"I don't think you can get at them in the tree. You'll have to soar up
above and catch one of them on the wing when they fly away. Think you
can get up that high?"
He looked around slowly at the breeze playing in the branches and
dancing along the hillside grass. It was as if he had been flying a
thousand years and was bringing antique wisdom to bear. "I can get up
there. I can stay for a while. How long will they be in the tree?"
"Chances are they won't stay long. Keep your eye on the tree in case
they leave while you are climbing."
* * * * *
He ran to a nearby oak and clambered aloft. Presently he launched
himself, streaked down-valley a way and caught a warm updraft on a
hillside. In no time, he was up about two hundred feet. He began
criss-crossing the ridge, working his way back to us.
The two girls were watching him intently. They came over to me
wonderingly, stopping now and then to watch him. When they were
standing beside me, they said nothing. They shaded their eyes with
tiny hands and watched him as he passed directly above us at about two
hundred and fifty feet. One of the girls, with her eyes fast on his
soaring planes, reached out and grasped my sleeve tightly.
He flashed high above the stream and hung behind the crest of the hill
where the doves rested. I heard their mourning from the oak tree. It
occurred to me they would not leave that safety while the hawklike
silhouette of the volpla marred the sky so near.
I took the girl's hand from my sleeve and spoke to her, pointing as I
did so. "He is going to catch a bird. The bird is in that tree. You
can make the bird fly so that he can catch it. Look here." I got up and
found a stick. "Can you do this?"
I threw the stick up into a tree near us. Then I found her a stick. She
threw it better than I had expected.
"Good, pretty one. Now run across the stream and up to that tree and
throw a stick into it."
She climbed skillfully into the tree beside us and launched herself
across the stream. She swooped up the opposite hillside and landed
neatly in the tree where the doves rested.
The birds came out of the tree, climbing hard with their graceful
strokes.
I looked back, as did the girl remaining beside me. The soaring volpla
half closed his planes and started dropping. He became a golden flash
across the sky.
The doves abruptly gave up their hard climbing and fell away with
swiftly beating wings. I saw one of the male volpla's planes open a
little. He veered giddily in the new direction and again dropped like a
molten arrow.
The doves separated and began to zigzag down the valley. The volpla did
something I would not have anticipated--he opened his planes and shot
lower than the bird he was after, then swept up and intercepted the
bird's crossward flight.
I saw the planes close momentarily. Then they opened again and the bird
plummeted to a hillside. The volpla landed gently atop the hill and
stood looking back at us.
The volpla beside me danced up and down shrieking in a language all her
own. The girl who had raised the birds from the tree volplaned back to
us, yammering like a bluejay.
* * * * *
It was a hero's welcome. He had to walk back, of course--he had no
way to carry such a load in flight. The girls glided out to meet
him. Their lavish affection held him up for a time, but eventually he
strutted in like every human hunter.
They were raptly curious about the bird. They poked at it, marveled at
its feathers and danced about it in an embryonic rite of the hunt. But
presently the male turned to me.
"We _eat_ this?"
I laughed and took his tiny, four-fingered hand. In a sandy spot
beneath a great tree that overhung the creek, I built a small fire for
them. This was another marvel, but first I wanted to teach them how to
clean the bird. I showed them how to spit it and turn it over their
fire.
Later, I shared a small piece of the meat in their feast. They were
gleeful and greasily amorous during the meal.
When I had to leave, it was dark. I warned them to stand watches, keep
the fire burning low and take to the tree above if anything approached.
The male walked a little away with me when I left the fire.
I said again, "Promise me you won't leave here until we've made you
ready for it."
"We like it here. We will stay. Tomorrow you bring more of us?"
"Yes. I will bring many more of you, if you promise to keep them all
here in this woods until they're ready to leave."
"I promise." He looked up at the night sky and, in the firelight, I saw
his wonder. "You say we came from there?"
"The old ones of your kind told me so. Didn't they tell you?"
"I can't remember any old ones. You tell me."
"The old ones told me you came long before the red men in a ship from
the stars." Standing there in the dark, I had to grin, visioning the
Sunday supplements that would be written in about a year, maybe even
less.
He looked into the sky for a long time. "Those little lights are the
stars?"
"That's right."
"Which star?"
I glanced about and presently pointed over a tree. "From Venus." Then
I realized I had blundered by passing him an English name. "In your
language, Pohtah."