THE ADVENTURES OF

FLEET FOOT

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

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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

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CONTENTS

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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!

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.”

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.

————

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.

————

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.

————

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!