At the moment the hunt has gone dead. No music. No action. 

 Doc lifts his gun and fires into the air to call back the dogs, and 

 at that precise moment the fox jumps out of the swamp in plain 

 sight, streaking west. 



A lot of things happen at once. Merv and Bob dash for their 

 cars and head back east. Doc yells to Russ down in the woods 

 that the fox is coming his way. Harry dashes across a wheat field. 

 Cars raise trails of dust in a race to beat the fox to a road crossing. 



The sun climbs higher and the guessing game goes on. Cars 

 maneuver. Men wait. Dogs bay. And somewhere, 10 pounds of 

 cunning chooses a devious trail to security. 



By two o'clock they're all gathered again, wondering whether 

 to call it a day, but Morgan has one final strategy to explore. 

 Over yonder is the gravel pit. Morgan knows that more than one 

 fox has given his pursuers the slip among the barren boulders 

 and mounds of the gravel pit. He tops a rise and looks down. 

 There on the far side, half concealed by a rock, the fox lies, rest- 

 ing. Not fifty yards away, the dogs are aimlessly circling, their 

 tongues hanging out. Silently Morgan pays tribute to the fox's 

 cunning. There he is, out of shotgun range, knowing the dogs 

 have lost him, taking a breather before going away from there. 

 Presently he rises cautiously, slips over the rim of the stone 

 quarry, and heads north to safety. Morgan shrugs his shoulders 

 and rejoins his fellow hunters. It's too late to go on. 



Ritchie and his friends have deep respect for the fox's resource- 

 fulness. They remember the fox that wore out the dogs in heavy 

 snow, leading them in a wide circle, coming back time and again 

 to the same trail, making a beaten track of*mingled dog and fox 

 scent, until the dogs were utterly frustrated. 



They remember the fox that deliberately headed through a 

 herd of Herefords in an open pasture. Did the little rascal know 

 that the hounds would give the touchy cattle a wide berth, thus 

 causing them to lose the scent? Doc and his friends are sure of it. 



Doc and company figure that in spite of their frequent hunts, 

 the fox population in the woods and swamps of South Lyon is 

 increasing which doesn't make them at all unhappy. There'll 

 be plenty of foxing this year and next. 



132 



