Vol. XCIV No. 2 

February - 1924 
A Story in White 
The Ways and Wiles of the Hunting 
OODED and muffled in heavy 
H woolens, I waited in the sable 
darkness that is thickest be- 
fore dawn—waited for light to prowl 
over a fox trail. I know of nothing 
more fascinating than the miles of a 
fox trail winding over the deep snows. 
From a natural history and biological 
point of view it is a study of com- 
pelling interest—the narrative may be 
long-drawn but sheer excitement 
is never flagging. As a pictorial 
impression it leads one 
into secluded parts of 
the landscape and 
thus the winter world 
ig) seen in all its 
beauty and sorcery of 
snowy design. 
The trail is a record 
written in the snow. 
It is something that 
dims and fades under 
the glare of the sun of 
noonday. It may be 
blotted out by the cold 
kisses of invasive 
winds or covered from 
mortal eyes with a 
sudden fall of fresh 
snow, but in its brief 
and fleeting existence it contains 
the history of a night stripped of 
all fancy and poetry—it is life in the 
primitive. 
T HERE was something austere and 
heroic abroad when a thin, am- 
bered flush of light brooded on the. 
eastern skyline. It was a world far 
from cities and men—black boughs and 
squat spires against the dawn glow, a 
lonely silence vibrant with singing 
frosts and snapping twigs, a snowy 
solitude barren of blooded life. The 
air had the sinister feeling as of cold 
iron on bare flesh, it burned the nos- 
trils and lungs. The still cold seeped 
through leather and wool, and when I 
dumped the ashes of a long pipe my 
gloved hand shook feverishly like an 
aspen leaf. In the primal half-lights 
shot with broad shadows and wraiths 
Page 67 
By EDWIN C. HOBSON 
of dusk, I sought the fox trail at the 
frontier of a pine grove. 
On the slope slipping gently down off 
the pine thicket I came upon the print- 
ed tracks made just after yesterday’s 
sundown—the den, I knew, set in some 









« ... UNCOVERED A FARMER’S TRAPS 
NEAR A FROZEN SPRING” 
rock upheaval back in the conifers 
where aspens and birch formed an 
impenetrable refuge. The  plainly- 
marked trail led an indolent way 
through the pitch pines and then set 
a straight line across a _ juniper- 
studded clearing to the top of a long 
open hill. 
The sky was aglow with dawn in 
all its witchery and cold beauty. Old 
pastures and frozen river, pine woods 
and rolling hills, all emerged as dusk 
retreated from the openness to woodsy 
depths and deep valleys. The east was 
Red Fox 
a sea of entangled colors in inconstant 
changes of tones and tints. 
Yesterday, when the fox set back on 
his hams, the western sky was deep in 
a labyrinthine splendor as wonderful 
as the sky that looked down on my 
pursuit of an _ interrogative track. 
Snow on the hilltop revealed the fox 
was restless, ever shifting positions to 
watch all points of the compass. He 
seemed unable to sit long in one 
place, and kept up a constant 
wagging of his heavy 
brushy tail. The rising 
moon, no doubt, found 
him barking: fitfully in 
the pallid radiance—a 
bark that was _ long, 
wailing, tinged with 
the yearning of utter 
loneliness. 
The trail ran the 
crest of the ridge, 
eventually dipping 
downward and _ south- 
erly to a pasture dotted 
with boulders and ju- 
niper clumps. He 
turned aside to sniff at 
each rock and shrub, to 
nose the multitudinous 
trails of white-footed mice radi- 
ating from a massive white pine 
stump. At this point the tracks showed 
he made a sudden leap to one side and 
swung at a trot down the slope where 
a rail fence formed a barrier to a 
growth of scrubby pine and wild cherry. 
WALKED into a flock of rutfed 
grouse who rose hurriedly in a 
whirlwind of flying snow and a thunder 
of driving wing's to vanish like shadows 
down the gloom of piny spires and 
cherry branches. I heard the dimming 
flap-flap-flap of broad pinions, and 
finally crawled through the fence to 
find bad going among the dwarf 
growth. And in here by the long 
length of a huge log whose end jutted 
blackly above the snow was the first 
evidence of a kill—the tail and a scrap 
of rufous fur of a redbacked mouse. 
Contents Copyrighted by Forest and Stream Pub. Co. 
