Fragmentary pictures projected themselves in Gurri’s memory. She remembered the warrior’s cry of the great horned owl; the roaring snarl He gave as He leaped at the poacher. Yet this was different. The stag’s challenge sprang from pride, not wrath. He seemed to say:
“I am worthy of my wives. Does any dare deny it?”
It stirred her like the stories of remembered heroes, the figures who were legend in the forest. A shudder, not of fear but of excitement, raised the hair along her spine.
Faline said falteringly, “We’d better go now.”
Geno glanced across the clearing. “No,” he replied. “We’re better off where we are just now. Look.”
It was clear that he was right. From the other side of the clearing, another stag entered, a fine animal with a crown of sixteen points and a hide that seemed to have the supple sheen of youth.
The five hinds shifted uneasily, looking first to the right and then to the left. They gathered together, their dark eyes glowing.
“Are they afraid?” whispered Geno.
Even in Faline’s voice there was a new expectancy that almost overcame her fear.
“No,” she replied, “they are proud.”
The second stag did not answer the challenge of the first. Instead he regarded his adversary silently, with eyes that blazed.
Suddenly, as though uplifted by some gigantic hand, the harvest moon rose above the trees. Darkness had come on silent feet. The tilting ground was lighted with silver. The palisades of trees were black and still.
As though at some given word, the adversaries couched their antlers and rushed on each other. There was a fearful shock of impact. They drew away again, miraculously whole, but not so far apart this time.
They feinted at each other, glistening eyes aroll, breath coming short and harsh. They circled back and forth, legs like strong pillars binding them to earth, each seeking the other’s unprotected flank. They clashed again, skull meeting skull.
Faline said breathlessly, “We must go. This is the time.”
Silently she stole away with Geno following; but Gurri could not move. She was deaf and blind to everything save the excitement of this mighty battle.
They were striving now like wrestlers, head to head, horns interlaced, neck muscles writhing silver in the moonlight.
Breath seemed to be torn in rags from their heaving chests. It jetted from distended nostrils like plumes of morning mist.
The stranger gave ground suddenly; but not from weakness: it was a trick. Yet it proved his undoing. The challenger was too old a warrior. He turned the disadvantage of his stumble into an added force of charge. His great head with its crown of gleaming points swung upward in a ripping blow. It caught and tangled with the other’s antlers, but the impact was so great that the brain was stunned.
A second great stroke, and the stranger’s spirit broke. Like a startled hare the beaten stag turned to find a refuge in flight.
The victor raised his head high in the moonlight. The monstrous sound of triumph burst from his throat like a clap of exultant thunder.
Almost in a trance, Gurri followed her mother’s trail. The trees, some of them already bare of leaves, pressed around her as though the forest itself had become a crowded place of antlers.
She did not notice the shadow of the defeated stag until she heard his roar. Resentment bade him attack something, anything. He saw Gurri moving. He charged.
Gurri took to her heels, as fast as the hare. She steered a flying, zigzag course where the trees grew thickest and where her small size gave her the advantage of being able to weave quickly in and out. The stag, still dazed, was not so agile. He finally gave up the chase with a disappointed bellow.
Bambi came leaping through the trees. He stopped when the stag retreated and gazed at his daughter. She could sense how stern he was.
“You almost paid the penalty of your foolishness,” he began; but the crack of a shot interrupted him.
In an overhanging treetop a magpie screeched, “It’s the King. The thunder-stick killed the King.”
Bambi delicately tested the air.
“Yes,” he said, “and it might have been you. Go to your mother at once and beg her to pardon you.”
Ashamed, Gurri went in the direction he indicated. She had had enough of Kings, and yet, she thought, perhaps it was better for this King to die than to live on in the shame and shadow of defeat.
Chapter Fifteen
THE AIR ABOVE THE FOREST was like a still, icy pool. In scurrying swarms the leaves fell from the trees and piled in drifts around the boles. Crisp and dry, they crackled when the lightest-footed creature walked on them. Even the hare and the squirrel left their wake of rustling sound.
“This is wonderful protection,” Faline said. “It wouldn’t much matter about the bare thickets if these leaves remained.”
“Do they go then?” Geno queried.
“When the rain falls, they turn soft,” Faline replied, “and then no hoofbeat makes a sound in them.”
The stillness threatened rain, and soon it came: at first a trickle that was like a weeping on the earth, and then a steady downpour that went on day and night. The leaves became a sodden pulp, pressing close to earth, forming a blanket that would protect the lesser plants from winter’s ice.
Life for the roe-deer became a soaking, cold discomfort. When the wind came, they were hard pressed for shelter from it, but Nature, which protected the earth with a warm cloth of leaves, also remembered them. They put on heavy winter coats, not bright red like their summer ones, but thick and dun to match the earth.
“My goodness,” Geno exclaimed, “it’s a good thing I’ve got this coat. I was ready to freeze to death.”
Gurri strove to get a look at her own by peering over her shoulder.
“Is it just like yours?” she demanded anxiously.
“A shade lighter perhaps. It looks very well on you.”
Gurri laughed, shaking the rain-drops off her back.
“You must be growing up, if you’re beginning to flatter!”
Her brother looked sheepish. “No, I mean it. . . .”
“Wait till you see Lana’s. She must look wonderful!”
Faline came trotting toward them.
“What are you two arguing about?”
Gurri gave Geno a mischievous glance which he pretended not to notice.
“It’s the grass,” he complained. “It tastes sour.”
“It tastes more sour when there’s none!” Faline told him. “It’s better on the ridges, sometimes, where the wind can’t get at it.”
“I don’t believe I care for any more.” Geno laid his ears back sulkily. “I’m going home. It’s nearly time, anyway.”
Yet when he got to the clearing, he could not sleep. He felt depressed by everything: by his thoughts, by the black, stark branches of the empty trees.
“I should think you’d need your leaves when it gets so cold,” he said to them. “It seems a shame to take them from you.”
In thinking of them, he forgot himself. A watery ray of sun seeped through their branches and again he seemed to hear them talking.
The oak said, stretching himself until his branches creaked:
“Well, another summer over! I shall take a long nap.”
“When I’ve got rid of this last twigful of leaves,” the beech yawned, “I’ll be joining you.”
The shadow of the oak kept the full impact of the wind and rain from the poison ivy. It, too, still bore an unhealthy-looking leaf or two.
“It’s all very well for you,” it said bitterly. “I’ve got to die right down to the ground.”
The sapling quivered. “I’ll be glad of your company in the spring.”
“You!” the poison ivy sneered. “One good gale and you’ll be out of the ground—if the ice doesn’t get you first.”
The oak said, without rancor, “Be careful! I have a root very near you. I think sometimes that if I were to strangle you the forest would be a be
tter place.”
“Is that so! Well, let me tell you, you’ll have to strangle the sapling first. We’re pretty well tied up together.”
“It’s the only reason I leave you alive,” the oak said. “The sapling may have a part to play in our scheme of things.”
“It’s very kind of you,” the sapling said. “I had come to the conclusion that I was just a nuisance.”
The poison ivy tightened its tendrils irritably. “Don’t you see, stupid, they’re just teasing you? Big, rich trees like the oak and the maple can afford to toss you a crumb of comfort once in a while. Why, the forest’s full of undernourished specimens like you! And do you know why you’re undernourished? Because these aristocrats gobble everything there is into their own greedy roots. Do you feel this ray of sunshine that’s shining now? Of course you don’t! You should wish an ivy on the oak to strangle him.”
The sapling shifted its thin branches uneasily. “I admit I’ve wondered sometimes,” it muttered.
A splendid pine that generally maintained unyielding silence broke in haughtily.
“I’m not as old as the oak,” it said, “but I’ll tell you this, sapling, if it means anything to you. My grandfather told me, when I was a seedling, that he remembered the oak when it was a little straggler hard pressed to draw a living from the ground near the biggest elm this forest has ever known.”
“That’s so,” the oak admitted sleepily, “and then one day an illness came and struck the elm down, so I grew until I became what I am now.”
The moss which thickly clothed the trunk of the oak whispered softly. “It’s true,” it said; “it’s in our annals.”
“Of course it’s true,” the oak said. “And let me tell you, sapling, lightning can strike me any time as it struck the poplar, and then you’ll have to give your mind to growing. So throw down a root or two, get rid of the poison ivy yourself, and wait.”
Geno said dreamily, “Aren’t you afraid of death, oak? How can you speak so casually about it?”
The trees creaked their bare branches until it seemed to Geno that they must be laughing.
“Death?” they said. “How is it death to return to earth again? Our seed can grow from us. We shall return.”
“That’s all very well,” murmured Geno, “but . . .”
A soughing sound, like the beginning of a snore, ran through the forest. It was not Geno. It must have been the oak.
Chapter Sixteen
THE WINTRY SUN ENDURED A day or two before a dull cloud heaved itself above the mountains to the east and, like a spreading stain, engulfed the sky. An icy wind blew drearily, in weary gusts.
Gurri, Geno, Lana and Boso shivered in the meadow by the pool. The water was dark; it stirred into sullen ripples and around its boundaries there were already scales of ice.
A robin perched on a branch of the apple-tree, his feathers ruffled, his red chest blazing.
“No need to look so down in the mouth,” he chirruped. “Things’ll get worse before they get better.”
“I don’t know what it is about that tree,” Geno grumbled, “that makes everything that sits in it talk in proverbs.”
“It’s easier than thinking,” the robin stated.
“Thinking’s so much warmer,” Gurri said.
“Maybe it is. But if you’d blow out your feathers as I do and whistle once in a while, you wouldn’t need to think so much.”
“We can’t whistle and we haven’t any feathers,” Boso put in.
“If I had a red blouse like yours—” Lana shivered—“I’d feel warmer too, even without whistling.”
“You can’t have everything, I suppose,” Gurri said. “Lana’s got a nice brown coat, hasn’t she, Geno?”
Geno said nothing, but he breathed so hard on a piece of ice that he was able to get a good-sized drink from the edge of the pool. A flurry of wind carried a scampering flock of late-falling leaves into a pile around the apple-tree.
“It’s an ill wind that blows no tree any good,” chuckled the robin, and flew away.
“The robin’s quite right,” Rolla said, joining the children and nuzzling Gurri affectionately. Boso’s narrow escape from death had drawn them all more closely together than ever before. “If we are patient and careful, we shall pull through the winter all right. Why, Faline and I don’t like to remember how many we’ve been through.”
Faline said, rather peevishly, “I don’t like them any better as time goes on. And now the wind’s dropping. You know what that means.”
Rolla looked up at the sky. “Yes,” she agreed gravely, “I know.”
“What does it mean?” Boso asked.
“Snow.” Faline sampled the still air. “Yes, it’s coming.”
“Snow! Are we really going to see snow?” Geno was quite excited at the approach of this thing which, for so long, had interested him.
A first pale flake lighted on Faline’s nose. “Yes,” she said, tasting it, “this is snow.”
Like the blackbird’s first trial notes, the flakes came stealing through the darkness.
“How wonderful it makes you look,” Geno said to Lana; and Gurri cried:
“Have you tasted it? It’s not like anything you can imagine.”
The screech-owl passed above them, flying hard for warmth and safety.
“It’s a new taste,” he cried. “Tangy, flavorful . . .”
For several days snow fell all the time. For the deer it was no longer a joking matter. Belly-deep, it covered all their earth, blotting out everything that was edible.
With painful leaps, Faline led them to places where it piled less deeply. There they scraped with hoofs ill adapted to the purpose until they discovered some mouthful of sour, half-frozen moss. Gradually they grew thinner. They said little, one to the other, saving their breath for the business of staying alive.
Even the birds kept a sullen silence. Sparrows, usually so lively, perched dejectedly on the naked trees, sleepy with cold.
Finally the brown He came. He built long shelters and erected racks. The sound and scent of Him were constant. Then, when His work was finished, He returned with millet for the pheasants, clover and ripened chestnuts for the deer.
Faline, Gurri and Geno were forced to wait for the Kings to eat their fill before they went near this bounty; but the sparrows and the robins pecked with cheerful impudence among the grain without a by-your-leave to anyone.
Gurri said one day, before a squirrel interrupted her, “I don’t understand about Him. When things are bad, all He seems to think about is keeping us alive; and when things are good, it’s the thunder-stick!”
Geno was thinking about this when a squirrel came bounding down from his home in an oak.
“Hide!” he squeaked. “Oh, my tail and forepaws, hide!”
He streaked into the topmost branches of the mighty pine, hung there a moment and swung into the willowy branches of a near-by birch.
Before Geno and Gurri could follow his advice, a creature they had never seen before streaked past them in pursuit. It was smaller than a fox, more the size of a hare, but rounder and more supple. It was black as night, with glaring, amber eyes. It raced up the pine, its claws scraping at the bark. The squirrel showed himself a master strategist. With nimble bounds he swung himself from tree to tree, using only the thinnest twigs to support himself until he found the safety of his home in the oak.
The black marauder remained quiet in the branches of the pine for some time, as if considering a further course of action. Then, suddenly, it dashed to the ground and disappeared.
“What on earth was that?” demanded Geno, trembling.
The squirrel came to the entrance of his hole in the oak. Never had the roe-deer seen a squirrel so upset.
“I’ll tell you what that was,” he chattered feverishly. “That was the cat. I’ve seen him around once before, but never, glory be, so close!”
“Cat is the opposite of dog!” Geno murmured, remembering the screech-owl’s words.
?
??And curiosity kills it,” Gurri added.
“What did you say?” asked the squirrel. “What kills it?”
“Curiosity,” Gurri repeated.
“Good gracious,” the squirrel muttered, his eyes big with hope, “do you suppose we could find one around here?”
“I don’t think curiosity is a thing,” Geno hazarded.
“Of course it isn’t,” Gurri said scornfully. “It’s something we all have, like smell or hope. Father says I’ve got too much of it.”
“Who told you about curiosity and about its being bad for the cat?”
“The screech-owl, I think.”
“Oh!” The squirrel patted his stomach nervously. “Well, if Bambi says you’ve got too much of it and you could spare me a little, perhaps the screech-owl would tell me how to use it to kill the cat.” He bobbed back into his hole. “I’d be very much obliged,” he called out to them.
“Perhaps it’s gone, anyway,” Geno said hopefully. “The squirrel’s getting on, and if he’s only seen it once . . . Do you think it would attack us?”
“It looked rather small.” Gurri sighed. “But you can never tell. I think we should be careful.”
It was unusual for Gurri to talk of care, but the sight of the cat, black as a demon, and with dreadful, flashing eyes, had impressed her deeply. Faline was glad that this was so, when the cat’s continued presence in their neighborhood became more dolefully evident. First they heard the death-cry of a bird and then the sharp scream of a tortured hare.
When they heard this pitiful cry, both Geno and Gurri knew unbearable suspense.
“Do you suppose it can be the hare who lives on the path?” Geno faltered.
“Oh,” cried Gurri, “that would be too terrible. We must go and see.”
When they reached the place where the hare lived, they saw a flurry in the snow.
“Are you all right, hare?” Gurri asked softly.
“Eh, what’s that?” came a well-remembered voice. “Oh, it’s you, my dear! I swear I hardly recognize my friends these days, really I don’t.”