“Take your damned dogs out of this,” he called to the huntsman. “Call your damned dogs out of it.” The hounds were round him. The huntsman was swearing at him and at the hounds. From all the valley-side, horsemen and horsewomen and children on ponies appeared. Annual-Tilter was there. “Get off this estate,” Frampton said. “I’ve shot your fox. Clear out of it and get another. Get to hell out of it, the lot of you.”
A big man, with a tough face, called:
“Horsewhip the swine. Let’s duck the mucker. Come on, you, let’s duck him.”
“No threats,” Frampton said. “Any man who touches me’ll die.”
“What d’you mean by shooting our fox?” the Annual-Tilter called. “What d’you mean, sir?”
“What do I mean, you bun-headed ape?” Frampton said. “The poor thing was run off his legs and on my land, and therefore mine to do what I choose with. I shot him out of mercy. I’m only sorry someone can’t do as much by you.”
There were thirty riders, all hot, blowsy, fuming, angry and raging. Each one of the thirty behaved like one of a pack; even the children called in shrill voices that he was a swine and a spoil-sport; the women were not backward; the men cursed him. One of the women, with a very clear, hard, penetrating voice, the one who had spoken at the Meeting, called:
“Do you fellows call yourselves men, that you can’t horsewhip him within an inch of his life?”
“No, madam,” Frampton called to her, “they don’t call themselves men. They know that I’ve got a gun, and am pretty good at using it. They are only fox-hunters. But, Golly, they can chase a fox to death, if all his earths are stopped.”
Bynd appeared at this instant; he had not seen and did not know what had happened; he had had a fall and was covered with mud, but in some swift, human way, native to him, he judged the situation.
“Come, come,” he said, “you know we mustn’t hunt this line. Come on, Master; come on, Bill. Get going. Never mind what has happened; we’re not wanted here and have no business here. Take hounds out of it, Bill.”
Bill swore under his breath: “We don’t want any Christian religion with a fox-shooter,” but he trailed his thong and called the hounds, who followed. He led them at a fast trot towards Weston Mullples, and the riders, with a few choice remarks to Frampton, went after them. Frampton followed them to the gap, with a few choice retorts. He had enjoyed the scene enormously. He had faced the lot and cowed the lot, and all with an empty gun, which had lain at the ready. He had publicly called Annual-Tilter “a bun-headed ape,” which exactly described him; he had put a poor fox out of his misery, and had won all along the line.
Going home late for lunch, he saw that the news of the scene had come somehow before him. Mrs. Haulover and the maids were looking at him very curiously. Well, let them look, he thought.
“Look, first, at this gun,” he said. “You can bear witness, that all the cartridges in this clip have been fired.”
During that afternoon, the tale of the shooting of the fox went up and down the land; it roused a pretty storm in all that part of Tatshire; nothing else was talked of. The gun-fella at
Frampton knew that the case would reach the police; he, therefore, drove in to Stubbington Police Station that afternoon, taking his uncleaned gun and the salved corpse of the fox. He made an exact statement of the occurrence, and was able to prove, by one of his workmen, who had been ditching within earshot, that only one shot had been fired and no threat made. Having thus cleared the ground, he waited for the next move. No move came from the other side. He knew that he was loathed by every sportsman in the district; but he took pleasure in that. He liked being loathed; it showed him that he had made them squirm. He had certainly done that.
Some of the charitable said that he was a clever man, perhaps, but quite deranged, because he hadn’t been raised to the peerage. The less charitable said that he was simply a bounder, who behaved like the pie-seller he was. The few, who had read the science gossip in their weekly paper, said that he had an inferiority complex, “which, of course, would make him behave like that.” One knew for a fact that he was sickening for G.P.I. The main body of people said, “The chap’s a bounder,” and wished that one of his beastly guns would go off by accident and blast him into eternity.