One December morning, about two weeks after his rescue from the pack by Kitty Mason, Redcoat ventured across the river. The mice had become scarce on the east side and there were always plenty on the west side. These meadows were elliptical in shape, resting in a great bend of the river. They were two miles long and a mile in width. Close to the river for the entire distance there was a fringe of bushes about a hundred feet deep. This was the only cover on the meadows, and even this cover had half a dozen gaps in it and it was at these gaps that the fox hunters always took their stand. When the foxes were started out on the meadows they usually ran in the open for a while. The meadow was slightly undulating in places, but most of it was very level. This made backtracking and snarling up the track very dangerous on the part of the foxes, for the hounds would often see them half a mile away and cut across the labyrinth of trail that the fox had been several minutes in making, so sooner or later the foxes always took to the cover along
Page:Redcoat (1927).djvu/184
