The still warmth of Indian summer passed, with its dreamy days and its
crisp nights ablaze with twinkling stars.
And Fleet Foot left the fawns to shift more and more for
themselves,--though they still followed her about. At first they were
puzzled and a little hurt by her growing indifference. Then, as they
began to feel the strength of their coming buck-hood, they began to
enjoy their taste of freedom.
Indeed, the little rascals even began to watch the bucks, (their big
cousins and uncles), who were returning in little bands from their
summer's wanderings. Someday they, too, would have those lordly antlers,
and they, too, could join their bachelor explorations, while the does
and younger fawns remained safely behind in the low-lands.
Now no longer could they hear Vesper Sparrow trilling in the meadows and
locusts twanging in the tree-tops. The brook beds were drying, 'and the
deer now pastured along the sedgy shore-line of Lone Lake or splashed
knee-deep in the shallows, while here and there the scarlet of a maple
told of approaching winter.
No longer did the gabbling of countless ducks fill their ears when the
pink sunsets tinted the Lake. Instead, there were many V-shaped flocks
constantly migrating to the Southland, where the waters would not
freeze.
Now it was that the speckled trout, whom all summer long they had
watched flashing silvery through the shallows, began putting on their
coats of many colors.--At least the bride-grooms did. The prospective
brides 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 fellows
racing and leaping up the water-falls to the rapids. With the long, hot
days, they had taken to the deep, shadowy pools--those watery caverns
that afford such peaceful coolness everywhere along Beaver Brook.
Now as the woods turned red and gold, the trout changed their cream
colored vests to the most vivid orange, which looked gay enough with
their red and white fins.
Their coats were still olive-green, mottled with darker splotches, and
on their sides the green melted into yellow, with the little red spots
and speckles that give the trout their name.
Their thousands of tiny scales were like suits of mail,--which came in
very handy when they fought, as you shall see.
Now the fawns noticed that the larger and brighter colored fish were
prospecting 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, and
over 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 a
smaller fish; and then what a fight they had! How they butted each other
about, ramming each other's soft sides, and even, at times, biting each
other on the lip. It must have hurt dreadfully, because each trout had a
mouthful of the sharpest teeth, that turned backward, so that when they
caught a worm he was hooked as surely as he would be on the end of a
fish-line.
In trout-land, you know, it is the father of the family that makes the
nest. He it is who wears the gayest clothing, too,--because if the
mother were too bright colored, her enemies could see her on her nest.
Once the nests were ready the mother trout came swimming upstream and
promptly set to work filling them with leathery yellow-brown eggs, which
they covered with gravel so that no pike or other cannibal of the
river's bottom could find and make a breakfast off of them.
The fawns marveled as they watched, day after day, till at last the
trout all went back into deep water for the winter, leaving the eggs
behind them. And Fleet Foot explained how, next spring, each leathery
brown egg that had escaped the cannibal fish and the muskrats would be
burst open by the baby trout inside, and out would wiggle the teeniest,
weeniest troutlet you can possibly imagine!
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