A SWING AROUND VERMONT 



513 



was that wc were out of hearing of old Tim's 

 feeble baritone when, in casting about 

 after leaving the late deceased, he plumped 

 over a stone wall, almost on top of a fox that 

 had been in the valley and sneaked out 

 behind the wall and was at the moment 

 watching us in the swamp and listening to 

 Brownie's fine tenor, as the dog was puzzling 



tree, shot to death by his own good master. 

 That was the first blue fox Dave Galusha 

 ever saw, the first any of us ever saw fresh 

 killed, and Chase said it looked "like a 

 cross between a bobcat and a coyote." But 

 to feel of the fur, ah! but 'twas so soft, so 

 fluffy, as compared with the bristly fur of 

 a red or a gray. And, oh! how proud was 



A VIEW OF THE BATTENKILL, VERMONT'S BEST TROUT STREAM 



out his trail. What happened could only be 

 guessed at, when later, hurrying back up the 

 mountain to reach a runway, in the hope 

 of the dogs bringing the fox back, we 

 stumbled upon the story on the snow. That 

 Tim had "got fur " was startlingly manifest, 

 and the fox, breaking away, had gone up the 

 mountain, touching only at rare intervals. 

 Tim, all desire, had followed hard after; 

 very hard, poor old chap, the snow being, 

 belly deep and the crust cutting his shins 

 cruelly. But did he ever have such luck 

 before? Surely, for once he was repaid for 

 being only a pottering old white hound. 

 Trotting idly along, on the wet top snow, he 

 made no noise and, favored by the wind, 

 he had "jumped" a fox as perhaps but few 

 dogs ever have. And the old rascal brought 

 that fox back ahead of the other dogs and 

 was the first in, first in since many a long 

 winter, to worry the quarry where it lay on 

 the snow at the foot of a sobbing chestnut 



Dave, how proud old Tim, gibbering now 

 with reaction from the race and licking his' 

 poor wounded paws. I took a picture of 

 them, with their famous blue fox — for Dave, 

 and for Chase and for myself, but not for 

 publication, dead foxes looking anything but 

 interesting when pictured in a magazine. 



In the morning we went to Sunderland, 

 to visit Deputy Warden Jesse Bentley, at his 

 home far up on Equinox Mountain, where 

 the stillness of the long ago yet holds sway, 

 except for the few days in the deer season, 

 when Jesse stays within doors and writes 

 letters — and men come to his door and say: 

 "I'll give you ten dollars for a shot at a 

 buck." 



To one such, so Chase afterward told me, 

 the trapper, being in a happy mood and 

 feeling reassured by a cessation of the firing 

 on the mountain, replied: "I don't want 

 your money, stranger; but I'll send one by 

 you, and if you want me to I'll hitch up my 



