Cinnabar: The One O'Clock Fox, Page 3

  With his head cocked a little to one side, he turned now to look at the small shadow he made. His heart began to beat faster. It was just past the hour of one. The hunters must surely be headed his way by now. But which covert would they draw? Which line would they take? He stood up, pricking his ears, then swiveling them like a man with an ear trumpet. Although the sharpest human ears could scarcely have heard so faint a sound, Cinnabar’s caught a single high note. The Huntsman’s horn! “Your life is at stake,” it said. “The chase is on. Run, Cinnabar! Run!”

  Now he knew which way the hunters were coming. They were directly east of him, in the woods across the creek. The horses would have to ford it, the hounds would have to swim it; then they would come crashing into his own woods and the fun would begin.

  Excitement rose in him. He licked his right forepaw and held it up to see which way the wind was blowing. “Hmmm,” he breathed. “ ’Tis a west wind. I shall skallyhoot down to the edge of the creek, and there I shall leave a spot of scent where the cattails grow. And West Wind shall blow my scent in the hounds’ faces. I want them to chase me!”

  He waited until the very last moment, waited until he heard the cracked voice of the Huntsman, crying, “Yhou-whou-whou,” encouraging the hounds, telling them to enter the creek.

  Then, with a swift, winnowing movement, he headed downhill, brushed against the cattails to leave his scent, and returned again to the little knoll to wait.

  For an awesome moment the world was wrapped in silence, except for a lone bird singing in a wild persimmon tree.

  All of a sudden the quiet exploded. Horses and hounds came splashing across the creek, and the pack fanned out along the bank, thrashing in and out among the scrub willow and honeysuckle. It was Sweet Lips who first caught a tiny drift of oily, musky fragrance. She began working the scent, sifting it from the smell of beavers and muskrats. She yipped a little, not quite certain at first. Then she doubled back again to check, and now she was sure! With a long-drawn howl she spoke out. Hounds and men, and even Cinnabar, knew the cry. “I’m on the line!” it said. “I’ve scented a fox!”

  “Hark to her! Hark!” the Huntsman’s voice bellowed.

  From all over the bank the hounds came in to Sweet Lips. One by one they too picked up the trail and gave tongue until the medley of their voices spread like a wave. The woods caught up the sound and tossed it back and forth from tree to tree.

  Cinnabar’s heart thumped wildly. At last! At last they were coming for him! The crash of hound music touched off a fuse inside him. It was as if all of life had been building up to this moment.

  “Oh, frogs and mice, and all things nice!” he trilled in rapture. Then up he sprang into the air, flaunting his tawny red coat against the blue of sky. And so, in full view of thirty eager horsemen and a pack of bloodthirsty hounds, he went flying downhill. Bravely, he headed toward them, then with a teasing grin, he circled in front of them and veered away like a wisp of red vapor.

  Chapter 6

  SWEET LIPS IS OUTFOXED

  Tal-ly Ho!” It was George Washington who sighted the flying form of Cinnabar. “Tal-ly ho!” he cried, standing up in his stirrups and pointing his cap in Cinnabar’s direction. “ ’Tis the One O’Clock Fox!”

  “Tal-ly ho! Tal-ly ho!” echoed the Whippers-In, while Billy Lee lifted his big brass horn to heaven and played a joyous spirtle of notes. “Gone a-way! Gone a-way!” the notes said.

  Within a hundred yards of the oncoming pack, Cinnabar stopped an instant to plan his route. The map in his mind suddenly came clear. To the south lay Union Farm, Field Number Four. Yes! He would take it! Time enough later to twist and turn, and needle in and out of hedgerows. Now he was fresh and strong. Yes! To the green field of winter wheat. Cinnabar, the One O’Clock Fox, would give them a run to remember.

  With the pack yelping in pursuit, he laid back his ears and straightened away. The hounds went hard from the start. Theirs was the advantage. Wind in their faces. Scent heavy and pungent. The wheatfield new-green and smooth.

  In a diagonal line Cinnabar flew. He loved the rush of the run with a wild and passionate love. There was nothing to stop him. Acres and acres lay stretched out before him. It was as if Vicky had unfurled a green carpet and had called out, “Here, Cinny, run! Run, run, run!”

  Behind, he could hear the hounds baying and the horses making thunder with their hoofs. His lope became a gallop. Run, run! Run for the pure joy of running. Suck in fresh air. Hind legs leap ahead of forelegs. Skim the earth. Go! Go! Go! Eat up the green mile. A hundred yards, two hundred yards. Three hundred. Suck in more breath. Let your tongue whip out of your mouth, a bright red streamer. Flush a covey of quail. Skitter and squawk them up to the sky. Go! Go! Go!

  Soft and velvety, the wheatfield stretches on. How good it feels! Keep going, Cinnabar! Keep going! No hollow trees to hide in. Not even a rabbit’s nest. Run, run, run!

  The Huntsman’s voice closer. “For’ard, Sweet Lips and Chanter! For’ard, June and Jowler! For’ard, Rhapsody, good fellow!”

  The hounds now gaining. The horses gaining. Cinnabar had to widen the gap. He had to catch his breath. The wind dried his tongue until he could scarce swallow. And just when the hounds were close on him, the map in his mind said, “Yonder it is! Yonder the ditch that marks the edge of the field. Run for it! Run, Cinnabar, run!”

  In a wild spurt he reached the yawning ditch, and with a single leap disappeared into it. What’s this? What’s this? A deserted fox den right here? With a nick and a turn he was inside its cobwebby darkness while the pack of hounds and the whole field of hunters jumped over his head.

  “Oh, beetles and bugs, what fun!” he panted as he lay there on his belly.

  One minute to rest. Two minutes. Three. Precious time to rest. Time to breathe, and time to chuckle, too. For Sweet Lips had lost the first skirmish. Her high bugling was fading off to silence.

  Cinnabar laughed, laughed aloud. “Oh, my brush and whiskers! Wouldn’t Vicky and the cubs love to be hiding in here with me!” He began humming to himself as he swept the cobwebs from his nose:

  Crash! Sweet Lips had fanned back on the line. Her tonguing came fiercer, faster, louder. The other hounds joined her, uproarious as they, too, struck the scent again.

  Quick, Cinnabar, what now? They’ll find your hiding place. Sniff about the den. Is there a hidden exit? Probe with your nose. Here. There. Everywhere.

  Eureka! The wall gives way to his bunting. Another tunnel, a winding run, half closed by fallen earth. Fiercely he paws the dirt away, then wriggles through the opening until once more he is peering out at the big wide world.

  For a moment the light blinded him. But almost in his ears he heard the Huntsman’s horn playing a string of choppy notes:

  “Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . .”

  “Come in!” the notes said. “The fox must have turned here!”

  Quickly Cinnabar scampered along the ditch until he came to a place where the willows made umbrellas of their branches. There, hidden from view, he sneaked up and over the bank, then dashed across the grazing meadow that bordered Dogue Run. With a soaring leap he sailed over the water, swished through the tall grass on the far side, and stole into the shocks of corn in Field Number Five.

  “I may lose ’em in this dry field,” he thought. “My scent won’t hold here.”

  Chapter 7

  TURNABOUT!

  Field Number Five was e-nor-mous! Ever so much larger than the wheatfield. All around, as far as the eye could see, there were standing shocks of Indian corn, like little brown wigwams. And between them, fat-bellied pumpkins ripening in the sun.

  Cinnabar sighed in relief as he wound in and out among the shocks at an easy pace. How he loved life and living! “But,” he told himself, “being game and plucky is one thing; being a foolish knothead is quite another. From now on I’d better keep more distance between me and the hounds.”

  Glancing back, Cinnabar
could not even see them. They were working up and down the rows tediously, so faint was the scent. He could hear their occasional yapping as they unraveled his winding trail.

  Nimbly he made great sweeping “S’s” around the shocks, letting his body fall into a pleasant swaying rhythm. What a holiday this was! Flowing along, drifting along, free as air. He tasted the scent of rabbits in the busy whisper of wind, but he did not stop to investigate. Today he was the hunted, not the hunter. He seemed one with the wind, a streamer of wind himself.

  A flock of wild pigeons rose in front of him with a whizzing and whirring of wings. The dust they raised made him sneeze and cough.

  “I wish I had something cool to drink,” he thought. “Not icy cold like spring water, but just cool enough to slake my thirst.”

  A happy idea came to him. Wouldn’t a juicy grape taste good? If he headed for the lower end of the field, he would come upon the kitchen gardens of Union Farm, and there would be the old stone wall covered with big clusters of glossy black grapes.

  Still holding a winding course, he aimed for the gardens and the delicious grapes. Already in his mind’s eye he could see them spilling over the wall. Already they tickled his tongue with their juiciness. He could hardly wait! He pushed on, keeping a measured distance before the hounds. And then, almost there, an angry growl came at him, not from behind, but from the direction of the wall! It was the low snarl of a watchdog.

  A hoarse voice belonging to Farmer Grimm cried out, “Sic ’im, Ripper! Sic ’im! Whomsoever it is, sic ’im!”

  Cinnabar halted, tense and still. The taste of dog came sharp to his nostrils. Now only a few yards ahead he saw a huge mongrel coming at him, jaws snapping, white fangs gleaming. And behind he heard Sweet Lips and the pack baying on the line.

  Danger ahead! Danger behind! What should he do?

  He began muttering excitedly to himself. “If I dive into the center of the field and pull the whole hunt in after me and then loop around the shocks in great big circles, soon I’ll be chasing them!” He veered off at a tangent and began weaving in and out of the shocks in a circle, an ever-widening circle until . . . “Bless my bushy tail!” he barked. “The tables are turned!”

  They were indeed. Cinnabar was coming up behind the field of horsemen and the milling pack. Now he was chasing the hunt, and they were chasing the big mongrel, who had come to join the fun.

  “Oh, bows and arrows, titmice and sparrows!” he whistled, as the field became a whirling mass of flap-eared hounds and galloping horses. “It’s just as I planned!”

  Farmer Grimm added to the confusion, bellowing at his dog and flailing the air with his fists. Suddenly he stopped in openmouthed wonder as Cinnabar cut out of the circle, ran around behind the farmhouse, and dashed for the kitchen gardens. There he leaped up onto the stone wall and came to rest like a fox in a fable.

  The farmer followed, huffing and puffing and shouting his threats. “I’ll git ye, ye red demon, for stealin’ my grapes!”

  Quite nonchalantly Cinnabar was plucking the biggest ones and crunching them with his fine white teeth. He was even spitting out the skins and savoring the juicy pulp, as if he owned the whole of Union Farm!

  This was too much for Farmer Grimm. “General!” His voice came loud as a war whoop. “General Washington!” he bawled above the cries of the hounds. “Here! Here on the wall is your sassy varmint!”

  Chapter 8

  A MINTY DISGUISE

  Feeling smug and happy and full of glee, Cinnabar continued to sit upon the wall eating grapes. He listened to the yammering of the hounds as they chased the Ripper, and to the anxious Huntsman calling the pack. “Leu in! For’ard, Sweet Lips and Chanter! For’ard, June and Jowler! For’ard, Rhapsody, good fellow! Leu in, Meadow Lark!”

  Above the uproar came the piercing voice of Farmer Grimm. “Ripper! You addlepated cur! Chase the fox!”

  Cinnabar parted the vines and looked out. The Ripper was seemingly deaf. He was dogging Sweet Lips’s steps, ignoring his master as something small and distant and unimportant now.

  “You . . . !” Farmer Grimm swung around, venting his wrath on Cinnabar. “You red varmint, you! If’n you cause me to lose my dog to the pack, I’ll catch ye in a trap and I’ll skin ye alive!”

  Cinnabar grinned in the man’s face. “Sticks and stones may break my bones,” he barked, “but words will never hurt me.” Then, snatching a last grape, he leaped from the high wall across a footpath, and landed on a lower wall that hemmed in the kitchen garden.

  Bedlam broke loose. Half of the pack came babbling after him in confusion, trying to pick up the scent. The other half was still after the Ripper, driving him into the potato patch, rolling him atop the piles of sorted potatoes, mixing the large with the small, and the small with the culls.

  Farmer Grimm, who had just finished his sorting, jumped up and down in a rage. “Gener-al! Gener-al!” he yelled with all the force of his lungs. “Please to call off yer hounds. Please to call ’em off!”

  The general’s face turned as scarlet as his vest. He wrenched his horse around. “No! You get that nosy cur of yours out of our pack!” he commanded.

  Angrily, Grimm stomped toward the hounds, first yelling at his dog, then wheedling him with a sugary voice. Even the Whippers-In tried to help. They cracked their long-thonged whips to distract the hounds.

  If the noise was fearsome before, it was earsplitting now. The hounds were hysterical! Cinnabar’s maneuvers were driving them crazy. Always he was on the other side. When they were in the vegetable patch, their jaws almost latching on to his brush, he would slither free and with a mighty leap land back on the wall where the grapevine grew. Back and forth, back and forth he jumped, and always he was safe on the other side!

  The farmer, now coming up with a club, threw it straight at Cinnabar, who lost his balance and fell off the wall. Like quicksilver he bolted through the hound pack, through the patch of potatoes, through the cabbage patch, through the turnip patch, and then lightly as a cat he landed in the bed of pennyroyal mint. There he rolled and rolled to take on the minty smell and to lose his own musky fragrance. With this disguise he dived into a drain at the edge of the garden.

  “Outfoxed!” Farmer Grimm spat the word. “I been outfoxed once too often! I got foxy tactics too! I’ll go into the woods with my traps, and I’ll bait ’em with big snacks of smelly fish. And I’ll git him yet!”

  Cinnabar, meanwhile, lay sprawled all safe and secure in the drain. “Ho, ho!” and “Ha, ha, ha!” he chortled deep down inside him. He could hardly keep from laughing aloud as he watched a curious parade passing the tiny porthole of his hiding place—a parade of twitching noses, floppy ears, and padded feet. “Wait till Vicky hears about this! Ho, ho . . . ha, ha, ha!”

  Chapter 9

  A FOX IN A FIX

  Watching, not moving, Cinnabar kept himself hidden in the drain. He fancied he saw the big paws of Sweet Lips potter by. Then he saw four paws bigger still. And suddenly a monstrous dog face with little pig eyes thrust itself into the opening.

  The Ripper!

  At once Cinnabar leaped forward and bit him on the nose.

  “Ki-yi!” yelped the big dog. “Ki-yi-i-i-i!” His startled cries brought the hounds pell-mell. They began packing in around the entrance of the drain, while Cinnabar slyly backed out the other end. All that the hounds smelled was pennyroyal mint, and all that they saw was the Ripper streaking for home, tail between his legs.

  Cinnabar took one glance at the pack milling about in confusion. “Now’s my chance to dash away free,” he thought as he fled to the shelter of a hedgerow. There in the honeysuckle he laid his plans.

  Two choices were open to him. He could backtrack at once for home, or he could carry on the game. Impulsively he favored more sport. Today was his hard-earned holiday after months of desperate hunting. He had yearned so long for this day, so very long, that he wanted to make it last. He needed a little more fun, just a little more. Then dark would come on and he would
be content to go home.

  His mind was made up. Fun it would be! He was only a tawny shadow as he crept through the honeysuckle, but the sharp eye of Billy Lee sighted the white tip of his brush, and once again an insistent tootling filled the air: “Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . . Ta, ta . . .”

  Again the chase was on! Again the hound music as Cinnabar dashed headlong through the bramble, and out upon a field of cotton that sloped away to the creek. Here the soil was red clay, so that Cinnabar was red on red, and he seemed no more than a whisper of movement. Joyfully he dug his toes into the earth, glad to be out of the dark drain, glad to be flying again.

  Straight on came the hounds, crashing through the twiggy cotton as fast as their legs could carry them. And behind them the long string of horses.

  “Head him! Head him!” It was George Washington calling to the Whippers-In, telling them to steer the fox away from the creek.

  But as easily turn back the wind! Dogue Run was Cinnabar’s goal! With sublime sureness he fled straight toward the shining stream, while hound voices rang out full and eager for the kill. Down sloped the land—down, down, down. As he ran, Cinnabar’s mind flew on ahead. He could see himself swimming, faster than a beaver, faster than a fish!

  It was midafternoon now and the sun was spilling its gold slantwise across the earth. It fired the water into a ribbon of gold, and it made tiny rainbows of the splashing spray against the larger rocks. The shimmering stream, so near and yet so far, dazzled Cinnabar, winking up at him like something alive. “Come to me!” it laughed. “Come to me!”