Reynard & Pals

THE FOXES--R. P. Harriss--Houghton Mifflin ($2.50).

The Foxes is more than just an animal story. Foxhunters might claim it, with some justice, as a sporting book, for it sings the glories of the chase. And Southerners could point with pride not only to the color of Author Harriss' style but to the knowledgeable way he handles the Carolinian flora and fauna, not to speak of human whites and blacks. And readers need to be neither centaurs nor Southerners to see in this little book (240 pp.) a lot of life.

The Cape country Author Harriss writes about was a fox country. Bears still snuffled through the woods, and otter and coon and deer were plentiful, but the only enemy foxes had to fear was man. In the swamp where the Vixen bore her litter lived one of them, an Indian trapper. No sport, he killed for his living. But he accounted for fewer foxes than the local hunt, whose master was the hard-drinking widower Cap'n, squire of a plantation falling to seed almost as swiftly as himself. Of the Vixen's litter, two died in traps, one was captured, one run to death by hounds while she was still a cub. That left only one, the strongest and canniest of the lot. Through a long round of seasons he added to his foxy lore, while around him the other creatures of the woods added to theirs also, or died.

It was a full year, too, for Duncan, the Cap'n's young nephew. He had his first hunt, and was blooded (given the accolade of a dab of blood on the cheeks, from a torn bit of the killed fox). He sneaked away to cockfights, hunted rats, drank in wisdom and tall tales from his elders. He learned to distinguish the distant hounds by their baying, how to tell when they were on the right line. When the year came full circle, Duncan's story and the fox's drew nearer & nearer together. The Cap'n's hunt made up in enthusiasm and skill what it lacked in fanciness. Socially a cut above the night foxhunters, who went to their midnight meets in cars, brought their hounds in scattered couples, it was still democratic enough to include a pickaninny on a mule. But that autumn the Cap'n sold enough of his remaining heirlooms to spruce up the place, put out regal hospitality for the rich neighboring Sandhill Hunt. That day might have ended our fox's career had not Author Harriss, no friend to sentimental reprieves, pronounced for once a stay of sentence.

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