The Adventures of Fleetfoot and Her 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!

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."

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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