CHAPTER I. The Coming of the Red Fox

THE COMING OF THE RED FOX

In the state of New Jersey there are still thousands of acres of low-lying woodlands, called pine barrens, where man has done little except chop down a few trees. Slowly but surely, however, the farmers are each year pushing their clearings deeper into this section, gradually overcoming the last barriers which Nature sets up to protect her own.

Ben Slown was one of these farmers. When the forest had been cut, he built a square house and a square barn. He planted straight-rowed orchards, he fenced in square, flat fields. He succeeded so well in stamping out all the natural loveliness that other practical farmers came there to start practical farms like his.

Soon there was a village; but Ben Slown's square fields and the edge of the wild, interesting Pine Barrens were never separated, because no plow could conquer Oak Ridge and Cranberry Swamp.

The Ridge was a long mound covered with laurel, pines and white oaks. Cranberry Swamp, on the other hand, was low, wet ground which bore a nearly impenetrable mass of greenery, largely made up of tall cedars, holly bushes and cat briars. Through the swamp flowed a little creek in whose deep eddies green waterweeds swung with the current, giving glimpses now and then of turtles and slender, watchful pike.

When Ben Slown first planned to come to the Pine Barrens, his friends gloomily shook their heads.

"The foxes and other varmints will drive you out," they warned. "You won't be able to raise a chicken. The coons and crows will eat your corn. The woodchucks will destroy your vegetables. There are critters enough in the Barrens to keep you from being lonely, but they won't be the kind of neighbors you want."

"You just watch me," boasted the farmer, "I'll fix the varmints."

He was no sooner settled in his new place than he began to put traps and poison around the cleared ground. All the little creatures that still lived there, and the others which came out of the woods at night to marvel at the strange new things to be seen--mice, snakes, birds, rabbits, mink, muskrats, woodchucks, coons, possums, skunks, foxes, deer and a lot of others--all suffered the same ill-treatment. But most of all he feared and hated the foxes, for they were clever enough to give him a little trouble. One after another was destroyed, however, and the farmer was having everything his own way when all at once there was a newcomer on the Ridge.

This was a red fox, a beautiful creature several inches taller than any of the gray foxes that lived in the Barrens. She found the farmer's poisoned baits, but instead of taking them she took a chicken, and that right before his face.

This was the first fowl a fox had taken from Ben Slown, and therefore he complained all the more loudly; so loudly indeed that the neighbors began to think the destruction of the red fox the only thing that interested him. Instead of asking about his health, whoever met him would say, "Well, Ben, have you caught that pesky fox yet?" or perhaps, "Say, Ben, that old red fox of yours is bothering me now. Why don't you keep her at home?"

Ben would mutter something, then pass on, his brows puckered from worrying over how to get rid of her. He might have worried far more had he known that in a burrow near the south end of Oak Ridge the red fox had four fine little fox pups.

Weeks went by, and still the fox and her tracks were seen occasionally, and still the farmer worried over that chicken he had lost. Then, one fine day, when the mice seemed scarce and the pups were very hungry, the fox dashed among the hens and took away another, this time a big white one.

The farm yard was in an uproar. Chickens cackled and rushed about, cows mooed, sheepdogs barked, and Ben Slown, snatching his rifle from the rack, shot twice at the fox before she reached the woods, two fields away.

He was too much excited to aim well; the bullets went wild and the fox went on. The farmer, however, would not believe he had made a clean miss. Out to the fields he ran to see if a tuft of fur could be found on the ground.

He was walking around and around, growing more and more angry because where the fox had been he found only the white feathers of his pet hen, when out from the woods burst a neighboring farmer.

"Ben," this man called, "Ben, get your shovel, quick! I've just found the red fox's den!"