Gently I grasped the tense little body and before Freddy could move, the fox had snapped; her needle-pointed canines went through the nail of my forefinger. Lord Freddy emitted a sort of stifled groan, still holding the fox. Don Joaquin and Don Juan both leaped to the rescue. Don Joaquin was a big man, and a powerful one; he grasped the tightly clamped jaws and tugged for what seemed ages to me, the sweat rolling down his face. Doña Maria stood by wringing her hands, her face contorted with emotion for me. Don Juan suddenly dashed out of the sala toward the kitchen. He came back with a shaker of black pepper to make the fox sneeze just as Don Joaquin succeeded in prying the steel jaws apart. Lord Freddy, still holding the fox, looked a little white and shaken. And I? I’m not quite sure. My finger, which had been bitten entirely through the nail, felt a little numb.
Don Joaquin was covered with confusion. “But this is the occurrence so terrible!” he exclaimed. “I sold you the fox for ten pesos and now she has bitten you.” He looked genuinely distressed, then brightened. “I shall kill the fox and you can sell the pelt for perhaps twenty pesos!”
I was glad that Lord Freddy did not understand much Spanish, for I’m sure Don Joaquin would have been surprised at what Freddy might have said or done. But Freddy and I had the same thought simultaneously. “Let’s,” he said, “go now and set her free. …”
Rapidly I explained. Don Juan reacted immediately to the situation; the idea of freeing prisoners, either human or animal, appealed to him. With the puzzled Don Joaquin leading the procession, we left the house, going down the cobbled lane which soon gave way to a winding dirt road that led over the pine-covered hills. We climbed swiftly and silently up a steep incline which ended in a beautiful bluff; the scene below was something to conjure with, although I was not in exactly the poetic mood to do so.
The little fox, nose twitching, golden eyes alert, sniffed. “Now,” I said.
Don Joaquin slipped the leash and in one quick red flash my pet was gone, down, down through the trees and brush, pausing only once to sniff the wind.
Night was closing in as we reached the house. The rest of the evening remains a little confused in my mind, as the pain was by that time intense in my hand and spreading up the arm. Freddy gave me a stiff dose of babanero while Don Juan went to the chemist’s to buy a disinfectant and bandages.
The Indian who had murdered his wife because she turned into a bird was released from prison. Don Juan Sarmiento Castillo took him to the pine-covered bluff and said graciously, “Now you are free. You are Indian and you can return to the forests where your ancestors lived.” And the Indian disappeared as the fox had done down the pine-covered bluff.
This I didn’t dream, but I like to think that the fox and Indian met and lived happily ever afterward in the high, wild, and free Mexican Sierra, unhaunted either by gringos or witches.
Pinterest
