The Case of the Fiddle Playing Fox (4 page)

Chapter Six: Loneliness on the Front Lines

C
rouched in some weeds across from the chicken house, we waited in the darkness and silence.

Did I say silence? Not exactly. A guy never realizes how much non-silence there is on a quiet autumn night until he's forced to sit and listen.

Crickets, for example. You ever stop and wonder how many crickets there are in this world? Neither had I, but there are bound to be bunches and bunches of crickets.

And did you ever stop and wonder how one cricket can make so much noise? I mean, we're talking about a little bitty feller who makes something more than a little bitty racket.

Don't crickets ever get tired? You'd think so, but they go on and on, making their chirp or whatever it is, and they don't ever seem to sleep.

Well, after studying crickets for a lot longer than I ever wanted to, I came to the conclusion that whoever builds 'em is pretty handy with his tools.

And there were other sounds in the night. The hooting of an owl. The “voom” of bull-bats. The howling of coyotes. Bullfrogs saying, “
Rrrump, rrump
!” down on the creek.

And then there was the whisper of the wind. Did you know that the wind has a different voice for every season of the year? It does, and when you live outside, the way I do, you become something of an expert on the subject.

I listen to the wind every day and every night, and I can tell you that in the fall of the year, that old wind sings a lonesome song. It makes you wonder what happened to spring, and where the summertime went.

And that's the kind of song I was hearing, as I listened to the wind blowing through the trees. It went kind of like this.

Wind Song

She came here in the springtime

With flowers in her hair,

Inquiring for a place to stay

Until the trees grew bare.

I saw her in the cottonwoods,

Beneath their pools of shade.

She caught a puff of cotton

And blew it on its way.

Oh sing songs of sunshine,

Sing songs of rain,

Sing songs of springtime gone,

Sing them all again.

She stayed through the summer months,

I saw her having fun.

She took a gold strand of hair

And wrapped it 'round the sun.

She warmed the earth and kissed its face

With lips of sparkling dew.

I thought she'd stay forever,

Her name I never knew.

Oh sing songs of sunshine,

Sing songs of rain,

Sing songs of springtime gone,

Sing them all again.

The autumn came, I heard the wind

And saw the swirls of red,

And cottonwoods with gnarled limbs

Against a sky of lead.

I called for her to warm herself

And said that she must stay.

But all at once her eyes turned sad

And then she went away.

Oh sing songs of sunshine,

Sing songs of rain,

Sing songs of springtime gone,

Sing them all again.

Kind of mournful, huh? That old autumn wind can sure send a chill or two down your backbone, especially if you happen to be on a dangerous assignment in the dead of night.

And there were other sounds I couldn't identify: whispers and rustles and clatters and snaps, swishes and sighs and moans and slithers. Those were the ones that made me uneasy because . . . Well, a guy never knows what manner of beast might produce that kind of noise.

And after a few hours, it begins to work on his mind. I mean, when you're trying to maintain a state of readiness and alertness, you tend to respond to every little sound. And after doing that for a couple of hours, something happens to your state of readiness and alertness.

For one thing, you begin to feel drowsy. Sleepy. Stuporous. Comatose. Even if you've had a nice long nap.

It must have been sometime past midnight when I realized that I was in danger of falling asleep. One of the things you can do to stay awake on a stakeout is talk to your partner. I decided to give it a shot.

“Drover, it's time to check in. Have you seen any
zzzzzzz
. . . ?”

“No thanks, I couldn't hold another bite
zzzzzzzzz
.”

“Uh, Roger, did you
zzzzzzz
get a count on 'em?”

“Three green elephants dancing with a . . .
zzzzzz
.”

“Come back on that one, Roger, we didn't have a good . . .
zzzzzz.
”

“Oh yeah, I've been wide asleep for . . . steak bones.”

“Right. Well, I'm having a little troub . . . Beulah, you shouldn't be here at this hour of the . . . having a little trouble staying . . . asleep my
zzzzzzzzz
elf. How about you?”

“Oh sure, I'll take all three . . . snort
zzzzzz
.”

“Check and double
zzzzz
. . . got to stay asleep, no matter how hard it . . .
zzzzzzz
.”

“Fiddle music.”

“You bet. And the fiddler it is, the musicker I like it.”

“Pete, I hear fiddle . . . fiddle-faddle . . . fiddle music.”

“Don't be obserd, Droving. Pete can't play a . . . what did you say?”

“Who?”

“Just now. Someone was talking about Pete.”

“No, that must have been . . . fiddle music.”

“You keep talking about . . . fiddle musle . . .
zzzzz
.”

I keep hearing . . . middle fusic . . . and steak bones.”

“It's just the crickles, Droving. Crickets.”

“Do crickles play . . . fickle music?”

“Roger, a big ten-four on the crickles.”

Crickle? Fickle? Fiddle?

HUH?

Fiddle! Hey, unless my ears were deceiving me, I was hearing FIDDLE MUSIC! But that was impossible. Nobody on my ranch played the . . . nobody on my ranch had ever played the . . .

I sat up and gave my head a shake. Just for a second there, I must have dozed off for a second or two. Not long, just a momentary lapse of a split second or two, but long enough to . . .

Drover was dead asleep, the little dunce, sleeping on the job, sleeping through a very important stakeout, and I had a good mind to . . .

That WAS fiddle music, and I wasn't dreaming it. Not that I had been asleep, you understand, or that I might have been dreaming about anything at all, but on the other hand . . .

I took my ears off Automatic Liftup and switched over to manual. I raised them to the Full Alert position, trimmed them out to Max G (that's our shorthand term for “Maximum Gather­ing Mode,” don't you see), and homed in on the alleged sound frequency.

Fiddle music. No question about it. I could hear it as plain as day, but still my mind refused to accept it as real. And yet . . . I had picked it up on Max G, so it had to be the real thing.

Very carefully, I threaded my nose through the weeds in front of me, pushing them aside so as to give myself a clear and unobsconded view of the chicken house. Everything appeared to be normal, but then . . .

HOLY SMOKES!!

My tail stuck straight out and the hair on my back shot straight up and my ears jumped three inches and cold chills went rolling down my backbone.

I blinked my eyes, trying to convince them that they had malfunctioned. No luck there. Hence, after running checks and double-checks on all my sensory equipment, I still saw . . .
a fox playing a fiddle, and strolling towards the chicken house
.

I saw it, fellers, and I heard it, but I still didn't believe it. I had a peculiar reaction to this situation. I turned away and looked the other direction, hoping to give my racing mind a chance to catch up with . . . I'm not sure what a racing mind would catch up with, but the point is that I needed a moment to absorb all this.

I tried to think and pull together bits of evidence and testimony and clues that I had gathered over the past several days. Chicken house. Broken eggs. J. T. Cluck's bizarre story about hearing fiddle music in the night. Drover's unbelievable tale about a fox playing a fiddle, which he himself had dismissed as nothing but a dream.

But perhaps Drover had been mistaken. Per­haps he had misled me, thrown me off the trail, just as he had done so many times over the years. For you see, it was beginning to appear that the fox playing fiddle was NOT a dream at all, but an actual reality.

And the most astounding thing of all was that I had suspected it all along.

Yes, it was all coming back now and the pieces of the puzzle began falling into place. I took a deep breath and turned my eyes back to the chicken house, ready now to resume my observation.

It was a fox, all right. In his original testimony, Drover had noted, and this is a direct quote, “We don't have foxes around here.” Almost true but not quite. We don't have red foxes or gray foxes or your other varieties of northern foxes, but we do have a few kit foxes.

Your kit fox is about half the size of a coyote, don't you see, which makes him a fairly small animal. He has a long pointed nose, beady little eyes, a light red coat, and a bushy tail. He lives in holes and eats such items as mice, grasshoppers, and rabbits.

Or, when he can get them, he loves to eat anything he might find in a chicken house.

They're bad about thieving, them foxes, but very few of them play fiddles. This one was a little out of the ordinary in that respect.

So what we had going on at that moment was a kit fox, walking slowly towards the chicken house and playing a tune on a fiddle, which pretty muchly fit into the pattern I had worked up earlier that day.

The question now was, should I come out of hiding and use the Riot Axe on this little villain, or should I remain hidden and see what he would do?

Since I didn't actually have an airtight case against him, I decided to go with Opinion Two. I would remain hidden in the weeds, observe his every movement and gesture, and then, if he made one false move, I would spring my deadly trap on him.

And I really had suspected a fox all along.

Honest.

Chapter Seven: Fiddle Hypnosis, and How I Managed to Resist It

O
kay. So there I was, and here's what I saw.

This fox came strolling down the gravel drive, the one that lays between the machine shed and the chicken house. The moon was bright enough so that I got a good look at him.

I've already given a partial description, but I'll do it again: kind of small and wiry, light red coat of hair, sharp pointed nose, cunning little eyes, long bushy tail with a splash of white on the tip end.

He had that fiddle tucked under his chin and he was playing this tune and kind of singing along with it: “Dee dee dee-dum, dee dee dee dum-dee-dum dee dee, dee dee dee dee dee dum, dum dee dum dee dee dee dee.”

And smiling. Did I mention that? Yes sir, had his eyes closed and he was smiling to himself, just as though he didn't have a care in the world and was doing exactly what he ought to be doing.

Now, I have to admit that after I'd watched and listened for a minute or two, the hair on my back began to lay down and the cold chills stopped skating down my spine. After I got over the initial shock of seeing a fox playing a fiddle in the dead of night, I sort of settled back and, well, enjoyed the music, you might say.

It wasn't half bad. In fact, it was pretty good. That little fox had obviously taken a lesson or two on the fiddle, and he was making some derned fine music—and I consider myself a pretty severe critic of such things.

And the longer I watched and listened, the more I found myself hoping that he wouldn't go into the chicken house. I mean, I've got no grudge against foxes. As long as they stay away from headquarters and leave my chickens alone, I've got no quarrel with them whatsoever.

On the other hand, any creature that goes where he shouldn't on my outfit becomes my mortal enemy. Whether he's a fox or a coyote or a coon or a Bengal tiger, it's all the same to me. He gets persecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Well, for a while there, it appeared that he would be content to play for himself in the moonlight, and as I say, I was kind of enjoying the concert. That was a snappy little tune he was playing, the kind that makes you want to tap your paw.

And as a matter of fact, I did catch myself tapping my paw a time or two. Not anything serious, just a little tap here and there.

But then . . . I raised up and lifted my ears and narrowed my eyes. Was he drifting closer to the chicken house? Yes, he definitely appeared to be drifting towards the little door in the middle of the chicken house.

That was too bad. The scene to come flashed across my mind. The fox would stop playing, cast cunning and greedy glances to the left and to the right, and dive through the opening.

This would be followed at once by an explosion of squawking and a blizzard of feathers as terrified chickens came flapping out the little door. A moment later, the villain would appear again, with egg all over his face and a murdered hen clenched in his jaws.

And at that point, I would have no choice but to emerge from my hiding place in the weeds, bark an alarm to the house, and lumber down to settle all accounts with the villain.

And his life would end there in front of the chicken house he had just robbed, snuffed out like a candle, either by the Head of Ranch Security or by a blast from Loper's shotgun.

And he would take his music with him to the grave. No more would we hear his fiddle in the moonlight.

It would be a sad and sorry ending, and I would have much preferred a better one. But when you're Head of Ranch Security, you have to write the endings as they come, and some of 'em ain't real happy.

I pushed myself up and tried to steel my iron will for what was about to come. The moment I heard the first chicken squawk, I would have to push the Button of No Return, for you see, if a chicken squawked and I didn't sound the alarm, my boss would have grounds for stripping me of my rank and position.

And dog food.

Oh, terrible decision! Oh, heavy burden of responsibility! I hoped against hope that the fox wouldn't dart inside and that no chicken would . . .

Hmmm. That was odd. The fox DIDN'T dart inside and no chicken DID squawk.

Now, this was stretching my powers of credulation. By George, I couldn't believe what I was . . . two hens appeared at the door, and unless my eyes were playing tricks on me,
they invited the fox inside
!

Hence, there was no squawking or flapping of wings, no signs of a forced entry. Hence, how could I . . . hmmm. Was it against Ranch Law for a fox to be INVITED into the chicken house?

Ordinarily, my mind moves very quickly over matters of law and crinimality, and comes up with solutions in a matter of seconds. But this deal had me stumped.

If a fox in the chicken house wasn't a problem for the chickens, then maybe it shouldn't be a problem for the Head of Ranch Security, is sort of the way I framed it up. So why should I risk my life and limb protecting a bunch of dumb chickens who didn't appear to think they needed protecting?

Okay. The fox stopped playing, smiled at the chickens, and gave them a little bow. And then he said, “Uh, good evening, ladies. Shall I come in and play a few tunes on my fiddle?”

They motioned him inside. He threw a glance over his shoulder and hopped through the little door.

“Drover,” I whispered, “this beats anything I ever saw. Cover me. I'm going down there to have a look.”

“Morgle gurgle skiffering steak bones.”

I pushed myself up, slipped out of the weeds, and began stalking towards the chicken house, taking one cautious step at a time. After covering a short distance in Stealthy Crouch Mode, I switched over to a faster pace and sprinted the rest of the way.

Upon reaching the chicken house, I flattened myself against the front of the building and peered through the opening—and witnessed a very strange sight.

The fox stood right in the middle of things, playing a song on his fiddle and showing that same contented smile I had seen before. And get this. All around him, the chickens were . . . you ain't going to believe this, but here goes . . . the chickens were dancing the Panhandle Two-step!

There was J. T. Cluck squiring some old hen around near the east wall, perhaps the same Elsa we had heard so much about. The rest of the couples were hens, dancing together. And they seemed no more concerned about the fox in the midst than if he'd been a fly or another chicken.

But here's the clinker. While the hens were dancing, that fox would lean over, stick his sharp nose into a nest, gobble an egg, and spit out the shells—and never miss a beat on that fiddle.

He did all this in full view of the chickens, and it didn't cause one ripple of concern.

So! Now I understood why we hadn't heard squawks of alarm the night before. It was an inside job! In giving me his testimony, J. T. Cluck had either lied to cover up his part in the conspiracy or . . . or else, for reasons I couldn't explain, he'd had no memory of the event.

Yes indeed, the wheels were turning now. I had pretty muchly firmed up my case and now the time had come for me to bust in there and . . .

Sure was pretty music, the sweetest fiddle you ever heard. If there's one thing this old world's short on, it's sweet fiddle music. I couldn't remember when I'd . . .

I could almost understand how a bunch of chickens might invite this guy into their house and . . . what else did a chicken have to do with its time? And it seemed fairly reasonable that they might pay him off in eggs, didn't it? What else could . . .

You know, there's something almost hypnotic about a fid . . . flowers and pretty girls and young love, and me and Beulah . . . one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four . . . dancing around the room, her big collie eyes . . . something almost hypnotic about fiddle music.

I mean, a guy has to concentrate real hard on his . . . one-two-three-four, a one-two-three-four . . . sweetest fiddle . . . on his business or he could very easily get . . . “Oh Hank, you're a wonderful dancer!” . . . one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four . . . “Beulah, you've never been more beautiful than you are tonight” “. . . Hank, how did you know that I love fiddle music?”

Anyway, the point is that if a guy didn't concentrate pretty hard on his fiddle, he could sure get caught up in that sweet business music, because there's something hypnotic . . .

Pink streaks of dawn on the eastern horizon? That was odd. I must have dozed . . . I sat up and blinked my eyes. The music had stopped and the chicken house was dark and quiet. Somehow the night had slipped away from me, and perhaps that sneaking, egg-stealing fox had slipped away with it, which kind of annoyed me, don't you know, seeing as how I'd intended to . . .

Ah ha and oh ho! He hadn't slipped away from me, because at that very moment I saw his bushy tail appear at the door, as he came backing out.

I leaped to my feet and puffed myself up to my full height and massiveness, and announced to one startled fox, “Freeze, turkey! You're under arrest!”