CHAPTER IX--THE OGRE OF THE AIR.
It was one of those breezy days when white wind clouds piled up againstthe sky, and patches of shadow traveled across the mountain-sides.
Fleet Foot had decided to take the fawns to Mountain Pond, in the passbetween Mount Olaf and Old Bald-face, a peak that had been burned bareof trees by a forest fire, and now grew nothing much save blue-berriesfor the bears to feast on.
Fleet Foot wasn't a bit afraid of bears at this time of year, knowinghow greatly they prefer a vegetarian diet, though, at that, she didn'tintend to go too near. (After all, the steep gulch of Beaver Brook Bedlay 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 mothersgossiped over their cuds. The cool breeze ruffled their furdelightfully, and they found enough shade in the patch of woods thathuddled in the head of the gulch.
As the sun neared the tops of the purple peaks that faded away to thewest, the little group started back down the trail to where there wasmore herbage to browse upon, Fleet Foot lingering along to allow thefawns plenty of time to pick out a sure footing. For it was their firsttrip over this particular trail.
Carefully they wound over a great over-hanging boulder, on the edge ofwhich they paused to peer, with braced hoofs, over the precipice, whichhere dropped sheer to the rocks below. Just beyond, the first falls ofBeaver Brook dashed green-white over the ledges.
Then Fleet Foot hurried on to the foot of the falls, where one mighttake a shower bath in the spray.
"Come on, children," she whistled over her shoulder, her eyes on thepath ahead. And the tinkle of the falling water filled her ears till shecould not have heard their foot-steps following, had she tried.
But fawns will be fawns. And the youngsters stopped to watch a queershadow that now danced across their path. Cloud shadows they had watchedall day, but this one was different. In the first place, it was such atiny thing,--for a cloud. And it danced about in the most amusingmanner,--much faster than any cloud shadow they had seen before. Infact, it seemed to be going around and around them in big circles. Andit looked exactly as if the little cloud had wings like a bird.
Alas for two such little helpless ones!--Had they but looked above theirheads, instead of at the circling shadow, they would have discoveredthat 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 havingfawn for supper!
An ugly fellow was Baldy, with his great curved beak and his greatyellow claws. His body alone was bigger than that of the fawns, and hiswings spread out like the wings of an aeroplane. He was mostly a muddybrown, with white head and fan-spread tail, and he smelled horriblyfishy, for he isn't a bit particular about what he eats, and frequentlystuffs himself so full of the spoiled fish he finds on the shore that hecan't even fly.
The air hissed to his wings.
He waited now till he felt that Fleet Foot was surely too far away tocome to their rescue, should he attack the fawns. For he knew fromexperience that with her sharp hoofs she could put up a fight he wouldrather not face.
For a while he wandered if he should just simply drop down upon one ofthe little fellows and pin his talons into his back, and fly away to hisnest. But it would be awfully heavy to carry and of course it would kickand wriggle, 'till like enough he would be unable to manage hisfeathered aeroplane, and they would run into some jagged rock.
If the fawns had been orphans, he might have killed one right there, andno one would have interfered.
But they were not orphans, and their mother would come racing back andcut him to pieces with those knife-edged fore-hoofs.
Ha! An idea popped into his ugly old head.--He would scare one of thefawns off the edge of the precipice, and it would leap to its death onthe rocks below; and then he could wait till Fleet Foot had gone, forhis feast.
Swooping lower and lower, while still the foolish fawns staredinnocently at the dancing shadow, he suddenly flapped his wings aboutthe tinier fawn, startling him terribly, but not enough to make him backoff the cliff.
Stronger measures must be tried,--and there was no time to waste; for atthe fawn's first bleat of terror, Fleet Foot heard and was now leapinglike the wind, back the trail to his rescue.
Swooping again, Baldy began beating the little fellow with great heavyblows of his middle wing joints. It hurt dreadfully, and the frightenedfawn turned first this way, then that, in his endeavor to get away.Nearer and nearer the edge of the precipice he crowded. Now one hindfoot had actually slipped off the rock face, and he had to struggle toregain his balance.
Then the one thing happened that could have saved him. Fleet Footreached the spot. Rearing furiously on her hind legs, she struck atBaldy'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 slantedswiftly upward, wings hissing, to his granite peak.
The fawn was not seriously hurt,--only terribly frightened. His back wasbruised, but that would heal, and he would be none the worse for hisexperience.
But where was the other fawn?--They found him wedged in between theboulders,--the one place where he could ever have escaped the beat ofthose wings. Fleet Foot praised him mightily for having so much sense,and he felt quite cocky,--though of course his brother was the real heroof the day.
One other danger marred their summer.
Every now and again, as they were passing beneath some low-hangingbranch, they would catch a glimpse of a tawny form flattened along thelimb, watching them with pale yellow eyes that gleamed through narrowedlids.
Perhaps it would be in a deep, dark hemlock thicket, or a cedar swamp,that they would meet the giant cat.
He was a ferocious-looking fellow, was Old Man Lynx, with his great,square, whiskered face, and his ears with their black tassels and theblack stripe down the middle of his back. And my, how his claws crunchedthe bark as he sharpened them! How his whiskers twitched and his mouthwatered as the fawns passed beneath him! He seemed all teeth and claws.
Perhaps the little family would be drowsing peacefully in the shade of along September afternoon when suddenly some spirit of their ancestors,(or was it some guardian angel of their antlered tribe?) would whisper"Danger!" and set their fur to rising along their spines in a coldshiver of nameless fear.
Had Old Man Lynx ever really put it to the test, he could have won outwith Fleet Foot. But he knew the sharp drive of her little hoofs, and hewas terribly afraid of pain. (Did he not wear a great scar in his side,due to an adventure of his rash young days, when a fat buck had givenhim a rip with his antlers?)
Perhaps that was why Fleet Foot always raced away in a wide curve thatpresently brought her back to where she could peer curiously at theinvader of her solitude, without herself being seen.
She used to spy in the same way on Old Man Red Fox, and Frisky, hispromising young hopeful.
In fact, what with Frisky spying on the fawns, and the fawns watchingFrisky, these children of hostile tribes kept pretty close track of oneanother.
The summer passed on the whole, however, with no more adventure than thesound of the lonely "Hoo-woo-o-o-o" of a loon at twilight, or the suddenwhirr of a startled pheasant's wings, or a quarrel between some wickedred squirrel caught robbing a crow's nest. (Or was it a crow that hadrobbed the squirrel's little hoard, and was getting handsomely scoldedfor his villainy?).
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