Fox's Thicket is a small, steep-sided wood that becomes a partisan encampment and a setting for the doctor’s captivity. Previously fortified by the Whites, it brings the army’s recent past into the partisans’ present; within its trenches and dugouts, the doctor’s medical duties unfold alongside his efforts to learn whether his family is alive and to secure his release.

Setting and Military Use

In autumn, the partisans occupy Fox's Thicket, a small wood on a steep hill, with a swift stream running around three sides and cutting into its banks. The location is not merely a natural refuge: the Whites had wintered there the previous year and, with help from neighboring villagers, dug in. When they left in spring, they did not destroy the fortifications. The partisans now use the existing dugouts and communication trenches, inheriting a military landscape made by their opponents.

The former defenses give the place a continuing frontline character even after the Whites have departed. Near its western end, a wooden blockhouse turret rises above the earthworks. Its watchtower looks through slits toward the wooded distance beyond the river, while empty machine-gun positions and trenches mark the military uses for which the ground was prepared.

The Doctor’s Captivity

The doctor shares a dugout with Liberius Mikulitsyn, whose ceaseless talk keeps him awake for two nights. Liberius wonders aloud about his father; the doctor privately recognizes the resemblance between them, despite his irritation at Liberius’s manner. Their shared quarters place the doctor in close, involuntary proximity to the partisan leader, even as their outlooks and purposes diverge.

The doctor’s presence in the camp is a form of captivity. He rejects the partisans’ claim that their cause or camp has given him anything he wanted: he longs instead for his wife, child, home, and work. A rumor reaches him that an unidentified force has raided Varykino and killed everyone there, though Liberius dismisses the story as groundless. The doctor asks to be allowed to search for his family, not knowing where they are or whether they are alive. Fox's Thicket thus becomes the place where uncertainty about his family intensifies his demand to leave.

Meetings, Duties, and Seasonal Setting

The doctor’s life at the thicket also includes practical medical service. On a clear autumn day, he arranges to meet Dr. Lajos about service matters at the blockhouse. While waiting, he walks along the crumbling earthworks, climbs into the watchtower, and looks through its slits across the river. The encounter links the ordinary work of a doctor to a landscape still organized by war.

The surrounding wood is described through the boundary between conifers and deciduous trees: dark pines frame thickets colored by autumn. Frost has hardened the earth in the trench and road ruts, and fallen willow leaves lie across it. This seasonal passage gives the camp a life beyond its military function, but does not erase the defenses embedded in the terrain.

Families and the Camp’s Uncertain Future

News that the partisans’ families are within two days’ journey of the camp prompts preparations to welcome them and then move on. The doctor goes to Pamphil Palykh, whom he finds at his tent with an ax and a heap of birch saplings. Pamphil explains that he has cut the wood to make a roof for his wife and children, whose tent is too low and lets in rain. The domestic purpose of the work contrasts with the camp’s trenches and fortifications: family life is approaching, but must be accommodated within a military encampment preparing to relocate.

The thicket therefore gathers together several kinds of provisional shelter: old defenses reused by new fighters, the dugout the doctor shares with Liberius, and the roof Pamphil is preparing for his family. Its significance lies in this overlap. It is both a strategic position shaped by successive armies and a temporary home where the needs of civilians press against the demands of partisan life.