BIG REDDY, STRATEGIST 47 
there was no catching her. Off she went with 
Big Reddy in her mouth. 
“Gee, I ain’t sorry!” exclaimed young Bill. 
“Some pep, she’s got!” 
The boys took the three other little foxes home, 
and kept them that summer in an old chicken 
coop—but that is another story. This is to be 
the tale of Big Reddy. 
Reddy was apparently none the worse for this 
exciting adventure of his early youth, for he grew 
rapidly in the warm, dry hole which his father 
and mother dug in an old, abandoned marble 
quarry about a mile away, playing all day in the 
sun before the door, and justifying by his thick 
fur, his deep chest, his wonderful, snapping, alert 
eyes, his mother’s choice of him out of all her fam- 
ily tosave. By August he was learning to hunt, 
and by the time the leaves fell in the woods and 
you could see a rabbit far off as well as hear or 
smell it, Big Reddy was able to shift for himself, 
which he proceeded to do, learning every foot of 
the land for several miles around. Both his 
mother and his father impressed this lesson upon 
him. The very first secret of success in securing 
