It was one of those breezy days when white wind clouds piled up against the sky, and patches of shadow traveled across the mountain-sides.
Fleet Foot had decided to take the fawns to Mountain Pond, in the pass between Mount Olaf and Old Bald-face, a peak that had been burned bare of trees by a forest fire, and now grew nothing much save blue-berries for the bears to feast on.
Fleet Foot wasn’t a bit afraid of bears at this time of year, knowing how greatly they prefer a vegetarian diet, though, at that, she didn’t intend to go too near. (After all, the steep gulch of Beaver Brook Bed lay 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 mothers gossiped over their cuds. The cool breeze ruffled their fur delightfully, and they found enough shade in the patch of woods that huddled in the head of the gulch.
As the sun neared the tops of the purple peaks that faded away to the west, the little group started back down the trail to where there was more herbage to browse upon, Fleet Foot lingering along to allow the fawns plenty of time to pick out a sure footing. For it was their first trip over this particular trail.
Carefully they wound over a great over-hanging boulder, on the edge of which they paused to peer, with braced hoofs, over the precipice, which here dropped sheer to the rocks below. Just beyond, the first falls of Beaver Brook dashed green-white over the ledges.
Then Fleet Foot hurried on to the foot of the falls, where one might take a shower bath in the spray.
“Come on, children,” she whistled over her shoulder, her eyes on the path ahead. And the tinkle of the falling water filled her ears till she could not have heard their foot-steps following, had she tried.
But fawns will be fawns. And the youngsters stopped to watch a queer shadow that now danced across their path. Cloud shadows they had watched all day, but this one was different. In the first place, it was such a tiny thing,—for a cloud. And it danced about in the most amusing manner,—much faster than any cloud shadow they had seen before. In fact, it seemed to be going around and around them in big circles. And it looked exactly as if the little cloud had wings like a bird.
Alas for two such little helpless ones!—Had they but looked above their heads, instead of at the circling shadow, they would have discovered that 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 having fawn for supper!