3.

WILD LONE

Mid-October in Coldhanger. pearly mornings and mushrooms, dying hues of leaf and fern, mists coming up from the river, and longer nights for hunting! Rufus was well grown now; a lithe, clean-run fox without a trace of mange.

In the woodland rides the gold-red leaves lay deep, and with every sigh of air, more would tick and waver down as though loath to join the earth. Most beautiful of all were the pink, almost incandescent, fires of the sloe bushes, and the vivid autumn fungi that grew round the bases of the big trees.

The field maples flamed a lovely salmony orange; the exquisitely cut leaves, borne on the slender pinkish stems, seemed to mock the paintings of a Japanese artist, and the ditches were full to over-flowing with millions of such little beauties, each one a picture in itself. The trees that already showed their bare bones revealed also new and hidden loveliness, yet men went about this world and were blind to it all.

There was a new exciting mystery in the woods, too; nay, in every little spinney, wherever trees gathered together. The lower veils of foliage had not yet dropped, but let through the light in a magical way, and the earth, strewn with the damp fresh-fallen leaves, took on a new smell, sweeter far than the rarest incense. This rusty wealth and range of colour blended with an enchanting rareness the hues of the fox's coat as he padded about his secret ways.

To a black pool in the centre of the woods, some wild duck came in the evenings. The pool was not deep, though it appeared so because the water was so dark and peaty-looking, due to unburdening of many autumns such as this, generations of trees shedding their leaves into its mirror. To this pool came a drake mallard, a duck and three youngsters born in April by Wildwood pool, four miles away across the fields. Every evening, when the smoke from the cottage chimneys was sending up soft blue signals, they circled the wood and came in to this dark water, and Rufus knew of this arrangement. For three nights he had lain in the dying brambles close to the water's edge at the upper end of the pond. From this ambush he had caught moorhens, young ones, as they quested about on the black evil-smelling ooze, in which a bullock would have sunk to his middle.

On the fourth night Rufus went again and hid in his favourite ambush. For a long while nothing came but a cock bullfinch that had been piping in the maple bushes, and he came for a sip before going to bed. He was a lovely little bird, with a breast the colour of some of the hawthorn leaves and a cap as blue as a crow's wing. 'Wit, Wit!' he flew up again, and only his white rump was visible as he flew away through the dark thickets.

'Hoo, hoo, hoohoo!' the owls awoke, mothy and with mothy eyes, birds of the touchwood and the night.

A wee mouse rustled, ever so quietly, making no more sound than a little brown sprite, but Rufus heard it and his eyes took on a watchful expression and both ears cocked right forward. He sat up slowly with bent head, staring through the veil of bramble leaves to where the maple bushes formed a fairy screen. But the mouse disappeared, and the fox lay down again and resumed his watch on the pond.

Whenever the shadows began to fall in the woods, the blackbirds made much bother, zinking like a pair of rusty shears.

Sometimes they had cause for alarm, especially when the owls awoke. There was nothing they liked more than teasing the owls awoke. There was nothing they liked more than teasing the owls, and they drove the poor big-headed things to distraction.

All kinds of sounds came to Rufus as he lay under the brambles, and all manner of smells, all far beyond the range of human ear and nose. He could smell a rabbit that was hopping along beyond a fallen tree-trunk on the other side of the pond; he could smell the yellow-lipped sinister fungi that grew on the underside of the fallen tree. He could recognise a moorhen scent coming from the rushes on his right, and a dead water-rat was lying on the edge of the mud, where a little trickle of water fed the pool. He could smell other things, the scents of different plants and trees, and he sorted them all out with a twitch of his nose.

Bullfinch

He could hear a beast scratching itself against a rubbing post outside the wood (the post was all shiny on one side and had given pleasure to countless tough hides now long perished) and the men talking over their spades in the village allotments right on the other side of the hill.

And all about there was a pattering, as of little furtive feet. This was the sound of the falling leaves, millions of them, falling all over the wood in a ceaseless flurry of yellow and amber snow. Whenever a breath of wind came over the hill the rustling would grow, and it sounded as if fairy armies were on the march. This pattering would have made a man uneasy if he had lain there long, but Rufus knew them for lifeless things.

Far singing came to him. It was a party of cyclists on the Harboro' road. They were bent over their handlebars with eyes fixed on the ground, blind to all beauty of earth and sky. They were singing a sexy American jazz song, 'D'you love your baby like I love ma baby, or do you simply say, Meet me at twilight, little Miss Eyebright, then that'll be OK.' One of the cyclists was a beefy girl, and her bare lobster-tinted thighs worked like pistons. How could they guess a little red fox heard them, as he lay under the pink bramble leaves by a wood pool!

The sounds died away, and then a cow began to call, a faint hornlike sound like a man calling a moose.

Across the pool a big white owl suddenly flew, quite silently, and two blackbirds chased it. One, in its excitement, let fall a white spot into the water and the consequent rings took quite a minute to subside. Losing their quarry, the excited blackbirds came back into the holly tree close by, and one of them, dropping to the leaves for a moment, saw this new enemy. For a minute it sat there, tail slightly up and its privetberry eye fixed on the fox. Then, with a scream, 'zink, zink, zink,' it flew up into the tree and the other blackbird saw the fox as well. Both birds hopped low in the holly, scolding and shaking the leaves. Before very long, a missel-thrush - a big handsome masculine bird, that feared no man nor beast, and who built in the most absurdly naked positions with such infinite scorn - came and joined the blackbirds, and his long, drawn-out rasping call was louder than the blackbirds'. As Rufus showed no sign of life they soon went away. There was no fun in teasing a thing that would not move, and perhaps the fox was dead.

'Whi, whi, whi, whi,' the sound of pinions circling! Rufus became alert, his eyes glowing and tail twitching ever so slightly. The circling mallards kept on coming round and round past the holly, trying to make up their minds to land. With exasperating indecision they kept this up for two minutes; then the drake, feeling perhaps a little tired of the business, landed with a splash in mid-pond. Immediately he turned round, backing water, his neck very straight and rigid, and a semi-smile on his face, which was not really a smile at all. The other mallards immediately landed, too, and for a full minute they took stock of their surroundings. Then they began to swim slowly about, preening, questing the weeds and mud, and feeling more and more at home. But they did not come near the holly.

In the centre of the pond was a stump of a tree, very green because fresh grass was sprouting on it, and the edge of the stump was quite shiny, trodden by the feet of resting waterfowl. A few grey feathers were there too; it was an ideal preening place. The drake mallard climbed on to this with sturdy greenish-yellow legs, the colour of the rushes, and stretching his head right out and raising the feathers on his head he gave himself a good shake, just as a farmyard duck will do. Several small feathers dropped out of his person. He preened carefully, first his madder breast and then his tail, twisting round and pulling at his white outer tail-feathers.

Rufus drinking in the woods

There drifted across to Rufus the most appetising smell of wild duck and with every exertion of the preening mallard this scent seemed redoubled. It was agony for Rufus. He was ravenous, and he felt much as a hungry man would feel if a steaming turkey were put before him, and he were unable to touch it. The saliva dribbled out of the corner of his mouth, but he never moved. After a lengthy toilet, the mallard pushed off into the pond, passing some remarks in a low, watery voice to his duck. They swam about together, throwing the beads of moisture over their backs with evident abandon. But they did not come near the holly.

In the water was the reflection of a star, and soon a wondrous thing appeared. Over the tops of the thick crowding trees, rose a misty glow, and soon the moon, red and large, swam clear - the Hunter's Moon. It was reflected in the water, not as a whole, but in little shaking pieces as the ducks swam about.

Rufus was puzzled at this light and was at first a little nervous, but he soon thought of nothing but 'duck' again, and how to capture one. The young mallards now landed on the muddy margin of...