each whisked into its sleeping compartment.
Alec Smart drew nearer. He had much experience with rabbit hutches and he knew they were of two kinds. One kind had doors you could open. The other had doors you could not. It all depended on the way they were secured.
A bolt was very difficult to undo (Alec had even met hutch doors that were padlocked and these of course were impossible), and hook-and-eye catches were tricky. Turn buttons were the easiest fastenings to undo, especially if they were big oblong wooden ones. Like these. You could turn them with your nose or your paw and then the doors of the hutch would swing open.
“Now,” said Alec, “which o
ne of you shall I invite to join me for supper tonight?” He sat down and began to chant, “Eenie meenie minie mo, catch a bunny by its toe…” but at the sound of his voice all three rabbits began to stamp with their hind feet on the floorboards of their sleeping compartments, making quite a loud tattoo in the silent garden.
Alec stopped his chanting as these warning signals rang out and, choosing the middle hutch, began to scratch with one paw at a turn button. It was stiff, so that he could not shift it easily, and he was just about to try another when, in an interval in the rabbits’ drumming, he suddenly heard a quite different noise. It was a kind of rasping singsong, rising and falling in a way that sounded unpleasantly threatening.
Alec spun around, and there behind him, crouched flat upon the grass, its tail twitching, its battered ears flat above its big round tom’s face, was a very large tabby cat.
Instantly the fox too flattened his ears, while the hair on his red coat rose and he fluffed out his brush. He drew back his lips from his teeth in a silent grimace.
For a moment there was no sound in the garden but the stamping of the rabbits, and then: “Beat it, stinker!” growled Pug, rising to his full height.
“Who are you calling stinker?” snarled Alec.
“You,” said Pug. He stepped one inch nearer to the fox.
“I’m going to have to teach you some manners,” said Alec. He stepped back two inches.
“Just you try it,” said Pug, advancing four inches.
“You come any closer and I will,” said Alec, retreating eight inches. This brought his backside up against the trestle on which the rabbit hutches stood.
In fact, Alec had no wish to tangle with such an ugly-looking customer, so now he braced himself to leap clean over the tomcat and take his leave, with as much dignity as possible.
Just then the cat raised his big round head and stared over the fox’s head, as though he were looking at something above and behind him.
The oldest trick in the world, thought Alec. He’s pretending there’s something behind me and, when I turn to look, he’ll rush me. I’m not falling for that one, not likely.
Next instant something dropped from the roof of one of the hutches, dropped squarely onto the fox’s back and dug into it an awful lot of sharp claws, and at the same time the tomcat let out an earsplitting yowl and charged.
Alec Smart fled, with no dignity at all.
“Well done, old girl,” said Pug to Dulcie Maude. “I just wish Martin had been here to see you in action!”
“You and your precious Martin,” said Dulcie Maude. “I’ve never known you to take such a liking to one of our children before.”
“I never have,” said Pug quietly. “I miss him.”
“Well, you’d better get over it,” said Dulcie Maude. “You’re never going to see him again.”
—
“Nice to see you again!” called Martin from the roof of the shed, as Alec came slinking in in the gray dawn. He jumped down to greet the fox.
“You look bushed,” he said.
“I am,” said Alec.
“And your back—it’s all scratched! What happened to it? Did you catch it under a barbed-wire fence?”
“You could say that.”
“Did you find my farm? With the three rabbits at the bottom of the garden?”
“I did, Martin, I did.”
“You didn’t hurt the rabbits, did you, Alec?”
“Oh, no,” said the fox. “Never harmed a hair of their heads. As if I would.”
“Did you meet my dad?”
“Your dad?”
“He’s big, and the same color as me.”
“With rather battered ears?”
“Yes.”
“I did, Martin, I did.”
“How did you get along with him?”
“We exchanged a few words.”
“And my mother—did you see her?”
“Just a glimpse.”
“How did she strike you?”
“Unexpectedly,” said Alec.
“How do you mean?”
“She came as quite a surprise to me.”
“Did you tell them that I was coming home?”
“Actually, no.”
“Good,” said Martin. “It’ll be quite a surprise to them, then. When can we start?”
“Not till tonight,” said Alec firmly. “I am footsore and weary and I need a good day’s sleep.” And he crawled under the shed.
—
How the hours dragged by for Martin. At long last it was dusk, and the hedgehog’s supper was put out.
Martin was looking at it longingly when the fox appeared.
“We’ll split it,” he said. “You have the milk and I’ll have the meat. After all, you’ll soon be back on your farm, and farms are always riddled with mice. I bet you’re fond of a nice fat mouse, eh?”
“Yes,” said Martin, lapping at the milk.
I am fond of a nice fat mouse, he thought with a sigh, and her name is Drusilla and I don’t suppose I’ll ever see her again because she’s afraid I’ll shut her up, which I won’t because now I know what it’s like to be a prisoner.
“Can we go now?” he said.
“Not till the small hours,” said Alec. “Too many people still around, and too much traffic.” And he disappeared through the hedge.
So Martin waited, as patiently as he could, until at last a familiar stink told him of the fox’s return.
Out of town they went, hurrying along the deserted streets, and the fox led the kitten across country until at last they came to the edge of a wood on the crest of a little hill. The moonlight showed a cluster of buildings in the valley below.
“That’s it,” said Alec, and “That’s it!” cried Martin excitedly. “I can smell all the smells of home!”
The fox lifted his muzzle to the wind, sifting the messages it brought and noting in particular the scent of chickens.
“Off you go then, Martin,” he said.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“Not just now. But I might drop in one of these nights,” said Alec Smart, and he turned and melted away into the darkness of the wood.
“Thanks for everything, Alec!” called Martin after him.
He lay for a little while, savoring his homecoming. Night was changing to day, and in the trees behind him the birds began their dawn chorus. Down at the farm the first cock crowed and as though in answer there sounded from the far end of the wood the sharp yap of a fox.
Martin rose to his feet and trotted happily home.
17
He brought me a strawberry once
From the top of the hill, Martin had had a bird’s-eye view of the farm. Now, lower down, he had a cat’s-eye view but one that he had never seen before. His kittenhood had been spent entirely within the main cluster of buildings—the farmhouse, the cowsheds, the pigsties, the poultry houses, the Dutch barn, and, of course, the old cart-shed with its loft.
Now, approaching home from the outside for the first time, he noticed that there was another quite isolated building, a long low open-fronted shed, used to provide shelter for outlying cattle in wintertime. It was a couple of fields away from the farmyard, and he had not even known of its existence.
Curious (like all his kind), Martin went to explore it. Daintily (like all his kind), he picked his way over the crust of dried mud and dung in front of the shed and looked in. There was some moldy hay in the row of wooden mangers that lined the back wall, and the earthen floor had a thin cover of musty straw, but there was no sign of life. No sign of life, that is, until suddenly Martin saw a movement in the straw in front of him and quickly and instinctively (like all his kind) pounced. A squeak of terror told him, as did his nose, that he had caught a mouse, and though his first impulse was to let the wretched thing go, he decided on second thought to question it. You never could tell, it just might know where Drusilla was.
He pulled the mouse carefully from beneath the straw and examined it. It was a big
sleek dark one. It was Cuthbert!
“Cuthbert!” cried Martin in high delight. “It’s me, Martin!”
Cuthbert fainted clean away.
Visions of Cuthbert’s last faint flashed through Martin’s mind. How he had tried to revive him. How Drusilla had screamed at him and called him a murderer. “You, who pretended to be my friend!” were the last words she had spoken to him.
At that instant he heard her voice again.
“Cuthbert?” she called. “Did you squeak?”
Quick as a flash, Martin leaped up into the nearest manger and hid behind the moldy hay. Peering through it, he saw Drusilla come out of a hole in the wall. She waddled awkwardly across the floor of the shed (for she was—once again—very heavy with young) until she reached Cuthbert, who opened his eyes and got dazedly to his feet.
“Where is he?” he said.
“Where is who?”
“Martin.”
“Martin? You know quite well where Martin is, Cuthbert,” said Drusilla sharply. “Mr. Pug told us, weeks ago. He’s gone to live in town.”
“Well, he’s back,” said Cuthbert. “He just caught me. Didn’t you hear me squeak?”
“You were dreaming,” said Drusilla. “You were squawking in your sleep. I saw you, lying there with your eyes shut.”
“I was pretending,” said Cuthbert hastily. “I was pretending to be dead. Playing possum. So as to fool him.”
“Of course,” said Drusilla. “Of course.”
She did not love her handsome husband the less for knowing that he was an extremely nervous person. But for long now she had felt guilty about Martin. She had called him a murderer. Poor boy.
“Are you certain it was really Martin, Cuthbert?” she said.
“Quite certain.”
“He brought me a strawberry once,” said Drusilla dreamily. “When I was pregnant with the Months, do you remember?”
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