fallen trees, swept away branches that hung down in front of him, and splashed through collected pools of water as he ran over the ground. The fox was in full flight; it laughed as it led him on. It ran down to the river, where it leapt into the water with a neat, unbroken step, then swam swiftly in the running flow.
Otci ran to the water’s edge. Cold uncertainty seized him as he hesitated on the bank. He forgot himself in his boldness, and ran into the water holding his musket high in the air. He swam strongly in the river. As he did so, he felt the current sucking at his arms and legs, pulling him downstream. Still, he gained on the animal, for he was swimming with all his strength. The fear of middle river diminished with each strong stroke of his free arm and his legs.
As his foot struck the muddy ground, the fox was climbing up the bank. He struggled after it and regained the chase. The fox ran swiftly through the woods, red flashing through the dark green. Then it disappeared over the edge of a tree-shrouded gully. As he dashed through the defile after the fox, he was running faster than he ever had before. The fox turned briskly around the edge of the deep gully. As he swept the ferns from his path, he found himself approaching a high, hard clay wall that stood at the end of the corridor, which the brilliant fox now tried desperately to climb, his tail waving. Otci laid his finger on the trigger as the exhilaration heated his temples. He had trapped his game.
“Utassi Tchati!” (Red Fox!) he called out. The fox turned in resignation and shook the water from itself as it panted. It looked straight into Otci’s eyes. Otci hesitated.
“Don’t do it, Otci!” the fox said in a clear voice. “I am not to die just now. There is too much to be gained.”
In the shaded part of his memory, Otci remembered his vow to remain open to the voices of the thicket. Four-legged creatures carry the word.
“I chased you out of the thicket and across the river. You are trapped here, and you can’t beguile me. You can’t escape me!” he said strongly.
The fox cocked its head. “I cannot escape you, neither do I wish to beguile you, but you will not kill me, Otci!” the fox repeated.
“I have only one chance,” he replied. “The one shot that it takes to blow the fire through you gives me an entrance into the warriors’ council. I’ll wrap your skin over the miko’s shoulders and hang your tail from my lodge door!”
“You do not have the power in a new land to kill me, Otci,” the fox said. A smile of satisfaction lit its face. “You have crossed over into a new place, you see. The river is wide. I see you still sitting in the cabin of your mother.”
The hunter’s pride rose in him. He would hesitate no longer. He raised his musket and aimed it at the fox’s heart. The animal stood, unmoved, panting its small tongue like a small flag. His hand was shaking as he jerked the trigger. But there was only the cold click of the flint against the steel. The flash in the pan and the explosion did not come. He pulled the hammer back again. The fox still stood there. Again there was no fire and jolt.
“You are new in the strange land, Otci. Your ground is across the river where the current keeps you safe and well-guarded until the men call you. You swam across it after me to my ground, and here, where it is thicker with trees than on your side, a ground you have not seen before, you are powerless with the old methods,” the fox said in a controlled voice.
The animal’s words rose strongly before Otci and struck at him with slaps of doubt. The impotent steel in his right hand grew heavy as he felt the gravity of his quest seize him. He spoke from the pit of his stomach.
“The water was cold and deep, and the current carried me away from you,” he said, “but I still found you. Long Person did not stop me!”
“What were you seeking?” the fox asked, with a wrinkled eyebrow. “You entered that water from which many have never reemerged, and you swam it without slowing to doubt yourself. You have never been here before. It must be the calling of the spirit, Otci.” The sharp-eyed animal spoke in a quietly authoritative voice that was now beginning to sound sharply familiar. The fox’s tone and rhythm of speech was one he recognized. Without looking deep for his own reply, he recited what he knew instinctively. The words arose dark from within him.
“I cross over the Long Person and it allows me the passage. I swim in it without the fear. I know the river and I am known by it. It confirms me with the power.” He spoke to a distant thing. He was unable to identify what it was, but it was the possibility of him along the path he had weeks ago begun to travel. “The rains that fall in the high country are sent from the far heights where the Master sits, and the rains fall every day in the corn-growing time. I am like a tall pine by the river’s edge, and the wind carries my seed to other lands that show me.”
The fox looked at him with his dark and gleaming eye and said, “If you cross over the dark stream again back to your own ground, what will the talk be? You aimed at me and tried to fire your gun, but it was useless. You tried to kill me and couldn’t do it. So now you see what the new ground is. Can you find your way back when darkness hides the path? It will be so dark you will not see the rattlesnake. The new land is known only to those who dwell there. This ground defies such a bold entrance.”
He pondered the challenge, not taking his eye from the animal that spoke in such a fierceness of color and knowledge. He looked up and saw the sky darken through the trees. It suddenly turned gray blue.
Then he said to the fox in anger, “They will say of me that I confronted the one who hungers for swimmers. They will say that I floated in the river like a fish, for I know it moves, and they will say that neither strange places nor new impediments cause Otci to hesitate. That is what they will say!”
The fox looked at him derisively. “What of me, Otci?”
The fox had spoken firmly. Otci knew that it had led him off in its chosen direction. A knot tightened in his throat. He knew now that he was unprepared when he had taken the leap, that the distance of the leap showed his rawness. The fox had led him off so easily, and he easily could become lost in going back.
“You overpower me,” he heard himself say. “This land is yours, and I do not take back with me that which is not naturally laid out before me. That is what they have said. The courage to cross over the void is not enough. I entered it hungrily, but I’ll go back now.”
The fox grinned in a way that he had seen on another’s painted face, the bold red streaks of wild fur that flashed back beside a sharp mouth. The fox held him in his stare, drawing him further into the weight of its talk. Then without another word, it turned nimbly toward the wall. In three light steps it sprang up the slippery clay edifice to disappear over the edge.
Now with the strange sky blinking darker over him in the dimming forms of the gully, he sensed his intrusion into the animated woods. He was lost in a place he didn’t know and could accomplish nothing there. He turned to retrace his steps.
He arrived at the water’s edge relieved to see the familiar stream stretching out before him. Stepping into it, he felt the welcome of its freshness about his feet and ankles. The exultant death cry now was lost. He couldn’t give in, not now. He had not brought back the prize. He had only intruded and found something he couldn’t touch that was mightier than he. Otci dipped his face into the eddy by the bank and drank. The cool, clean water refreshed him. As the water washed down his dry throat, he felt he was finding a calm place for his thoughts to collect. He would regain himself after this ineffective chase; it would be successful the next time. The fox’s face flashed again before his inner eye, laughing. It is a lost . . .
A drop of rain on his thigh awoke him from the dream. He opened
