A Tour De Farce: THE TAILS OF MONTAGUE STUMP, #3

By P R M Kinloch

A Tour De Farce, another 90k-words of fun! This is Book 3 in the humorous Animal Fiction Series, The Tails of Montague Stump.

Monty, the ever resourceful fox, has more adventures as he returns to his new home. Totally unaware of the chaos he is causing as trouble spreads underground, on the ground, in the river, even in the air!

There are extraordinary problems to be solved. Can Monty save the day? Will he ever realise he's already met his match?

• Language: English
• Publisher: P R M Kinloch
• Release date: Jul 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201397401

Book preview

The Weald

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1  THE LONG AND THE SHORT––––––––

To the foxes Montague Stump and Diana McLeash, The Weald was the extent of the known world. Essentially it was a great valley with a name passed down from antiquity, as was The Milky Way, an ancient track that wandered its length. Towns, villages and hamlets had grown over time in response to newer opportunities and needs of the moment. Most occupants were content to remain unaware of any long-gone predecessors, accepting the many customs they grew up with and taking for granted the occasional clues to an ancient past.

Monty had already ventured outside this world with his discovery of a place called Wilder Ness. His success there had done little to prepared him for his attempt to float on a raft down the river from his ancestral home to his new house in the country. Being suddenly lumbered with a passenger in the shapely form of Diana McLeash with the strictest instructions for her welfare did not help.

First they discovered the terrifying land of Corrid. Next, they realised they were totally lost. Thirdly, food was a major problem.

After their unscheduled stopover in Corrid, a country they had never even heard of, the foxes Montague Stump and Diana McLeash were at least on their way again. They were leaving a land that had held them trapped and taken them way out of their comfort zone. Right at the start, the place had almost cost Monty his life and confronted the two of them with mind-bending conundrums and strange surprises. For their part, they had been instrumental in discovering a secret that changed the destiny of every inhabitant of Corrid, and which finally gave the foxes their freedom to return to the raft.

They had found it still floating as they had left it, untethered in the lily-filled channel away from the river current. It was still as Monty had left it from his last visit. A long plank and the hull of a wheelbarrow lay where he had pulled them on board to take the rope with him in his frantic bid to rescue Diana.

Once on the raft, the two foxes wasted no time getting under way. By pushing the long handles of brooms down against whatever was the floor of the channel, they reversed the raft into the river. As the current took over, they paddled with spades to turn the raft and let it head down-stream. This departure from Corrid was a lot more polished than their arrival had been.

When Diana was happily keeping the raft centred in the current with her spade, Monty went to the rear. He pulled the rope out of his satchel and found one end. He tied it to the cleat he had made on the long shelf plank. Then he slid the plank into the water to let it trail behind the raft. He tied it off round the cleat he had made for it on the raft. Having a plank floating behind was the best he could do in case one of them fell into the water. Hopefully it extended the chance to get back on board.

Satisfied, he found the other end of the rope and tied it round a cleat he had put on the inside of the wheelbarrow hull. These cleats were crudely fashioned from pieces of banister, but they worked well.

The barrow, minus wheel and handles, had already been used as a dinghy by the foxes. He pushed it back into the water and it floated obediently behind the raft like the plank. He secured it with a couple of turns of the rope round its own cleat on the raft.

He gave a final check of each rope tie. Not knowing a good tie from a bad, he judged them all to be secure. Pushing the remaining rope under the bed, he reckoned everything was once again as it was before their strange time in Corrid.

Jumping onto the bed he joined Diana at the front. She would have agreed that things were back, at least to the way they were before Corrid. But while Monty might be satisfied with the way things were now going, she was wondering what on earth had led her to be sitting on a bed, on a raft of doors in the middle of a river, having come from Heaven-knows-what in Corrid, and were once again heading the river towards Who-knows-where.

There again, she thought, everything had started so naturally – if being kidnapped by, rescued from, and then chased again by a gang of nasty dogs for no apparent reason could be considered as natural - And if putting one’s life into the care of such a safe-looking family could turn out to have such a lunatic outcome, how and when is it going to end?

For a while they stared ahead re-living what they had been through, and wondering about the future. Inevitably, this brought them to see the present more clearly. Any sense of relief or return to normal after Corrid, died right there. They were as lost as ever and again with no prospect of food. With this reality, they became discouraged and disappointed. Added to that, having been through half starvation before simply made them feel hungry already.

Being lost or hungry wouldn’t normally have been a problem since they were foxes. Superior guile, cleverness and wit – not that they saw their talents as exceptional – were usually well up to the task of solving what would normally be a minor inconvenience.

Unfortunately, it was at least one of those talents that had landed them squarely in their current predicament. Monty had only himself to blame for this. He could hardly blame Diana anyway since she was there as his guest, but in his defence, he had been cornered into helping her. With a gang of dogs determined to get her, he had been dutybound to help. And with that, his only option had been to take her with him as he left town.

After their strange adventure in Corrid, they were still hopefully on their way to Monty’s new house near a village called Wallop, even though it was halfway across his known world. But Monty’s simple vision of stepping onto his raft at one end of a boring and uneventful journey and stepping off at the other, with food deliveries from his mates on the way, had disappeared as soon as the raft went round the first bend. Nobody knew where the river went, or more to the point, how long it took to come back into view.

It had never occurred to them to keep track of days, and as if their time lost in Corrid wasn’t bad enough, the sheer monotony of passing bog, fen, marshes and endless acres of impenetrable reeds, had totally put paid to any hope of those on foot finding them.

Thinking of the difficulty facing anyone on land trying to meet them, Monty assumed his friends would have given up long ago and gone home. And with stopping the raft at any likely spot proving to be a major challenge, if they were to get food for themselves, they needed to have a plan and have it ready.

The river they were on was the Phlough, pronounced ‘fluff’, and the raft was indeed made of doors. The doors were doing a splendid job. But while this method of exit from Monty’s home town of Diddling might be up there with the best in the cleverness department, it had sadly lacked planning for any number of contingencies as the two foxes were finding out.

The doors and everything on them were to save Monty renovation time and effort on his new house in the country. Everything had come from the same place - except the rope, Monty’s tools and five wheelbarrows. Five. And there was a logical reason for so many.

It had started as part of Monty’s idea of payback for the crooked ways a scoundrel of a dog called Fairly Fullon had taken him and his family to the financial cleaners. Four of the barrows had been needed to transport stuff used to sabotage the scoundrel’s house and render it uninhabitable. Having done that, Monty and his mates had attached the barrow wheels to the fellow’s prized double bed. Then they had loaded up this massive bed with lots of the fellow’s doors, all his banisters and most of his book shelves. They had pushed the lot down to the river to make the raft.

The doors had become the raft. The hulls of the four barrows were still underneath it, fixed there with Fullon’s bannisters, because that was the only way they could devise to slide the raft into the water. The wheels of the barrows were still attached to the huge bed but prevented from rolling about on the raft with more bannisters.

Fairly Fullon was an older white bull terrier who had been living the high life with no apparent income, attracting the town’s young to a lot of mischief and mayhem. When he had apparently legally relieved Monty of a huge family inheritance, Monty had fled the scene, made his own fortune and returned years later, to find Fullon had been exposed as a swindler and cheat.

Monty and his mates decided they would beat Fullon at his own game. They had lured him into donning fancy dress to celebrate coming into the Stump estate on Monty’s passing. Sure enough, the mug had presented himself literally gift-wrapped for Monty’s father to deal with while Monty and crew emptied the fellows house of whatever they wanted while they turned the remainder into a minefield of nasty surprises.

What they didn’t know was Monty’s parents had been sheltering Diana McLeash from a fast-approaching gang of dogs hell bent on auctioning her off to a bunch of bigger and meaner wolves.

The fifth barrow had been used to transport Diana to Monty without her leaving a trail . That barrow, also stripped of its wheel and handles, was the one Monty had just pushed back into the water.

Diana seemed as deep in thought as he was. He assumed she was also thinking about how to get food. The spade lying ready beside her reminded him of how good she was paddling about in the hull. They had experimented trying to reach the shore of the river in the hull to receive a delivery of food with the raft still moving.

They had later found food in Corrid, but only by chancing on a side-channel and managing to leave the raft in it. Remembering the most awful screams and what followed after that, Monty steeled himself against re-living the horrors of their introduction to Corrid. What was needed was a clear plan ready for any opportunity to get food. Without his friends passing food to one of them in the hull, it would mean stopping the raft at the riverbank while they foraged.

When he put his thoughts to Diana, she agreed. She still thought doing something clever with the hull while the raft was moving could work, but if they were stopping they might find out where on earth they were.

Not knowing where they were was the main problem, but not having food could soon become bigger.

2––––––––BLTs ALL ROUND––––––––

A couple of days after they had passed the end of what they realised had been a great island on their left, and gone round yet another long westerly bend, the countryside became slightly hillier with scatterings of bushes. The river gently meandered to cope with the hills.

It was mid-morning when Diana called Monty to come and look. She was on the bed watching ahead as usual while he was down at the back thinking about what they might need for stopping and leaving the raft while they went what he called shopping. When he joined Diana, she said she had the impression that fish were jumping some distance ahead. After a while of seeing nothing different, Monty got bored and went back to thinking about the shore trip. He had to be ready. The need for food was becoming urgent.

Suddenly Diana called again. Monty! What’s happening! I’m not doing anything! She jumped down and paddled furiously. Monty came beside her and she stopped. The raft moved steadily to one side. Curiously, it wasn’t spinning the way it always wanted to when they took it out of the main current. This time it seemed to be aiming perfectly for a particular spot. Once there, it stayed against the low bank. It was exactly the manoeuvre the foxes wanted to perfect.

They looked at each other, unable to explain the situation. Everything was quiet. Or, at least, they could hear a faint occasional noise in the distance ahead, but nothing around them provided any clue as to what had happened. The hull and long plank bumped into the raft, pushed by the current. The plank swung round against the outward side of the raft while the hull stayed side-on at the rear.

The water was not clear so looking down revealed nothing. They poked and prodded with brooms and found nothing. They tried to push away from the bank with the brooms but that was like trying to move the bank. In the middle of these efforts, they were startled by a voice behind them.

Tickets, please. A wet otter was half onto the raft.

What? Asked Monty.

I’ve no time for argy, said the otter, your bargy stays here. River entry is by ticket or invitation - unless you’re on the committee or have friends in high places. The riffraff, those who can’t afford the fee or can’t swim - that’s you by the look of you – Well, you’re welcome to hoof it, but it’s crowded, I’ll tell you that.

I’m sorry? Monty attempted, look, we’re just passing through - or trying to. Somehow we’ve been pushed into the side. Can you tell us what’s going on?

Didn’t my staff tell you? Oh, they’re probably casuals. That would explain it. There’s no parking further down. Same goes for through traffic. You haven’t a hope. Not a chance. Not until the Games are over.

Games?

The OSCARS! Haven’t you heard? Where have you been hiding? Under a rock, apparently. The great Otter Swimming Carnival And Racing Series!

Oh, Monty tried to sound happy at this turn of events. And when do these festivities finish?

Well, they’ve been going for, what? Three days? The otter brought the rest of himself onto the raft and settled comfortably to chat creating a widening puddle of water.

"Day One was for kiddies, littlies and those who can’t swim. Day Two was the traditional Tricks and Stupidities. Today is Relays, Rowing and Racing and a lot of participation sports, stuff like that.

Tomorrow? Underwater Potato Polo Elimination Rounds. Or, The UPPER Down Under, as they say. Always goes into extra time, that one. Anyway, then the last day is Special Presentations. This year it’s Synchronised Diving, Sprouting and Baby Tossing. Then everyone goes home. Any time then after that you should be right. But he added a somewhat cautious Probably.

Ah, so you’re saying we can’t get through for three days!

Not a hope. Otter said, cheerfully. Your vessel’s been clumped ’til then anyway, so you won’t get far even if you try it. Got to go. Everyone happy?

Monty looked at Diana. You want to ask anything?

Anywhere to get food here?

Ha! You’ve a hope. As a last resort, try The Last Resort. Good Luck on that one, but! Tell ’im Bob sent you. Not that it’ll make much difference. He thought about it and said, Maybe be good for a laugh? Eyeing them up and down, he added, Maybe. With that, Bob the otter slipped into the water and disappeared as smoothly as he had come.

OK, what did you make of that, then? Monty asked.

It seems we are to stay here for the next three days. If that’s the case, can we find some food, do you think?

What did you make of his last resort thing?

I don’t know. Was it something to eat? Or did he mean it was somewhere to go to eat?

Something tells me it wouldn’t make much difference if we did know the answer. Let’s leave that and look after ourselves.

Is it safe for both of us to go? Diana asked.

Monty took one look at her and knew she did not want to be the one to stay behind. If they have locked the raft here, I don’t see why we can’t both go sightseeing. He immediately started pulling the rope about to find the end. But I think we will still secure it. You know, to be on the safe side. Can you bring a spade?

Monty realised that both ends of the rope were being used. Once again he needed the hull on the raft. Diana came back, dropped the spade and helped him turn the hull and drag it on board. As she took the spade up the bank, Monty untied the rope from the hull and raft and followed her, pulling the rope with him. At the top, they worked the spade well into the ground and Monty tied the rope to it as best he could and they set off along the bank.

The rope was still attached to the raft at the cleat for the plank, but neither fox noticed there was an awful lot of loose rope between the spade and the raft. The raft would be a long way downstream before the rope would pull tight and test Monty’s knots. Apart from the unexplained otter-clump, the raft was free to go and try its luck – and maybe leave the foxes with nothing but the spade.

The ground they were on was flat. Alongside the river it looked well and truly trampled. A surprising amount of foot traffic had been through, heading in the same direction as the river, and kept close to the river by poles lying three or four deep in a rough line parallel with the river. It looked as if they had been placed there ready to make a fence. Or maybe it was already someone’s idea of a fence. Or maybe somebody had forgotten to finish a job.

On the other side of this line, a pole had been driven into the ground. On it, a well-weathered sign made an announcement.

The area behind the fence-line and sign looked like a large plantation of young Aspen trees. The two foxes took this in as they followed the path and the footprints.

Any ideas about ‘BLT’? Monty asked.

No, but there must be a lot of folk up ahead, Diana suggested. The noise grew louder as they walked on, and every so often they passed another BLT sign. In among the stand of straight young trees were occasional worn paths or runs. periodically, these joined a channel that came through to the river. They had water in them but could be jumped across. They came to another sign, also not new.

They could see more up ahead.

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Crowd sounds had become distinct. They stopped and listened. Almost like waves crashing, a lot of water seemed to be involved. But as the river curved, the plantation of Aspen masked their view ahead.

They passed a bigger sign. This one warned about the plantation of trees growing behind it.

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The next bend in the river gave them a view ahead where the river widened to form a big square body of water, after which it returned to normal again. As the river came to the big pool, a massive fig tree stood on the other side from the foxes. At least one great branch reached over the pool. On either side of the pool, very artificial-looking hills faced each other across the water. They had been built up to form terraced grandstands.

The whole area in and around the square of water was seething with otters busy doing things. Many were in groups, others were jostling in queues for different activities. The water was alive with splashing activity in some parts, oddly smooth in other areas with swimmers on their backs busily making, or maybe unmaking things on their stomachs. In other places, objects - possibly potatoes - were flying about in organised games.

The stepped hills were seething with otters. Parts of the tiers were smoothed down to form slides down to the water. Old and young were whizzing down to make a splash, only to join queues stretching from the water back to the top again.

At the great tree, otters were running along the branch over the water, hurling themselves into space, landing any-old-how with as big a splash as possible, only to swim round to line up for another go.

Up in the sky, the fox’s attention was caught by a flight of three pelicans in formation coming from down-river. They glided majestically high over the water. For a moment, every otter stopped before a flurry of activity cleared spaces on the water.

Circling majestically, one pelican glided in to land mid pool. The other two separated to come down in front of the tiered hills. Lowering their heads to bring their throat pouches near the waterline, they raised their long beaks. Otters sprang forward. Reaching in, they started flinging fish and other things in all directions. Three more pelicans appeared overhead and began their lazy circling glide down.

Once emptied of cargo, the pelicans took off nicely ahead of the incoming flight. Smooth and coordinated, the whole operation was repeated with precision timing.

A third wave of pelicans was the last. By that time the foxes were near enough to notice that a good percentage of otters seemed to be making quite a meal out of other things besides the more obvious fish. With a flat stone on their tummies, otters were cracking and breaking open food they found very yummy. As quick as the meal had begun, it was over. Dumping every scrap of debris in the river the organised mayhem resumed as if it had never stopped.

Closer to the grandstand on their side, they came to yet another notice. This one was definitely nothing to do with beavers or logging. Scrawled in black on a board treated with something white were a list of activities and their availability.

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Scissor Flinching? Offered Monty.

Sounds painful to me, offered Diana, If I were you, I’d give that one a miss, I think.

Which leaves Limp Sinking. Monty pointed out.

They read through it again slowly, then looked at the activities they saw going on. Nothing seemed to match what they saw.

Looking off to their left between the thick expanse of young saplings and the grandstand, they could see a more natural looking hill of quite featureless grassland. It was a long way off.

They felt they faced a choice, neither of which seemed to be inviting enough. They had done enough traipsing over land getting nowhere except into trouble, and to sit out the delay of this festival or whatever was equally bad. They just wanted to be on their way.

I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but I don’t think there’s much here for us, Diana declared.

Yea, that’s what happens when you arrive late to this sort of thing with no research beforehand. Tell me, asked Monty, What would you go for if you could?

Hm! The safest looks as if it would be Lump Licking, until you read what’s happened to it. Diana sounded dubious.

Exactly, agreed Monty. More information needed I think. He looked round again. Well..."

We’ve missed out on the food, as well. She pointed out.

Mm, I think we go back. The other side of the river might be better. For one thing, it looks far less crowded.

The other side? Diana asked.

Yeah. Let’s take the hull across. We’ve got to do something.

They went back to the raft.

3  BOBBING ABOUT IN BOATS––––––––

Reaching the spade holding the rope, Monty undid his knot and took the spade down to the raft and then pulled the rope in. Only then did he notice that it was the entire length of loose rope he had tied to the spade on the riverbank. Had the raft drifted away, it would have travelled a massive distance before the rope could stop it.

Being Monty, he thought about this.

I was lucky. If the raft was way down the river somewhere with the rope holding it from here, we’d have to... If we undo this end, then the raft will be free to go off again... The rope will... I would need...

OK. I’ve got to go and find the raft first, and... I’ve got to secure the raft there. Oh... How do I do that if the end that I want is up here? How do I tie up the raft down there? There’s no spare end to do it!

He had a worse thought. What if it was out in the middle of the river! Then, yet more terrifying. Oh No! Imagine the raft ploughing through so many otters! Although they seem pretty nimble in the water – but the kids? Don’t know about that.

Then he thought, I think, these people here would see it coming and – they’ve moved it before. They would save it from... Well, for that matter, they could hold it while we collect the spade and... and haul in the rope onto the raft again.

Right. But what would we do if they weren’t there? If the raft was down there and the rope is holding it from up here? How would we hold the raft there while we untie here? That is quite a problem.

Why is that a problem? Diana asked. We use the hull.

Monty jumped, unaware he had said anything aloud. She had appeared at the end of the bed.

Ah. Um, well, he floundered, How will that help? Well, the problem’s the same. Maybe if one of us is there and the other is here, but then... Let me think.

Oh, no! Diana declared, "You’re not doing that again. We either stay or go together.

Monty looked at her, realising she was talking about getting to the other side. He looked at the hull. Getting across. Two of us in that... It should be big enough. He looked at the river moving past, and the distance to the bank on the other side.

What are we waiting for? She asked.

Diana, slow down a bit. He pictured their problems they had already had, getting either the raft or the hull into the middle. If we want to get out there, it’s going to take us away. Not across. It’s going to go that way. He indicated downriver.

So tie the rope to it, then it can’t do that, she suggested.

Monty grappled with this idea. Wouldn’t that prevent us getting across as well?

Not if the rope was long enough, she decided.

Monty thought about that. That’s not a bad idea. If the hull is on a rope fixed to the raft, then, no matter what happens, we’ve got some hope of getting back to the raft. I like that.

So what are we waiting for? She repeated, adding, We use the spades to get across. That’s how we got into Corrid.

True.

What’s your problem?

We, he considered, will need every bit of our rope.

There’s enough here, isn’t there? She looked around at it all.

Oh, I’m sure there’s enough, he sounded dubious.

Monty, she started at him, You don’t want to do this, do you? What’s wrong now?

Just bear with me, Diana. By the time we get to the middle, we could be way down the river. Presumably we can get to the other side, but it could be a huge distance down there somewhere.

But there’s enough rope? She asked.

Maybe.

So it’s possible. We can get to the other side!

OK, Monty began cautiously, And when we want to get back? How do we get the hull from so far down the river as that? He looked at her to make sure she was listening. How do we get back here?

She stared at him, saying nothing.

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