A Black Fox Running Read online

  Crashing through the reeds the border collie flung herself at Stargrief but he rolled on his side and under her. The animals squared up to each other. Stargrief puffed out his fur and swished his brush while his blood stiffened the hackles on his back. The cold fire of moonlight danced about him and stars splintered his eyes with diamond points and twinkled on his fangs.

  Queenie had chased a few foxes in her time but she had never been confronted by one who seemed totally fearless. Her growling lacked conviction and she had difficulty in lifting her own hackles. She froze on stiff legs and tried to pretend she was not afraid of lighting the fuse of Stargrief’s ferocity.

  The blood banged against her eyes and she swallowed noisily.

  ‘I am Stargrief,’ the fox said, speaking the simple canidae argot. ‘If this is your hunting ground I’ll go. Fox don’t want to fight dog.’

  ‘Maybe you go. Maybe you stay,’ Queenie said slyly. ‘Maybe Queenie kill you.’

  ‘Maybe Queenie grow wings and fly,’ Stargrief grinned. ‘Maybe Stargrief rip off one of Queenie’s ears.’

  ‘You’re too bloody small to do that.’

  ‘And you’re too wise to chance it. Let me pass.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Stargrief squatted close to the ground and shook his head.

  ‘Look, Queenie,’ he said. ‘You don’t belong to Man any more. Why do bad things that Man taught you? There’s plenty of room on the moors for dog and fox. Plenty of rabbits. Plenty of mice. Plenty of birds.’

  ‘True.’ Queenie sank on her rump and twisted in a vain attempt to lick a place on the nape of her neck.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ said Stargrief.

  ‘Bloody barbed wire. Big cut but I can’t get at it.’

  ‘Let me.’

  ‘How do I know you won’t go for me throat?’

  ‘What good would it do me? I don’t eat dogs.’

  ‘OK, then, but Queenie ain’t slow. If you play foxy tricks I’ll have your throat out before you can blink.’

  The cut was deep and festering. Queenie bowed her head and Stargrief gently licked away until the wound was open and clean and the swelling had gone down.

  ‘I’m sorry I gave you a bad time,’ the collie bitch said. ‘You’re a good animal. Queenie will never forget. You and your tribe can use my hunting ground any time. Are we friends?’

  They stood nose to nose for a moment.

  ‘Friends,’ Stargrief said. ‘Now I go. Man is coming to my homelands to kill foxes. Stargrief must warn all.’

  ‘Man no bloody good,’ said Queenie. ‘Man killed my mate. Man took my puppies away. No bloody good.’

  The old fox reached Leighon Woods with a few hours of darkness left. There was a lot of snuffling and grunting at the mouth of Thorgil’s sett. The great one-eyed boar greeted the fox amicably.

  ‘Have men been around with dogs and guns?’ Stargrief said. The badger said they had not.

  ‘They will come,’ said Stargrief. ‘The lurcher killed a sheep and some lambs. We will be blamed for it.’

  ‘It always happens when we have young,’ said the sow.

  ‘No matter,’ Thorgil said gruffly. ‘The terrier that can get me out of the heart of my sett hasn’t been born yet.’

  ‘Have you any lodgers?’ asked Stargrief.

  ‘Foxes? Only one. I think it’s Wendel.’

  ‘Will you let him stay?’

  ‘Does Wulfgar wish it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, there’s room – so long as he does as he’s told.’

  Stargrief ran on, visiting the earths and clitters around Hay Tor, taking in a wide circle of moorland and in-country. But one vixen with cubs refused to move. She was called Redbriar and her stubbornness was well known among the clan dogs. Her mate had been killed by the hounds on the last hunt of the season. The earth was on a tree-clad hillside in Crownley Parks.

  ‘When are the men coming?’ she said, looking down her muzzle at him.

  ‘Today, tomorrow – three sunrises from now; does it matter? I’ll help you carry the little ones to a safer place further south.’

  ‘And what if they decide to visit that “safe place” instead of my earth?’

  ‘They never have in the past. It is the trapper. He is as much a creature of habit as the hare and the badger.’

  ‘I suppose the runes told you,’ she sneered.

  ‘Surviving for eight summers tells me.’

  She would not be persuaded and Stargrief was too tired to argue at length. He dragged himself to the top of the hill and kennelled under a holly tree. He was asleep almost before his eyelids shut out the world.

  ALMOST A FOX SHOOT

  Things went wrong from the start.

  Yabsley arrived at Emsworthy with the sun, and his mates who had been standing around for nearly an hour were not amused.

  ‘It’d be easier to separate a wasp from jam than to lever your butt off the mattress,’ said Farmer Lugg.

  ‘My missus is a heller for her oats,’ Yabsley grinned. ‘I got to sneak out of bed mornings, maister, or her would have me at it all day.’

  ‘We come to shoot foxes not to jaw,’ said Scoble.

  ‘A few minutes either way idn goin’ to matter, Len. Foxes don’t carry watches.’

  Scoble lit a cigarette and his eyelids slowly descended. Leather cut into his hand as Jacko strained at the leash. The lurcher whined and glared at the terriers who were inspecting Farmer Lugg’s border collie.

  ‘Right then,’ the farmer said. ‘Let’s make a start. Better late than never.’

  Scoble was already striding down the hillside with his twelve-bore on his shoulder.

  ‘Miserable bugger,’ Yabsley said under his breath.

  A cock pheasant whirred up from the bracken and the iridescent head shone against the sky. The crash of Yabsley’s shotgun sent flat echoes skipping across the valley.

  ‘Are you mazed?’ cried Farmer Lugg. ‘You’ve told every bloody fox this side of Widecombe we’re coming. One day they’ll have ’ee certified, Yabsley. You idn sixteen ounces. There’s more sense in a cowpat than you’ve got between your ears.’

  ‘But old pheasant didn know that, did he?’ Yabsley said gleefully.

  He hoisted the bird aloft by its feet and swung it round his head. Scoble was speechless, and all he could do was screw a forefinger viciously into his temple and spit.

  ‘Don’t fret, Len,’ Yabsley bawled. ‘You can have the foxes and I’ll make do with these little beauties.’

  The sun vanished behind a cloud and a shower fell. Then it passed and the last raindrops glittered down. A rainbow arched over Leighon, and along the edge of Seven Lords Lands the fence posts were steaming.

  They put Tacker in Holwell Clitter. The terrier went down on all fours and squeezed under the stone that blocked the crevice. Urged on by the men, he explored the maze of runs and galleries to the centre of the clitter. A muffled yapping marked his progress. He met fox smell and bolted a few rabbits that were shot, but eventually he had to admit defeat. Some of the passages ran far underground into blackness and from their depths came the ghostly chittering of stoats and weasels.

  Every so often Tacker nosed through a warm pocket of air heavy with the reek of mustelid. The stoats mocked him as they flowed in and out of the boulders.

  ‘Coo-ee … cooo-eee … Over here, dog. No, not there – here, stupid. Yoo-hoo … I see you-oo. Stoaties chew out dog’s liver, yiss – snik-snak! Dog crazy to come alone into Stoatland. Get out. Get out, crow’s guts, or you’ll stay here forever.’

  Tiny pointed fangs nipped his hindlegs and he yelped, but the narrowness of the tunnel stopped him turning. Above him was a small aperture, and scrabbling furiously he shot out of it into the sunlight and stood panting on a boulder.

  ‘I bet there’s half a dozen foxes lying up in this place,’ said Scoble. ‘Your terrier idn all that smart, boy, or he’d have ’em out by now. He’s a bit like you, Bert – all wind and pee.’

  ‘Ge
t home, do!’ said Yabsley. ‘If a fox was in there Tacker would have flushed ’im out. Tacker’s flushed more foxes than you’ve had hot dinners.’

  ‘If some daft bugger hadn let off his gun there’d be a few foxes round here to shoot,’ Farmer Lugg said.

  ‘They usually goes to ground when they’m scared,’ said Scoble. ‘It idn right for the clitter to be empty.’ He fingered his wart and frowned.

  ‘Still us have got a couple of brace of rabbits,’ Yabsley said.

  ‘Rabbits don’t kill sheep,’ Scoble grated.

  ‘Big ones might,’ said Yabsley, shaking with laughter.

  Scoble showed him a saturnine face and marched off towards Leighon Woods.

  The terriers were let loose in Thorgil’s sett but found the way to the chamber where the sow and cubs lay blocked by the boar. The passage was wide enough for two dogs to attack at the same time. Thorgil was not impressed. Bristling and growling he bowled Billy over and crunched Jan’s left forefoot like a hazel nut.

  The terrier bitch squealed and struggled to reverse past Tacker. Thorgil thundered into them. His jaws snapped shut and locked on Billy’s stump of a tail. The dog let out a howl of agony as the badger’s teeth severed a part of him that had never been his noblest attribute. Jan and Billy collided with Tacker and their panic filtered through the rocks to the men above.

  ‘Fox?’ said Yabsley.

  ‘Badger,’ said Scoble.

  ‘Where’s Old Blackie to, Len?’ Yabsley said with a wink. ‘Here, that fox is leadin’ you a bit of a dance, boy. Dang me if he idn.’

  Scoble stared through him into the past and kept quiet.

  ‘Tidn natural,’ Farmer Lugg said. He wedged himself between Yabsley and the passenger door of Scoble’s van. ‘Not one bloody fox. Last year us were shootin’ them in job lots.’

  ‘There’s still the woods round Bagtor,’ said Scoble in his frosty voice.

  ‘Not for me,’ said Yabsley. ‘Drop us at Halshanger Cross. My little dogs need the vet.’

  ‘I’d have the sods put down,’ Scoble said. ‘They idn up to much.’

  ‘Careful I don’t put you down, Scoble,’ Yabsley said.

  He knotted his handkerchief on Billy’s bleeding stump, while Jan whimpered softly from the back of the vehicle.

  ‘Soddin’ old badger,’ Yabsley growled. ‘If I had a stick of dynamite I’d blast ’im out.’

  He fixed his eyes on Jacko and said, ‘Does that tripe hound do anything else other than whine and piddle?’

  Scoble was too wise to bite …

  The trapper and his dog came alone to Crownley Parks. Lugg had departed in disgust with Yabsley, the farmer trying to be philosophical. If they had not seen a fox there were no foxes about and his lambs were safe. It was an opinion Scoble did not share, for he had a feeling the foxes were one jump ahead of him. The hair stiffened on the back of his neck. They had never behaved like this before. Blackie was responsible – he had to be.

  ‘You’re a sly old boy,’ Scoble murmured.

  Stargrief heard the van pull up on the bridge over the River Lemon and within seconds his nostrils were full of the smell of oil and petrol, gun metal, trapper and lurcher. He hurried down the hillside into the earth. Redbriar bared her teeth and snarled at him, but there was an urgency about the old dog fox that could not be ignored.

  ‘How many cubs?’ Stargrief said. ‘Quickly – the trapper is coming and Tod help you if his lurcher gets in here.’

  ‘Three,’ Redbriar said. ‘But what – ’

  ‘One each and hurry,’ Stargrief snapped. ‘I’ll come back for the third. Follow me.’

  He grabbed the nearest cub by the scruff of the neck with his teeth and darted outside.

  The foxes ran through the beech trees to the narrow road. Stargrief crossed it in four strides and wriggled through the hedge. The cub squeaked as a twig scratched its nose. Stargrief tightened his grip and trotted down the slope behind a derelict cottage. He could hear the river surging past the mill on the other side of the clearing. Lowering his head he dropped his cub.

  Dog and vixen were standing under an ash tree that was growing outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees from the bank.

  ‘Now what?’ Redbriar said breathlessly.

  ‘Do exactly as I do,’ said Stargrief.

  He gathered up the cub again and climbed the tree, running up the bark like a squirrel, until he reached a great branch about eight feet from the ground. The branch shot out horizontally over the cottage roof. Stargrief walked along it and jumped onto the thatch, then he scrambled to the top of the roof and vanished down the other side.

  Redbriar found him squatting between the thatch and the chimney.

  ‘Wait here and keep them quiet,’ Stargrief said.

  ‘The cub is called Gorseflame,’ said Redbriar.

  The journey back to the earth seemed to take a long time, but Stargrief was in and out of the bolt-hole before Swart could spread his wings a dozen times. The crow flapped through the tree tops and said ‘craark-craark’. He had seen the man and the dog creeping up through the ramsons and ash saplings. A little earlier he had been sucking eggs in the nest a thrush had built low in the ivy of a hazel bush.

  Scoble dug a fingernail savagely into his wart and drew blood.

  ‘Blackbird, black fox; black bloody day,’ he said.

  Jacko tugged so hard on the leash he nearly strangled himself.

  ‘Can ’ee smell fox, boy?’ Scoble said. ‘Go get ’im. Go on – good dog. Good Jacko.’

  The lurcher was away like a snipe but he had seen nothing and merely wanted to stretch his long legs. He barked excitedly to con his master and pretended to be on the fox trail. Blindly he smashed through brambles, primroses and ramsons, loving his freedom.

  Scoble clenched and unclenched his fists. He reached the earth, smelt the hot stink of fox and for a moment could not catch his breath. There seemed to be a tight steel band round his lungs. He coughed and retched and brought up an oyster of phlegm.

  ‘Soddin’ fags,’ he wheezed, fishing out his cigarette tin.

  The England’s Glory match rasped and a whiff of sulphur cancelled out the fox smell. He inhaled deeply and felt better as Jacko trotted out of the trees looking alert and keen.

  ‘Get down the hole, boy,’ Scoble said. ‘Go on, Jacko – chase ’im out.’

  The lurcher stared mindlessly up at him and wagged his tail.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Scoble snorted.

  He gripped the dog’s collar and dragged him to the earth.

  ‘In,’ he said, planting the toe of his boot in Jacko’s rump.

  The dog nosed around the passages and yelped and barked to show he was busy. Then he emerged wearing a morose expression and slunk up to Scoble.

  ‘It don’t matter, boy,’ the trapper said. He crouched and ruffled Jacko’s fur.

  ‘There was a fox in here and that’s certain sure.’

  He shifted the scats with a stem of dead bracken and retrieved a scrap of wool from among the beetles’ wing cases and the beak of a chaffinch.

  ‘The sod’s had a lamb too,’ he murmured. ‘Well, Jacko, us will till a few gins round here at dimpsey. Yabsley and his lap dogs can go to hell.’

  The cigarette end fell from his lips and lay smoking in the primroses.

  ‘If we don’t make a noise we’re safe,’ Stargrief whispered. ‘When the man goes I’ll take you and the little ones to another earth downstream. It’s in a thick wood where men are never seen.’

  ‘Why bother with me?’ Redbriar said. ‘I’ve made a fool of myself again. I’m always doing it.’

  Stargrief smiled.

  ‘Better a live fool than a brave corpse,’ he said. ‘Suckle the cubs and rest. We’re not in danger. I’ve used this hiding place before.’

  ‘You look very pleased with yourself,’ said Redbriar.

  ‘Do I? Well, we’ve beaten the trapper and that doesn’t happen every day.’

  Redbriar grinned and licked his
muzzle.

  Stargrief suddenly felt an intense sorrow, as though an old wound had opened inside him. For a while the sensation puzzled him, then he realised what it was. He was in love with life of which he had so little left.

  A WOODPIGEON CROONING

  The wren’s mutes splashed white on the fern frond. The little bird dipped through the deepening light of the wood into greenness that had the luminosity of an aquarium. Wulfgar did not raise his head from his outstretched forelegs even when the brimstone came to cling to the nettle. A faint breeze lifted the dust from the butterfly’s wings.

  Wulfgar cocked an ear and yawned.

  A lizard’s length from his nose a cuckoo pint was poking out of the ground-ivy and ramsons. The plant’s arrowhead leaf had uncurled four sunsets ago to reveal the stiff purple spike of the flower stem. The flowers were at the base, protected by the spathe and ringed with bristles to trap insects. Wulfgar could smell the frail odour of decomposing animal matter given off by the spike to attract flies and tiny beetles. At a signal from the bristles the leaves would shut, holding the victim in a green envelope. Its efforts to escape would lead to the collection of dust from the male flowers and the pollination of the female flowers. When the spathe withered the insect would escape.

  In Princetown the children called the cuckoo pints ‘Wake Robins’ and ‘Lords-and-Ladies’, but they did not pick them.

  The dog fox looked up. Beyond the tree trunks was a close horizon glimpsed through fern fronds and the dark leaves of wild garlic. The pale evening sky was stamped with the outline of hills and tors. It was a soft sky to complement the soft colours of blossoms and flowers. Cockchafers clacked against the ash saplings. It grew darker, and a woodpigeon began to croon from her platform in a solitary fir. Gradually the universe flickered and glowed, and just east of the meridian a curving group of stars bloomed for Tod’s glory. The bottom star was pale Regulus. Lower in the sky the constellation of Virgo shone beneath the dim star cluster known as the Hair of Berenice.