44 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
was a gutter snipe, though I verily believe he 
could have crossed the Fifth Avenue traffic with 
more skill and nonchalance than some dogs I’ve 
seen try it! 
But let me go back of Big Reddy to his father, 
first. A true novelist would begin with his great- 
grandfather, no doubt; but as this is only a short 
story, his father is far enough back. Sometime 
before Big Reddy was born, this parent, who was 
also a big fox, with a magnificent brush (more 
heredity, you see), used periodically to raid Zach 
Corliss’s chicken yard. Zach set traps, he bought 
a dog, he kept one gun by the kitchen door, an- 
other in the barn. But the old fox walked past the 
traps, he outran the dogs, when he couldn’t make 
friends with them, and he kept out of gunshot. 
Zach was growing ‘pretty desperate when, one 
day, well after sun up in the morning, too, as he 
was coming down the lane from shooting at a 
woodchuck up in the new rye field, whom should 
he meet, trotting toward him between the stone 
walls, but the old fox. Aha! he had him cor- 
nered! The fox couldn’t retreat without going 
into the barnyard, and there were men there. On 
