CHAPTER XI.--SPECKLED TROUT.
The still warmth of Indian summer passed, with its dreamy days and itscrisp nights ablaze with twinkling stars.
And Fleet Foot left the fawns to shift more and more forthemselves,--though they still followed her about. At first they werepuzzled and a little hurt by her growing indifference. Then, as theybegan to feel the strength of their coming buck-hood, they began toenjoy their taste of freedom.
Indeed, the little rascals even began to watch the bucks, (their bigcousins and uncles), who were returning in little bands from theirsummer's wanderings. Someday they, too, would have those lordly antlers,and they, too, could join their bachelor explorations, while the doesand younger fawns remained safely behind in the low-lands.
Now no longer could they hear Vesper Sparrow trilling in the meadows andlocusts twanging in the tree-tops. The brook beds were drying, 'and thedeer now pastured along the sedgy shore-line of Lone Lake or splashedknee-deep in the shallows, while here and there the scarlet of a mapletold of approaching winter.
No longer did the gabbling of countless ducks fill their ears when thepink sunsets tinted the Lake. Instead, there were many V-shaped flocksconstantly migrating to the Southland, where the waters would notfreeze.
Now it was that the speckled trout, whom all summer long they hadwatched flashing silvery through the shallows, began putting on theircoats of many colors.--At least the bride-grooms did. The prospectivebrides remained a quiet brown, for reasons the fawns were soon to learn.(For October is the month when trout start housekeeping together.)
In the early summer the fawns had watched these same finny fellowsracing and leaping up the water-falls to the rapids. With the long, hotdays, they had taken to the deep, shadowy pools--those watery cavernsthat afford such peaceful coolness everywhere along Beaver Brook.
Now as the woods turned red and gold, the trout changed their creamcolored vests to the most vivid orange, which looked gay enough withtheir red and white fins.
Their coats were still olive-green, mottled with darker splotches, andon their sides the green melted into yellow, with the little red spotsand speckles that give the trout their name.
Their thousands of tiny scales were like suits of mail,--which came invery handy when they fought, as you shall see.
Now the fawns noticed that the larger and brighter colored fish wereprospecting around in the shallows, where the water ran fastest,shoveling the gravel about with their bony noses, aided by their tails.Each trout soon had a little nest scooped out in the stream bed, andover it he stood guard, (or perhaps we ought to say swam guard),defending his homestead against all comers.
Sometimes a larger trout would come by and try to steal the nest of asmaller fish; and then what a fight they had! How they butted each otherabout, ramming each other's soft sides, and even, at times, biting eachother on the lip. It must have hurt dreadfully, because each trout had amouthful of the sharpest teeth, that turned backward, so that when theycaught a worm he was hooked as surely as he would be on the end of afish-line.
In trout-land, you know, it is the father of the family that makes thenest. He it is who wears the gayest clothing, too,--because if themother were too bright colored, her enemies could see her on her nest.
Once the nests were ready the mother trout came swimming upstream andpromptly set to work filling them with leathery yellow-brown eggs, whichthey covered with gravel so that no pike or other cannibal of theriver's bottom could find and make a breakfast off of them.
The fawns marveled as they watched, day after day, till at last thetrout all went back into deep water for the winter, leaving the eggsbehind them. And Fleet Foot explained how, next spring, each leatherybrown egg that had escaped the cannibal fish and the muskrats would beburst open by the baby trout inside, and out would wiggle the teeniest,weeniest troutlet you can possibly imagine!
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