CHAPTER XXIII
The forest was again under snow, lying silent beneath its deep white mantle. Only the crows’ calls could be heard. Now and then came a magpie’s noisy chattering. The soft twittering of the tit-mice sounded timidly. Then the frost hardened and everything grew still. The air began to hum with the cold.
One morning a dog’s baying broke the silence.
It was a continuous hurrying bay that pressed on quickly through the woods, eager and clear and harrying with loud yelps.
Bambi raised his head in the hollow under the fallen tree, and looked at the old stag who was lying beside him.
“That’s nothing,” said the old stag in answer to Bambi’s glance, “nothing that need bother us.”
Still they both listened.
They lay in their hollow with the old beech trunk like a sheltering roof above them. The deep snow kept the icy draught from them, and the tangled bushes hid them from curious eyes.
The baying grew nearer. It was angry and panting and relentless. It sounded like the bark of a small hound. It came constantly closer.
Then they heard panting of another kind. They heard a low labored snarling under the angry barking. Bambi grew uneasy, but the old stag quieted him again. “We don’t need to worry about it,” he said. They lay silent in their warm hollow and peered out.
The footsteps drew nearer and nearer through the branches. The snow dropped from the shaken boughs and clouds of it rose from the earth.
Through the snow and over the roots and branches, the fox came springing, crouching and slinking. They were right; a little, short-legged hound was after him.
One of the fox’s forelegs was crushed and the fur torn around it. He held his shattered paw in front of him, and blood poured from his wound. He was gasping for breath. His eyes were staring with terror and exertion. He was beside himself with rage and fear. He was desperate and exhausted.
Once in a while he would face around and snarl so that the dog was startled and would fall back a few steps.
Presently the fox sat down on his haunches. He could go no farther. Raising his mangled forepaw pitifully, with his jaws open and his lips drawn back, he snarled at the dog.
But the dog was never silent for a minute. His high, rasping bark only grew fuller and deeper. “Here,” he yapped, “here he is! Here! Here! Here!” He was not abusing the fox. He was not even speaking to him, but was urging on someone who was still far behind.
Bambi knew as well as the old stag did that it was He the dog was calling.
The fox knew it too. The blood was streaming down from him and fell from his breast into the snow, making a fiery red spot on the icy white surface, and steaming slowly.
A weakness overcame the fox. His crushed foot sank down helpless, but a burning pain shot through it when it touched the cold snow. He lifted it again with an effort and held it quivering in front of him.
“Let me go,” said the fox beginning to speak, “let me go.” He spoke softly and beseechingly. He was quite weak and despondent.
“No! No! No!” the dog howled.
The fox pleaded still more insistently. “We’re relations,” he pleaded, “we’re brothers almost. Let me go home. Let me die with my family at least. We’re brothers almost, you and I.”
“No! No! No!” the dog raged.
Then the fox rose so that he was sitting perfectly erect. He dropped his handsome pointed muzzle on his bleeding breast, raised his eyes and looked the dog straight in the face. In a completely altered voice, restrained and embittered, he growled, “Aren’t you ashamed, you traitor!”
“No! No! No!” yelped the dog.
But the fox went on, “You turncoat, you renegade.” His maimed body was taut with contempt and hatred. “You spy,” he hissed, “you blackguard, you track us where He could never find us. You betray us, your own relations, me who am almost your brother. And you stand there and aren’t ashamed!”
Instantly many other voices sounded loudly round about.
“Traitor!” cried the magpie from the tree.
“Spy!” shrieked the jay.
“Blackguard!” the weasel hissed.
“Renegade!” snarled the ferret.
From every tree and bush came chirpings, peepings, shrill cries, while overhead the crows cawed, “Spy! Spy!” Everyone had rushed up, and from the trees or from safe hiding places on the ground, they watched the contest. The fury that had burst from the fox released an embittered anger in them all. And the blood spilt on the snow, that steamed before their eyes, maddened them and made them forget all caution.
The dog stared around him. “Who are you?” he yelped. “What do you want? What do you know about it? What are you talking about? Everything belongs to Him, just as I do. But I, I love Him. I worship Him, I serve Him. Do you think you can oppose Him, poor creatures like you? He’s all-powerful. He’s above all of you. Everything we have comes from Him. Everything that lives or grows comes from Him.” The dog was quivering with exaltation.
“Traitor!” cried the squirrel shrilly.
“Yes, traitor!” hissed the fox. “Nobody is a traitor but you, only you.”
The dog was dancing about in a frenzy of devotion. “Only me?” he cried, “you lie. Aren’t there many, many others on His side? The horse, the cow, the sheep, the chickens, many, many of you and your kind are on His side and worship Him and serve Him.”
“They’re rabble!” snarled the fox, full of a boundless contempt.
Then the dog could contain himself no longer and sprang at the fox’s throat. Growling, spitting, and yelping, they rolled in the snow, a writhing, savagely snapping mass from which fur flew. The snow rose in clouds and was spattered with fine drops of blood. At last the fox could not fight any more. In a few seconds he was lying on his back, his white belly uppermost. He twitched and stiffened and died.
The dog shook him a few times, then let him fall on the trampled snow. He stood beside him, his legs planted, calling in a deep, loud voice, “Here! Here! He’s here!”
The others were horrorstruck and fled in all directions.
“Dreadful,” said Bambi softly to the old stag in the hollow.
“The most dreadful part of all,” the old stag answered, “is that the dogs believe what the hound just said. They believe it, they pass their lives in fear, they hate Him and themselves and yet they’d die for His sake.”