Free Little Foxes by Michael Morpurgo

down, I thought. Then I spotted the smoke. Came just in time, didn’t I? Come September you’ll make fine sport for the hounds. So I’ll be seeing you again, my fine foxy friend. I’ll be the one on the chestnut mare leading the hunt. First over every fence I am: the Master they call me. Be all in pink so you can’t miss me. We’ll meet again, you can be sure of that. And don’t go getting yourself shot in the meantime will you? Always a pity to waste a good fox.’
    The boy and the fox waited all day in their earth cave until the daylight at the entrance began to fail. Billy had made up his mind now that it was dangerous to move by day. In future he would travel only under cover of darkness and find somewhere to lie up during the day. He waited until dark had fallen outside before clambering out of the hole. They climbed up through the woods and out once again into open countryside beyond. He could see the city glittering far away below him and knew that if he turned his back on the lights and kept walking he would be going in the direction he wanted. That night they put many miles between themselves and the city for they were able to walk safely enough along the lanes. On the rare occasions a car did disturb them they could see its headlights coming and had plenty of time to climb a gate or jump into a ditch.
    Billy kept the fox on a lead again now, a piece of orange twine he had found by the side of the road – he wanted no repeat of their encounter with the little girl the day before. The fox baulked at it more and more as the night went on, and from time to time would sit down obstinately in the middle of the road and refuse to move. It was no use jerking on the string, and Billy knew that. So Billy would sit down beside him on the road and put an arm around him and talk softly in his ear of the place they were going to, how it would be a wild country where there were no people, where they could be together always and where no one would hunt them because no one would even know they were there. ‘And when we get there,’ Billy said, ‘You’ll never have to have a lead on you again – won’t be any need for it, will there? And there’ll be food enough for us both, I promise you. I’ll see to it. Come on now, it’s not far. I know you’re tired, but after all you got four legs and I got two, so you can only be half as tired as I am. On your feet now.’

CHAPTER TEN
    BY DAWN THEY WERE OVER THE HILLS AND dropping down into a broad valley of grey shadows. The river that wound its way along it could be seen only fleetingly, glimpsed through wandering mists. For some time now Billy had been on the lookout for a place they could hide up that day. Lights were coming on in the farmhouses all over the valley and the birds had already finished their dawn chorus when he heard a tractor start up in the farmstead to one side of the road. He spotted its funnel belching black smoke and pulled the fox behind the safety of a hedgerow. The tractor rumbled up the farm track towards them.
    Billy watched as the farmer off-loaded the milk churns from the trailer onto the stand by the roadside. As he did so he bumped one of them down too hard and the lid flew off, sloping milk out down the side of the churn. The farmer cursed roundly as he jumped down off the trailer to recover the lid. Until that moment Billy had not even been thinking about food – he had already accepted that they would be going hungry again that day. But this was an opportunity that was too good to miss. He waited until the tractor had disappeared down the farm track, its trailer rattling behind it. Then he was across the road, hauling the fox along with him. He left the fox sitting by the roadside and jumped up onto the stand. He pulled the lid off one of the churns, dipped his cupped hands into the milk and drank until he could drink no more.
    An impatient bark below him reminded him that he was not alone. The churn was heavier than he imagined, but he