Now the fighting pair were shouldering each other about roughly with their horns, lips foaming, gasping for breath,--almost locking horns in a butting match. At last the first buck lifted his knife-edged forelegs and struck at the intruder. The next moment he was belling in triumph, for he had cut a great gash in the other's shoulder, and the latter had had enough.
The victor now turned for the look of admiration he felt he ought to find in Fleet Foot's eyes. But instead, he barely caught a glimpse of her dancing away through the thicket, with just one merry backward glance to see if he would race her.
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.