"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 b.u.t.terflies 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 a.s.sured 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!
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.
"h.e.l.lo, 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 pa.s.sing 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 b.u.mble-bee, who b.u.mbled and tumbled among the perfumed spikes of the Solomon"s seals.
Then their ears p.r.i.c.ked 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.
"h.e.l.lo, 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 sh.o.r.e-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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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."