Wood Folk at School | Page 4

and tried to
make my eyes say all sorts of friendly things, the harsh, throaty
K-a-a-a-h! k-a-a-a-h! the danger cry of the deer, burst like a trumpet
blast through the woods, and she leaped back to cover.
At the sound the little ones jumped as if stung, and plunged into the
brush in the opposite direction. But the strange place frightened them;
the hoarse cry that went crashing through the startled woods filled them
with nameless dread. In a moment they were back again, nestling close
against me, growing quiet as the hands stroked their sides without
tremor or hurry.
Around us, out of sight, ran the fear-haunted mother, calling, calling;
now showing her head, with the terror deep in her eyes; now dashing
away, with her white flag up, to show her little ones the way they must
take. But the fawns gave no heed after the first alarm. They felt the
change; their ears were twitching nervously, and their eyes, which had
not yet grown quick enough to measure distances and find their mother
in her hiding, were full of strange terror as they questioned mine. Still,
under the alarm, they felt the kindness which the poor mother,
dog-driven and waylaid by guns, had never known. Therefore they
stayed, with a deep wisdom beyond all her cunning, where they knew
they were safe.
I led them slowly back to their hiding place, gave them a last lick at my
hands, and pushed them gently under the hemlock curtain. When they
tried to come out I pushed them back again. "Stay there, and mind your

mother; stay there, and follow your mother," I kept whispering. And to
this day I have a half belief that they understood, not the word but the
feeling behind it; for they grew quiet after a time and looked out with
wide-open, wondering eyes. Then I dodged out of sight, jumped the
fallen log to throw them off the scent should they come out, crossed the
brook, and glided out of sight into the underbrush. Once safely out of
hearing I headed straight for the open, a few yards away, where the
blasted stems of the burned hillside showed faintly through the green of
the big woods, and climbed, and looked, and changed my position, till
at last I could see the fallen tree under whose roots my little innocents
were hiding.
The hoarse danger cry had ceased; the woods were all still again. A
movement in the underbrush, and I saw the doe glide out beyond the
brook and stand looking, listening. She bleated softly; the hemlock
curtain was thrust aside, and the little ones came out. At sight of them
she leaped forward, a great gladness showing eloquently in every line
of her graceful body, rushed up to them, dropped her head and ran her
keen nose over them, ears to tail and down their sides and back again,
to be sure that they were her own little ones and were not harmed. All
the while the fawns nestled close to her, as they had done a moment
before to me, and lifted their heads to touch her sides with their noses,
and ask in their own dumb way what it was all about, and why she had
run away.
[Illustration: "THE WHITE FLAG SHOWING LIKE A BEACON
LIGHT AS SHE JUMPED AWAY"]
Then, as the smell of the man came to her from the tainted underbrush,
the absolute necessity of teaching them their neglected second lesson
before another danger should find them swept over her in a flood. She
sprang aside with a great bound, and the hoarse K-a-a-a-h! k-a-a-a-h!
crashed through the woods again. Her tail was straight up, the white
flag showing like a beacon light as she jumped away. Behind her the
fawns stood startled a moment, trembling with a new wonder. Then
their flags went up too, and they wabbled away on slender legs through
the tangles and over the rough places of the wood, bravely following

their leader. And I, watching from my hiding, with a vague regret that
they could never again be mine, not even for a moment, saw only the
crinkling lines of underbrush and here and there the flash of a little
white flag. So they went up the hill and out of sight.
First, lie still; and second, follow the white flag. When I saw them
again it needed no danger cry of the mother to remind them of these
two things that every fawn must know who would live to grow up in
the big woods.
[Illustration]

A Cry in the Night
[Illustration]
This is the rest of the story, just as I saw it, of the little fawns that I
found under the mossy log by the brook. There were