Lives of the Fur Folk Part 11

However, he picked his way with that unerring instinct which is the peculiar heritage of the Wild Folk, and of men who live as the Wild Folk live. He turned northwards, and, fording the trout stream where he paused to drink deeply and cool his sore feet, entered the low-lying fields which lie between Coolgraney and Knockdane. The gra.s.s was all but hidden under a blue blur of scabious, and the cobwebs in the hedges were elaborately studded with dew-drops. In some places the corn was already ripening, and the sparrows harvested there before the farmer was astir. A kestrel patrolled the fields for breakfast, and a hare lilted back to her form. Lazy pigeons flapped over the barley fields, and the rabbits kicked up their scuts and bolted into the hedges as the badger trudged past.

As he climbed the long slopes at the back of Knockdane, the early beams of the August sunrise shot over the hill. A c.o.c.k-pheasant, gobbling blackberries, ran away at his approach, and boomed, crowing, over the hedge. Something must indeed be amiss that the badger was astir after sunrise. Stubbs had never seen the sun so high in all his life, and to his eyes the whole world was bathed in perplexing glare--green, blue, and golden. He climbed painfully over the boundary wall and into the grateful shadows of the wood, where the mists, as though entangled in the tree-trunks, were long in lifting.

He turned down the well-known track, and presently, like the gates of a city of refuge, the mouth of the 'earth' opened before him. Not a leaf stirred, but scent lay long on the warm air, and his nose told him that Grunter was down there before him. He slid underground, and limped through the comfortable darkness to the dormitory. There she slept with her limbs extended awkwardly. She did not awaken; and Stubbs, flinging himself down with his head between her fore-paws, closed his eyes with a sigh of content. Two minutes later he was completely oblivious to light or darkness, man or beast, as he sank into a blessed sleep which bade fair to last far into the succeeding night.

CHAPTER III

THE LARCH HILL 'EARTH'

On the sunny side of the wood where the larches spindle up tall and thin, each trying to outstrip the rest in the race for free air and sunshine, is the 'earth' which Stubbs and Grunter dug, as has been already related. It had originally been an old rabbit burrow, but no rabbits had used it for many years, although it was well drained, warm, and dry. It consisted of one long main tunnel, with other side chambers communicating with it, and of a smaller gallery running parallel to the first. The 'earth' had only one main entrance, although there was a rabbit-hole some distance off which opened into the upper of the two princ.i.p.al galleries; but its roof was so low that a badger could hardly have crept along it.

As a spider sits in the centre of his web, so the badgers lay in the middle hall of their abode. Long, grey and sprawling, they snored noisily in their sleep like pigs, with their pied snouts nestled together in the stuffy darkness. At moonrise, however, Grunter woke, punctual as an alarum clock. She rose from the warm bed of moss, and stretched herself so vigorously that she woke her lord, who smote his head against the roof and growled. She glided past him down the pa.s.sage, and came to the main entrance, where the fresh night air blew in. Grunter was hungry. The last two nights it had rained, and the badgers had lain a-bed, but to-night was fine and mild again. She thrust her long snout right and left, and sampled all the strong damp odours of the night before she ventured to trust herself to the woods; but all was still, and she pattered away. Five minutes later Stubbs stole out. By that mysterious telepathy which is the secret of the Fur Folk, he knew whither she had gone, and followed her down the main highroad of the badgers of Knockdane, under the wet bushes to the fields by the river bank.

Greybrush came along about two hours later, and snuffed thoughtfully at the hole. Greybrush was a Ballymore fox. He had been born in a hedgerow during the spring, and now that autumn was coming on, he sought winter quarters in Knockdane. There were certainly many desirable points about this 'set.' He sat down and sucked his pads, for they were wet with dew, shook his brush plumy again, and meditated. The upshot of his meditations was that he presently entered the 'earth.'

Before the autumn sun had struggled through the mist, the badgers came home, grunting with comfort begotten of a raided bees' byke and truffles. But when Stubbs poked his snout into the burrow he drew it out again smartly, and his grunt said plainly and indignantly: 'Fox!'

Then more cautiously they proceeded to investigate. Stubbs crept in first, and Grunter followed exactly two feet behind, in approved badger fashion. The pa.s.sage wound downwards, and the air inside being hot and still, the scent was very strong. Suddenly the silence was broken by a low snarl--the snarl of a full-fed fox awakened from his sleep. Stubbs backed precipitately, for the sound was just under his paws, and in so doing collided with his mate. For a few seconds there was a scrimmage as they jammed shoulder to shoulder in the narrow pa.s.sage. Then Stubbs struggled free, and they fled to discuss the situation from a safe distance. A fox is no match for a badger in open fight, but in this case the advantage of position decidedly lay with the intruder. As they deliberated, the ringing snarl sounded again.

That settled it. Sleep is a necessity to a badger, and it was already long past bed-time. Stubbs was wet, full-fed, drowsy, and in no fighting trim. They retired to the draughty main tunnel, and slept there on the bare ground.

The next evening the fox went out hunting, and when the badgers woke and gingerly investigated the dormitory, they found it empty. They immediately took possession again, and sniffing fastidiously, dragged out the deep comfortable bedding which they had prepared against the winter; for Stubbs hates anything which a fox has tainted.

On his return Greybrush found the pa.s.sage littered with moss and leaves, while porcine snoring resounded throughout the earth. The fox was too cunning to a.s.sail the badgers in their lair. He dug a hollow in the rabbit burrow and slept there, for he was not particular, and only desired some place to protect him from the weather; but he had no intention of making an 'earth' for himself if he could find one already made.

But it certainly was annoying for the badgers, for Greybrush's ideas of cleanliness did not coincide with theirs. To find a rabbit's head or other refuse lying about, distressed them terribly, and night after night Stubbs delayed his hunting that he might scavenge the gallery where the fox slept. It is also one of the laws of the badger code that the nest shall be spring-cleaned twice a year: in March before the cubs are born, and in September, in preparation for the winter's sleep. The last-named clearance had only just been effected, and the dormitory was in apple-pie order before the fox's intrusion. However, the badger is nothing if not persevering, and Stubbs and Grunter decided to make one last effort to oust the invader. They entered the other gallery one night, prepared to turn their unwelcome lodger out of doors; but the fox had opened up the ancient rabbit burrow to serve as his back door in case of emergency, and when the indignant badgers arrived, they found him 'not at home.' They congratulated themselves on having ousted him so easily, and began to refurnish their chamber.

There happened to be a spell of warm dry weather just then, and the fox lay out in the woods without once returning to Larch Hill, so that they met with no hindrance. There is a clearing about two hundred yards from the mouth of the 'earth,' overgrown with dead gra.s.s. Here the badgers repaired for their harvesting. They tore up quant.i.ties of dry gra.s.s and moss, and twisted them into long wisps deftly enough. By the time Stubbs had made a selection of what he considered the finest and driest bedding, the clearing looked as though a herd of pigs had been rooting there. The path to the 'earth' was littered with b.a.l.l.s of gra.s.s and moss. Several times Grunter started home with a heavy load, but by the time she had reached the burrow she had dropped all but one little wisp, which, however, she carried underground, and deposited with as much care as if she had housed the whole collection.

At this rate the badgers' progress was naturally slow, and it was nearly a week before all was arranged to their satisfaction.

Alas! the first wet night found the evicted lodger back in his former quarters, and the badgers, seriously perturbed, prepared to give battle. They found the smaller gallery empty, but a snarl from the pa.s.sage beyond told them where the intruder had ensconced himself, and they had perforce to retire baffled. This happened not once but many times. Stubbs never came to close grips with his enemy; the fox was too clever to be caught napping, and at the sound of shuffling pads in the gallery, he used to back hastily into the old rabbit burrow, which was too small for the badger's comfort.

So matters dragged on for more than a month, and then the hounds came to Knockdane, and precipitated the crisis.

One night the fox went out betimes, but it was damp and raw, and the badgers slept longer than usual, for their winter slothfulness was creeping over them. The weather also accounted for the fact that Paddy Magragh, the earthstopper, went his rounds before moonrise that he might return the sooner to his warm cabin. It was only eight o'clock when he came by the Larch Hill earth, and examined the marks outside.

He saw Stubbs' broad spoor (Stubbs' spoor was a spoor to be wondered at--two and a half inches in width), and he chuckled, for he had heard of Borrigan's 'baitin'' and its sequel. Then he set to work with such right good-will that when Grunter wished to go out, an hour later, she found a firm barricade of earth and branches piled against the burrow's mouth. Grunter was very wary. The hated taint of man hung about the place, mingled with the smell of wet earth. What might not be lurking outside? She crept back to the entrance to the fox's quarters, and picked her way delicately to Greybrush's back door, which was so small that it had even escaped the keen eye of Paddy Magragh. Then she b.u.t.toned down her stumpy tail, and waddled off truffle-hunting.

The morning was grey and misty, with a cold nip in the air. Scent lay strong in covert--every rabbit which hopped across the path left a trail which lingered on the wet leaves. The t.i.ts aloft in the bare branches chatted together in little splinters of song, and the woodpigeons squabbled over cl.u.s.ters of unripe ivy berries. It was as though the day was reluctant to come; and at noon, save for a pale sun spot in the mist overhead, it was as still and damp as at daybreak.

The jays, scolding in the Fir Plantation at the top of the wood, saw Greybrush running hard from Carigaboola with seven couple of hounds behind him. His tongue was out and his brush was down, and he thought gratefully of the 'earth' on Larch Hill as he tore through the brambles, and stubbed his nose against tree-roots, as fast as his stiff legs would carry him. All the chaffinches cried: 'Spink--spink--see the fox! 'ware fox!' but as the hounds did not understand finch language it did not matter much. He dived in through his back door just as the foremost hound burst out of the covert. The latter marked the place, and bayed there, with his comrades round him, until the men rode up. The huntsman crashed through the bushes and looked at the hole, and then he ordered a terrier to be brought and put in, that it might bolt the fox. But Paddy Magragh came down the path, and although he knew that he ought to have found and stopped this hole, yet his love of the hunt was greater than his pride in his woodcraft, and he said: 'Bedam, Captain, if ye put a terrier down there ye'll niver see the tail of him again. This burra' goes into the "earth" below, and there's badgers in it. Shure, they'd ate him.'

But the master, who was young and very foolish, said: 'This is too far away to join the big "earth."'

'Them badgers would dig down to h.e.l.l itself,' said Magragh. But the master would have none of it, and called again for a dog.

Now Rip, the kennel terrier of the Carkenny pack, was as game and eke as disreputable a little cur as ever ran with hounds. His rough coat was pepper and salt, and his right ear was p.r.i.c.ked, but the left had drooped down ever since it had been torn in a great fight which he had with an old dog-fox in Kiltorkan rocks. But he was a bold little terrier and went straight into the 'earth' after Greybrush.

Stubbs was awakened by a smell of fox. Smells do not awaken human beings as a rule, but a badger's nose is exquisite, and is always alert, even when its owner is asleep. Since the fox had come to the 'earth' this was not an uncommon occurrence; as a rule Stubbs growled in his dreams and lay still, but to-day his ear caught the sound of scuffling close at hand, and he stood up. The burrow was pitch dark, and the narrow pa.s.sages carried sound like a telephone, but overhead Stubbs heard--or rather felt--mysterious thuds. Grunter, quick to take alarm, cowered down at the back of the chamber with the moss heaped over her back, but the hair along Stubbs' spine rose, and he went out to investigate. Now, as we have said, the Larch Hill 'earth' consists of two main tunnels connected by a side pa.s.sage. As Stubbs listened he heard something moving along the other gallery, and knew that the fox had bolted home in a hurry. Suddenly he whisked round. He was standing at the spot where the pa.s.sages crossed, and something had glided behind him into his dormitory. He growled, and waddled back, for he guessed what it was. Greybrush was thoroughly frightened, and not daring to lie up in his own quarters, he had sought refuge in those of the badgers. Stubbs began a systematic search of the chamber. It was not large, but it was pitch dark, and so close that his nose could not guide him. Halfway round he b.u.mped into Grunter, who had also taken the alarm, and for a minute or two there was a wild scuffle before they could establish one another's ident.i.ty. Greybrush, too terrified to move, lay still in the middle, which was perhaps the best thing he could have done, for the two badgers groped round the walls and thus missed him.

But presently another smell was wafted down the gallery. Stubbs' nose disentangled it from the scent of fox and damp earth around; and then his little pig's-eyes grew red and angry, for he had not forgotten the smell of dog which he had learned in Borrigan's yard that summer. The terrier was groping his way awkwardly, for the dust in his nose made him sneeze, and his eyes were as yet scarcely used to the darkness.

However, when he discovered which way the fox had gone he gave an excited yelp, and came on. Stubbs rumbled threateningly. A badger does not fight willingly, and always gives notice when his patience is growing short. Rip instantly snarled and rushed in--fox or badger, either was a legitimate adversary. In the dark he partially missed his hold and seized Stubbs under the ear. Stubbs grunted, and flung his head back, but Rip hung on gamely. Then the badger bored forward and crushed him against the side of the pa.s.sage, and he let go for an instant; but the next moment he sprang in again, and his teeth met in the other's shoulder. What little air there was in the burrow was thick with dust, and both the combatants choked for breath. Stubbs cut at the terrier with his digging claws, but the s.p.a.ce was too confined, and only a grunting gasp and momentary tightening of the teeth in his neck told that his blows took effect. Rip then shifted his hold again, and tugged and dragged at the badger's thick hair, with all four legs widely extended. Stubbs lunged forward in vain--his enemy merely retreated backwards as he felt the strain on his jaws slackening.

Suddenly the grip of the terrier's teeth gave way, and he staggered back with his mouth full of grey hair. The badger ran forward and in the darkness stumbled right on the top of the dog. Something hairy brushed his mouth, and his jaws closed like a trap upon the terrier's leg. It was well for Rip that it was his leg and not his body which those teeth seized, or else all the life would have been squeezed out of him very quickly; but as it was, as he fell he twisted himself round and snapped at Stubbs' jaw. The badger grunted and let go, and the terrier crawled backwards, dragging his broken leg and sobbing in his breathing.

But as long as there was life in Rip's s.h.a.ggy body there was pluck. He rested for a few seconds, and then turned to the attack again. The badger heard the m.u.f.fled yelping close at hand, and knew that to win his way to the open air he must face the snapping fury in front of him. He resolved upon another plan. Grunting and gasping in the stifling atmosphere he turned round, and plunging his pads into the light soil, he began to throw up a barricade. He dug with his long fore-claws, and shovelled the earth with his hind-legs until the pile nearly filled the pa.s.sage. He could hear the terrier whimpering and scuffling on the other side as he attempted to climb the barrier, and dug the deeper. Only when he had put two feet of earth between himself and his a.s.sailant did he slink to the bottom of the burrow to lick his wounds.

Rip climbed the barricade time after time. Then, when he was finally convinced that it was useless, he dragged himself to the light of day once more, tattered and torn, with his eyes and nose full of sand. But they could see that he had fought a great fight, and Dennis the Whip vowed that he should never go underground any more. Indeed, he never could do so, but limped on one leg to the end of his days.

How Greybrush ultimately escaped from the badgers I do not know, but he was not seen abroad in Knockdane for several days. However, after the battle the badgers ceased to try and evict him. Instead, they dug a new and deeper gallery at right angles to their former one, and dwelt there. So that if you go to Knockdane and ask Paddy Magragh, he will show you the Larch Hill 'earth,' and tell you that foxes live in the upper tunnels and badgers in the lower. And if you could creep down, where even Paddy Magragh cannot go, you might hear the rumbling snores of Stubbs from a side dormitory; and in the deepest chamber of all, well lined and cosy, the maternal snorts of Grunter, and the squeals of her new-born cubs.