The Adventures of Fleetfoot and Her Fawns Part 5

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 pa.s.s 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, suns.h.i.+ny 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 gra.s.s, 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 rea.s.sured 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?" s.h.i.+vered 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 pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e 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.