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!
----