But he knew where to follow; for there was the faintest, loveliest perfume on the air where she had passed.
The fawns gazed after the pair, as they disappeared, then found themselves alone. All that month, while the woods turned from scarlet and yellow to brown and gray, and the nights grew frosty under the stars, the fawns were left very much to their own devices. But they were well capable of looking out for themselves at this time of year, for they found a beech wood and began fattening on the beech nuts against the increasing chill.
Their coats were changing from tawny red to bluish gray, and their fur thickening to keep a layer of warm air next their skins. There were coarser hairs growing out as well, that helped to shed the rain. Their new fur glistened in the sunshine, and the fawns raced and hurdled in the keen air, and took running high jumps to work off their surplus energy.
Then Fleet Foot and the winning buck returned, and with them came two of the young bucks who had watched the battle. The six ranged happily from cranberry bog to evergreen swamp, feasting, feasting, feasting on mosses, lichens, anything and everything that grew, till their sides rounded with their winter plumpness, and a layer of warm fat lay just underneath their skins.
But with the first powdering of snow came a new danger. The hunting season had opened, and to the huntsman our little family meant merely a few pounds of venison for his table, and the pride of a pair of antlers to hang his gun upon.
To the buck, however, one little bullet might in an instant rob him of life and the keen joy of his airy speed, and all the glad wonderful world about them, and leave his family defenseless through the long, hard winter.
He was therefore more than wary. With the first crash of the Hired Man’s thunder stick, he led his little herd to a distant cedar swamp, where they were soon joined by other groups as nervous as themselves at this new peril that could pick them out and wound them from so far away.
Sometimes, even then, a member of the band would have a race for his life.—And sometimes he never came back! But Fleet Foot and her five pulled through in safety.
Then the thunder-stick ceased to roar in the woods about Mount Olaf. The “season” was over, and the entire, band set about making active preparations for the on-coming winter. Already there were chill, drizzly days when all the world looked gray.
The former rivals now chewed their cuds together as peacefully as you please, the bucks sleeping on one side of the thicket, the does and their fawns on the other.