when the stippled silver kennel, inc., went into the wholesale raising of silver foxes for a world market, its two partners brought to the enterprise a comfortable working capital and an uncomfortable ignorance of the brain-reactions of a fox.
they had visited the national exhibition of silver foxes. they had spent days at successful fox farms, studying every detail of management and memorising the rigid diet-charts. they had committed to memory every fact and hint in bulletin no. 1151 of the united states department of agriculture—issued for the help of novice breeders of silver foxes.
they had mastered each and every available scrap of exact information concerning the physical welfare of captive silver foxes. but, for lack of half a lifetime’s close application to the theme, their knowledge of fox mentality and fox nature was nil.
2now one may raise chickens or hogs or even cattle, without taking greatly into account the inner workings of such animals’ brains. but no man yet has made a success of raising foxes or their fifth cousin, the collie, without spending more time in studying out the mental than the physical beast.
on the kitchen wall of the stippled silver kennel, inc., was the printed dietary of silver foxes. on the one library shelf of the kennel was all the available literature on silver fox breeding, from government pamphlets to a three-volume monograph. in the four-acre space within the kennel enclosure were thirty model runways, twenty by twenty feet; each equipped with a model shelter-house and ten of them further fitted out with model brood nests.
in twenty-four of these thirty model runways abode twenty-four model silver foxes, one to each yard at this autumn season—twenty-four silver foxes, pedigreed and registered—foxes whose lump value was something more than $7,400. thanks to the balanced rations and meticulous care lavished on them, all twenty-four were in the pink of form.
all twenty-four seemed as nearly contented as can a wild thing which no longer has the zest of gambling with death for its daily food and which is stared at with indecent closeness and frequency by dread humans.
but the partners of the stippled silver kennel, inc., failed to take note, among other things, of the uncanny genius certain foxes possess for sapping and mining; nor that some foxes are almost as deft at climbing as is a cinnamon bear. true, the average silver fox is neither a gifted burrower nor climber. but neither are such talents rare.
for example, king whitefoot ii, in number 8 run, could have given a mole useful hints in underground burrowing. lady pitchdark, the temperamental young 3vixen in number 17 run, might wellnigh have qualified as the vulpine fly. because neither of these costly specimens spent their time in sporadic demonstration of their arts, in the view of humans, those same humans did not suspect the accomplishments.
then came an ice-bright moonlit night in late november—a night to stir every quadruped’s blood to tingling life and to set humans to crouching over fireplaces. ten minutes after rance and ethan venner, the kennel partners, finished their perfunctory evening rounds of the yards, king whitefoot ii was blithely at work.
foxes and other burrowing beasts seek instinctively the corners or the edges of yards, when striving to dig a way out. any student of their ways will tell you that. wherefore, as in most fox-kennels, the corners and inner edges of the stippled silver yards were fringed with a half-yard of mesh-wire, laid flat on the ground.
whitefoot chose a spot six inches on the hither edge of a border-wire and began his tunnel. he did not waste strength by digging deep. he channelled a shallow tube, directly under the flat-laid wire. indeed, the wire itself formed the top of his tunnel. the frost was not yet deep enough or hard enough to impede his work. nor, luckily for him, did he have to circumnavigate any big underground rock.
in forty-two minutes from the time he began to dig, his pointed black nose and his wide-cheeked stippled black face was emerging into the open, a few inches outside his yard.
wriggling out of his tunnel, he shook himself daintily to rid his shimmering silver-flecked black coat of such dirt as clung to it. then he glanced about him. from the nearby wire runs, twenty-three pairs of slitted topaz eyes flamed avidly at him. twenty-three ebony bodies 4crouched moveless; the moon glinting bright on their silver stipples and snowy tailtips.
the eyes of his world were on the fugitive. the nerves of his world were taut and vibrant with thrill at his escapade. but they were sportsmen in their own way, these twenty-three prisoners who looked on while their more skilled fellow won his way to liberty. not a whine, not so much as a deep-drawn breath gave token of the excitement that was theirs. no yelping bark brought the partners out to investigate. these captives could help their comrade only by silence. and they gave him silence to a suffocating degree.
with their round phosphorous eyes they followed his every move. but twenty-two of the twenty-three forbore so much as a single motion whose sound might attract human ears. couchant, aquiver, turning their heads ever so little and in unison to watch his progress, the twenty-two watched whitefoot make for the high wire boundary fence which encircled the four-acre kennel enclosure—the fence beyond whose southern meshes lay the frost-spangled meadow.
beyond the meadow reared the naked black woods, sloping stiffly upward to the mountain whose sides they draped;—the mountain which was the outpost of the wilderness hinterland to southward of this farm-valley.
but, as whitefoot set to work at the absurdly simple exploit of digging under this outer fence—a fence not extending underground and with no flat width of wire before it—the twenty-third prisoner could stand the emotional strain no longer. young and with nerves less steady than her companions’, little lady pitchdark marred the perfect symphony of noiselessness.
she did not bark or even yelp. but she went into action.
5by natural genius she was a climber. up the side of her ten-foot run-wire she whizzed; her long-clawed feet scarce seeming to seek toe-hold in the ladder of meshes they touched. like a cat, she sped upward.
to provide against such an unlikely effort at jail-breaking, the four wire walls of the run sloped slightly inward. at their summit, all around, was a flat breadth of wire that hung out for eight inches over the run; projecting inside the walls. as a rule such deterrents were quite enough to bar an ordinary fox from escape. but nature had taught lady pitchdark more than she teaches the ordinary fox. she was one of the rare vulpines born with climbing-genius.
up she scrambled her fierce momentum carrying her to the very top of the fence; to the spot where it merged with the eight-inch overhang. here, by every rule, the vixen should have yielded to the immutable law of gravity and should have tumbled back to the ground with a breath-expelling flop.
this is precisely what she did not do. still helped by her momentum, she clawed frantically with both forefeet at the edge of the overhang. her claws hooked in its end-meshes. her hindfeet released their hold on the in-slanting fence and she swung for an instant between moon and earth—a glowing black swirl of fur, shot with a myriad silver threads.
then lithely she drew herself up, on the overhang. a pause for breath and she was skidding down the steep slope of the fence’s outer side. a dart across the yard and she reached the kennel’s boundary fence just as whitefoot was squirming to freedom through the second and shorter tunnel he had made that night.
diving through, so close behind him that her outthrust muzzle brushed his sensitive tailtip, pitchdark reached 6the safety of the outer world at almost the same instant as did he. whitefoot felt the light touch at his tail. he spun around, snarling murderously, his razor-keen teeth bared. he had won his way to liberty by no slight exercise of brain and of muscle. he was not minded to surrender tamely to any possible pursuer.
but as he confronted the slender young vixen in her royal splendour of pelt and with her unafraid excited eyes fixed so mischievously upon him, the dog-fox’s lips slipped down from their snarling curl; sheathing the fearsome array of teeth and tushes. for a fraction of a second whitefoot and pitchdark faced each other there under the dazzling white moon; twin ebon blotches on the frost-strewn grass. twenty-two pairs of yellow-fire eyes were upon them.
then on impulse the two refugees touched noses. as though by this act they established common understanding, they wheeled about as one; and galloped silently, shoulder to shoulder, across the frosted meadow to the safety of the black mountainside forest.
sportsmanship can go only just so far; even in cool-nerved foxes. as the couple vanished through the night, a shrilly hideous multiple clamour of barking went up from twenty-two furry black throats. the tense hush was broken by a bedlam of raucous noise. the prisoners dashed themselves against the springy sides of their wire runs. one and another of them made desperate scrambling attempts to climb the inslanting walls that encircled them—only to fall back to the frozen ground and add their quota once more to the universal din.
rance and ethan venner came tumbling out of the nearby house, grasping their flashlights and shouting confusedly to each other. instantly blank silence overspread 7the yards. the foxes crouched low, eyes aflame, staring mutely at the belated humans.
the briefest of inspections told the brothers what had happened. first they found the tunnel leading forth from whitefoot’s run. then they discovered that pitchdark’s run was empty; though they could find no clue to its occupant’s mysterious vanishing until next morning’s sunrise showed them a tuft of finespun black fur stuck to a point of wire on the overhang, ten feet above ground. last of all the partners came upon the hole under the fence which divided the kennel from the meadow.
“whitefoot was worth an easy $600 as he stood,” grunted rance venner, miserably; as his flashlight’s ray explored the hole under the fence. “nearer $700, in the coat he’s carrying this fall. and pitchdark isn’t more’n a couple of hundred dollars behind him. two of the best we had. a hundred per cent loss; just as we’re getting started.”
“nope,” contradicted ethan. “not a hundred per cent loss. only about fifty. the pelt of either one of ’em will bring $300, dressed. any of a dozen dealers will pay us that for it.”
“if they was to pay us three million, we wouldn’t be any richer,” complained rance. “we haven’t got the pelts to sell. you’re talking plumb foolish, ethan.”
“we’ll have ’em both by noon to-morrow,” declared ethan. “those two foxes were born in a kennel. they don’t know anything else. they’re as tame as pet squirrels. we’ll start out gunning for ’em at sunrise. we’ll take ruby along. she’ll scent ’em, double quick. then all we’ll have to do is plant the shots where they won’t muss the pelt too much.”
“we’ll do better’n that,” supplemented rance, his 8spirits rising at his brother’s tone of confidence. “we won’t shoot ’em. we’ll get out the traps, instead. they’re both tame and neither of ’em ever had to hustle for a meal. they’ll walk right into the traps, as quick as they get the sniff of cooked food. c’mon in and help me put the traps in shape. we ought to be setting ’em before sunrise. the two foxes will be scouting for breakfast by that time.”
the newly optimistic rance was mistaken in all his forecasts. the two fugitives were not scouting for breakfast at sunrise. hours earlier they twisted their way in through the narrow little opening of an unguarded chicken-house belonging to a farm six miles from the kennel. thither they were drawn by the delicious odour of living prey.
there, like a million foxes since the birth of time, they slew without noise or turmoil. there they glutted themselves; carrying away each a heavy fowl for future feasting; bearing off their plunder in true vulpine fashion with the weight of the bird slung scientifically over the bearer’s withers.
daybreak found them lying snugly asleep in a hollow windfall tree that was open at either end and which lay lengthwise of a nick in the hillside, with briars forming an effective hedge all about it.
nor did the best casting efforts of ruby, the partners’ foxhound, succeed in following their cleverly confused trail across a pool and two brooks. in the latter brook, they had waded for nearly a furlong before emerging on dry ground at the same side.
thus set in a winter of bare sustenance for the runaways. they kept to no settled abiding place, but drifted across country; feasting at such few farmsteads as had penetrable hencoops; doing wondrous teamwork in the 9catching of rabbits and partridges; holing in under windfalls or in rock-clefts when blizzards made the going bad.
it was the season when foxes as a rule run solitary. seldom in early winter do they hunt in pairs and never at any season in packs. but these two black and silver waifs were bound together not only by early association but by mutual inexperience of the wild. and while this inexperience did not blur nor flaw their marvellous instinct, they found it more profitable to hunt together than alone.
only once or twice in their winter’s foraging did they chance upon any of the high-country’s native red foxes. a heavy hunting season had shifted most of the reds to a distant part of the county; as is the way with foxes that are overpressed by the attentions of trappers and hounds. in that region, pink coats and hunting horses and foxhound packs were unknown. but many a mountain farmer eked out his lean income by faring afield with a brace of disreputable but reliable mongrel hounds and a fowling piece as disreputably reliable; eager for the flat price of $10 to $12 per skin offered by the nearest wholesale dealer. this sum of course was for the common red fox; silver foxes being as unknown to the region at large as were dinosaurs.
(the dealer paid the farmer-huntsman perhaps $11 per skin. the pelt was then cured and dressed and mounted and equipped with snappers; at a total price in labour and material of perhaps $6 at most. after which, in marketable form, it sold at retail from $60 to $75 or even higher. thus, there was money for every one concerned—except possibly for the ultimate buyer.)
the two silver foxes had the forest and farmland largely to themselves. the few reds they met did not attack them or affiliate with them at that hungry time of year.
10the winter winds and the ice-storms made whitefoot’s coat shine and thicken as never had it done on scientifically balanced rations. the life of the wild put new depth to pitchdark’s narrow chest and gave her muscular power and sinew to spare. quizzical dame nature had lifted them from man’s wisest care; as though in object lesson of her own infinitely more efficient methods for conditioning her children.
late january brought a sore-throat thaw and with it a melting of drift and ice-pack. incidentally it ushered in the yearly vulpine mating season.
spring was early that year. but before the frost was out of the ground, pitchdark had chosen her nursery. it was by no means so elaborate nor sanitary as had been the costly brood-nests at the kennel. indeed it would have struck horror to the heart of any scientific breeder.
for it was merely a woodchuck hole in an upland meadow, at the forest edge, a short mile from a straggling farmstead. even here whitefoot’s inspired prowess as a digger was not called into play. his sole share toward securing the home was to thrash the asthmatically indignant old woodchuck that had dug the burrow. then pitchdark made her way cautiously down the hole and proceeded to enlarge it a little at the shallow bottom. that was all the home-making done by the pair.
then, of a windy night, just before the first of april, the vixen did not join her mate in his expedition for loot. and as he panted homeward before dawn with a broken-winged quail between his jaws, he found her lying in the burrow’s hollow, with five indeterminate-looking babies nuzzling close to her soft side.
then began days, or rather nights, of double foraging for whitefoot. for it is no light thing to provide food 11for a den-ridden mate and, indirectly, for five hungry and husky cubs.
nor was the season propitious for food-finding. the migratory birds, for the most part, had not shifted north. the rabbits for some silly reason of their own had changed their feeding grounds to the opposite valley. farmers had suffered too many depredations from whitefoot and pitchdark during the past month to leave their henroosts as hospitably open as of yore.
the first day’s hunting netted only a sick crow that had tumbled from a tree. whitefoot turned with disgust from this find. for, though he would have been delighted to dine on the rankest of carrion, yet in common with all foxes, he could not be induced to touch any bird of prey.
that night he foraged again; in spite of having outraged his regular custom by hunting in daylight. there was no fun in hunting, this night. for a wild torrent of rain had burst out of the black clouds which all day had been butting their way across the windy sky.
foxes detest rain, and this rain was a veritable deluge; a flood that started the spring freshets and turned miles of bottomland into soggy lakes. yet whitefoot kept on. grey dawn found him midway between his lair and the farmstead at the foot of the hill.
this farm he and pitchdark had avoided. it was too near their den for safe plundering. its human occupants might well be expected to seek the despoilers. and just then those despoilers were in no condition to elude the chase. wherefore, fox-fashion, the two had ranged far afield and had reserved the nearby farm for later emergencies.
now the emergency appeared to call for such a visit from whitefoot. a moment or so he hesitated, irresolute 12whether to return empty-mouthed to his mate or to go first to the farm for possible food. he decided on the farm.
had he gone to the burrow he would have known there was no further need to forage for those five beautiful baby silvers, so different in aspect from the slaty-gray infants of the red fox. a swelling rivulet of rain had been deflected from its downhill course by a wrinkle in the soil; and had poured swishingly down the opening of the woodchuck warren and thence down into the ill-constructed brood nest at its bottom.
for the safeguarding of newborn fox-babies, as of the babies of every race, dry warmth is all-essential. chilled and soaked, despite their young mother’s frantic efforts to protect them, the five ill-nourished and perilously inbred cubs ceased to nurse and began to squeak right dolefully. then, one by one they died. the last of them stiffened out, just before daybreak.
rance and ethan venner would have cursed luridly at loss of so many hundred dollars in potential peltry. but the bereft little mother only cuddled her ice-cold babies the closer; crooning piteously to them. they were her first litter. she could not realise what had befallen them, nor why one and all of them had ceased to nurse.
meantime, her mate was drifting like an unobtrusive black shadow through the rain toward the clutter of farm buildings at the base of the hill-pasture. his scent told him there was a dog somewhere in that welter of sheds and barns and houses. but his scent told him also that there were fowls aplenty. preparing to match his speed and his wit against any dog’s, he crept close and closer, taking due advantage of every patch of cover; unchecked even by the somewhat more distant man-scent; and urged on by that ever stronger odour of live chickens.
13presently he was skirting the chicken-yard. it and its coop were too fast-locked for him to hope to enter with less than a half-hour’s clever digging. he had not a half-hour. he had not a half-minute to spare.
slinking from the coop, he rounded a tool-house. there he halted. for to his nostrils came again the smell of living food, though of a sort vaguely unpleasant to him. hunger and the need to feed his brood formed too strong a combination for this faint distaste to combat.
he peered around the corner of the half-open door of the tool-house. from the interior arose the hated dog-smell, ten times stronger than before. but he knew by nose and by hearing that the dog was no longer in there.
he was correct in this, as in most of his surmises. not five minutes earlier, the early-rising dick logan had opened the tool-house door and convoyed thence his pedigreed collie, jean, to the kitchen for her breakfast.
in the corner of the tool-house was a box half filled with rags. down among the rags nestled and squirmed and muttered a litter of seven pure-bred collie pups, scarce a fortnight old.
man-scent and dog-scent filled the air; scaring and disgusting the hesitant whitefoot. stark hunger spurred him on. a fleeting black shadow slipped noiselessly swift into the tool-house and then out again.
through the welter of rain, whitefoot was making for his mile-distant lair; at top speed; pausing not to glance over his shoulder; straining every muscle to get away from that place of double peril and to his waiting family. no need to waste time in confusing the trail. the sluicing rain was doing that.
between his teeth the fox carried a squealing and struggling fat collie puppy.
keen as was his own need for food, he did not pause to 14devour or even to kill the plump morsel he had snatched up. nor did his pinpoint teeth so much as prick through the fuzzy fat sides of his prey. holding the puppy as daintily as a bird dog might retrieve a wounded partridge, he sped on.
at the mouth of the warren, pitchdark was waiting for him. she had brought her babies out of the death hole; though too late. they lay strewn on the rain-sick ground in front of her. she herself was crouched for shelter in the lee of a rock that stood beside the hole.
whitefoot dropped the collie pup in front of his mate; and prepared to join her in the banquet. pitchdark nosed the blind, helpless atom of babyhood; as though trying to make out what it might be.
the puppy, finding himself close to something warm and soft and furry, crept instinctively toward this barrier from the cold and wet which were striking through to the very heart of him. at his forward motion, pitchdark snarled down at him. but as his poking nose chanced to touch her, the snarl merged suddenly into a croon. with her own sharp nose, she pushed him closer to her and interposed her body between him and the rain.
whitefoot, the water cascading from his splendid coat, stood dripping and staring. failing to make any sense of his mate’s delay in beginning to devour the breakfast he had brought along at such danger to himself, he took a step forward, his jaws parting for the first mouthful of the feast. pitchdark growled hideously at him and slashed at his advancing face.
piqued and amazed at her ungrateful treatment, he hesitated a moment longer; then trotted glumly off into the rain; leaving pitchdark crooningly nursing the queer substitute for her five dead infants. as he ran, he all but 15collided with a rain-dazed rabbit that hopped out of a briar clump to avoid him.
five minutes later he and pitchdark were lying side by side in the lee of the rock, crunching unctuously the bones of the luckless bunny; while the collie pup feasted as happily in his own fashion as did they, nuzzling deep into the soft hair of his foster-mother’s warm underbody.
why the exposure to rain and cold did not kill the puppy is as much a mystery as why pitchdark did not kill him. nevertheless—as is the odd way of one collie pup in twenty—he took no harm from the mile of rainy gallop to which whitefoot had treated him. more—he throve amain on the milk which had been destined for five fox cubs.
the downpour was followed by weeks of unseasonably dry and warm weather. the porous earth of the warren was dry within a few hours. the lair bed proved as comfortable for the new baby as it was to have been to his luckless predecessors.
by the time may brought the warm nights and the long bright days, the puppy weighed more than twice as much as any fox cub of his age. he had ceased to look like a sleek dun-coloured rat and resembled rather a golden-and-white teddy bear.
on the moonlit may nights and in the red dawning and in the soft afterglow, he and his pretty mother would frisk and gambol in the lush young meadow grass around the lair. it was sweet to see the lithe black beauty’s complete devotion for her clumsy baby and the jealous care wherewith she guarded him. from the first she was teaching him the cunning caution which is a fox’s world-old birthright and which is foreign to a man-owned collie. with his foster-mother’s milk and from his foster-mother’s 16example he drank in the secrets of the wild and the fact that man is the dread foe of the beast.
gaily as the two might play in the moonlit grass, the first distant whiff of man-scent was enough to send pitchdark scuttling silently into the burrow; driving the shambling pup ahead of her. there the two would lie, noiseless, almost without breathing; while man or dog or both passed by.
this was not the season for hunting foxes. their pelts were “off-prime”—in no condition for the market. thus, the pair in the burrow were not sought out nor harried.
back at the logan farm there was bewilderment at the puppy’s mysterious vanishing. his dam, returning from the kitchen after breakfast, had broken into a growl of sudden wrath and had changed her trot for a handgallop as she neared the tool-shed. into the shed she had dashed, abristle and growling, then out again, sniffing the earth, casting in ever widening circles, and setting off presently on a trail which the deluging rain wiped out before she could follow it for a hundred yards.
the stolen pup was the only one in the litter which had not been sold or else bespoken. for the logan collies had a just fame in the region. but that one pup had been set aside by dick logan as a future housedog. this because he was the largest and strongest and liveliest of the seven; and because of the unusually wide white ruff which encircled his broad shoulders like a shawl.
dick had named the youngster “ruff,” because of this adornment. and now he was liked to have no use for the name.
ruff, meantime, was gaining his education, such as it was, far more quickly than his super-domesticated collie mother and dick together could have imparted it to him.
by example and by swift punishment in event of disobedience, 17pitchdark was teaching him to crouch, flattened and noiseless, at sound or scent of man or of alien beast. she was teaching him to worm his pudgy little body snakelike through grass and undergrowth and to make wise use of every bit of cover. she was teaching him—as foxes have taught their young for a million years—the incredible cunning of her race and the fear of man.
by the time his legs could fairly support him on the briefest of journeys, she was teaching him to stalk game;—to creep up on foolish fieldmice, to confuse and head off young rabbits; and the like. before he was fairly weaned she made him try his awkward prowess at finishing a rabbit-kill she had begun. with ruff it was a case of kill or starve. for pitchdark cut off natural supplies from him a full week earlier than his own gentle mother would have done.
pitchdark was a born schoolmistress in nature’s grim woodland course of “eat or be eaten.” to her stern teachings the puppy brought a brain such as no fox could hope to possess. ruff was a collie—member of a breed which can assimilate practically any mental or physical teachings, if taught rightly and at an early enough age. pitchdark was teaching him rightly, if rigidly. assuredly, too, she was beginning early enough.
to the imparted cunning of the fox, ruff added the brain of a highly sensitised collie. the combination was a triumph. he learned well-nigh as fast as pitchdark could teach. if nine-tenths of the things she taught him were as reprehensible as they were needful, he deserved no less credit for his speed in mastering them and for his native ability to add to them.
at an age when his brethren and sisters, back at the farm, were still playing aimlessly around the dooryard, ruff was grasping the weird secrets of the wild. while 18they were still at the teddy bear stage of appealing helplessness, his fat body was turning lean and supple from raw food and from much exercise and from the nature of that exercise. while they were romping merrily with an old shoe, ruff was creeping up on fieldmouse nests and on couchant quail, or he was heading off witlessly racing rabbits which his foster-mother drove toward the cul-de-sacs where she had stationed him.
for a pup situated like ruff, there were two open courses—abnormal thriving or quick starvation. ruff throve.
by the time he was three months old he weighed nearly eighteen pounds. he was more than a third heavier than pitchdark, though the silvered black vixen had the appearance of being fully twice his size. a fox is the most deceptive creature on earth, in regard to bulk. pitchdark, for instance, gave the impression of being as large as any thirty-pound terrier, if of far different build. yet, stripped of her pelt, her slim carcass would not have weighed eleven pounds. perhaps it would not have weighed more than ten pounds, for she was not large for her kind.
before ruff was six weeks old, whitefoot had tired of domesticity—especially with so perplexing a canine slant to it—and had deserted his mate and foster-son.
the warm days were coming on. the woods at last were alive with catchable game. the chickens on many a farm were perching out of doors at night. life was gloriously livable. there seemed no sense in fettering himself to a family, nor for helping to provide for a huge youngster in whom his own interest was purely gastronomical.
more than once whitefoot had sought to slay and eat the changeling. but ever, at such times, pitchdark was 19at him, ravening and raging in defence of her suckling.
then crept the influx of spring food into the valley and mountain. there was dinner to be gotten more easily than by battling a ferocious mate for it, a mate who no longer felt even her oldtime lonely comradeship for the dog-fox, and whose every thought and care was for the sprawling puppy. apart from this, the inherently hated dog-scent on ruff was a continual irritation to whitefoot; though maternal care had long since accustomed pitchdark to it.
thus on a morning in late april whitefoot wandered away and neglected to return. his mate was forced to forage for herself and for ruff. but the task was easy in this new time of food lushness. she did not seem to miss her recreant spouse.
she and ruff shifted their abode from the burrow whose narrow sides the fast-growing pup could scarce squeeze through. they took up changeable quarters in the hinterland forest. there ruff’s training began in grim earnest.
so the sweet spring and the long drowsy summer wore themselves away. through the fat months pitchdark and ruff abode together; drawn toward each other by the queerly strong tie that so often knits foster-dam and child, in the fourfoot kingdom;—a tie that is prone to be far stronger than that of normal brute mother and offspring.
this chumship now was wholly a thing of choice. for no longer did ruff depend on the vixen to teach him how to catch his daily bread. true, he profited still by her experience and her abnormal cunning, and he assimilated it and improved on it—as is the way with a collie when he is taught something that catches his bright fancy. but he was self-supporting.
he continued to live with pitchdark and to travel with 20her and to hunt with her; not because he needed to, but because he loved her. to this temperamental black-and-silver vixen went out all the loyal devotion and hero-worship and innate protectiveness which a normal collie lavishes on the human who is his god.
together they roved the mountain, where pitchdark’s technique and craft bagged illimitable game for them. together on dark nights they scouted the farm-valleys, where ruff’s strength and odd audacity won them access to hencoop after hencoop whose rickety door would have resisted a fox’s onslaught.
twice, ruff forced his way through the rotting palings of a sheepfold and bore thence to his admiring foster-mother a lamb that was twice as heavy as pitchdark. once in open field he fought and outmanœuvred and thrashed a sheep-herding mongrel; dragging off in triumph a half-grown wether.
there were things about pitchdark the young collie could not understand; just as there were traits of his which baffled her keen wits. to him a grape vineyard was a place whose sole interest centred about any possible field-mouse nests in its mould. an apple orchard had as little significance to him. he would pause and look in questioning surprise as pitchdark stopped, during their progress through an orchard, to munch happily at a fallen harvest apple; or while she stood daintily on her hindlegs to strip grapevines of their ripening clusters.
the fable of the fox and the sour grapes had its basis in natural history. for the fox, almost alone of carnivora, loves fruit. ruff cared nothing for it. few collies do.
also, he could see no reason for pitchdark’s rapture when they chanced upon the rotting carcasses of animals. true, he felt an æsthetic thrill in rubbing first one 21shoulder and then the other in such liquescent carrion and then in rolling luxuriously over on his back in it. but it was not good to eat. ruff knew that. yet pitchdark devoured it in delight. on the other hand, when the two came upon a young hawk that had fallen from its pine-top nest, pitchdark gave one sniff at the broken bird of prey; and then pattered on, leaving it alone. ruff killed and ate it with relish.
by the first cool days of autumn, ruff stood twenty-four inches at the shoulder. he would have tipped the scales at a fraction above fifty pounds. his gold-red winter coat was beginning to come in, luxuriantly and with a sheen such as only the pelt of a forest-dweller can boast. his young chest was deep. his shoulders were broad and sinewy. his build was that of a wild beast; not of a domesticated dog. diet and tremendous exercise and his mode of life had wrought that vast difference.
he had the noiselessly padding gait and the furtive air of a fox. mentally and morally he was a fox; plus the keener and finer brain of a collie. his dark and deepset eyes had the glint of the wild, rather than the straight-forward gaze of a collie. yet those eyes were a dog’s and not a fox’s. a fox has the eye of a cat, not of a dog. the iris is not round, but is long and slitted, like a cat’s. in bright sunlight it closes to a vertical line, and does not contract to a tiny circle, like dog’s or man’s.
nor did ruff have the long and couchant hindlegs and short catlike forelegs of pitchdark. his were the honestly sturdy legs and sturdy pads of a collie.
the wolf is the dog’s brother. they be of one blood. they can and do mate as readily as dog and dog. dog and fox are far different. their cousinship is remote. their physique is remoter;—too remote to permit of 22blending. there is almost as much of the cat as of the dog in a fox’s cosmos;—too much of it to permit of interbreeding with the cat-detesting dog.
yet ruff and pitchdark were loving pals. they profited materially from their association; so far as food-getting went. they were inseparable comrades, through the fat summer and autumn and in the lean winter which followed.
in the bitter weather, when rabbits were few and when most birds had flown south and when rodents were holed in, it was young ruff whose daring and strength enabled them to snatch fawns from snow-lined deer-yards in the mountain creases and to raid sheepfolds and rip through flimsy hencoop doors. he kept them alive and he kept them in good condition. daily he grew larger and stronger and wilier.
at a year, he weighed a full sixty pounds; and he had the strength and uncanny quickness of a tiger-cat. it was he now who led; while pitchdark followed in meek adoration. such foxes as they chanced to meet fled in sullen terror before the collie’s assault. ruff did not like foxes.
the next autumn brought forth the hunters. a few city folk and farm-boys ranged the hills with fowling piece and with or without bird dog or rabbit hound. these novices were ridiculously easy for ruff and pitchdark to avoid. they offered still less menace to whitefoot ranging in solitary comfort on the thither side of the mountain wall.
but the real hunters of the region were a more serious obstacle to smug comfort and to safety. they were lanky or stumpy men in woolly old clothes and accompanied by businesslike hounds. these men did not bother with mere sport or pot hunting. red fox pelts brought 23this year $11.50 each, uncured, from the wholesaler down at heckettville. fox hunting was a recognised form of livelihood here in the upland valley district.
it was not like quail shooting or other sport open to any amateur. it was an art. it called for craft and for experience and for a rudimentary knowledge of the habits of foxes and for perfect marksmanship. also it required the aid of a well-trained foxhound;—not the type of foxhound the pink coats trail after, in conventional hunting fields—not the spruce foxhound on exhibition at dogshows—but rangy and stringy and wise and tireless dogs of dubious pedigree but vast fox-sense.
a veteran hunter with a good hound, in that part of the country and in those days, could readily pay the year’s taxes and improvements on his farm by the fox-pelts he was able to secure in a single month’s roaming of the hills. wherefore, now that the year’s farmwork was done, these few experts began their season of lucrative and sportless sport.
time and again some gaunt and sad-faced hound, that fall, hit pitchdark’s confused trail; only to veer from it presently when his nostrils caught the unmistakable dog-scent along with it. still oftener did a hound cling tenaciously to that trail; only to be outwitted by the vixen’s cleverer manœuvres.
pitchdark had as much genius for eluding pursuit as for climbing unclimbable fences. there are such foxes.
in these retreats from pursuing hounds it was she who took up afresh the leadership she had laid down. ruff followed her, implicitly, in her many mazelike twists and doublings. at first he followed, blindly. but gradually he began to get the hang of it, and to devise collie improvements on the hide-and-seek game.
he and she were alone in their wanderings; especially 24since the hunting season forced them higher among the almost inaccessible peaks of the range. foxes that crossed their path or happened to sight or scent them fled as ever in terror at the dog-smell.
in midwinter, the day after a “tracking snow” had fallen, one jeffreys holt, an aged fox-hunter, tramping home with his tired hound at his heels, chanced upon an incredible sight.
an animal rounded a bend of rock on a hillside perhaps a hundred yards in front of him; and stood there, stockstill, for a few seconds, sharply outlined against the snow. then, as holt stared slackjawed, the creature oozed from sight into a crevice. holt plunged ahead, urging his weary hound to the chase. but by the time he reached the crevice there was no sign of the quarry.
the cleft led through to an opening on the far side of a rocky outcrop. thence a hundred-yard rib of rock jutted above the snow. along this, presumably, had the prey fled; for there were no further marks of him in the whiteness. holt cast his dog futilely upon the trail. he studied the footprints in the snow at the point where first the beast had been standing. then he plodded home.
whitefoot, from the safety of another double-entry rock-lair, a furlong away, watched him depart. long immunity had made the big dog-fox overbold. yet this was the first time human eyes had focused on him for two years.
at the store, that night, rance venner glanced up from his task of ordering supplies for the stippled silver kennels and listened with sudden interest to the harangue of an oldster among the group around the stove.
“i’m telling you,” holt was insisting, in reply to a doubter, “i’m telling you i saw him as plain as i see you. jet black he was, only his tailtip was white, and one of 25his hindfeet; and there was shiny grey hairs sticking out from his shoulders and over his eyebrows. he—”
“somebody’s black dog, most likely,” suggested the doubter.
“dog nothing!” snorted holt. “i’ve killed too many foxes not to know ’em from dogs. this was a fox. a reg’lar ol’ he-one. a corker. and i’m telling you he was coal-black; all but the tip of his tail and them hairs sprinkled all over his mask and—”
“well,” soothed the doubter, seeking to calm holt’s vexed vehemence, “i’m not saying there mayn’t be black foxes with white tails and white hindfeet and grey masks. for all i know, there’s maybe foxes that’s bright green and foxes that’s red-white-and-blue, or speckled with pink. there may be. only nobody’s ever seen ’em. any more’n anybody’s ever seen a black-and-white-and-grey one, till you seen that one to-day, jeff. i—”
rance venner came into the circle of disputants. he did not mingle with the folk of this village, six miles from his fox-farm. this was his first visit to the store. the emporium nearest his home had burned down, that week. hence his need to go farther afield for supplies.
“you say you saw a silver fox?” he asked excitedly, confronting holt.
holt stared truculently at him; suspecting further banter and not relishing it from a stranger.
“nope,” solemnly spoke up the doubter. “not silver. rainbow-colour, with a streak of this here radium you’ve likely heard tell of. jeff holt don’t see queer things, often. but when he does, he sure sees ’em plenty vivid.”
“my name is venner,” went on rance, still addressing holt. “my brother and i run the stippled silver fox farm, up above croziers. two years ago a couple of our silver foxes got loose on us. they—”
26“sure they wasn’t di’mond foxes?” asked the doubter, politely.
the audience snickered at this scintillant flash of native wit. but rance went on, unheeding. briefly, he explained the appearance and general nature and value of silver foxes; and expanded upon the loss of the two that had escaped from his kennel.
his oration gained scant personal interest; until he made a cash offer of $75 to any one who would bring him whitefoot’s or pitchdark’s pelt in good condition. he made an offer of $125 for either fox if captured alive and undamaged.
at this point incredulity reached its climax among his hearers. but when venner pulled twenty-five dollars from his hip pocket and deposited it with the postmaster-storekeeper in evidence of good faith, the sight of real money caused a wholesale conversion.
this conversion became rockbound conviction when, next night, holt returned from a call upon the wholesale pelt-buyer at heckettville, fifteen miles away.
“say!” reported holt, to the group of idling men at the stove-side. “that venner cuss ain’t loony, after all. gannett told me all about them silver foxes. they’re true, all right. showed me a picture of one. the spitting image of the one i seen. gave me this circ’lar to prove it. it was sent to him by the gov’ment or by some sort of association. listen here.”
drawing out a folder, he began to read at random:
"some silver foxes are cheap at $1,000.... if every silver fox in the world should be pelted in november or december, when the fur is prime, they could all be disposed of in a city the size of new york, in less than a week, at a fab—at a fab’lous sum."
impressively and for the most part taking the more 27unfamiliar words in his stride, jeffreys holt continued to read. nor did he cease until he had made his eager audience acquainted with every line of the folder, including the printer’s name and address in the lozenge at the foot of the fourth page.
next morning all available fox traps for some miles around were on duty in the woods and among the hilltop rock-barrens. every man who understood the first thing about fox hunting was abroad with gun and dog, as well as local wealth-seekers to whom the fine art of tracking foxes was merely a thing of hearsay. in that meagre community and in that meagre time of a meagre year, the lure of $75, to say nothing of $125, was irresistible. the village went afield.
rance venner and his brother were among the hunters, they and their little mixed-blood foxhound, ruby.
before dawn, ruff and pitchdark caught the distant signs of the chase, and they denned in, far among the peak rocks, for the day. at that, the chase might perhaps have neared their lofty eyrie before sunset, but for whitefoot.
the big dog-fox had enjoyed long immunity from harm. he lacked pitchdark’s super-caution. his adventure with man and dog, two days earlier, had resulted in no harm to himself. with entire ease he had blurred pursuit. seeking rabbits again, in the clefts of the same rockridge, at sunrise on this day of universal hunting, he heard hounds baying futilely in far quarters of the valley and foothills below him.
instead of denning in, as had his former mate and ruff, he went on with his own hunt. lacking a confederate like the collie to help him find food which was beyond his own vulpine powers to capture or slay, whitefoot had begun to feel the pinch of winter-hunger. unappeasable appetite 28made him take chances from which the vixen would have recoiled.
for example, the sound and smell of the distant hunt, this morning, did not send him to cover. all autumn and early winter he had been hearing such far-off sounds, had been catching the man-and-dog scent. never had he come to harm from any of it. he had been able to keep out of its way. until that afternoon when holt chanced upon him, no human eye had seen him. and even then there had been no trouble about getting away clean.
there were rabbits hiding in these clefts and crevices along the ridge-side. whitefoot could smell them. with luck he might be able to stampede one of them into a cul-de-sac cranny big enough to admit his own slim body.
an empty and gnawing stomach urged him on. it urged him on, even after he caught the scent of human footprints which had passed that way, not an hour agone. it urged him on, even when, in a cranny, he came upon a contrivance of wood and iron which fairly reeked of human touch. the thing reeked of something else—of an excessively dead chicken which lay just beyond it in the cleft.
too crafty to go past such a man-made and man-scented contrivance, yet whitefoot felt his mouth water at the ancient odour of the chicken. he craved it beyond anything. detouring the top of the ridge, he entered the cleft from the other side. no visible object of man’s workmanship checked him here or stood between him and the tempting food. of course the man-scent was as strong here as at the opposite end. but the morning wind was shifting through the cleft, bearing the reek with it.
cautiously the half-starved fox padded forward through the drift of dead leaves toward the chicken which itself was half buried in leafage. his jaws closed on it.
29as he backed out with his treasure-trove, steel jaws closed on his left forefoot.
an hour later, rance venner and holt climbed the ridge to visit the former’s newfangled patent fox-trap. in the centre of a patch of bloody trampled snow lay a magnificent silver fox; moveless, his eyes rolled back; his teeth curled away from his upper jaw. limp and pitifully still he lay.
venner ran forward with a cry of joy and knelt to unfasten the trap jaws from the lifeless creature’s paw.
“it’s our king whitefoot ii!” he exulted, laying the supine body in his lap and smoothing the rumpled glory of pelt. “but i can’t figure why he’s dead. maybe the shock killed him, or else he broke a blood-vessel in his brain trying to tear loose. he—”
the rambling conjecture ended in a hoot of pain. there was an indescribably swift whirl of the inert black body. rance venner’s thumb received a lightning bite from teeth which scraped sickeningly into its very bone. whitefoot was flying like mad for the nearest available rock-cranny.
venner once more was increasing his knowledge of fox-character. apart from enacting prodigies at digging and at climbing, it appeared now that foxes, in emergency, understood to perfection the trick of playing dead.
away flashed whitefoot, his lacerated forepaw marring his speed not at all. jeffreys holt was an old enough huntsman to act on sheer instinct. through no conscious volition of his own he whipped to his shoulder the gun that had hung idle in his grasp while he watched rance open the trap. taking snap aim, he pulled trigger.
whitefoot did not stop at once his panic flight. he continued it for two yards longer; rolling over and over 30like a mechanical toy, before thumping against the rock-side, stone dead.
“there’s another good stunt we done, in getting that ol’ feller,” remarked holt, ten minutes later, as he and venner made their way downhill with their prize. “i’ll bet my share of his pelt he’s the fox that’s been working the hencoops all along the valley, this winter. he’s a whooping big cuss. and no common-size fox could ’a busted in the coop doors like he did at a couple of places. now that we got the fox, i s’pose it’s up to us to get the wolf.”
“what wolf?” mumbled venner, still sucking his bitten thumb.
“why, the one the grange reward is out for, of course,” answered holt in surprise at such ignorance. “first wolf that’s been in this section in thutty years or more. he’s been at sheepfolds, all over. at hencoops, too. first-off folks thought maybe it was a stray cur. but no dog c’d do the smart wolf-stunts that feller’s done. pizen-shy and trap-wise. it’s a wolf, all right, all right.”
the store was jammed, for two hours or more, that evening, by folk who came to stare at the wonder-fox. next day and the next the whole community was out in quest of the priceless vixen.
all the second day, after a night of successful forage, ruff and pitchdark denned amid the rocks of their peak. at nightfall they fared forth again, as usual. but as they were padding contentedly back to their safe eyrie at grey dawn, pitchdark failed to note a deadfall which had been placed in a hillside gully three months earlier.
going back and forth—always of course by different routes—during the past three days, she and ruff had scented and avoided a score of shrewdly-laid traps scattered here and there. but this clumsy deadfall had been in place since november, when a farm lad had set it and 31then forgotten all about it. rains and snow and winds had rubbed it clean of any vestige of man-scent. it seemed nothing but a fallen log propped against a tree-trunk.
by way of a short cut, pitchdark ran under it.
there was a thump, followed at once by an astounded yell. the vixen, flattened out, lay whimpering under the tumbled log.
ruff was trotting along; a yard or so behind her. the fall of the log had made him spring instinctively sideways. now he went over to where pitchdark lay moaning and writhing. tenderly he sniffed at her; then he walked around the log and her pinioned body. in another second he was at work clawing and shoving at the weight that imprisoned her.
the log was too light for its purpose. also the boy who made and set the trap was a novice. the end of the log had come to rest on a knot of wood near the tree base. ruff’s weight and applied strength set it a-rolling. off from the vixen it bumped; while she cried out again in agony.
ruff turned to greet her as she should leap joyously to her feet. but she did not leap. the impact of the falling log had injured her spine. the best she could do was to crawl painfully along, stomach to the ground; whining with pain at every step. her hindlegs sagged useless. her forepaws made all the progress.
yet she was a gallant sufferer. keenly aware that she was in no condition to face or flee any possible dangers of the open, she made pluckily for the eyrie on the distant peak. the great collie slackened his pace to hers. at a windfall, too high for her to clamber over, he caught her gently by the nape of the neck with his mighty jaws and scrambled over the impediment, carrying her with him.
thus, at snail-pace, they made their way homeward; the 32collie close beside his crippled chum; quivering from head to foot in distress as now and then the pain forced from her a sharp outcry.
dawn deepened into daylight. up came the winter sun, shouldering its sulky way through dun horizon mists. the day was on. and ruff and pitchdark were not yet within a mile of their hiding place.
the last mile promised to be the worst mile; rising as it did, almost precipice-like, to the summit; and strewn with boulder and rift. to the light-footed pair, such a clamber had ever been childishly easy. now it threatened to be one long torment to the vixen.
no longer, since the accident, did they seek as usual to confuse or obliterate their homeward trail. there was no question now of wasting a step or of delaying the needful moment of safety.
then, as they came to a ten-foot cliff, at the base of the peak’s last stiff climb, they halted and looked miserably upward. along the face of this rock wall a narrow rudimentary trail ran, from bottom to top; a widened rock-fissure. the fox and the collie were wont to take it almost at a bound.
but now there was no question of bounding. nor was the collie able to navigate the tricky climb with pitchdark suspended from his jaws. it was not a matter of weight but of leverage and of balance. he had sense enough to know that.
for the past half-mile he had been carrying the vixen, her helpless hindlegs dragging along the ground. very tenderly, by the nape of the neck, he had borne her along. yet the wrenching motion had forced cries from her, so that once and again he had set her down and stared in pitiful sorrow at her.
33now, pitchdark took matters into her own hands. at the base of the cliff was an alcove niche of rock, perhaps two feet deep and eighteen inches wide; roofed over by a slant of half-fallen stone. it was bedded with dead leaves. there were worse holes into which to crawl to die, than was this natural den. into it, painfully, wearily, the vixen dragged her racked body. there she laid herself down on the leaf-couch; spent and in torture. she had come to the end of her journey; though still a mile on the hither side of the den where she and ruff were wont to hide.
it was no hiding place, no safe refuge, this niche of rock wherein she lay. but it was the best substitute. panting, she settled down to bear her anguish as best she might. above her, at the opening of the niche, stood the heartsick dog that loved her.
puzzled, miserable, tormented, he stood there. at times he would bend down to lick the sufferer, crooning softly to her. but she gave him scant heed.
a rabbit scuttled across the snowy open space in front of the cliff. with a dash, ruff was after him. a few rods away the chase ended in a reddened swirl of the snow. back to pitchdark trotted ruff, the rabbit in his mouth. he laid the offering in front of her. but she was past eating or so much as noticing food.
then, as he watched her, his deepset dark eyes sick with pity and grief, he stiffened to attention; and his lip curled away from his curving white teeth. the morning breeze bore to him a scent and a sound that had but one meaning.
the scent was of dogs. the sound was of multiple baying.
instinctively he glanced at the cliff-trail—the trail he could surmount so quickly and easily, to the safety of the 34peak’s upper reaches. then his unhappy gaze fell on pitchdark. the baying and the odour had reached her even more keenly than it had reached ruff. she read it aright; and the realisation brought her out of the pain-daze into which she had fallen. she tried to get to her feet. failing, she fell to whimpering softly.
once she peered up, questioningly, at ruff. the big collie was standing in front of the niche, shielding it with his strong body. his head was high and his eye had the look of eagles. gone from his expression was the furtiveness of the wild. in this crisis he was all collie. the sun blazed on his flaming red-gold coat and his snowy mass of ruff and frill. every muscle was tense. every faculty was alert.
zeb harlow knew nothing about fox-hunting. indeed, he knew little enough about anything. but at the store conclave, the preceding night, his fancy had been fired by tales of the silver foxhunt. he had an inspiration.
before daybreak he was abroad; gun in hand. going from one sleeping neighbour’s to another’s, he loosed and took along with him no fewer than five chained foxhounds.
the dogs all knew him well enough to let him handle them. there was not one of the five that would not have followed anybody who carried a gun. so his one-man hunt was organised. he and the five hounds made for the ridge where, two days before, whitefoot had been caught.
from reading nature-faked tales of rattlesnakes, zeb argued that the slain fox’s mate would be haunting the scene of her spouse’s death. it was a pretty theory; as pretty as it was asinine. like many another wholly idiotic premise it led to large results—of a sort.
as zeb was traversing a wooded gully on the way to the ridge, the foremost hound gave tongue. the pack had come to the spot where pitchdark had been crippled. 35from that point a blind mongrel puppy could have followed the pungent trail.
oblivious of harlow, for whom they had all a dog’s amusedly tolerant contempt for an inefficient human leader, the quintet swept away on the track. zeb made shift to follow as best he could. not being a woodsman, his progress was slow.
up the gully they roared and out into the hillside birch woods beyond and thence to the patch of broken ground over which ruff had carried pitchdark so tenderly. the scent was rankly strong now. it was breast-high. no longer was there need to work with nostrils to earth. the dragging hindfeet of the vixen were easier to follow than an aniseseed lure.
out into the cleared space they swung—the clearing with the ten-foot cliff behind it. there, not fifty yards in front of them, clearly visible between the braced legs of a shimmering gold-and-white collie on guard at the niche opening, crouched their prey.
deliriously they rushed to the kill.
the kill was there. but so was the killer.
perhaps there are two foxhounds on earth which together can down a normal collie. assuredly there is no one foxhound that can hope to achieve the deed. most assuredly such a hound was not the half-breed black-and-yellow leader of that impromptu pack.
the black-and-yellow made for the niche, a clean dozen lengths ahead of his nearest follower. blind to all but the lust of slaughter, he dived between the braced legs of the movelessly-waiting collie, and struck for the cowering vixen.
ruff drove downward at him as the hound dived. the collie’s terrible jaws clamped shut behind the base of the leader’s skull. the aim, made accurate by a thousand 36snaps at fleeing rabbits and rising birds, was flawless. the jaws had been strengthened past normal by the daily grinding of bony food.
ruff tossed high his head. the black-and-yellow was flung in air and fell back amid his onrushing fellows; his neck broken, his spinal cord severed.
but that was ruff’s last opportunity for individual fighting. the four following hounds were upon him; in one solid battling mass. noting their leader’s fate they did not make the error of trying to jostle past to the vixen. instead, they sought to clear the way by flinging themselves ravenously on her solitary guard.
the rest was horror.
there was no scope for scientific fighting or for craft. the four fastened upon the collie, in murderous unison. they might more wisely have fastened upon a hornet-nest.
down, under their avalanche of weight went ruff; battling as he fell. but a collie down is not a collie beaten. as he fell, he slashed to the bone the nearest gaunt shoulder. by the time he had struck ground on his back, he lunged upward for one flying spotted hindleg that chanced to flounder nearest to his jaws. the fighting tricks of his long-ago wolf ancestors came to him in his hour of stress. catching the leg midway between hock and body he gave a sidewise wrench to it that wellnigh heaved off the pack that piled upon him. the possessor of the spotted hindleg screeched aloud and gave back, tumbling out of the ruck with a fractured and useless limb.
up from the tangle of fighting hounds arose ruff, his golden coat a-smear with blood. high he reared above the surrounding heads. slashing, tearing, dodging, wheeling, he fought clear of his mangled foes.
for an instant, as they gathered their force for a new 37charge at this tigerlike adversary, the great collie stood clear of them all. a single bound would have carried him to the cliff trail. thence, to its top would have been a climb of less than half a second. at the summit he could have fought back an army of dogs or he could have made his escape to the fastnesses beyond. never was there a foxhound that could keep pace with a racing collie.
the coast was clear, if only for an instant. there was time—just time—for the leap. ruff made the leap.
but he did not make it in the direction of the inviting trail. instead, he sprang back again in front of the trembling vixen as she crouched in her niche.
a fox would have fled. so would any creature of the wild. but no longer was ruff a creature of the wild. in his supreme moment he was all collie.
whirling to face his oncoming enemies he took his stand. and there the charge of the hounds crashed into him.
by footwork, by dodging, by leading his foes into a chase where they should string out, he could have conquered them. but this he dared not do. he knew well what must befall pitchdark the moment he should leave the niche unguarded. so he stood where he was; and went down once more under the rush.
there were but three opponents atop him, this time. the spotted hound was out of the fight, with a crunched leg and a craven heart. nor were any of the three others unmarked by slash or nip or tear.
now, as ruff fell he pulled one of the three down with him; his awful fangs busy at the hound’s throat. a second of the trio rolled over with them; the forequarters of his inverted body sprawled within the niche. while he bit and roared at the fast-rolling ruff, the vixen saw her chance. darting her head forward, she set her needle 38teeth deep in the hound’s throat. instantly, seared by the hurt, he was atop her; ripping away at her unprotected back; tearing it to ribbons. but, with death upon her and the rear half of her paralysed, she did not abate the merciless grinding at the hound’s throat. presently, the needle teeth found their goal.
ruff was up again; one of his assailants gasping out his life beneath him; the other with pitchdark clinging in death to his throat. torn and bleeding and panting as he was, ruff flew at the fourth dog; the only one of the five still in fighting condition.
before that one-to-one onset the mongrel hound’s heart went back on him. he turned and fled; but not before ruff’s madly twisting jaws had lamed him for life.
the battle was fought and won. of the five hounds, one lay dead; two more were dying, a fourth was lying helpless with a crunched hindleg. the fifth was in limping flight.
the young collie staggered, then righted himself. crossing to pitchdark, he bent painfully down and licked her face—the face whose teeth were locked in her oppressor’s throat.
never now would that glorious pelt sell for hundreds of dollars; or even for hundreds of cents. the dying hound had seen to that. so had the dog now limping away. this latter had taken advantage of ruff’s preoccupation with his two fellows, as they rolled in the snow, to tear destructively at the silken coat as the vixen’s teeth were finding their way to his comrade’s jugular.
crooning, licking, ruff sought to make his loved little foster-mother awaken. then he lifted his head and wheeled wearily about to face a new intruder.
across the snow toward him was clumping a slack-faced man who gripped in both hands a cocked gun and who was 39shouting foolishly in his excitement. zeb harlow had caught up to the hunt at last.
ruff had not been so near to any human since he was a fortnight old. the carefully-taught lessons of pitchdark warned him to turn and flee. the cliff trail was still open to him. but into the brain that was once again all collie there seeped a queer sensation the big dog could not analyse.
his dear little comrade was dead. without her the old life would be empty. his was the collie heritage—the stark need for comradeship; coupled with the unconscious craving to be owned by man and to give his devotion to man, his god.
still unable to analyse his own unwonted feelings, ruff bent again and licked pitchdark’s dead face. then, hesitant, he took a step toward the stormily advancing harlow. he took another irresolute step; paused again and wagged his plumy tail.
“attacked me, he did!” bragged zeb harlow, that night at the store. “come straight for me, like he was going to eat me alive. but i stopped him, all right, all right. i stood my ground. after the second step he took, i let him have both bar’ls. you saw for yourselves what he looked like after he tried to tackle me.”
