Free The Fox and the Hound by Daniel P. Mannix Page B

another field with grass as short as a lawn. Here the fox had made a number of spy-hops leaping high in the air to see about him. These spy-hops made a series of breaks in the trail that puzzled Copper until he realized what they were. Then the fox had turned off at a sharp angle. After running a few yards, he had dropped down and started to crawl on his belly. Here the scent was so strong Copper burst into full cry, lifting his head as he ran in hopes of seeing his quarry ahead of him.
    Instead he ran into a Bock of sheep that exploded in front of him. A belligerent ram refused to move, and stood threatening with his head down. As the trail led right under him, Copper grabbed the stupid beast by the wool around his neck, dragged him to one side, and then continued on. But the panicky animals had virtually obliterated the line with their sharp hoofs and pungent odor. Copper could find only the faintest ghosts of scent, and these were too scattered to form a continued trail.
    After a few minutes' effort, Copper left the trampled field in disgust and made a long cast around the fence line. Behind the sheep there was nothing, and Copper had to turn and go the other way. Here he finally picked up the line again where the fox had gone under the fence. The fox had backtracked - just like one of those sneaky creatures! He had crawled in among the sheep and lain there, watching Copper come up. He had probably still been there while Copper was having his fight with the ram. Then when he saw Copper start out to make his cast, he had run back through the flock, ducked under the fence, and was now headed back toward his regular run. Copper began to bay again, in indignation at the trick that had been played on him as much as in satisfaction at hitting the line.
    As Copper had suspected, the line led back to the regular route, and he picked it up beside a post-and-rail fence surrounding a plowed field where winter wheat had been planted, The plowed earth completely absorbed the scent, and Copper would have been hopelessly lost had he not been able to pick up occasional ends of odor blown into the furrows by the wind. Copper paused to clear his nose by sniffing loudly and long before going on, but even so the bits of scent were so few and far between he would have been defeated had the fox not kept along the fence. As soon as he realized how the fox was running, Copper simply followed the fence. Had the fox turned and cut across the field, the hound would have been at a hopeless loss, but the fox had here kept to his regular run, and at the end of the fence where he had turned at right angles to go up a path leading to a small woods, the hound was able to pick up the line again and follow it.
    As he approached the trees, Copper smelled where the fox had jumped a rabbit from its form and turned off the route to catch and kill it. In spite of his careful training, Copper could not resist the temptation to make a quick cast to see if the fox had left the rabbit living there, but he had carried off its quarry. Clearly the fox thought he has lost the hound in the sheep field, and was no longer worried. Copper would show him differently. The hound pushed on, hoping to find the fox eating his kill. Just before he reached the woods, he came upon the body of the rabbit. The fox had not broken into it and had dropped it when he heard or smelled the hound coming. After a quick sniff at the dead animal, Copper plunged into the cover.
    The trees were pines, and their resinous odor tended to mask the scent. Even worse, the ground was heavily carpeted with dead needles that carried almost no scent in the deep shade, especially as the ground was still frozen here. Copper went on by taking the scent from branches that had touched the fox as he passed. He came to a place where the fox had run along a fallen tree, the roots still in the ground. Copper jumped clumsily on the trunk and followed the scent along it until he came to the end five feet above the