“I tell you what,” said the Farmer to his son next day. “I’ve a plan that I think will interest you.”
“What is it?” asked the Boy, eagerly.
“Just this: I’ve plenty of hay this year, (more than enough for the stock,) and I’m going to pitch a little of it out, after this, every time the storms make it hard for the deer. I declare, I can’t bear to think of their being so starved!” And he gazed thoughtfully out over the drifting snow, as he thought how Fleet Foot had braved everything to reach their hay-stack.
“Hurray!” shouted the Boy. “May I pitch some out right now? Poor things, there wasn’t much they could reach between the bars,” and he gazed at the dainty footprints the fawns had made the night before.
The deep, dry snow was followed by a freeze that left a glistening crust over every drift. Once more Fleet Foot and the rest of the deer could run nimbly on their spreading hoofs; and young Frisky Fox and Mother Grouse Hen and Mammy Cotton tail, the brown bunny, could foot their way across the white expanse in search of food. For they were sure of at least a fighting chance of getting home again.
Fleet Foot and the fawns, returning every night to the hay-stack, with a little band whose sides were as pinched with hunger as their own, now passed Old Man Lynx without a fear. For where there was footing that would bear their weight, they knew they could outspeed him.
Hereafter the snow might whirl and the spruce trees bend and sway in the wind that wailed through their tops, but the white-tailed deer of the woods about Mount Olaf were always sure of a little hay to tide them over the month of hunger.
“Father,” said the Boy, “I’ve made a birthday resolution. I am going to befriend every furred and feathered creature in these woods.”
“All of them?” his Father asked. The Hired Man paused in the smoking of his traps to listen. “You aren’t going to tell us we can’t do any more trapping this winter?”
“You can trap muskrats,” said the Boy thoughtfully. “And, of course, wolves, if any more should come. And weasels—the wicked creatures! They are only cruel, blood-thirsty ruffians who kill without need, just for the love of killing.”