Читать книгу The Biography of a Silver-Fox; or, Domino Reynard of Goldur Town онлайн | страница 5

Though it was on the Jukes’s farm, the Benton boys decided to come next day and dig out the Foxes. But the mother instincts were aroused. The home had become a place of danger. At once she set about preparing a new den, and at dawn began to move her family.

Among the country folk, when it is decided to save only one of a litter of kittens, there is a simple, natural way of selecting the best. The litter is left in the open field. The mother soon finds her young, and begins carrying them back to the barn; and it is believed that the first that she brings is always the best. There is at least one good reason for this: the liveliest will get on top of the pile and force itself first on mother’s notice, and so be first brought back. Thus it was now. The mother Fox was met in the tunnel by the liveliest cub, the eldest and strongest, him of the domino face, and she carried him first to the safety of the new home. At the next visit his most vigorous sister, and at the third a sturdy little brother, were taken away. Meanwhile the father was wholly occupied with sentinel duty in the neighboring hills, and day was beaming when he gave the warning just as mother ran off with number three.

The Benton boys had come armed with shovel and pick to dig out the family, and ordinarily would have succeeded in an hour; but three feet from the entrance their progress was barred by a great ledge of rock. They were debating what to do, when the sound of a blast from the quarry in the hills suggested a plan. One of the boys went for a charge of dynamite. This, with fuse and cap, was fixed in a cranny of the rock. In a minute there was a fearful shock and blast, the hillside trembled in a cloud of dust, and then it was seen that the upheaval had not opened the den, but had buried the tunnel in broken rocks, and that the cubs within were doubtless crushed and stifled. The shock had made a tomb of the home, and the boys went away.

That night, had they been there, they might have seen father and mother Fox clawing out the earth and vainly mouthing the broken granite in their efforts to reach the home den. The next night they came again. On the third night the mother came alone, and then gave up the hopeless task.