  The great snow stayed in the woods for weeks. All that time and longer Red Ben and his new found comrade kept near the stream where they had met. She knew no other home land, and he cared only to be where she was. On moonlight nights they went hunting together, then hurried back to romp and play like two big cubs. Red Ben seemed suddenly young again, carefree, happy beyond words. When April brought the first flowers and the hum of bees, when the summer birds began to fill the woods, and all the little animals to go about with the Spring joy in their hearts, two and two, wherever they were seen, Red Ben and his little mate started on a journey—a long night’s journey—to Oak Ridge. Again the longing for home was tugging at Red Ben. Once started, he could hardly stop an instant to rest. Just as the sun rose they crossed the log over Goose Creek, trotted up the old woods path and looked from the Ridge over Ben Slown’s broad fields, lying so peacefully under the morning mist. Jim Crow’s “caw—caw—caw,”—all’s well—echoed through the woods quite in the old way. White Stripe, too, was lumbering along the path just as he had when Red Ben first saw him and nearly got into trouble. Bun, the big farm rabbit, passed ahead of the old skunk, and far down the Ridge, Red Ben saw a possum cautiously shuffling along. “Holding to a limb with all four feet” There was something familiar about the possum. Red Ben watched for a moment, then playfully pranced to meet him. It was the little possum, now grown very big and fat, who had been so frightened when Red Ben tried to play with him. And now, too, he almost went over backwards with fright and scuttled up the first tree he could find, holding to a limb with all four feet as if his life depended on it. Poor, scared, little possum! Red Ben and his mate did not stop there; they were hunting something very important, a snug, safe den. They found just what they wanted in a tumbled down old mill on Goose Creek. Parts of the walls still stood, but enough big stones had fallen to make a great pile of rock, under which a burrow was run without much digging. On the top of one of the walls they could lie in the pleasant sun and look down at the water rushing by, and at the fish coming up the creek to spawn in the shallows, where the young ones, when they hatched, would be safe. First came the long nosed, slim pike, then the fat suckers and last of all the silver sided herring, hundreds of them, fresh from the ocean. Here four little fox pups were born—Red Ben’s children. They looked like him, and like him they were strong and wise and merry. With their parents keeping guard on the top of the old wall, they could play all through the long days. Many were the romps they had together, but none so exciting as those in which Red Ben joined; then all four would pile on top of him and bury their little noses in his soft fur trying to hold him down; but somehow he would suddenly roll them all off and go dashing about the old mill with all of them close at his heels, yelping with delight. Care free days were these: indeed, a change had come over the Ridge. Red Ben had noticed it at once. There were no gun shots, no hounds, no grim signs of Ben Slown’s work. The farmer had moved away, disgusted with the place and with his neighbors. His poison baits and traps, set for Red Ben, his big brute of a hound, all had gotten him into trouble with the villagers. The foxes had won, Ben Slown had to move. The man who bought the farm had no use for a gun. He let the fence rows grow up with weeds and berries for the birds, so that his corn and fruit would not be disturbed by them. He let the woodchucks and the children of Bun feed at will in his meadows, and grow so plentiful that no fox would ever need a chicken for a meal. Once in a while—very seldom—he would steal into the woods, come, up wind, towards the old mill and cautiously peep at the little red foxes. Only Red Ben saw him, and Red Ben seemed to understand. He never gave an alarm to stop their play. Year after year Red Ben, with his faithful, pretty mate, raised little red foxes in the old mill. Year after year he hunted on the Ridge and on clear nights barked his defiance to any and all the gray foxes of the Barrens. “Yap, yap, yrrrrrr,” over the farmlands it would echo, and all the people who heard it would stop their work, or reading, for an instant to say to each other excitedly, “Listen! The Fox of Oak Ridge!” THE END |
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