The Fox Cub Bold (13 page)

The mastiff lapsed into silence until they reached his yard. It was a large open pen of bare earth surrounded by a low wire fence. There was a big wooden kennel in front of which stood an empty food bowl and another containing water. There was access to the yard from a door at the back of the adjoining house. Rollo leapt easily over the fence and went into his kennel. He re-emerged carrying two bone-shaped biscuits, which he dropped by the fence.

‘That’s my ‘den’ as you call it,’ he said. ‘There’s no meat at the moment, I’m afraid. I ate it all.’ He nudged the biscuits through a hole in the links with his muzzle. ‘Try those,’ he suggested.

Bold lay down and, holding a biscuit between his front paws in the same way as a dog, took a bite with his side teeth. ‘Very appetising,’ he pronounced after crunching it up. ‘I’ll take the other back for Whisper. But when will you be given meat again?’

‘Tonight,’ answered Rollo.

‘Good,’ rejoined Bold. ‘Shall we come when it’s dark, then?’

‘Yes, do. I’ll look forward to it.’

Bold turned and began his slow return to the churchyard. Although he had not mentioned it to Whisper, since the occasion when he had found the wall repaired and had tried to kick out a new hole, his damaged leg had started to hurt badly again. The pain was severe enough to make him wince at times if he brought that leg down too heavily, and so the prospect of a long journey, perhaps lasting some weeks owing to his lameness, was an ordeal he dreaded. But he was resolved that Whisper should remain ignorant.

He reached Rollo’s hole in the wall and went through, still carrying the biscuit. Whisper slept so he dropped it by her and stretched himself out gratefully. At dusk the vixen awoke and found Bold by her side again. She let him sleep on while she devoured her titbit.

Bold woke eventually and told his companion about the arrangement he had made with the mastiff. Whisper congratulated him. ‘A very sound idea,’ she said. ‘When does he expect us?’

‘Tonight,’ said Bold.

They left the earth together and Bold led the way back to Rollo’s yard. The two foxes smelt the strong odour of fresh meat from some metres away as Rollo had nosed his meat dish painstakingly across the ground to the fence. He had refrained from tasting the food himself. So it was that Bold and Whisper heard their friend before they saw him, for the huge dog’s belly, as empty as a pit, was reverberating with the most ominous rumblings.

‘Rollo!’ cried Bold. ‘You’re there?’

‘I’m here,’ came the solemn, deep-toned reply.

Bold now saw the meat dish close against the chain link fence. ‘You haven’t touched it!’ he exclaimed in astonishment.

‘No, I – I thought I’d wait for you,’ replied the dog. ‘It’s more companionable to eat together.’

‘Poor Rollo,’ said Whisper as a fresh rumble racked the cavernous depths of his stomach. ‘How you must have suffered!’

‘Well, I’ll do so no longer, now you’re here,’ he replied and took a gargantuan mouthful.

Whisper and Bold were able to hook pieces of meat through the wire with their paws, and all three made a good meal. Rollo was far too polite to take more than the two foxes did between them; neither did he tell them he could comfortably have eaten as much again. But he did ask them when they expected to leave.

‘Not later than the new moon,’ said Whisper.

‘I shall miss you,’ said the mastiff, looking at them with his great mournful eyes.

The foxes did not know how to comfort him, so said nothing on that subject. They talked for a while and then made their farewells.

‘I’ll be here waiting for you tomorrow night,’ Rollo promised, ‘with the same supplies.’

‘Don’t starve yourself on our account,’ said Whisper kindly. ‘Eat what you want first.’

‘Thank you, Whisper,’ said Rollo, ‘but it wouldn’t be with the same relish.’

‘He really is a friend to us,’ Whisper remarked as they left him. ‘We owe him quite a lot.’

‘We do,’ agreed Bold, ‘and it makes me sad that we have to desert him so soon.’

But Whisper’s resolution was final. ‘As to that,’ she said, ‘we have no choice. For blood is thicker than water.’

The day for their departure came sooner than expected. Bold had gone at daybreak one day to have a look round for Robber to acquaint him of their intentions. He did not find the crow but he did find a message left under the privet hedge: a piece of meat still sufficiently fresh to persuade Bold that it had been dropped there that very morning while he’d been looking elsewhere. What could it mean? The crow seemed not to be in the immediate vicinity, so what was he to do? Bold decided he would go and consult Whisper.

As he approached the familiar churchyard wall, which soon would no longer encompass his and Whisper’s home, he realized what Robber’s message had intended to convey. The gap in the wall made by their friend the mastiff had been repaired again and so, once more, Bold had no access to his earth. Even as he looked at this new barrier there came several loud ‘caws’ from a nearby treetop. Bold spotted the bird among the bare branches and barked a greeting. Robber flew down.

‘I think we’re in need of your powerful friend again,’ he said to the fox.

‘No-o,’ Bold said dubiously. ‘Not on this occasion. The wall seals my entrance and my fate at the same time.’

‘Don’t talk in riddles, Bold,’ Robber urged. ‘What are you hinting at?’

‘Oh, I’ve just been looking for you to tell you that Whisper and I are to embark on a journey,’ Bold said casually. ‘Now I can add to that piece of information. We shall start today.’

Robber was full of questions.

‘It’s to be White Deer Park, my own birthplace,’ Bold told him. ‘For the sake of my unborn cubs I’m returning to the safe haven I turned my back on only last summer.’

‘Ah, so a family is in question,’ said Robber. ‘In that case, your young vixen is behaving very sensibly.’

‘She is – I don’t deny it,’ Bold averred. ‘Yet I can’t be sanguine about my own chances of completing the journey.’

‘You look more robust now than you’ve done for a long time,’ the crow observed. ‘If you take it easily . . .’

‘Yes, I’ve gained some weight,’ Bold admitted. ‘But it’s an awfully long trek on only three sound legs.’

Robber re-arranged his wings and looked thoughtful. At length he said: ‘I’ll keep you in sight as you go. Then, if you ever should need help – ’

‘I’m most grateful,’ said Bold promptly. ‘I have to confess I was rather hoping you might say something of the sort.’

The two separated momentarily as they spotted some human figures walking close by. Robber flew back to his tree-top while Bold found cover amongst some undergrowth. When the coast was clear again the fox emerged to ask his friend to alert Whisper to their new situation. Robber flew to the earth’s entrance hole and ‘cawed’ repeatedly until Whisper responded. She came at a run and jumped over the wall.

‘Our cue to leave, it seems,’ Bold said to her.

‘Yes. We must hide up until dark.’

‘We’ll go to my old hideaway,’ Bold decided. ‘Robber, will you scout around and see if it’s safe to proceed?’

The crow flew off at once and returned quickly. ‘If you come now, you should be under cover before any fresh danger appears,’ he announced.

Bold led his mate back towards the playing fields and the familiar tangle of shrubbery and undergrowth in the old waste-plot. Robber left them with a parting ‘I’ll look for you tomorrow’. The hours to darkness dragged by while Bold and Whisper tried vainly to sleep, their minds too aroused and full of thoughts of their undertaking. Only as the still-early dusk began to descend did they fall into an uneasy doze.

During the night they awakened to the screeches of a pair of owls calling through the trees. They looked at each other significantly.

‘Time to go,’ said Whisper.

‘Time for one last sustaining meal?’ Bold queried. He was thinking of Rollo.

Whisper knew it. ‘Very well, dear Bold – if we’re quick.’

Rollo’s greeting was as boisterous as ever but the foxes’ restraint told him the news he had been fearing. For the last time he silently pushed his meat dish across the yard. The three animals ate with glum expressions. There was no time to talk afterwards. They made hasty but warm farewells and the pair of foxes disappeared into the night. Neither cared to look back, for they both knew that poor Rollo would be standing by his fence, gazing after them with the wringingly forlorn expression he had been wearing ever since he had heard their plan.

They travelled steadily and noiselessly. Bold tried to ignore his bad leg and Whisper, of course, allowed
him
to set the pace. By dawn they had put the neighbourhood of the town behind them and were on the fringes of open country once again. A dark patch of woodland beckoned them to their rest. The murmurings of town life reached them still, but so muted as to enhance the new peacefulness of their surroundings. The night’s frost, as yet undispersed, nipped at their skins and they huddled together for warmth. A delicious languor overcame them and they slumbered gratefully.

The next morning Robber followed their direction. He knew which route Bold would take. Unerringly he flew into the clump of trees that sheltered them, saw their sleeping bodies and vanished again. Now, for the bird, too, the sojourn amongst town-dwellers was over.

That night Bold and Whisper needed to hunt for food for the first time in many days. It was February and the last month of what had been a relatively mild winter. Food was still by no means abundant. The weight of their effort was necessarily undertaken by Whisper. Bold had passively to accept a lesser role and he did so almost thankfully. The difficulties of once more finding sufficient to eat meant that their travelling time was restricted. So their progress did not advance much before daylight threatened again. In this way, almost by fits and starts, the first week passed.

Bold was not displeased with their slow pace, as in that way his injured leg was not overtaxed. However, by the end of the week, Whisper was visibly fretting.

‘We must make an effort to speed up a bit, Bold,’ she urged. ‘We’ve come such a little way!’

‘Don’t worry; there’s no need,’ replied Bold, who had the benefit of his knowledge of the distance to the Nature Reserve. ‘We have to take time to eat.’

‘It’s not the eating, but the hunting, that takes the time,’ she corrected him. ‘If only there were some way of reducing it.’

‘There isn’t,’ Bold said flatly. ‘It was your decision to travel in the winter when food isn’t plentiful.’

‘I know. I know. There’s no way round it, I suppose. But I can’t help getting concerned.’

‘Trust my knowledge – we shall do it.’

‘Of course I trust you,’ Whisper said tenderly. ‘
I
shouldn’t complain when it is you who are finding it most difficult.’

The next night they were close to the farm where Bold had killed the bantam cock. There was no such rich fare for him and his mate on this occasion. They caught what small creatures they could, dug up some roots, and were glad to get them. Bold led Whisper to the hedgerow where earlier he had been dug out of his earth. He told her how he had only escaped death by a hair’s-breadth of unaccountable human whim. They decided to lay up in the shrubbery during the daytime. Robber was still following them, but kept to his plan of not approaching while things went well.

Now that the pair of foxes were in an area of farmland, there were scraps and pickings to be had for a little less work. This pleased Whisper who then, naturally, tried to force the pace a little. Bold uttered no objection but simply gritted his teeth more firmly and hung on. Now, when the time came to rest, he was prostrate with exhaustion. Yet still he did not demur. As luck would have it, the weather came to his rescue.

It was the middle of February and it seemed that only now was winter about to release its worst on the countryside. The temperature had been steadily dropping and now there was a savage, new bite in the air – such as had not been felt all season through. It was as if it had been held in reserve to inflict the greater hardship when it was most unexpected. Ice formed on every small puddle, each twig was rimed with white and, at last, the snow fell in earnest. It began at night and continued around the clock. Coupled with the strong wind, it was impossible to withstand. Bold and Whisper found what protection they could amongst some holly and shuddered miserably as the wind moaned over the land. Snow was piled up against any large obstacles in drifts, and overall its mantle was spread to a depth daunting even to the largest and longest-legged of would-be travellers – Man himself.

While the wind raged and the snow fell Whisper accepted the impossibility of moving. Indeed, she tried her best to enlarge a rabbit burrow to give them more shelter, but the ground was now so hard that she could not manage to make more than a sort of depression in the soil. Here she and Bold cowered, burying their faces in their brushes, while their backs gathered snow enough to bury them. When the blizzard abated at last, Whisper was eager to press on, however tardily. Bold looked at the scene before them with more than just misgiving.