"Keep on," cried Addison, "he cannot run fast." We crossed the pasture and entered the sugar maple grove between the pasture and the Aunt Hannah Lot. As it chanced, the fox was lurking in the high brakes here, having stopped to rest, no doubt, as Addison had conjectured. We did not come upon him here, however; for warned probably by the noise which we made, the goose-hunter stole out silently on the farther side and ran on across the open fields of the Aunt Hannah Lot. As we emerged from the belt of woodland, we caught sight of him, toiling up a hillside beyond the fields, fifty or sixty rods away.
"It is of no use to chase him any further," said Addison, pulling up.
"He will reach the woods in a few minutes more."
By this time we were all three badly out of breath. The fox had the best of the race. We could distinguish plainly the white goose across his back, in contrast to his butter-colored coat and great bushy tail.
"Wouldn't Gram fume to see that!" Halse exclaimed. "Her best old goose is taking its last ride."
"I think I know where that fox is going," remarked Addison. "I was in those woods, gunning, one day last fall, and I came to a fox burrow, in the side of a knoll, among trees. There was no end of yellow dirt, dug out, and there seemed to be two or three holes, leading back into the side-hill. I told the Old Squire about it. He said it was a fox-hole, and that there had been one there for years. When he was a young man, he once saw six foxes playing around that knoll, and, first and last, he trapped a number there."
We went back to our interrupted breakfast. Gram heard our tidings with much vexation. Gramp laughed. "If the foxes got every goose, I shouldn't cry," said he. "Nasty creatures! Worse than a parcel of pigs about the farm."
"But you like to put your head on a soft pillow as well as any one,"
replied Gram calmly. "If you know of anything that makes better pillows than _live_ geese feathers, I shall be glad to hear about it."
The Old Squire not having any proper substitute to offer, Gram went on to say that she wished some of us possessed the energy (I believe she said _spunk_) to make an end of that fox; for now that it had achieved the capture of a goose from her flock, it would be quite likely to come back for another, in the course of a day or two.
This appeal stirred our pride, and after we had gone out to hoe corn that forenoon, Addison asked the Old Squire whether he thought it likely we could unearth the fox, if, as we suspected, it had its haunt in the burrow on the hillside of the Aunt Hannah Lot.
"Maybe," replied the Old Squire, "by digging hard enough and long enough. But 'tis no easy job."
Addison did not say anything more for ten or fifteen minutes, when he observed that as Gram seemed a good deal disturbed, he for one would not mind an hour or two of digging, if it would save her geese.
"Oh, I have nothing against her geese, boys," replied the old gentleman with a kind of apologetic laugh. "I like to hear her stand up for them once in a while.
"I wanted to get this corn hoed by to-morrow," he continued. "Let's see, to-morrow is Saturday. We will take the crowbar and some shovels and make a little trip over to that burrow, later this afternoon. Don't say anything about it at dinner; for likely as not we shall not find the fox there."
After we had hoed for some time longer, Addison said, "What if we have Halse run over to Edwardses', right after dinner, and ask Tom to take a bar, or shovel, and go with us. Tom is a good hand at digging,--and that fox may trouble them, too."
The Old Squire laughed. "You are a pretty crafty boy, Addison," said he.
Ad looked a little confused. "I knew Tom would like to go first rate,"
said he; "and as there may be considerable hard digging before us, I thought it would be all right to have somebody who could take his turn at it."
"Quite right," replied Gramp, still laughing. "Craft is a good thing and often helps along famously. But don't grow too crafty.
"I am quite willing for you to send for Thomas," he added. "I think it is a good idea."
Accordingly, at noon Halse went to the Edwards homestead, bearing an invitation to a fox-digging bee. They, too, were busy with their hoeing, but Mr. Edwards, who was a very good-humored man, gave Thomas permission to join us at two o'clock. When we went out from dinner to our own hoeing, we took along an axe, two spades, a hog-hook to pull out the fox, and a crowbar, also the gun; and after working two hours in the corn-field, we set off across the fields and pastures for the fox burrow, just as Thomas came running across lots to join us.
"Mother's glad to have me go," said he. "She lost a turkey last week; and father says there's a fox over in that burrow, this summer, no mistake. Father gets up at half-past three every morning now, and he says he has heard a fox bark over that way at about sunrise for a fortnight. But we will end his fun for him."
Thomas was such a resolute boy that it was always a treat to hear him talk.
Crossing the pasture, we climbed the hillside of the Aunt Hannah lot, and again entering the maple woods, went on for forty or fifty rods over rather rough ground.
"That's the knoll," said Addison, pointing to a hillock among the trees.
"Yes, that's the place," the Old Squire corroborated.
On the side of the knoll next us as we drew near, there was a large hole, leading downwards and backwards into the bank side. A quantity of yellow earth had been thrown out quite recently, looking as if dogs had tried to dig out the fox. Tom looked into the hole.
"Yes, siree," he exclaimed. "There's a fox lives here; I know by these flies in the mouth of the hole. You'll always see two or three of these flies at a hole where there's a fox or a wood-chuck."
Farther around the knoll there were two other holes, one beside a rock and the other under a birch-tree root, which manifestly led into the same burrow, deep back in the knoll.
"And only look here!" cried Addison. "See these bones and these feathers."
"Oho!" said the Old Squire. "'Tis a female fox with her cubs that has taken up her abode in the old burrow this summer. That accounts for her raids on the turkeys and geese; she's got a young family to look out for."
After some discussion, it was agreed to begin our assault at the hole where the bones and feathers had been brought out; and while Addison and I went to block up the entrance to the other two holes with stones, the Old Squire threw off his coat, and seizing the crowbar, commenced to break down the rooty ground over the hole, while Thomas and Halse cleared it away with their shovels. We worked by turns, or all together, as opportunity offered. It was no light task for a warm June afternoon, and we were soon perspiring freely. Gradually we removed the top of the knoll, following the hole inward, and came to the intersection of this one with another farther around to the west side. There was a considerable cavity here, matted underfoot with feathers and small bones. From this point the burrow crooked around a large rock down in the ground.
Listening now at this opening, we could hear faint sounds farther back in the earth, and an occasional slight sneeze.
"Digging to get away, or get out!" exclaimed Thomas.
While we were resting and listening, a sharp, querulous bark came suddenly to our ears from out in the woods behind us.
"'Tis the old fox!" said Addison. "She's been away. She isn't in the hole. But she has come back in sight, and she don't like the looks of us here." He seized the gun and went cautiously off in the direction of the sound, but could not again catch sight of the fox.
We resumed our digging, and soon broke into a still larger cavity, leading off from which were three passages. Fresh earth was flying back out of one of them.
"We are close hauls on the fox inside!" cried Thomas. "Stand ready with the gun, Ad; he may make a bolt out by us."
The Old Squire plied the crowbar again, and breaking down a part of the bank over the passage, we caught sight of three fox cubs, all making the dirt fly, digging away for dear life, to get farther back. As the bank broke down and the light fell in upon them, they turned for a moment from their labors, and casting a foxy eye up at us, "yapped" sharply and bristled themselves.
"Oh, the little rogues!" cried Addison. "Only look at them! Look at their little paws and their little noses all covered with yellow dirt!
There they go at it again, digging!"
"Aren't they cunning!" exclaimed Thomas. "Fox all over, too. Regular little rascals. See the white of those eyes, will you, when they turn them up at us! Isn't that a rogue's eye now?"
"We will catch them and carry them home, and put them in a pen," said Addison. "By next November their skins will be worth something."
"They will make you lots of work, to tend them and get meat for them,"
said the Old Squire. "Their pelts will not half pay you for your trouble."
These cubs were several weeks old, I suppose, but they were not larger than half-grown kittens.
"It won't answer for you to grab them with your bare hands," the Old Squire warned us. "I did that once, when a boy, and found that a fox cub is sharp-bitten."
They were of rather lighter yellow tint than a full-grown fox, but otherwise much like, although their legs, we thought, were not yet as long in proportion as they would become; nor yet were their tails in full bush.
It was not quite as far across lots to the Edwards farm as it was to the Old Squire's, and at length Addison and Thomas set off to go there for a basket to put the foxes in, and some old thick gloves with which to catch them.
Meantime the rest of us remained hard by, to watch the burrow, lest the cubs should escape. Once, while the boys were gone, we heard the mother fox bark. Halse went after her with the gun; she was evidently lingering about, but he could not catch sight of her.
The boys returned with a bushel basket and an old potato sack, to tie over the top of it. A little more of the bank was then broken down, when Addison, reaching in with his hands, protected by a pair of buckskin gloves, seized first one, then another, of the snapping, snarling little vulpines and popped them into the basket. It was agreed that Thomas should have one of them; and in furtherance of this division of the spoils, Halse and Addison went around by way of the Edwards farm, with Tom and the basket, while the Old Squire and I loaded ourselves with the tools and took the direct route homeward.