They were mostly red foxes, but one was a large "crossed
gray," the skin of which brought twenty-two dollars. After every few
days Willis "doctored" the bed with more pills; he probably used more
than a hundred.
What had happened to the colts was now clear. They had nuzzled that
chaff for the oat grains that were left in it and had picked up some of
those little balls of tallow. We wondered now that we had not at once
guessed the cause of their death, and we wondered, too, that we had not
thought of the fox bed and the danger from it when we first turned the
colts into the pasture. The fact remains, however, that it had never
occurred to us that fox pills would poison colts as well as foxes.
All that day as we worked we brooded over it; and that evening, when we
had done the chores, we stole off to the Murches' and, calling Willis
out, told him about it and asked him what he thought we had better do.
At first he was incredulous, then thoroughly alarmed. It was not so much
the thought of having to settle for the loss of the horses that
terrified him as it was the dread that he might be imprisoned for
exposing poison to domestic animals.
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