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.. meta::  
   :PG.Id: 35749
   :PG.Title: The Adventures of Fleetfoot and Her Fawns
   :PG.Released: 2011-04-01
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Roger Frank
   :DC.Creator: Allen Chaffee
   :DC.Title: The Adventures of Fleetfoot and Her Fawns
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1920
   :coverpage: images/cover.jpg
   
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The Adventures of Fleetfoot and Her Fawns
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   This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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      Title: The Adventures of Fleetfoot and Her Fawns
      
      Author: Allen Chaffee
      
      Release Date: April 01, 2011 [EBook #35749]
      
      Language: English
      
      Character set encoding: UTF-8

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      \*\*\* START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADVENTURES OF FLEETFOOT AND HER FAWNS \*\*\*

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      Produced by Roger Frank.

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   | :xl:`THE ADVENTURES OF`
   | :xl:`FLEET FOOT`
   | :xl:`AND HER FAWNS`
   | 
   | A True-to-Nature Story for
   | Children and Their Elders
   | 
   | BY
   | ALLEN CHAFFEE
   | 
   | Author of
   | “Twinkly Eyes,” “The Little Black Bear,” “Trail and
   | Tree Top,” and “Lost River, or The Adventures
   | of Two Boys in the Big Woods”
   | 
   | ILLUSTRATED
   | 
   | MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
   | SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS

-----

.. class:: center

   | Copyright 1920, by
   | MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
   | 
   | SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
   | 
   | Adventures of Fleet Foot
   | Bradley Quality Books for Children

-----

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   | TO
   | POLLY
   | WHO IS A DEAR
   | HERSELF

-----

.. contents:: CONTENTS
   :depth: 1

-----

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   :xl:`THE ADVENTURES OF FLEET FOOT AND HER FAWNS`

CHAPTER I.—THE SPOTTED FAWNS.
=============================

“Me-o-ow!” screamed Old Man Lynx,
from the heart of the woods. The two spotted
fawns heard the cry from their laurel copse
on the rim of Lone Lake. But, though their
big, soft eyes were round with terror, so perfectly
had they been trained, they never so
much as twitched an ear. Well did they
know that the slightest movement might
show to some prowler of the night just
where they lay hidden.

Next morning, no sooner had the birds
begun to chirp themselves awake, than
Mother Fleet Foot fed the fawns as usual
and ate her own light breakfast of lily pads,
Then she lined up the two fawns before her.

“Children,” she said, in deer language,
“you have a great deal to learn before ever
you can take care of yourselves in these
woods. From now on we are going to have
lessons.”

“Yes, Mother,” bleated the little ones,
“but what are lessons.”

“They are going to be as much like play
as we can make them,” said Fleet Foot.
“You need practice in running, and we must
play ‘Follow the Leader’ every day.
Mother, of course, will be the leader. It will
be lots of fun.”

The fawns waggled their ears in delight.

“Now listen, both of you,” said Fleet
Foot. “*This* means danger! Follow me!”
And she stamped her foot three times and
whistled, as she leaped away through the
bushes.

“Just watch my white flag, and you’ll
know where to follow,” she called; and she
showed them how, when she ran, she held
the white lining of her tail straight up to
show which way she had gone. This was
because her brown back might not show between
the tree-trunks.

“And when I give the danger signal, you
must give it, too, to warn the others,” she
added, leaping back to their side.

“What others?” asked the tinier fawn.

“Any deer within ear-shot. That is how
we help each other. And remember—obey
on the instant! It is the only safe way!”

Suddenly she gave the danger signal!

This time it was in real alarm, for she had
spied a black snake wiggling toward them.
The fawns bounded after her, just in time
to escape the ugly fellow. And, because
woods babies learn quickly they remembered
to give their own tiny stamp and whistle,
their own wee white flags wig-wagging behind
them. Fleet Foot could have killed the
snake with her sharp fore-hoof, but a deer’s
long legs are better suited to running away
when danger is near.

The next day she taught them to leap exactly
in her footprints. She took short
steps, so that it would be easy for them.
Great skill and experience is needed for a
deer to know where and how to put his feet
down when he makes those great leaps of his.
He may land, now among the rocks, now in
marshy ground, slipping over mosses and
scrambling over tree-trunks. It would be
only too easy to break one of those slender
legs, and be at the mercy of his enemies.

By the time the fawns were six weeks old,
they had learned just how to land without
stumbling and hurting their frail ankles.
Then, one day, young Frisky Fox, hiding at
the edge of the clearing, saw a strange sight.
In fact, he thought he had never seen anything
quite so odd in all his life.

Down four little trails from the hill-top
came four does, Fleet Foot among the number.
And close behind each doe came her
two fawns. Then a fifth mother came from
the other side of the meadow. She had only
one baby with her.

It was to be a sort of party. But the fawns
were most unwilling to get acquainted, as
their mothers intended them to do. The
baby bucks made at each other with heads
lowered, ready to fight. The infant does
backed timidly away to the edge of the
meadow. But their mothers insisted, with
gentle shakings of their heads and shovings
of their velvet noses.

They were pretty creatures, these baby
deer, with their soft orange-brown coats
spotted with white, and their great innocent
brown eyes! Everything about them, from
their slender legs to their swinging stride,
was graceful.

Now the mothers formed in line, the little
ones trailing along behind them. “Ah!”
thought Frisky Fox, “a game of ‘Follow the
Leader’.” He and his brothers had often
played it with Father and Mother Red Fox.

At first the does ran slowly around the
clearing, then they quickened their pace, the
little ones trying their best to keep up.

Suddenly Fleet Foot, who was in the lead,
leaped over a fallen log at the edge of the
glade and off into the woodland. The other
does followed. Then came Fleet Foot’s
youngest. This little scamp only ran around
the log, while her brother crawled under.

But that was not what Fleet Foot wanted.
She came back, stamping her foot for attention.

“Do just as I do!” she insisted. “Now
come back and try it over again.” And she
trotted out into the glade, and circled around
it, the tinier fawn close at her heels, till she
came to the log again.

“Now!” she stamped, taking the leap once
more. The fawn followed till she came to
the log, then stopped short, with her nose
against it. Fleet Foot hurdled back, and
coming up behind, butted the youngster
with her head till the fawn tried to jump.
This time the little creature went over, as
light as a bit of thistle-down—probably
much to her own surprise.

Then Fleet Foot turned to the larger
fawn. “Come, now, there’s nothing like trying,”
she urged. But he only gave a ba-a-ah!
and wriggled under the tree-trunk again.

“Follow me,” his mother bade him. First
she led him several times around the glade.
“Now!” she stamped, leaping the log once
more. This time he followed without stopping
to think about it.

The other fawns behaved much the same
way, but at last their mothers had them all
in line. Then what a race they had! First
around and around the opening, faster and
faster and faster. Then, without warning,
across the log and back again, till every infant
buck and doe of them could do it perfectly.

“Um!” sniffed Frisky Fox. “Wouldn’t
one of those little fellows make good eating?
I’d certainly like to try it!” For the smell
of venison that blew to his nostrils on the
breeze fairly made his mouth water.

But Frisky was too wise a pup to think
for an instant he could catch one. And so he
finally trotted off to stay his appetite with
field mice. But he told Father Red Fox
about it that night in the den on the hillside,
and the older fox made up his mind that next
day he would be the one to watch when the
fawns came to the meadow. If he couldn’t
catch one, at least he liked to know all that
went on in the woods. One never knew when
an odd bit of knowledge might come in handy
to a fellow that lives by his wits.

That day the fawns were being drilled to
run around and around in circles. They
made a track like a figure 8, only with three
loops instead of two. Sometimes one of the
little fellows would slip and stumble.

“I have it,” Father Red Fox told himself.
“The fawns are learning to make a quick
turn. Because they’d break their legs if
they were to stumble that way in the underbrush.”

The old fox knew that he could never
catch one by the usual methods. He did
wonder, though, if he might not corner one
by trickery. So, gliding from tree-trunk to
tree-trunk, he crept nearer the unsuspecting
little school, keeping always on the side
where the wind could tell no tales!

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CHAPTER II.—A FOXY TRICK.
=========================

Now it was chiefly in a spirit of mischief
that Father Red Fox decided to chase the
fawns. To tell the truth, the old fellow was
proud of his wits; and though he knew he
could not hope to catch them and bring them
down by a straightaway race, he thought he
might use some trickery on them.

So, he watched and waited till he should
find them alone. After an hour or more in
the racing meadow, Fleet Foot called to her
little ones with a “He-eu” and a stamp of
her little fore-hoof, and led them back to
Lone Lake, where they all waded out after
their supper of lily pads. Every minute of
the time Father Red Fox was right behind,
but always with the wind in his face, so that
she wouldn’t catch his musky scent on the
breeze with that wonderful nose of hers.

Now Father Red Fox knew one thing
about Fleet Foot, the doe. He knew that
when she heard a sound that alarmed her,
she always ran straight away from the
sound, without once stopping to see what
made it. No sooner, therefore, was she neck-deep
in Lone Lake, with her back to the
shore, than he cracked a twig behind
her.

The doe, hearing that, supposed of course
it must be Old Man Lynx, at least, or perhaps
a big black bear, as nothing so small
and dainty as a fox ever made a sound like
that.

She was terribly frightened, and whistling
the fawns to follow, she swam straight
across the Lake, never once stopping for
breath till they scrambled up the opposite
bank.

But Father Red Fox had raced around
the upper end of the Lake, just far enough
back in the woods so that she couldn’t see
him. And the instant the tired little family
planted their hoofs on dry ground, Red Fox,
hiding behind a boulder, cracked an even
larger twig, and made them think there was
another bear on that side of the Lake.

So she had to lead them back across the
Lake again, to the third line of shore. But
Father Red Fox was there before her and
cracked another twig to make her think
there was a bear on that side, too.

This time the fawns were fairly gasping
for breath, their little spotted sides heaving
painfully and their big eyes round with
fright. But there was no help for it; Fleet
Foot had to make them swim back across the
Lake to the fourth bank, where she hoped to
get into the woods before the three bears
could catch her. She was quite worn out,
herself, by now, and it was only the fear of
death that kept her in the race at all. But
finally up the bank she stumbled, and on
down a forest trail, her fawns following
desperately.

Father Red Fox laughed as he ran
around the Lake. They were all so worn
out that it should be an easy matter to
corner them. In fact, that wicked fellow
had one of the meanest plans in his black
heart that ever deserved the name of a foxy
trick. And so far it had worked.

Fleet Foot, believing she had nothing less
than a bear on her trail, raced on and on till
her flanks dripped foam and her legs felt
weak and wobbly—which was just what the
old fox intended. On he raced after her,
knowing she wouldn’t stop even to turn her
head.

Then, suddenly, he made a short cut in
the trail and headed her straight toward a
brush heap. The tired doe drew her trembling
legs together for the leap that would
carry her over in safety. But there was not
quite enough spring left in those delicate
hind quarters. She came down too soon,
catching one of her slim feet in the brush.
It broke her leg.

Ah, but Red Fox had hoped it would be
one of the fawns. Fleet Foot he dared not
approach, because she could strike him with
her sharp fore-hoofs, and punish him severely.
In fact, had she known it was only
a fox behind her, she would have stopped to
face him long ago.

The fawns—little rascals that they were—had
not tried to leap the brush heap; they
had left the trail and gone around it, hiding—when
their mother fell—by crawling under
a juniper bush. And there they waited,
without so much as waggling an ear, till Red
Fox had given up his quest in disgust and
trotted away home.

But their troubles were not ended. For
one thing, they were hungry. Besides, what
was Fleet Foot to do, helpless there where a
real bear might find her?

Just then they heard a cowbell.

Clover Blossom, the soft-eyed Jersey at
the Valley Farm, must have found a broken
place in the pasture fence, and wandered into
the woods again. She loved to go exploring.

This time she gave the Boy a chase. Here
it was, nearly dark! Straining his ears to
catch the sound, he decided he must creep
very softly upon her, or she would never let
him catch her.

The Boy, however, was not the only one
to hear the tinkle of the cowbell. Though
Clover Blossom grazed quite unaware that
she was being watched, as an actual fact she
had quite an audience of wood folk around
her, peering and sniffing and studying the
situation. Softly, silently, creeping through
the hazel copse, came Frisky, the fox pup,
as curious as his nose was long. Then came
Bobby, Madame Lynx’s kitten, to whose nostrils
the odor was most tempting, though he
did not dare attack an animal so large.
Crouched flat along a low-hanging branch, he
peered and peered with his narrow gold-green
eyes, his claws working nervously into
the bark.

Came also Unk-Wunk, the Porcupine, rattling
his slow way up a beech tree from
whose top he could see all that was going
on. He, too, watched curiously as the Jersey
wandered from one huckleberry bush to
another, lowing faintly now and then as she
realized that she needed to be milked.

But the two who were most interested as
she came their way were the hungry fawns.
They had waited hours for the familiar
stamp of their mother’s foot that should
call them to her, and for the warm milk that
had never failed them when they needed it,
and their little stomachs ached worse and
worse.

The hot sun had crept across the sky, and
the birds who had chirped and warbled over
their breakfast had come out again for the
cool of the late afternoon to chatter over
their worms. Then the sun had grown large
and red in the west, and the crickets had
begun to chirp, and the white-footed deer
mice to scuttle through the leaves in search
of beetles. Finally the shadows had grown
long and black, and the woods full of a
breathing silence, and still they waited for
their mother to come and feed them.

Then, at last, they crept to where Clover
Blossom mooed her invitation for some
one to relieve her udders of their creamy
burden. And when the Boy finally peered
through the bushes beyond which she stood,
he stopped amazed. For there on either side
of her a tiny fawn stood nursing!

“Something must have happened to their
mother,” he told himself. “I wonder if I
could coax them to go home with Clover
Blossom?”

Then he heard a rustle behind him. Bobby
Lynx was slinking home. (He was ever a
coward where human beings were concerned.)
The next instant the boy spied
Fleet Foot, lying helpless in the brush heap.

In her exhaustion after the chase, the pain
of her broken leg, and her terror, as she listened,
hour after hour, for the coming of
stealthy padded feet, she had been too weak
to struggle. Then had come a kindly stupor.

The Boy set about applying such first aid
as he had at his command. First knotting
her fore feet together with his handkerchief
so that she could not struggle, he searched
until he found a cedar sapling very nearly
the size of the leg that was broken. With his
jack-knife he made two length-wise slits and
removed the bark in two pieces, as nearly the
same size as he could make them. They were
just long enough to reach below the foot of
the deer and above the knee.

These he lined comfortably with dry moss
and crumpled grass, for he was going to be
as tender of the doe as he would be of a person.
Next he tore his shirt, which was an
old one, into bandages the width of his wrist,
knotting their ends together. For splints he
went down to Lone Lake and gathered a
bundle of good strong rushes.

But when he tried to set the bone, Fleet
Foot struggled so that he had to run home
for his father.

The Valley Farmer was a man who could
not see any creature suffer, so he came
straight back with his son. Lifting her to
the ground, the farmer braced himself and
held the injured leg while the Boy gently
but firmly grasped it with one hand above
the fracture and one below. My! How it
must have hurt! But his practised fingers
pulled the two pieces of bone in opposite
directions till he got them end to end! Fleet
Foot tried hard to struggle free, for of
course she did not understand. But she was
helpless. Then the Boy worked the bones,
ever so gently, till a slight thud announced
to his listening ear that they had fitted
together right. Next, he applied the padded
halves of the cedar bark, which—as he had
intended—did not reach quite around the
leg. For, in this way, he could tie them more
firmly, as he bandaged them immovably in
place with the strips of his torn shirt.

“There!” the Farmer sighed at last.
“That ought to heal. I don’t see why a few
weeks of rest and good feeding ought not
to set her on her feet again. But we’ll have
to make a litter to take her home.”

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CHAPTER III.—AT THE VALLEY FARM.
================================

Now that her broken leg had been set so
skillfully, Fleet Foot felt better. And the
fawns were content to get their supper of
the Jersey cow.

But the Boy and his father had to face
the problem of getting them all back to the
Valley Farm.

“How can we make a litter?” asked the
Boy, who was not so skilled in wood-craft
as the Farmer.

“First, find two good long poles,” his
father directed. “I wish we’d brought an
axe, but perhaps you can manage with your
jack-knife.” And under his direction the
Boy found what he needed. Next they
peeled the bark from a chestnut tree, and on
this they arranged a mattress of dried moss,
then tied it firmly between the two long
poles. Stretching this flat on the ground,
they laid Fleet Foot on it and carried her
home in state, one of them shouldering either
end of the litter.

“She ought to ride easy on that,” said the
backwoodsman. But the doe shrank back
in fear when the Boy tried laying his hand
caressingly on her velvet throat. For every
moment she expected they would kill her.

The fawns followed Clover Blossom, and
finally they came out into the star-lit
meadow, where Fleet Foot caught the odor
of cows and sheep from the big red barn.
The next thing she knew, she was lying on a
mound of sweet-smelling dried clover, in a
clean stall of that same barn, and there was
a pail of water beside her. She roused herself
to drink feverishly, standing on three
legs, but she could not eat. Then followed
a few hours when she slept despite her fears,
because she was too tired to keep awake.

In the pink dawn she awoke at the sound
of the milk-pails, and her first thought was
of the fawns. The Boy brought her a hatful
of grass; but her great eyes only searched
wistfully through the woodland and meadow
before the open door, and on to the dew-wet
forest where she thought they waited, and
she struggled weakly to get to her feet and
go to them.

“She’s worrying about her babies,” said
the Boy. “Can’t we show them to her?” he
begged his father.

“The only trouble with that,” the farmer
replied, “is that, once they get a sight of
her, they won’t have anything more to do
with Clover Blossom, and she’s got to take
care of them till their own mother is well
again. But that leg will heal quickly. The
bone was broken in only one place. We’ve
got to keep her quiet, though,—and the
fawns are better off where they are.”

Thus several weeks went by, till at last
Fleet Foot was able to trip daintily into the
pasture lot. But still she worried about the
fawns. She was comfortable and well fed,
and was even becoming used to the Boy, who
brought her food and water every morning
and sometimes a few grains of rock salt.
Through the bars of the open doorway she
could gaze straight into the cool green woods
all day. Had it not been for her longing for
the fawns, she would have been quite content
to lie still and get well.

The bone had set quickly, for her life in
the open had given her pure blood and much
reserve strength. But she was anxious to
make her escape and search for her babies.
Little did she dream, in the confusion of
sounds and smells that filled the barn every
day, that the pair actually came to Clover
Blossom’s stall.

Meantime, the fawns throve on the Jersey
milk. Though too shy to mingle with the
cows and sheep in the pasture lot, they
spent their days in a clump of alders down
by the brook.

“Won’t they be happy when they get their
own mother back?” the Boy exclaimed to his
father one evening.

The Father looked at his son in a puzzled
way.

“The doe has disappeared,” he
announced. “I had just taken the splints off
her leg. It was healed as good as new.
Thought I’d turn her loose in the pasture to
limber up a bit, when—would you believe
it?—she leaped clean over that fence, and
off into the woods out of sight.”

“Honestly?” exclaimed the Boy. “Without
so much as a thank you! And what will
become of her now?”

“Oh, she’ll be all right. But isn’t it a
shame now we didn’t let her have her
fawns?”

“Perhaps we can keep them ourselves,”
ventured the Boy wistfully, for he loved
pets. “We could tame them and let them
grow up with the cows. They’re half tame
already.”

“I don’t believe a wild thing is ever really
happy that way,” mused the Farmer. “Do
you?”

“No, perhaps not,” decided the Boy.
“And besides, their mother will break her
heart if she never finds them again.”

“She’ll feel badly, of course. But don’t
you see, the fawns will take to the woods
again, sooner or later, unless we keep them
tied all the time. And then do you know
what would happen? They wouldn’t know
how to take care of themselves, without their
mother’s training.”

“Oh,” said the Boy. “And some hungry
animal might catch them for its dinner!”

“I’m afraid so,” agreed the Farmer. “It
is always the young animals that have lost
their mothers that get caught.”

“Say, I’ve noticed a funny thing,” said
the Boy, a few days later. “Clover Blossom
has been giving more milk lately, and yet
the fawns aren’t weaned.”

“You didn’t see what I saw last night,”
said the Farmer, smiling. And he told the
Boy where to watch.

Meantime what had become of Fleet Foot?
First she leaped the fence, and took to the
trail down which Clover Blossom had wandered—here
over the smooth pine needles,
there through the crackling oak leaves, and
yonder over a fallen log. And as she went,
she nibbled course after course of the
dainties of the woodland.

How fit she felt, after her long imprisonment!
How swift her slender hoofs, how
strong her long hind legs that could send
her over a hazel copse like steel springs!
And how good it was to be alive in a world
all sunshine and dancing butterflies and
tinkling streams!

But where were her fawns? She searched
and searched for some sign of the little fellows.
But she searched in vain. And all
the joy went out of life again.

Then, one evening, as she stood on a hill-top
watching the Boy drive the cows home
from pasture, she saw something that made
her lonely heart beat high with hope. She
couldn’t make out the little spotted coats so
far away, but she did see their red-brown
outlines, so tiny beside the cows, and the
furtive way they shied along, as if they
never could get used to coming right out in
the open. And her anxious mother-heart
assured her that they were worth a closer
view.

So, the next night, before they turned off
the lane to the pasture lot, the fawns heard
the little stamp that had always been their
mother’s signal. “Wait where you are—and
hide!” she bade them with her whistled
“Hiew!” “I will come to you.”

And they obeyed, thrilling with a great
wave of homesick longing for the mother
they had thought lost to them. The Boy,
tip-toeing back to see what had become of
his pets, found the doe in the pasture lot,
nursing her fawns.

And though he did not know it, she stayed
with them until the first gray light in the
east warned her that she must leave them
for the day. For the fence was too high for
the fawns to leap.

The next night the Boy watched again,
from the cover of the hay-stack. Before
long the doe leaped smoothly into the pasture,
stamping for the fawns. Then he saw
the flash of her white tail signaling for them
to follow, and after that, two tinier tails wig-wagging
through the dusk as they disappeared
in the alders down by the brook that
ran through the lower end of the pasture.

The Boy stared after them awhile, a smile
of sympathy in his eyes. Then—ever so
softly, so as not to alarm them—he slipped
across to where she had leaped the fence,
and lifted the top bars away.

The next morning the fawns were gone!

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CHAPTER IV.—THE ROUND-UP.
=========================

Once back in the good green woods, both
Fleet Foot and the fawns capered joyously.

It was good just to be alive.

Up and down through the forest trails
they galloped,—down to Lone Lake, then
back to Pollywog Pond and along the
familiar trails on the slopes of Mt. Olaf.
Summer was even riper and lovelier than
when they had been taken to the Valley
Farm,—and to the fawns, remember, it was
their first taste of mid-summer in the Maine
woods.

These tiny fellows leaped and gamboled
hide-and-seek, till you would have thought they
would have broken their fragile legs among
the boulders and fallen tree-trunks. But
their mother knew her training had been
thorough, and they would know just how to
leap and land with safety.

“Hello, there!—Chick-a-dee-dee, Chick-a-dee-dee,”
a little gray bird in a black cap
kept calling, as he followed from tree to
tree.

When at last they had had their dinner
of warm milk, and Fleet Foot had cropped
her fill of the tender green things that lay
like a banquet table everywhere about them,
she led them to a little rocky ledge that over-looked
Lone Lake, where they could lie
under the partial shade of a clump of yellow
birch trees and rest, while she chewed her
cud. The black fly season was well past, and
there was nothing to disturb them save a
passing swarm of midges that couldn’t
begin to bite through their thick fur.

(They little dreamed that Frisky, the Red
Fox Pup, was peering down on them from
a higher crag, where he, too, crouched on the
red-brown soil that proved such a perfect
cam-ou-flage.)

No one save a fox could have seen the
fawns, so long as they lay still, their tawny
orange-brown coats blended so perfectly
with the ground. And if anyone had noticed
the white spots on their sides, he would have
taken them for a glint of the creamy birch-bark.

At first the 'two youngsters watched a
yellow-jacketed bumble-bee, who bumbled
and tumbled among the perfumed spikes of
the Solomon’s seals. Then their ears
pricked to a new voice.

“Greetings, my friends!” called a cheery
red-brown coated bird who had been rustling
about among the dead leaves just behind
them.

He was as large as a robin, with even
longer beak and tail, and his creamy breast
was streaked with darker brown.

“Hello, Thrush,” bleated the fawns in
shy friendliness.

“You mustn’t look for any nest in the
bushes around here, because you won’t find
it,” twittered Thrush, in a tone Old Man
Red Fox would have been suspicious of.
“Listen! I am going to give you a concert!”
And he flew to the birch tree over their
heads.

There followed a program of the most
varied trills and whistles the fawns had ever
heard; and though his voice was not so sweet
toned as some of the tinier birds’, his throaty
trills and liquid, low-pitched chirps and
whistles were just as delightful as they
could be.

There were bird calls all around them,
“Pee-wees” and “Chip-chip-chips” and
“Wee-wee-wee-wees” and all sorts of soft
little calls and answers.

They none of them minded the fawns in
the least, except those who had nests on the
ground. They always watched nervously
when the frisky fellows capered too near,
with their sharp little hoofs, though they
knew the fawns wouldn’t hurt an ant if they
knew it.

Every now and again the singers would
cease, when one of the soft patches of white
cloud got in front of the sun; for instantly
the air grew chilly, and a breeze started all
the tree-tops to waving till the birds had to
hang on hard.

Then the Lake would ruffle into tiny wave-lets
and grow dark green like the woods
along the shore-line. For before, the water
had lain as still as a silver mirror, reflecting
the pale blue of the warm sky.

In weather like this, it was good just to
lie still and watch and listen, or drowse off
with the sun warm on one’s fur and the spicy
earth smells in one’s nostrils. The green
world was so interesting.

When a passing cloud of a darker gray
brought the big drops pattering about them
for a few minutes, they merely scampered
under an over-hanging boulder, where they
huddled together on a drift of leaves, and
watched it all.

Later, when the bull-frogs began their
“Ke-dunk, ke-dunk,” down under the banks
of Lone Lake, where the ducks were feeding
their nestlings, and the sun began to
send long red beams slanting through the
tree-trunks, Fleet Foot led them down to a
shallow cove for a taste of lily pads, and
they waded in and tried a nibble of everything
she tasted.

After that came a night under a drooping
pine tree, whose lowest branch roofed over
a boulder in the most inviting way, and the
wind droned through the branches and blew
the mosquitoes all away, and they lay
snuggled warmly together on the fragrant
needles, and watched the stars come out.

In the morning they were just starting
out on an exploring tour when they were
alarmed by the baying of a hound.

Now Lop Ear had always had an important
duty at the Valley Farm. It had been
his part to round up the cows when night
came, or when any of them went astray in
the woods. And all day yesterday he had
missed Fleet Foot from her stall in the hay-barn.

True, she had always seemed different
from the regular cows. Until she came there
with her broken leg, he had always supposed
she belonged in the woods. But surely,
surely the Farmer would not have kept her
there unless she belonged there, reasoned the,
faithful dog. And now she was gone!

There was but one thing to do: he must go
in search of her and bring her home.

All that day he tried in vain to find her
trail. The next morning he was up with the
sun. This time he would search farther
afield. “Wow! Bow-wow! Wow-wow-wow!”
Here was a footprint, unless his
nose deceived him! What’s more, they had
passed that way not ten minutes since! It
was but a matter of following the trail, and
he would be nipping at their heels and driving
them back to the Farm.

“Wow-wow-wow!” he bayed; and Frisky,
the Red Fox Pup, heard and came trotting
to peek at him and see what it was all about.

The sound filled the fawns with uneasiness.
They had always been afraid of Lop Ear,
with his nipping and yapping around the
cattle.

“Children,” bade Fleet Foot sternly,
“hurry to that clump of bracken and lie
down. Stretch your heads and fore legs out
straight in front of you and lie there as flat
as you can make yourselves,—while I lead
this hound off somewhere where he’ll lose
your scent.”

The fawns obeyed instantly.

Fleet Foot then doubled back on her trail,
and with a stamp and a snort to call the
hound’s attention, she soon had him following
her great bounds in quite the opposite
direction. She kept just far enough ahead
of him to make sure he wouldn’t give up
the chase—though she could easily have out-distanced
him.

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CHAPTER V.—A SON OF THE WILD.
=============================

Now Frisky, the Red Fox Pup, admired
no one so much as he did his father. And
he had heard his father tell how he had
chased the doe and her fawns that dreadful
day when Fleet Foot broke her leg.

Not that the little rascal really wanted to
hurt those gentle soft-eyed babies. He
wasn’t hungry, and besides, he couldn’t have
killed them had he wanted to. He just
thought it would be fun to play that he was
Father Red Fox and give them a good scare.
(But how were the fawns to know that?)
In other words, like a great many very
young persons, he didn’t stop to think of
the other fellow’s point of view in the
matter.

Thus, no sooner had he seen Fleet Foot
headed in the other direction, leaving the
fawns unprotected, than he pranced merrily
up to them, his yellow eyes gleaming with
mischief.

“Yip, yip!” he yelled at them in his high-pitched
little voice.

Now the fawns had been told to lie still.
But how could they, when danger was almost
upon them? They were certainly not going
to lie there and let this little wild dog bite
them!

With a bleat of alarm they sprang to their
feet and raced through the brush, leaping
over bush and brier and boulder as if their
very lives depended on it.

But Frisky Fox could also leap bush and
brier and boulder. And he came leaping
after, just two jumps behind them!

Now around a clump of greenbriar, down
a trail of dainty pointed hoof prints that led
through brush head high,—up hill, down hill
the trio sped, startling the pheasants and
sending them into the air with a whirr.

Here the trail turned abruptly down the
side of a precipice, and the fawns followed,
while Frisky, having paused for a moment
when his tail got caught in a bramble, had
to come trotting after with his nose to the
ground, as he could no longer see them.

Now the fawns had never been taught that
water carries no scent. They just happened
to go splashing across a bit of a frog pond
that lay cupped among hillocks of seedling
pines. But looking back at every seventh
leap or so, they could see that the fox pup
followed his nose to the water’s edge, and
there stopped and sniffed all about uncertainly,
before again catching a glimpse of
them.

But though the chase went merrily on
(that is, merrily on the fox’s part), the
fawns had learned a valuable lesson.

They now made straight for Lone Lake,
and my! You should have seen the ducks
take flight as these two alarming little fellows
came splashing in among them!

A deer, when pursued by hounds, will
always take to water when he can, and the
hounds have no scent to follow. Then, unless
there is a hunter along, and he catches sight
of his quarry, and fires, the deer are safe.

The Red Fox Pup uses his eyes, as
well as his nose, and he was so close behind,
and understood so well this trick of taking
to water, (for he escaped the hounds that
way himself), that he wasn’t fooled the least
little bit in the world. Not he!

Only once they had taken the plunge, the
little fellows decided to swim out to a reedy
islet where they could rest. And the fox pup
didn’t think it worth while to get his fur
wet. For when his great brush of a tail gets
wet, it is so heavy that it weighs him down,
and he can’t run nearly so fast, so the mice
all get away.

Of course the fawns thought it was all
their own cleverness, and you should have
heard them telling Fleet Foot about it when
she found them there!

The fawns never tired of watching the life
that stirred everywhere about them, their
great soft eyes filled with pleasant wonder.

One day it would be the one soft cluck
of Mother Grouse Hen, calling to her chicks
to hide before Frisky Fox should pass that
way.

When he had passed, looking so wise and
knowing, (with his bright eyes peering into
every nook and corner, and his pointed little
nose testing the air for a taint), Mother
Grouse Hen would give a different sort of
cluck; and back the frightened chicks would
come to her, and she would gather them comfortingly
under her wings, pressing each
wee brown baby to her down-covered breast
to reassure him.

Then she would utter a soft, brooding
cluck that told them how she loved them, and
how safe they were with Mother to look out
for them.

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CHAPTER VI.—A STRANGE FRIENDSHIP.
=================================

What was the matter with the hen-roost
at the Valley Farm, the fox pup asked himself?
He had killed so many field mice in the
course of the summer that he felt he was
really entitled to one of the farmer’s nice fat
hens,—because the mice might have destroyed
the farmer’s crops, had Frisky not
prevented.

At the same time he knew that Lop Ear,
the hound at the Valley Farm, would have
another opinion in the matter.

Frisky sat up and thought.

Lop Ear would give the alarm, and then,
even if he threw the hound off the scent,
there would be men with guns, and more
dodging of bullets than he cared to risk.
He had often seen it, watching from his hill-top
in the woods. And he always tried to
profit by other people’s experience.

Suddenly his bright eyes began to snap.
The very idea! He would make friends with
Lop Ear.

Then Lop Ear might try to be sound
asleep on the night when Frisky visited the
chicken coop; and should the Hired Man get
out his gun, the hound would surely lose
his trail.

Thereafter, for days on end, Frisky made
the strangest advances to the dignified old
hound, whenever the latter fared forth into
the woods to catch him a mouse for supper.
It was very much like a puppy trying to
coax an old dog to play.

“Come chase me!” Frisky would invite,
dancing ahead just out of Lop Ear’s reach.
Then, “I’ll chase you,” he would vary the
program. And Lop Ear (half unwillingly)
played the role assigned him, till at last he
came to look on his evening ramble in the
woods with Frisky as a distinct part of his
day’s pleasuring.

Not that Frisky ever came within reach
of Lop Ear’s jaws. No, indeed! That was
carrying the thing a bit too far. But he
did finally get the hound to the point where
he no longer considered it his duty to try to
make an end of the young fox. And he
really enjoyed their games of hide and seek.

The Boy from the Valley Farm did not
know what to make of Lop Ear’s growing
fondness for solitary rambles.

One night, when the October moon
gleamed cool and sparkling through the
fringe of fir trees, young Frisky Fox might
have been seen loping softly through the
corn-field.

“Who goes there?” bayed Lop Ear, as he
leaped the barn-yard fence.

“Come and play,” coaxed Frisky. “You
can’t catch me!” and leaping up the sloping
roof of the hen-house, he squeezed gracefully
through the barred window. A
moment more and there was a stifled squawk
and Frisky squeezed his way back through
the bars, dragging a hen behind him.

But alas for the best laid plans.

“Bow-wow-wow! You can’t do that, you
know!” suddenly bayed Lop Ear. “That’s
carrying the game a little too far. After
all, I have my duty to perform.”

“What is it?” yelled the Hired Man, poking
his head from his sleeping-room in the
barn-loft. “A fox, eh?” and he grabbed for
his gun, leaning far out to scan the moonlit
fields.

Frisky Fox, by keeping the shed between
himself and the gun, made off through the
corn-field with the hen across his shoulder.

Lop Ear, his warning uttered, now dashed
madly in quite the wrong direction,—for the
memory of the fox pup’s friendship was
strong upon him. But the Hired Man was
not to be fooled.

In less time than it takes to tell it, he was
out circling the field, gun in hand. And the
bright moonlight soon showed him where the
cornstalks rustled with Frisky’s passing.

“Hi, there!” yelled the Hired Man, gun
in hand, as he raced around the corn-field.

But Frisky was an excellent judge of distance,
and he knew to a certainty that he
was out of gun range.

He therefore deliberately stopped where
he was and snatched a bite of his hen.

As the Hired Man came nearer, the fox
pup ran farther, always keeping just about
so much distance between himself and the
gun. He could easily have out-distanced his
pursuer. But he was in a mischievous mood
to-night, and it pleased him to see how far he
could go toward devouring the entire hen
while the angry man looked on.

He did it, too, saucily enough, gobbling a
bite here and a bite there, looking back over
his shoulder the while at the man with the
gun. One or two shots did ring out on the
crisp night air, kicking up the dirt a few
rods behind him, but Frisky Fox ate on,
secure by those few rods of space, as well
he knew.

Only once did he miscalculate, the shot
landing so near him that he knew the next
one would surely get him if the Hired Man
tried again.

Quick as a flash the clever rascal toppled
over on his side, playing dead. The ruse
worked, for the Hired Man did not shoot
again. And while he was fumbling his way
through the corn-field to where he believed
the fox lay waiting, Frisky was making for
the woods with his nimble black feet fairly
twinkling over the ground.

Throwing himself at last on the soft pine
needles on a little hill-top, he peered through
the moonlight to where the Hired Man was
staring helplessly about him wondering
where the dead fox lay. Frisky laughed
silently at the success of his ruse,—the first
time he had ever played ’possum himself,
though he had seen it done once before, when
his mother had been hard pressed. In her
case she had actually let the boy pick her
up, when he found her with one foot in a
trap. But to her surprise he had only
released her with pitying words and a caress
on her silky red head.

No such treatment could be expected of
the Hired Man, Frisky knew.

Lop Ear, slinking back to the barn-yard
with tail between his legs, was just unlucky
enough to catch the Hired Man’s notice as
the latter was returning foxless.

“Here,” he ordered threateningly. “Put
your nose to that trail and follow it, or I’ll
show you what’s what!”

The next thing Frisky knew, he heard the
baying of his one-time friend close on his
trail. With a yawn and a lick at his jaws,
where a feather still clung, he struck off as
easily as if he had just arisen from a sound
night’s sleep.

He didn’t even bother to keep very far
ahead of the dog.

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CHAPTER VII.—A WIT OUT-WITTED.
==============================

Not that Frisky Fox believed greatly in
Lop Ear’s friendship.

Not after the way the hound had given
the alarm at the chicken coop!

But he knew that at any moment he could
so far outdistance that doubtful ally that he
wasn’t in the slightest danger. The ground
was firm and dry, and he had all the advantage
of his lighter weight and nimbler feet.

Had there been soft snow on the ground
it might have been different. But the first
frost had not yet ripened the hazel nuts
in the woods around Mt. Olaf.

Once, just to punish him, Frisky turned
back and bared his teeth so viciously at Lop
Ear that the hound was driven back—to the
Hired Man’s amazement.

Then Frisky tripped his way down to
Rapid River and crossed on the wet brook
stones, leaving no scent for Lop Ear to
follow.

The hound well off the trail, Frisky again
crossed the stream farther up on a fallen
log. And circling around through the
shadows, he was soon following the Hired
Man, slipping behind trees and boulders and
smiling from ear to ear as the latter stumbled
along with his useless gun.

When at last the hound stopped short at
the river bank, where he lost the scent, the
Hired Man gave it up in disgust, and went
back home to his bed.

And Frisky, the handsome little scoundrel,
calmly sought out the dry south side
of a hill which would shelter him from the
wind and slept with his black legs doubled
under him and his white-tipped brush of
a tail curled comfortably around him to
keep out the draft.

Shrewd, cautious, daring, the Red Fox
Pup bade fair at this stage of his career to
develop the best set of brains in all the
North Woods.

Yet there was one at the Valley Farm that
could out-wit him.

Frisky was sitting on his haunches a few
days later in the midst of the now deserted
hay field, listening for the squeak of a
meadow mouse, when something made him
prick up his ears.

There was something about that squeak
that sounded just a wee bit different from
any squeak he had ever heard before.

But no, there it was again, unmistakably
the tiny voice of a mouse on the other side
of the field. The fox pup had such needle-sharp
ears that he could hear fainter
sounds than any human being ever could
have.

But though Frisky Fox was clever, the
Boy at the Valley Farm was more so. And
the Boy sat behind a bush at the farther
end of the field, as motionless as the gray
stump that Frisky thought he was. This
time the joke was on the Red Fox Pup, for
the squeaks he heard issued from the Boy’s
pursed lips. It was an excellent imitation.

He tip-toed nearer and nearer the
tiny squeaks, while the Boy gazed at the
graceful fellow through his new field
glasses.

He was a handsome fellow, was Frisky
Fox, with his yellow-red coat shining sleek
in the sunlight. And my! How his great
plume of a tail fluffed out behind him! His
tail was nearly as long as the rest of his
body put together, and it fluffed out nearly
as broadly. Mother Red Fox certainly had
a son to be proud of!

Of a sudden a little breeze shifted around
to where it brought the foxy one a faint
scent. It told his keen black nose there was
something down there besides the bush.

It wasn’t a mouse, either!

“No, sir, that’s no field mouse,” said
Frisky’s nose, as the Red Fox Pup circled
to windward of the tiny squeaking sounds.

“That’s the Boy at the Valley Farm!
That’s what that is! Now I’ll just pretend
not to see him at all till I get behind that
rock, then I’ll race for the woods.”

For Frisky didn’t know that the thing the
Boy was pointing at him was only a pair of
field glasses. And it wouldn’t have made
much difference even had he known. Frisky
did not like to be watched. He therefore did
exactly as he had planned, crossing the field
with seeming lack of interest in anything
save the purple and yellow of asters and
golden-rod and the scarlet of woodbine, and
the blue of the Indian summer sky, till he
felt himself out of range.

At the instant of his discovery that it was
one of those dangerous human creatures that
sat there like a stump he had cocked his ears
sharply and leaped fully two feet into the
air in his surprise.

That was the only sign he made, however,
of the extreme anxiety that set his heart to
thumping, till he was just on the edge of
the woods; then he suddenly looked back
with one of his thin, husky barks, to know
why the Boy should have tried to fool him.

But afterwards, from the shelter of the
barberry vines that fringed the old stone
wall, he peered and peeked and wondered
about it all as long as the Boy remained.

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CHAPTER VIII.—STEEP TRAILS.
===========================

These hot days in August, when the trout
took to the very deepest, coldest pools they
could find, and hid themselves all day under
the over-hanging rocks, and every creature
that couldn’t take to the water longed for
rain, Fleet Foot used to lead her little family
up the steep trails to the top of Mount
Olaf or some near-by mountain-top, where
the wind blew cool night and day.

These trips were full of much joy for the
fawns, for there was all the spice of adventure
in following a winding hoof-path that
led—they knew not where. For one never
knew what might be just around the next
turn.

How their hearts thumped when they came
suddenly to the edge of a precipice, where
they could look down at Beaver Brook tumbling
over the rocks away, ’way down below I
Or perhaps they could get just a glimpse of
Lone Lake lying gleaming in the hollow of
the hills.

Not that there was any trail in the real
sense of the word.

Left to themselves, they could not have
told one rock from another, save here and
there where a bit of mica gleamed silver
against the gray, or a scraggly pine leaned
too far out over a ledge to look safe.

But to their mother their trail was as
plain as the nose on your face. It was just
a matter of turning and twisting, here to
pass between those two queer-shaped boulders,
and there to go around that flat rock
which teetered alarmingly beneath one’s
feet. She had been over it all so many times
that she had learned the look of each new
turn of the pathway. Had so much as one
pinnacle been out of place, she would have
known,—and wondered why.

One still, sunshiny morning, after they
had drunk their fill at a cool green pool of
Beaver Brook, they started up the mountain-side
for a day under the shade of the
last fringe of evergreens before one came
to the bare, rocky ridges, where it got too
cold for anything to grow, except in sheltered
crevices.

The fawns danced and capered to the
music of the bird song that filled the woods,
while Fleet Foot cropped all sorts of delicious
tid-bits,—now a clump of oyster mushrooms
growing shelf-like on a fallen log,
and now a bunch of blue-berries, plump and
juicy and sun-sweet. Life was one long
holiday.

One misty morning, as Fleet Foot was
leading them in great bounds through the
tall meadow grass, the fawns came to a sudden
stand-still, their eyes popping with surprise.
For they had just barely escaped
stepping on the writhing coils of a great long
snake.

Their bleat of fear brought Fleet Foot
instantly.

“Pouf! That’s only a garter snake,” she
reassured them, with one glance at the
length-wise stripes (yellow and dark gray).
“That’s nothing to be afraid of. The only
kind you want to look out for is the kind
with cross-wisp stripes. I don’t believe there
is more than one snake in all the North
Woods that is poisonous,—and there are at
least a dozen that are perfectly harmless.”

“What is the poisonous one?” bleated the
trembling fawns.

“The rattler. But you won’t see one of
those in a year’s time,—not in these woods,
where it gets so cold in winter. They love
it hot and dry, and so of course they live
mostly out West, though you do find a few
sometimes among the rocks on the warm
south side of a mountain.”

“Oo! What if we’d meet a rattler?”
shivered the fawns.

“Well, he’d warn you before you went
too near.”

“Warn us?—How?”

“He’d rattle, of course. He has a little
set of bones on his tail that he can rattle, and
when you hear that, you need to look out,
and get away quickly.”

“Are the others really harmless, Mother?”

“Harmless to fawns. That is, they have
no poison bite. Snakes do a lot of good, eating
pests.”

“But I don’t like snakes,” insisted the
tinier fawn.

“Well, neither does Mother. But it’s so
silly, children, to be afraid. Where is that
garter snake? Gone, to be sure! And even
the rattler only strikes because he thinks
you are going to kill him.”

The fawns were very thoughtful after
that. “Mother,” they finally bleated,
“Seems as if even the meanest creatures in
the woods had *some* use.”

“That’s right,” their mother answered
them.

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CHAPTER IX—THE OGRE OF THE AIR.
===============================

It was one of those breezy days when
white wind clouds piled up against the sky,
and patches of shadow traveled across the
mountain-sides.

Fleet Foot had decided to take the fawns
to Mountain Pond, in the pass between
Mount Olaf and Old Bald-face, a peak that
had been burned bare of trees by a forest
fire, and now grew nothing much save blue-berries
for the bears to feast on.

Fleet Foot wasn’t a bit afraid of bears
at this time of year, knowing how greatly
they prefer a vegetarian diet, though, at
that, she didn’t intend to go too near. (After
all, the steep gulch of Beaver Brook Bed lay
between the two mountain-sides.)

They had a lovely time at the Pond, where
they met several other does, with their
fawns, and the youngsters played together
while their mothers gossiped over their cuds.
The cool breeze ruffled their fur delightfully,
and they found enough shade in the patch
of woods that huddled in the head of the
gulch.

As the sun neared the tops of the purple
peaks that faded away to the west, the little
group started back down the trail to where
there was more herbage to browse upon,
Fleet Foot lingering along to allow the
fawns plenty of time to pick out a sure footing.
For it was their first trip over this
particular trail.

Carefully they wound over a great over-hanging
boulder, on the edge of which they
paused to peer, with braced hoofs, over the
precipice, which here dropped sheer to the
rocks below. Just beyond, the first falls of
Beaver Brook dashed green-white over the
ledges.

Then Fleet Foot hurried on to the foot
of the falls, where one might take a shower
bath in the spray.

“Come on, children,” she whistled over
her shoulder, her eyes on the path ahead.
And the tinkle of the falling water filled her
ears till she could not have heard their foot-steps
following, had she tried.

But fawns will be fawns. And the
youngsters stopped to watch a queer shadow
that now danced across their path. Cloud
shadows they had watched all day, but this
one was different. In the first place, it was
such a tiny thing,—for a cloud. And it
danced about in the most amusing manner,—much
faster than any cloud shadow they had
seen before. In fact, it seemed to be going
around and around them in big circles. And
it looked exactly as if the little cloud had
wings like a bird.

Alas for two such little helpless ones!—Had
they but looked above their heads,
instead of at the circling shadow, they
would have discovered that it was a giant
bird that made it. In short, it was Baldy
the Eagle, the ogre of the air,—and an ogre
that especially delighted in having fawn for
supper!

An ugly fellow was Baldy, with his great
curved beak and his great yellow claws. His
body alone was bigger than that of the
fawns, and his wings spread out like the
wings of an aeroplane. He was mostly a
muddy brown, with white head and fan-spread
tail, and he smelled horribly fishy,
for he isn’t a bit particular about what he
eats, and frequently stuffs himself so full
of the spoiled fish he finds on the shore that
he can’t even fly.

The air hissed to his wings.

He waited now till he felt that Fleet Foot
was surely too far away to come to their
rescue, should he attack the fawns. For he
knew from experience that with her sharp
hoofs she could put up a fight he would
rather not face.

For a while he wandered if he should just
simply drop down upon one of the little fellows
and pin his talons into his back, and
fly away to his nest. But it would be awfully
heavy to carry and of course it would kick
and wriggle, ’till like enough he would be
unable to manage his feathered aeroplane,
and they would run into some jagged rock.

If the fawns had been orphans, he might
have killed one right there, and no one would
have interfered.

But they were not orphans, and their
mother would come racing back and cut him
to pieces with those knife-edged fore-hoofs.

Ha! An idea popped into his ugly old
head.—He would scare one of the fawns off
the edge of the precipice, and it would leap
to its death on the rocks below; and then he
could wait till Fleet Foot had gone, for his
feast.

Swooping lower and lower, while still the
foolish fawns stared innocently at the dancing
shadow, he suddenly flapped his wings
about the tinier fawn, startling him terribly,
but not enough to make him back off the cliff.

Stronger measures must be tried,—and
there was no time to waste; for at the fawn’s
first bleat of terror, Fleet Foot heard and
was now leaping like the wind, back the trail
to his rescue.

Swooping again, Baldy began beating the
little fellow with great heavy blows of his
middle wing joints. It hurt dreadfully, and
the frightened fawn turned first this way,
then that, in his endeavor to get away.
Nearer and nearer the edge of the precipice
he crowded. Now one hind foot had actually
slipped off the rock face, and he had to
struggle to regain his balance.

Then the one thing happened that could
have saved him. Fleet Foot reached the
spot. Rearing furiously on her hind legs,
she struck at Baldy’s head with her
sharp hoofs, tearing great wounds in
his scalp. Then, with a scream of rage and
pain, he raised his wings and slanted swiftly
upward, wings hissing, to his granite peak.

The fawn was not seriously hurt,—only
terribly frightened. His back was bruised,
but that would heal, and he would be none
the worse for his experience.

But where was the other fawn?—They
found him wedged in between the boulders,—the
one place where he could ever have
escaped the beat of those wings. Fleet Foot
praised him mightily for having so much
sense, and he felt quite cocky,—though of
course his brother was the real hero of
the day.

One other danger marred their summer.

Every now and again, as they were passing
beneath some low-hanging branch, they
would catch a glimpse of a tawny form flattened
along the limb, watching them with
pale yellow eyes that gleamed through narrowed
lids.

Perhaps it would be in a deep, dark hemlock
thicket, or a cedar swamp, that they
would meet the giant cat.

He was a ferocious-looking fellow, was
Old Man Lynx, with his great, square, whiskered
face, and his ears with their black
tassels and the black stripe down the middle
of his back. And my, how his claws
crunched the bark as he sharpened them!
How his whiskers twitched and his mouth
watered as the fawns passed beneath him!
He seemed all teeth and claws.

Perhaps the little family would be drowsing
peacefully in the shade of a long
September afternoon when suddenly some spirit
of their ancestors, (or was it some guardian
angel of their antlered tribe?) would whisper
“Danger!” and set their fur to rising
along their spines in a cold shiver of nameless
fear.

Had Old Man Lynx ever really put
it to the test, he could have won out with
Fleet Foot. But he knew the sharp drive
of her little hoofs, and he was terribly afraid
of pain. (Did he not wear a great scar in
his side, due to an adventure of his rash
young days, when a fat buck had given him
a rip with his antlers?)

Perhaps that was why Fleet Foot always
raced away in a wide curve that presently
brought her back to where she could peer
curiously at the invader of her solitude,
without herself being seen.

She used to spy in the same way on Old
Man Red Fox, and Frisky, his promising
young hopeful.

In fact, what with Frisky spying on the
fawns, and the fawns watching Frisky, these
children of hostile tribes kept pretty close
track of one another.

The summer passed on the whole, however,
with no more adventure than the sound
of the lonely “Hoo-woo-o-o-o” of a loon at
twilight, or the sudden whirr of a startled
pheasant’s wings, or a quarrel between some
wicked red squirrel caught robbing a crow’s
nest. (Or was it a crow that had robbed the
squirrel’s little hoard, and was getting handsomely
scolded for his villainy?).

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CHAPTER X.—WILD GRAPES.
=======================

It had been one of those cool, crisp days
when the sun shone just warm enough to
feel good to the furred and feathered folk.
Frisky, the Red Fox Pup, had been creeping
up on a flying squirrel, who sat nibbling
the ripe berries of the Solomon’s Seal with
her three little ones beside her, when the
entire family took alarm and went leaping
back to the beech-nut tree.

Now Frisky had not reached the age of
six whole months in vain. He had sharp
eyes, and he used them. And he had never
seen a squirrel that could spread sail like
that. He felt that his eyes must have
deceived him.

He forgot his surprise at the very next
turn of the trail, when he suddenly spied a
tangle of wild grape vine that hung in a
canopy of the luscious purple clusters over
the stag-horn sumac.

Frisky Fox had never seen wild grapes
before, though he had often passed the vines
when the fruit was green. Now his keen
little nose told him enough to make him
eager for a taste.

But the fruit hung just too high. Leaping
into the air, he occasionally got a nibble
from the low-hanging bunches. But these
only served to whet his appetite for more.

To add to his discontent, Fairy the Flying
Squirrel suddenly sailed down from a tree-top,
alighting on the very top of the grapevine
canopy. And there she perched saucily
and munched and sucked at grape after
grape before his very eyes.

This was too much for Frisky. Around
and around the vines he circled, screwing up
his courage for a leap.

He finally discovered a place where the
vine hugged a slanting tree trunk, and he
climbed as far as he could.

The next instant Fairy had sailed back to
her branch as easily as if she had been
laughing at him. But Frisky didn’t mind
that. It would take just a stretch of his
neck and his jaws would close on a great
cluster of the fragrant fruit.

If young Frisky Fox had only been content
with that one taste, all might have been
well. But just beyond was a larger bunch.
Frisky gave a leap, landing on his tip-toes
on crossed vines. But the vines parted
beneath his weight, and down he plunged—almost
to the ground, but not quite. Not
far enough for a foot-hold.

And there he hung, head downward, hind
legs tangled in the vines, unable to better
his position!

My, how he writhed and squirmed, and bit
at the vine that shackled him! But to no
avail! He was a prisoner, just as surely as
if he had been tied with a rope. Little his
brains availed him now.

If any one had asked young Frisky Fox,
as he hung head downward from that
grapevine, what he thought of the
situation, he would have said it couldn’t be worse.

Yet it speedily became worse,—so much
worse, indeed, that Frisky redoubled his
efforts to free himself,—though he had an
awful feeling that it was no use.

It was Tattle-tale the Jay who warned
him.

Tattle-tale kept pretty close track of all
that went on in the forest, and then told all
he knew.

So many times had he flown ahead of
Frisky Fox, screaming at the top of his
lungs: “A Fox! A Fox! Beware!” that
Frisky had come to dread the sound of his
voice.

This time Tattle-tale, who played no
favorites, was doing Frisky a good turn, but
the little fox was in no position to appreciate
the fact.

“Look out, there! Look out, everybody,”
Tattle-tale was screaming. “Old Man
Lynx is coming!”

“Old Man Lynx!” squeaked Shadow Tail,
the Red Squirrel, making for his hole in the
oak tree.

“OLD MAN LYNX, Mammy, Old Man
Lynx!” squealed Timothy Cottontail, hopping
madly for a hollow log.

“Old Man Lynx!” grunted Unk-Wunk,
the Porcupine. “A lot I care!” And he
rolled himself up into a prickly ball in the
top of a swaying birch tree.

“Old Man Lynx!” thought Frisky Fox,
fairly beside himself with frenzy. Hanging
there heels uppermost in the grapevine, he
was as helpless as a mouse in a trap. And
here was the great cat, his ancient enemy,
creeping, creeping, creeping through the
shadows, his nose sniffing this way and that
for the scent that would tell him where to
find a good supper.

Another moment and out of the tail of his
eye he saw the great, heavy, bob-tailed cat,
with his cruel face, squared off with a fringe
of whiskers that framed his chin, and sharp
ears tasseled with little tufts of fur at
their tips.

The yellow eyes gleamed evilly as Old Man
Lynx caught sight of Frisky hanging there
so helplessly, and his grizzled gray-brown
fur rose along his spine.

Now he was wriggling along the ground
flattened out like a snake. Now he was
creeping up the tree trunk as silently as a
shadow, and now he was gathering his legs
beneath him for the leap that would land
him squarely on Frisky Fox.

Frisky knew that one crunch of those
gleaming teeth would end it all, so far as the
Red Fox Pup was concerned.

But Frisky had a trick up his sleeve. His
wits were still in working order.

“What a pity!” sighed Shadow Tail, the
Red Squirrel, as he peered from his hole in
the oak tree.

For Old Man Lynx had no objection what-ever
to having fox for supper. The only
objection he had to foxes was that he could
never catch one.

For to look at poor Frisky Fox, his red-brown
fur still soft and silky, his black feet
tapering so delicately and his white throat
exposed, it didn’t seem as if he had a show
in the world of escaping the huge cat.

But Old Man Lynx was stupid. He had
nothing but his powerful muscles and his
murderous teeth and claws, whereas Frisky
had the nimble wit of one who lives by being
both hunter and hunted.

And even as he waited for the leap for
which he saw the Lynx preparing, he
thought of a way out of both the grapevine
and the danger he was in.

The next instant the Old Man gave one of
his blood-curdling screeches, by which he so
often paralyzed his prey with fright. Then
he dropped to the branch just above, claws
out for Frisky Fox.

But the very instant his heavy form
touched the tangled vines, they gave way
beneath him, and he, too, went crashing down
in a net-work that held him fast. And,
what’s more, his huge weight loosed the vines
that held Frisky prisoner.

But wait! With his great steel claws the
giant cat wrenched himself free. Frisky
made for a clump of greenbriar, for his leg
had gone to sleep, and he couldn’t run right
till it had had time to wake up.

Was Old Man Lynx to get him after all?

There was only one reason why he didn’t—he
had no great fondness for brambles.
Cats, wild and tame, are mighty fond of their
own skins, and Old Man Lynx was no exception.
He’d have to be mighty hungry before
he’d either scratch his fur out or get it wet.

While Old Man Lynx thought it over,
Frisky Fox was certainly not standing still.
Not Frisky! He was struggling so hard to
tear himself free that the brambles were
all trimmed up with little tufts of his tawny
coat.

That the gray form crouched so near him
meant to spring he could easily guess, and
his heart thumped so loudly in his furry
chest that he could hardly breathe. Eyes
straining wide with fright, as he tugged this
way and that, (for he was really caught fast
again), he suffered far more from terror
than from the pain of the brambles. His
leg was awake now, and with one last twinge
he wrenched himself loose.

At the same instant the great gray cat
launched itself almost upon him.

But Frisky was too quick for it. By the
time Old Man Lynx had reached the spot,
Frisky was tearing down the slope.

Now lynxes have poor eyesight. Following
their nose is their one best guide. Of
this Frisky was aware, as his mother had
told him so.

He could hear the great cat scrambling
after him at a terrific pace. But he was
going too fast to try any dodges, for one
stumble and the other would be upon him.
If it had been Mother Red Fox, she could
have laughed at her pursuer. But Frisky
was only a pup, remember, and his short
legs had all they could do to keep ahead of
such a big fellow.

Just as he was beginning to wonder how
long this would keep up, he recalled something
else his mother had taught him.
Lynxes cannot swim. At least, they won’t.
The river was just off to the left, and with
a quick turn and a sidewise leap that might
or might not throw the Old Man off his
scent, he dashed for the water.

On the very brink of the moonlit current,
he suddenly remembered one thing more.
The last time he had tried that swim he had
let his tail get so wet and heavy that he had
only reached the other bank by hanging on
to his father’s brush. Now there was no one
to tow him. Should he risk it, or was he
safer where he was?

To cross or not to cross, that was the question
before him.

If he trusted his fate to the current, he
might drown. And if he remained on the
same side with Old Man Lynx, he might meet
another fate.

There was but a heart’s beat to decide.

Ah! What was that dark object just
upstream? Could it be a log? What luck!
Frisky veered to the right, his long agile
leaps once more outdistancing the merciless
form behind him.

He reached the log. Alas, it reached only
half way across! But he raced that half.
Then one of his powerful forward leaps and
he had landed within easy swimming distance
of the other shore!

Old Man Lynx stood raging on the bank
he had left, afraid to risk it. His disappointed
screech sent shivers along Frisky’s
spine, but he knew he was safe.

Pup-like, no sooner was his mind relieved
of worry than he burrowed into an old
gopher hole and fell fast asleep.

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CHAPTER XI.—SPECKLED TROUT.
===========================

The still warmth of Indian summer
passed, with its dreamy days and its crisp
nights ablaze with twinkling stars.

And Fleet Foot left the fawns to shift
more and more for themselves,—though
they still followed her about. At first they
were puzzled and a little hurt by her growing
indifference. Then, as they began to
feel the strength of their coming buck-hood,
they began to enjoy their taste of freedom.

Indeed, the little rascals even began to
watch the bucks, (their big cousins and
uncles), who were returning in little bands
from their summer’s wanderings. Someday
they, too, would have those lordly
antlers, and they, too, could join their bachelor
explorations, while the does and younger
fawns remained safely behind in the low-lands.

Now no longer could they hear Vesper
Sparrow trilling in the meadows and locusts
twanging in the tree-tops. The brook beds
were drying, 'and the deer now pastured
along the sedgy shore-line of Lone Lake or
splashed knee-deep in the shallows, while
here and there the scarlet of a maple told
of approaching winter.

No longer did the gabbling of countless
ducks fill their ears when the pink sunsets
tinted the Lake. Instead, there were many
V-shaped flocks constantly migrating to the
Southland, where the waters would not
freeze.

Now it was that the speckled trout, whom
all summer long they had watched flashing
silvery through the shallows, began putting
on their coats of many colors.—At least the
bride-grooms did. The prospective brides
remained a quiet brown, for reasons the
fawns were soon to learn. (For October is
the month when trout start housekeeping
together.)

In the early summer the fawns had
watched these same finny fellows racing and
leaping up the water-falls to the rapids.
With the long, hot days, they had taken to
the deep, shadowy pools—those watery
caverns that afford such peaceful coolness
everywhere along Beaver Brook.

Now as the woods turned red and gold,
the trout changed their cream colored vests
to the most vivid orange, which looked gay
enough with their red and white fins.

Their coats were still olive-green, mottled
with darker splotches, and on their sides the
green melted into yellow, with the little red
spots and speckles that give the trout their
name.

Their thousands of tiny scales were like
suits of mail,—which came in very handy
when they fought, as you shall see.

Now the fawns noticed that the larger and
brighter colored fish were prospecting
around in the shallows, where the water ran
fastest, shoveling the gravel about with their
bony noses, aided by their tails. Each trout
soon had a little nest scooped out in the
stream bed, and over it he stood guard, (or
perhaps we ought to say swam guard),
defending his homestead against all comers.

Sometimes a larger trout would come by
and try to steal the nest of a smaller fish;
and then what a fight they had! How they
butted each other about, ramming each
other’s soft sides, and even, at times, biting
each other on the lip. It must have hurt
dreadfully, because each trout had a mouthful
of the sharpest teeth, that turned backward,
so that when they caught a worm he
was hooked as surely as he would be on the
end of a fish-line.

In trout-land, you know, it is the father
of the family that makes the nest. He it is
who wears the gayest clothing, too,—because
if the mother were too bright colored,
her enemies could see her on her nest.

Once the nests were ready the mother
trout came swimming upstream and
promptly set to work filling them with
leathery yellow-brown eggs, which they
covered with gravel so that no pike or other cannibal
of the river’s bottom could find and
make a breakfast off of them.

The fawns marveled as they watched, day
after day, till at last the trout all went back
into deep water for the winter, leaving the
eggs behind them. And Fleet Foot
explained how, next spring, each leathery
brown egg that had escaped the cannibal
fish and the muskrats would be burst open
by the baby trout inside, and out would
wiggle the teeniest, weeniest troutlet you
can possibly imagine!

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CHAPTER XII.—THE VICTOR.
========================

One evening when the frost lay glittering
in the moonlight, the fawns were suddenly
awakened, in their soft beds of drifted
leaves, by a loud belling down on the lake
shore; and wide-eyed, they tip-toed down to
see what it meant.

There on the muddy beach—stamped with
long lines of little cloven hoof prints—stood
a handsome buck, with polished antlers,
dancing about as if too full of energy to
stand still.

Now the fawns had never seen their
father, for he had been killed by a hunter.
And the other bucks of the herd had been
rambling about all summer in the higher
hills.

They now saw Fleet Foot mince daintily
down to inspect the new-comer, who was
belling his greeting at the top of his lungs.

But the meeting was brought to a sudden
end. For out of the woods pranced another
buck, belling a saucy challenge to a fight.
Fleet Foot withdrew to a safe distance, as
did the fawns, and watched admiringly as
the two bucks came together; and the excitement,
no less than the keen, frosty air, set
the blood to racing hot through their young
veins.

Stamping their steel-shod hoofs defiantly
and tossing their antlered heads in the pride
of their strength, the two bucks bellowed
their battle challenge.

“Well, where did you come from?”
shrilled Fleet Foot’s champion.

“Never mind that. I’ve come to stay,”
bellowed the new-comer. “If either of us
has got to go, it will be yourself, because
I’m the strongest.”

“Not if I know myself!”

“Look out! The strongest wins!”

“Yes, the strongest wins. So look out for
your own self!” and the first buck gave a
shrill snort of defiance.

Straightway the pair began dancing a sort
of war-dance around each other. Slim and
supple, they looked about equally fit.

Fleet Foot stepped gracefully a little
nearer, and stood looking on, with her back
to the fawns,—who thought best to keep
their distance. They noticed that another
little audience had gathered on the opposite
side of the lake,—a couple of yearling bucks
with proud spikes of horns and three with
two-pronged antlers.

Around and around the two combatants
tip-toed, heads flung back, chins in air. Then
they lowered their antlers like shields, and
Fleet Foot’s champion got in a good dig at
the other’s ribs. With a bellow of rage, the
second buck came plunging, and the two
crashed together, antlers against antlers.
Their sharp hoofs fairly ploughed the
ground as they strove and struggled and
pushed each other about, the very whites of
their eyes showing in their rage.

“There’s ginger for you!” thought the
fawns.

Now the fighting pair were shouldering
each other about roughly with their horns,
lips foaming, gasping for breath,—almost
locking horns in a butting match. At last
the first buck lifted his knife-edged forelegs
and struck at the intruder. The next
moment he was belling in triumph, for he
had cut a great gash in the other’s shoulder,
and the latter had had enough.

The victor now turned for the look of
admiration he felt he ought to find in Fleet
Foot’s eyes. But instead, he barely caught
a glimpse of her dancing away through the
thicket, with just one merry backward
glance to see if he would race her.

But he knew where to follow; for there
was the faintest, loveliest perfume on the
air where she had passed.

The fawns gazed after the pair, as they
disappeared, then found themselves alone.
All that month, while the woods turned from
scarlet and yellow to brown and gray, and
the nights grew frosty under the stars, the
fawns were left very much to their own
devices. But they were well capable of looking
out for themselves at this time of year,
for they found a beech wood and began fattening
on the beech nuts against the increasing
chill.

Their coats were changing from tawny
red to bluish gray, and their fur thickening
to keep a layer of warm air next their skins.
There were coarser hairs growing out as
well, that helped to shed the rain. Their
new fur glistened in the sunshine, and the
fawns raced and hurdled in the keen air,
and took running high jumps to work off
their surplus energy.

Then Fleet Foot and the winning buck
returned, and with them came two of the
young bucks who had watched the battle.
The six ranged happily from cranberry bog
to evergreen swamp, feasting, feasting,
feasting on mosses, lichens, anything and
everything that grew, till their sides rounded
with their winter plumpness, and a layer of
warm fat lay just underneath their skins.

But with the first powdering of snow came
a new danger. The hunting season had
opened, and to the huntsman our little family
meant merely a few pounds of venison
for his table, and the pride of a pair of
antlers to hang his gun upon.

To the buck, however, one little bullet
might in an instant rob him of life and the
keen joy of his airy speed, and all the glad
wonderful world about them, and leave his
family defenseless through the long, hard
winter.

He was therefore more than wary. With
the first crash of the Hired Man’s thunder
stick, he led his little herd to a distant cedar
swamp, where they were soon joined by other
groups as nervous as themselves at this new
peril that could pick them out and wound
them from so far away.

Sometimes, even then, a member of the
band would have a race for his life.—And
sometimes he never came back! But Fleet
Foot and her five pulled through in safety.

Then the thunder-stick ceased to roar in
the woods about Mount Olaf. The “season”
was over, and the entire, band set about making
active preparations for the on-coming
winter. Already there were chill, drizzly
days when all the world looked gray.

The former rivals now chewed their cuds
together as peacefully as you please, the
bucks sleeping on one side of the thicket,
the does and their fawns on the other.

Then came a big surprise for the fawns.

It was a surprise for the Red Fox Pup
as well.

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CHAPTER XIII.—THE QUEER FEATHERS.
=================================

Frisky, the Red Fox Pup, had learned
many lessons since the day he so nearly
hanged himself in the wild grape-vines.

There was the day of the first snow, for
instance.

Awakening one morning, cramped and
chilled because he had not lined his bed
deeply enough with leaves to keep off the
cold, he peered from his little den on the
hillside with wide eyes.

The air seemed filled, as far as he could
see, with tiny white feathers, and the ground
was covered with them.

He peered this way and that, wondering
what kind of birds they could be whose
plumage was being shed so freely. It must
be a flock large enough to cover the whole
sky, he decided, mystified.

He crept stealthily from the den, afraid,
because he did not understand.

The instant his black feet touched the cold
stuff, he leaped high into the air, with a yip
of fright and amazement. But when he
opened his mouth he got a taste of the falling
flakes.

“Ha!” he said to himself, “that accounts
for it. It is just rain turned white.”

Still, he crept warily down to Pollywog
Pond for his breakfast, stepping high,
because he hated wet feet.

Arrived at the pond he stopped for a
drink, when his lapping tongue came plump
against a film of something hard and shining
that seemed to cover the water. What could
it be, he asked himself, lapping up a mouthful
of the snow-flakes to ease his thirst. (He
wisely held them in his mouth till they had
melted, for fear of chilling his stomach.)

It was certainly very queer. Now the
very trees were beginning to be outlined in
white. It made the world look quite a different
place.

As for the deer, they took to a thicket of
poplar, birch and spruce, on which they
could feed when the snow lay deep.

There was one other to whom winter
brought a change and that was Old Man
Lynx.

Now it is very, very seldom that good luck
falls right at one’s feet undeserved.

So Old Man Lynx warned himself when
he came upon the muskrat in the trap.

Of course the giant cat did not know it was
a trap, as he circled around and around the
struggling rat. His green eyes gleamed hungrily
in his tawny face, and he crouched so
close to the snow crust that his whiskers
dragged on the ground. His tasseled ears
twitched nervously, his stubby tail thrashed
the earth and his claws were bared in a
fringe across the great awkward paws, as he
crept nearer and nearer the struggling bait.

To the nostrils of the cat tribe the musky
smell of the water-rat is most tempting, and
his mouth watered till he licked his jaws at
thought of the feast within such easy reach.

And yet—and yet—some spirit of the wild—some
instinct of the dumb brute who must
fight to live—seemed to warn him that where
man had been, there would be trouble for
him. And he circled his prey without quite
daring to close in upon it and end its squeaking
protest.

Now the Hired Man at the Valley Farm
had not meant the trap for Old Man Lynx.
He had placed it there on the bare chance of
there being a wolf at large in the forest
around Mount Olaf.

As the midwinter dawn deepened from
salmon to rose, and the snow began to glitter
in the sun’s first rays, Old Man Lynx decided
that the thing was altogether too mysterious
to be wholesome. Instead, he trotted
down to Lone Lake, where muskrats were
supposed to be. And he promised himself
that even were it too late in the day to catch
a rat, he could at least afford the pleasure of
sniffing at the chimneys to their round
houses,—those air-holes in the top, where
their musky breath steamed out, while the
rats themselves lay snug and warm within.

Then, suddenly, just as Old Man Lynx
was passing a snow-laden clump of spruces,
he caught a little movement in their lower
branches. Circling till he had the ribbon of
the wind in his nostrils, he discovered that it
was a covey of grouse.

Grouse! How infinitely more delicious
than muskrat—more tender even than rabbit!
Now indeed he was glad he had saved his appetite.

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CHAPTER XIV—STARVATION TIME
===========================

Fleet Foot, the Doe, would never have
dreamed of taking her fawns down to the
hay-stack at the Valley Farm, had not the
Farmer and his Boy set her leg the summer
before, and gained her confidence by their
kindness.

But, though the herd had selected a south-west
slope where the feeding was good, and
though they had trampled the snow till it
raised them higher and higher, and they
could browse on the limbs of the fir trees, it
was proving a cruel winter. As blizzard followed
blizzard, and bark and browse alike
were frozen stiff, they huddled together,
weak with hunger.

Then the thought of the big hay-mow provided
for the sheep and cattle proved too
much for Fleet Foot, and she resolved to
take the fawns, (now well grown,) slip down
under cover of the early winter dusk, and
there help herself to the few mouthfuls she
could reach through the bars. For part of
the hay stood in the open meadow, with only
a canvas over top to keep it dry, and a few
bars to keep it from being blown away.

The other deer of the herd, though they
were starving, were far too timid to make
the venture with her. To them it seemed a
perilous undertaking to go so near human-kind.
For they had seen many things in the
woods. They had seen the Hired Man with
his long black stick that spoke like thunder,
and killed more surely than tooth or claw.
They preferred to starve!

For Fleet Foot, the dangers of traveling
alone with the fawns through the winter
woods were many. First there was the
chance of meeting Old Man Lynx. For now
they would not have the protection of the
hoofs and horns of the herd.

Then they might get lost and freeze, should
another storm catch them far from the herd-yard.
But, once having made up her mind,
Fleet Foot whistled to the fawns and started
off in a series of long, graceful bounds that
carried them over one snow-bank after another.

Had they dared delay, they would have
sunk to their knees in the hard, dry snow to
rest for a while and nibble the tops of some
bush that promised a few mouthfuls of supper,
for their empty stomachs fairly hurt.
And if it had been freezing in the herd-yard,
with its wall of snow, and the crowding
bodies that helped keep each other warm,
imagine how cold Fleet Foot’s little family
must have been, out on the open hill-top!
The savage wind and the snow-filled air
made it all but impossible at times to draw
breath.

But worst of all was the shadow of fear
that never left the doe’s anxious mother
heart. The tree-trunks crackled alarmingly
with the frost, keeping her alert for enemies,
and the wind tore savagely through the
brush. Of a sudden Fleet Foot’s spine began
to prickle! It was one of those mysterious
things that she had never been able
to account for. But it usually meant danger!

Half blindly, they had been making their
way, hardly able to see in the green-black of
the darkness. But they marked their path
by the darker blackness of the clumps of
spruce trees, which to their trained instinct
pointed the way like a map.

Again a chill ran down their spine and the
hair raised along the backs of their necks!
Some instinct told them real danger was
near—what danger, they could not know.
Rolling their startled eyes behind them, they
could see points of light gleaming at them
through the darkness.

At length, through the winter night, came
a long, shrill cry like that of a hound, only
wilder and more terrifying. Then came another,
and a third. It was an uncanny sound,
that of the three gray wolves, watching from
behind the snowy evergreens.

Fleet Foot knew, more by instinct than experience,
what they were, for their like she
had never seen before. Nor had any one in
those woods known a winter when these ravenous
beasts had come down out of the Canadian
wilds. But it had been handed down
from grand-sire to grand-son that once, when
the snows were uncommonly deep, and half
the wild folk starved and frozen, wolves had
come down from the far North in search of
prey.

There were three of the lean gray shapes,
like collie dogs, yet so much larger and
fiercer—large enough to attack even bigger
game than Fleet Foot, the doe.

Should worst come to worst, she would
have no more chance with even one such foe
than a rabbit with a hound. It would all be
a matter of which could run the faster. And
she had to look out for the fawns!

Their one chance of escape lay in their
nimble heels. They might, for a time, outspeed
their enemies, if their strength held
out. The combined hoofs and antlers of the
herd might have fought off the beasts for a
time, but the herd-yard was now too far
away for Fleet Foot ever to reach it with the
fawns before those lean gray shapes would
be at their throats. The Valley Farm lay
straight ahead, and her fear of man shrank
to nothing beside the terrors behind her.

Yes, the one hope on the horizon lay at the
Valley Farm, where the fear of man might
keep the wolves from following.

And to the Farm Fleet Foot and the
fawns now sped with their great, bounding
strides that took whole drifts at a leap.
Would their feet slip in the darkness, crippling
them and leaving them helpless almost
within sight of safety?

On and on they ran, and behind them
through the forest crept the three gray
shapes, slinking along like shadows with
glowing coals for eyes. Every now and again
their barking howl, long drawn out and fearful,
tore the darkness. Could they reach the
Valley Farm, Fleet Foot asked herself with
pounding heart?

It was hard going through the powdery
snow, into which she sank dangerously every
time she came to a drift too wide to leap.
And the fawns were having an even harder
time, the cold cutting into their lungs ’till it
hurt.

At last, straight ahead, gleamed the dim
lighted windows of the farmhouse. A few
more bursts of speed would get them over the
fence and into the pasture lot, and perhaps
the wolves would stop at the boundary of
man’s domain. But—could they make it?
Could they reach that fence before their
grim pursuers?

Their eyes were fairly popping with the
effort they were making. Here was a mammoth
drift that in summer had been a creek,
and there a patch of the higher wind-swept
ground where the ice might take their hoofs
from under them.

Ah! The fence at last! One leap over its
smooth pyramid, and with a sobbing cough,
Fleet Foot and the fawns were safe, with the
wolves not ten paces behind!

Then, suddenly, the door at the farmhouse
opened, throwing a long streak of
lamp-light across the snow!

The wolves slunk back in fear. But so,
too, did Fleet Foot. The terror of the great
gray beasts behind her, all her old fear of
man flooded back upon her, and what to do
she did not know. She dared not go back, nor
could she go forward. So she stood stock
still, her fawns huddling, trembling against
her sides. The sudden light half-blinded her,
and made the darkness blacker. What could
be its meaning? Curiosity might, at another
time, have conquered fear, but now
she was trembling in every joint, her spent
lungs wheezing with the effort she had made.
This was far different from slipping in under
cover of darkness as she had planned.

“Father! Come quick! I do believe there
is a deer out there—no, a doe, and two
fawns!” cried the Boy of the Valley Farm,
as the light from the open door threw a long
ray across the barn-yard to the pasture beyond.

“Wait! I’ll get her for you!” exclaimed
the Hired Man, springing for his gun. But
at the Boy’s sharp command he dropped it,
shame-faced.

Then from farther back in the evergreens
came the spine-chilling howl of the gray
wolves, baying their lost prey.

“Wolves, my son!” exclaimed the Farmer,
joining the group in the doorway.
“Wolves from Canada. It’s a hard winter
that has brought them down. I don’t remember
seeing wolves since I was a little shaver,
forty years ago. And I expect that is what
has driven the deer so close. Sh! Come out-side.”
The two closed the door behind them.
“We mustn’t frighten them away, or the
wolves will get them, sure.”

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CHAPTER XV.—THE GRAY WOLVES.
============================

“That’s what I heard,” exclaimed the Boy
at the Valley Farm. “Wolves! Imagine! I didn’t
suppose they ever came into these woods.”

“It’s been an unusual winter,” his father
assured him, stepping out into the snowy
barn-yard. “I saw them once when I was
ten years old. But I thought they had been
driven away for good. I suppose the rabbits
all froze, up where they come from, and
they got so starved they were driven to it.
They’ve certainly been chasing these deer.”

For as their eyes became accustomed to the
snowy darkness, they could once more see
the shadowy forms of Fleet Foot and the
fawns by the hay-mow.

“It must have been those wolves that I
heard ten minutes back,” said the Farmer,
rubbing his unmittened hands together.

“Just see how hollow these poor things
look!” exclaimed the Boy. “They must be
starving. Let’s go back inside, so they won’t
be afraid.”

They met the Hired Man just starting
forth with his gun. “I’m going for those
wolves,” he hastened to explain.

“That’s more like it,” said the Farmer.

Here they were at last, beside the hay-stack,
Fleet Foot and her fawns. And as
three disappointed howls arose from the
woods at their back, the famished deer
turned to snatch their first ravenous mouthfuls
from between the bars of the crib. They
paused in their banquet only long enough to
stare at the Hired Man, as with snow-shoes
strapped to his feet, he strode down the Old
Logging Road,—Lop Ear, the Hound, at his
heels.

“Who-o-o-o!” howled the three gray
wolves from the blackness of the woods.
The Hired Man raised his thunder-stick
and fired—straight between a pair of the red
eyes that gleamed at him through the night.

“Yoo-o-o-o!” screamed one of the wolves,
as he fell, while the cries of the other two retreated
into the forest. And Whoo Lee, the
great barred owl, could have told you that
they carried their tails between their legs.
Their weird voices faded rapidly into the
depths of the woods; for wolves travel fast
on their round, furry feet, which spread out
beneath them like round snow-shoes.

The Hired Man strode on down the Old
Logging Road past the charred trunks
which the forest fire had swept,—standing
like white ghosts now in their snowy mantles,—and
on nearly to Lone Lake. But
never a sign of the gleaming eyes of the two
remaining wolves could he see, though his
ears shuddered at the weird howls that rang
down the wind, and Lop Ear bristled and
growled.

Fleet Foot and the starving fawns nibbled
and nibbled at the hay-mow,—for the time, at
least, safe and happy. But could they ever
get back to the herd-yard, with those wolves
still at large?

For once they were in luck. The Hired
Man was not the only hunter who followed
the wolves that night. Old Man Lynx, that
fierce, furry fellow with tassels on his ears
and claws that could rend like steel hooks,
had also been driven down to the Valley by
the winter’s famine. He, too, heard the
howling of the wolves.

He heard the piercing scream of the wolf
the Hired Man had shot, and he knew what
it meant. The lynx was hungry, for the
storms had lasted many days, and the rabbits
and grouse hens hid away where he could
not find them. On his own wide, spreading
paws, therefore, he set out over the snow to
find the wolf that had fallen. His heart was
glad at the unexpected feast in store, and he
whined hungrily under his breath.

Every now and again he had to pause to
bite off the icy balls that had formed under
his warm feet. But before ever the Hired
Man had turned back from Lone Lake, Old
Man Lynx was peering and sniffing at the
wolf that lay dead.

One thing he did not know, though. No
sooner had the two remaining wolves raced
to Lone Lake, with their tails between their
legs, and the roar of the thunder-stick in
their ears, than it occurred to them that they
were still ravenously hungry. And the one
that had fallen would go far toward easing
that terrible emptiness that drew their sides
together and made them desperate. (For
wolves are cannibals!)

So, back the horrid beasts came, running
on their furry snow-shoes—back down the
wind, which told the noses of these great wild
dogs as plainly as words that Old Man Lynx
was there before them.

“Who-o-o-o,” they howled wrathfully,
speeding back through the burnt-wood, over
whose ghost-like trunks they leapt in the
darkness so fast that no Hired Man could
have shot them had he tried.

Old Man Lynx raised his whiskered face
and yowled an answering challenge.

“Ye-ow-w-w!” he screamed at them defiantly.
Then he bent his head to snatch another
mouthful of the meat he knew the
wolves were on their way to claim.

“Ye-ow-w-w!” he screamed again, as the
wolf cry swept nearer. This time he saw
two pairs of red eyes gleaming in the darkness.

“I got here first, and I’ll make it hot for
the first one that comes within reach of my
claws,” he warned them, in tones they understood
without words.

“We are two to your one!” they answered
him.

Little did Old Man Lynx imagine that he
had an ally so near. To him it was merely
a case of having found a meal in the wolf the
Hired Man had shot, and of having the rest
of the pack demand it of him. So the giant
cat took his stand, with claws outspread over
the prize, his savage face tense with hate.
His green eyes blazed at them through the
darkness.

The cowardly wolves paused just out of
reach, neither one of them quite daring to
begin the attack, yet willing to fall in, should
the other go first, for both were wild with
hunger.

Old Man Lynx was not afraid. He meant
merely to meet each wolf as he came, and
fight him off with tooth and claw—or if
worst came to worst, he could climb the nearest
tree. For the power to climb is the one
great advantage that cats have over all members
of the dog tribe.

Old Man Lynx himself was lean with famine,
for the great storm had made hunting
all but impossible for him. Not so much as
a wood-mouse had shown its tracks on the
snow for days. And there had been nothing
in his rocky den save the dried and frozen
bones of dinners long since past.

To surrender his supper to-night might
mean starvation and actual death to him.
But so it did to the wolves. It was to be a
fight for life!

Now a lynx’s claws are like so many little
curved swords of poisoned steel,—and he had
five on each foot. He could dig at a wolf’s
unprotected sides with his hind legs while
his fore legs were clinging to the throat in
which he would try to fasten his fangs.

The gray wolves knew all this, for Old
Man Lynx visited the same Canadian wilds
that they had come from. But even so, in
another moment they had taken the leap—together!
And there was more lynx fur flying
than wolf fur—as Whoo Lee, the owl
overhead, could have told you.

Just in the nick of time for Old Man Lynx,
the Hired Man returned. When he heard
the shrill chorus of returning wolves, he had
hastened back, his great snow-shoes shuffling
their way down the Old Logging Road at a
speed of which he had not known them capable.

He was not thinking of Fleet Foot and the
fawns. But with the barn full of cattle, it
would never do to leave such beasts at large
in the forest. When he heard Old Man Lynx,
however, the Hired Man understood just
what was going on. He had not lived in the
back-woods for nothing all his days. And he
decided to draw a little nearer, in the hope of
getting another shot or two at the great gray
terrors from the North.

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CHAPTER XVI.—THE FARMER’S PLAN.
===============================

It was thus at the very moment that Old
Man Lynx was striking out with bared claws,
and the gray wolves were closing in on him
both at once, that his unexpected ally
reached the scene.

The Hired Man raised his gun, pointing it
straight between two gleaming eyes that
shone out in the darkness. He had to do it
quickly, they jumped about so fast. Then a
shot rang out on the silent night!

It singed a streak across the lynx’s flank,
but it felled the wolf whose jaws were just
about to clamp about his leg. A second shot
nicked the tasseled ear of the great cat
fighting so desperately. But it singed the fur
on the neck of the second wolf, just in time
to check him, as his fangs were finding their
way through the thick fur ruff that protected
the lynx’s throat. At this second shot, the
wolf, with a howl of terror, tucked his tail
between his legs and ran.

The Hired Man hesitated, then decided
that the lynx had won the right to live by his
pluck. Thus Old Man Lynx was left, somewhat
the worse for the meeting, but still able
to enjoy the rest of his meal; while the Hired
Man, counting the night well spent, shuffled
home on his snow-shoes. But there was still
a gaunt gray wolf at large in the forest—and
Fleet Foot and the fawns had still to get back
to the herd-yard before morning found them
in the haunts of man!

But strange things can happen. No sooner
had the lone gray wolf fled from the unexpected
slaughter than the wind shifted, and
he caught an odor most agreeable to his palate.
For his gaunt sides were so hollow that
every rib showed. It was an odor he had
never before followed up. He had not met it
in his Northern wilds, but it smelled porky
and delicious.

It was on the trunk of a wild apple tree
that he found the little round bristly fellow.
And he could see, by the gray light of dawn,
that his black sides bulged with fat, in a winter
when all the furry folk were lean and
hungry.

That alone was puzzling. But what surprised
him even more was that this queer
fellow showed no sign of fear. He was singing
a little song, all in one flat key—“Unk-wunk,
unk-wunk, unk-wunk.” It was a
young porcupine, one of these prickly fellows
so like a tiny bear, only with long black
needles instead of fur. The gray wolf did
not know how terrible those needle-like quills
can be, when once they get in one’s paw. For
they are barbed like a hook on the end, and
when they stick into one, it hurts worse to
pull them out than to leave them where they
are. The wood folk that lived around Lone
Lake knew enough to leave Unk-Wunk
strictly alone. So, he was never afraid. But
the wolf did not know. And when the little
porcupine, instead of climbing higher, out of
his reach, came lazily back down the trunk
and began to gnaw the frozen bark, the wolf
thought it was easy game.

Thus, without so much as wondering what
made this strange beast so fearless, he leaped
open-jawed upon the little porcupine. There
was just one howl of agony, as he clamped
his jaws on those barbed quills, and it was
not the porcupine who gave it!

Whining and clawing at his tortured
mouth, the wolf rolled about in the snow-drift,
choking and spluttering in mingled
wrath and terror. For Unk-Wunk’s terrible
barbed quills were working deeper and deeper
into the roof of his mouth. Finally he
rolled over on them, and they pierced
through to the brain. That was the last of
the great gray wolf that had come down out
of the North to prey upon the forest folk
around the Valley Farm.

Unk-Wunk, without in the least realizing
that he had done so, had performed a public
service. And in particular, he had made it
safe for Fleet Foot and her fawns to go back
home to the deer yard in the gray of the winter
dawn.

“I tell you what,” said the Farmer to his
son next day. “I’ve a plan that I think will
interest you.”

“What is it?” asked the Boy, eagerly.

“Just this: I’ve plenty of hay this year,
(more than enough for the stock,) and I’m
going to pitch a little of it out, after this,
every time the storms make it hard for the
deer. I declare, I can’t bear to think of
their being so starved!” And he gazed
thoughtfully out over the drifting snow, as
he thought how Fleet Foot had braved everything
to reach their hay-stack.

“Hurray!” shouted the Boy. “May I
pitch some out right now? Poor things,
there wasn’t much they could reach between
the bars,” and he gazed at the dainty footprints
the fawns had made the night before.

The deep, dry snow was followed by a
freeze that left a glistening crust over every
drift. Once more Fleet Foot and the rest
of the deer could run nimbly on their spreading
hoofs; and young Frisky Fox and
Mother Grouse Hen and Mammy Cotton
tail, the brown bunny, could foot their way
across the white expanse in search of food.
For they were sure of at least a fighting
chance of getting home again.

Fleet Foot and the fawns, returning every
night to the hay-stack, with a little band
whose sides were as pinched with hunger as
their own, now passed Old Man Lynx without
a fear. For where there was footing that
would bear their weight, they knew they
could outspeed him.

Hereafter the snow might whirl and the
spruce trees bend and sway in the wind that
wailed through their tops, but the white-tailed
deer of the woods about Mount Olaf
were always sure of a little hay to tide them
over the month of hunger.

“Father,” said the Boy, “I’ve made a
birthday resolution. I am going to befriend
every furred and feathered creature in these
woods.”

“All of them?” his Father asked. The
Hired Man paused in the smoking of his
traps to listen. “You aren’t going to tell
us we can’t do any more trapping this winter?”

“You can trap muskrats,” said the Boy
thoughtfully. “And, of course, wolves, if
any more should come. And weasels—the
wicked creatures! They are only cruel,
blood-thirsty ruffians who kill without need,
just for the love of killing.”

“What about Old Man Lynx?”

“Well, I know he is not popular. But, after
all, he’s a good mouser. And we must
spare our mousers, the fox and the skunk
and the big barn owl,—for the mice destroy
our grain, and I don’t know anything muskrats
are good for except their fur. I’m not
quite sure about the wild cat, but he doesn’t
do much harm, does he, as long as there are
fish to be caught? And he is a good
mouser.”

“What about bears?” asked the Hired
Man, with one foot on the chopping block.

“Never do any great amount of harm,” returned
the Farmer. “They can catch mice
with the best of them. Besides, they’re
mostly vegetarians. It isn’t once in a coon’s
age you’ll find one of these black bears that
would harm a baby, if you let him alone.”

“The deer seem awfully afraid of bears.”

“They have a lot more reason for being
afraid of men,” said the Farmer, eyeing the
Hired Man’s gun.

“And porcupines? What about porcupines?”
asked the latter.

“They mind their own business,” spoke
up the Boy. “Let them live. You’ll have
plenty to do, hunting animals like wolverines
and martins and mink and weasels. But
don’t any one hurt my friends!”

Thus Fleet Foot and her fawns were allowed
to live happily on, as season followed
season in the good green woods.

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