Part 3

Foolish children we may have been, but we were not cowardly. It never occurred to us to rouse the grown-ups. Leonard was our friend and our responsibility. From my window the two of us crept out on the roof, white nightgowned figures, shaking with cold and excitement. From the roof we dropped easily to the railing of the picket fence at the back of the cabin and from there to the ground.

Like two little white wraiths we crept along in the shadow of the fence until we could see the outlines of the brooder house and the pen which enclosed it. There was a moon, but it was thickly hidden by clouds. All we could distinguish was a dark form against the wire netting, a shape that moved restlessly, now away from the pen, now back to it.

As our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, we saw that Leonard was in the pen outside the brooder house, and we questioned each other silently. Surely no deer would come thus to meet an enemy animal that wanted to destroy.

And then, as if in answer to our question, the clouds parted and a pale moon turned the darkness into half-shadowed light. With the sudden effulgence came the weird gleam of four eyes turned in our direction—for our scent had carried to sensitive nostrils. Brother and I, for an instant, caught each other’s hands and gasped.

Then two of the luminous lights vanished, as the slim animal outside the pen sprang away in great bounds that carried her into the shadows beyond our ken—but not before we had recognized the slim, fleeing form for a doe. We knew it was Leonard’s mother, who had found her baby.

We climbed back into our window as silently as we had left it. Brother in his cot, and I in mine, stared up into the darkness, trying to tell ourselves that ours was the right to keep the fawn we had befriended, yet knowing that the mother heart was calling for the little brown deer whom we loved so well. And we knew that in the end we must relinquish our claim—Leonard, after all, belonged to the woods, and the mother heart of the woods was calling.

Because we loved him so, we tried to pretend, the next day, that the deer we had seen was not Leonard’s mother—that it was merely a friend from the woods who had come down by moonlight to pay a nocturnal call. In our hearts, though, we knew better. Leonard all the day was restless; he pricked his ears continually as if waiting for a voice from the forest. We could scarcely coax him out of his distrait mood, even with a double ration of the chewing gum he loved so well.

The next night sleep was impossible. Though we heard nothing, we knew, somehow, that outside Leonard’s pen was a slim brown body pressed close against the wire netting. We rose, at last, and crept out over the roof and down to the ground. The doe was there, as we had foreseen. At our approach she bounded away with only the faintest rustle of leaves and snapping of twigs to mark her progress. But knowing that she would not go far—that she would come back to her baby—Brother and I went quickly forward and opened the door of the pen.

Leonard came to us and thrust his nose against my hand. We knelt on the ground, putting our arms around him, pressing our faces against his soft, brown neck, telling him with tears behind our whispered words that he must go with his mother, that the danger season was passed, and that he was free to go back to his kindred.

We stole away, but Leonard followed us, as if asking where we went and why he was not to go with us. For the first time we pushed him away from us, though you can not know what it meant to us to do it. He stood still then, as if wondering, perhaps a little hurt, and we, not daring to look back, ran for the fence, clambered upon it, and gained the roof.

Once there, we could not resist watching a bit, and it was not long before the two luminous eyes gleamed from the underbrush. Then we saw a shapely, dark body come slowly into the open, and Leonard, with light, springing bounds, had rushed to meet his mother. For an instant we saw again the glowing orbs of two pairs of eyes. Then the lights vanished; two dark bodies moved side by side into the blackness of the woods; we heard the light crackle of underbrush; and then silence.

Silently we crept into our beds, and long afterward I heard Brother’s choking whisper coming through the darkness—my own face was buried in the pillow:

“I know—Leonard’s going to miss—his—gum—”

We cried ourselves to sleep that night, thinking of an empty pen and of a little brown friend gone from us forever.

_Part Four_ THE FAERY NIGHT

There came a night in June when the moon rose a great, yellow ball of light over the fir trees that crowned the hill. It was a night for adventure, for magic and mystery. And I, wide awake on the camp cot in the front yard of the cabin, listened to the faint lapping of the water upon the beach not a single stone’s-throw away, and to the wordless song of the pine trees as the night wind swept drowsy fingers across their branches—harps that woke to melody only when the daylight had gone and the stars stole out to listen to their song. The puffy maple tree which guarded the little log cabin was murmuring softly to itself, its leaves nodding to each other as if confiding some wonderful secret, and the giant fir tree on the other side of the porch stood erect and motionless as if it were a sentinel and thus disdained to gossip.

From far out in the bay came faint splashes which told of salmon leaping, and now and then the distant cry of a night bird, so faint as to be only the shadow of a sound. In the air was the smell of grass freshly wet with dew, of pine trees drenched and glistening, of wild syringa on the hillside, and, more pronounced, the scent of the tiny Mother of God roses that clambered over the cabin in a white and fragrant wreath.

The stars were bright as the tears of angels, from which the Chinook Indians say they were made, and the moon in their midst flooded hill and bay with a silvery light made more intense by the blackness of the forest.

Somehow there was a hint of expectancy in the air, as if the summer had looked forward to this one night and was a-thrill with the joy of its coming. I could not sleep, for I was attuned to the things of the out-of-doors, and I, too, was a-thrill with the expectation of something—I knew not what.

I watched Altair rise over the “Happy Family” pines with his two attendant stars that are like the outspread wings of an eagle, and I kissed my hand to him in greeting.

A star fell, leaving a trailing line of light in its wake, and suddenly I felt a little sad, for a Siwash Indian chief had told us that when a star fell, it was a flower tossed by the hand of a good spirit from Paradise to ease the pain of a soul passing out into the Great Darkness.

Then Amarillo, the big yellow cat, padded across the grass with little throaty mewings of greeting, and I felt the light thud of his body as he leaped on the bed and settled himself at my feet. He, too, was restless, for he would raise and lower his tawny head and would sometimes turn his golden eyes upon me as if seeking an explanation for the thrill that was in the night.

So I was not surprised when I heard a faint, familiar scraping which told me that Brother had climbed from his bedroom window and was sliding down the roof to the fence.

Since we had only one camp cot, Brother and I must needs take turns sleeping out of doors. And although this night was mine, I knew that he, too, had felt its magic and could not abide the stuffy darkness of the cabin when the world outside was bathed in moonlight. He came tiptoeing around the corner of the house very quietly so as not to waken the grown-ups, and Amarillo purred loudly as he saw him come, and dug his claws into the bedclothes with contented, prickling sounds.

Brother was fully dressed, and he put his lips close to my ear as he whispered: “Do you know what kind of a night this is?”

“No,” I answered breathlessly.

“A fairy night!” he breathed with awe. “The old fisherman told me that on moonlight nights the fairies dance in the moss ring on the Hill Trail. Come quick, let’s go!”

I needed no second bidding. Even as he spoke, I was drawing over my head the knee-length dress I had worn during the day, and was feeling for my moccasins tucked away from the dew under the rubber covering of the bed.

Hand in hand we slipped out of the yard and up the trail, moving as silently as wraiths. Amarillo followed to the edge of the woods and then slipped away on business of his own.

Up the hill we hurried, up the narrow trail patched with moonlight and shadows. The wet branches of the pines brushed across our faces; our bare legs were swished by fern fronds as we passed. Sometimes a twig crackled underfoot, and now and then we heard a slight rustling in the underbrush where a little animal was moving.

We passed by the spring which gurgled dreamily into the pool shadowed by ferns and alders. A mother deer and her baby were drinking there, and although they turned their great eyes upon us, luminous in the moonlight that sifted through the branches, they did not start or run as we stole by.

The top of the hill was gained at last, and the Hill Trail which we called ours. Well we knew the fairy ring, a circle of moss in a clearing, ringed around with pink twin-flowers and wild strawberry vines, a fitting place for elfin feet to dance on a moonlight night. And as we neared the clearing flooded by the bright moonlight, we trembled with ecstasy and anticipation. That the fairies did dance there we never doubted, but would they reveal themselves to the eyes of mortals, even such friendly mortals as ourselves?

Crouched behind a cedar log and screened by salal bushes, we watched and waited, our eyes glued to the moss ring in the patch of moon silver—but no fairies came.

Just the same it _was_ a fairy night, as you shall see. For presently a little brown bear came out into the clearing, making considerably more noise than his size warranted, sat up on his haunches, and sniffed the breeze questioningly. He nibbled daintily at the leaves of a red huckleberry bush, and having finished his nocturnal repast, walked pigeon-toed over to a cedar tree, scratched his back against it, making rumbling noises of content, and finally raised himself to his full height—which was not so high after all—and marked how tall he was on the shaggy bark of the tree by scratching it deeply with his claws. Then he waddled away in his bow-legged fashion, and we heard the faint crashing of the underbrush as he passed through.

There came a wakeful brown rabbit, who hopped into the very center of the fairy ring, wiggled his ears and nose, and then began to make an elaborate toilet—in honor, we thought, of the elfin ball. He washed his paws with care and gave each tapering ear a thorough massage. Last, he twisted like a contortionist to assure himself that his white knob of a tail was in perfect order, and finally being satisfied with his inspection, he loped leisurely away without so much as the crackle of a twig.

The next two visitors to the moonlit clearing were two baby skunks striped with brown and white and with graceful tufts of white for tails. Strangely enough, Brother and I were not afraid of what might happen should they suddenly be aware of our presence and become frightened, for it seemed to us that we too belonged to the fairy night and that nothing could happen to mar the perfect beauty of it. The little animals played like kittens, dashing out at each other from the shadows and rolling about in mock ferocity, but presently they, too, stole away, silently, as wood creatures move, and we were left alone with the moonlit night and the empty fairy ring.

Then from the direction of the trail came a cry of pain—like a human cry. The spell of the night was shattered, and we gripped each other’s hands and thought of flight. But again came the sound, a whimpering cry like a child in distress, and the fear which had clutched at our hearts vanished as suddenly, for we knew it must be an animal—some woods friend sorely hurt. So without further pause we left the shelter of the log and hurried across the clearing to the trail. The sound came from beyond the “Happy Family” pines, and we hastened toward it.

In the lumber clearing just off the trail we found what we had half expected—a young fox caught in a steel trap by his front paws, and he was whimpering with the pain of it. The dark eyes which he turned toward us showed a frenzied, greenish light, and as we came nearer, he yelped sharply, tugging frantically at the sharp teeth which never relaxed their grip.

The pity in our hearts made us forgetful of his fear, but as we started toward him, he wrenched backward, dragging the heavy trap to the full length of the chain, his small, gray-brown body a-quiver with terror and pain. So then we waited, approaching very quietly and slowly. Finally his struggles ceased from sheer fatigue, and the eyes which he turned upon us were dull and lifeless. Brother tried to hold me back, but I would not have it so, and coming very close to the little fox, I put my hand on his soft, furry head. He did not bite or even cringe. Perhaps his pain was so great that he could suffer no more and so could not be afraid, or perhaps it was because he sensed that my touch was a friendly one and that help was near at hand.

Together Brother and I pried the steel jaws apart, and the little fox, set free, limped away for a few feet and then fell exhausted. So I picked him up, and walking quietly so as not to hurt or alarm him, we sought again the forest pool, mottled now with deep shadows and pale lights. The mother deer and her baby had gone, and in the cool, gurgling water of the little stream we bathed the wounded feet of our friend and named him “Reginald.” We made sure that the paws were not broken, only lacerated by the sharp teeth of the trap, and when he began to stir and move his head in quick jerks from side to side, we set him down on the cool moss. After a little while he commenced to lick the hurt paws, very gently at first and then with increasing confidence, and he did not go away at once. He feared us no more than he would have feared a brother and sister fox. So for an hour, until the moonlight gleams became fainter and the shadows deeper, the three of us lingered by the forest pool. Brother and I pretended that Reginald talked to us and that he could understand what we said to him. And when finally he finished licking his paws and slipped away into the darkness, we regained once more the moonlit Hill Trail and started for home.

But there was one thing we must do, and we turned back to “Reginald’s clearing,” as we called it. In the waning light we found the trap which had so cruelly hurt our little friend, and we unwound the chain from the tree. Into the blackness of the underbrush we flung it and laughed defiantly as we heard it crash in the thicket. Then, as if some avenging power were hard on our heels, we fled down the trail out of the wood and stole into the yard without even the creaking of a gate to betray us.

Thrilled to the very core of my being, I huddled into bed. And Amarillo, who had long since returned, arched his back and yawned widely as if to imply that such a nocturnal excursion was not respectable.

Brother started to tiptoe around to the fence and thus gain the roof and his bedroom, but I stopped him with a sharp hiss, and he tiptoed back to me.

“What shall we say if some hunter asks us about the trap?” I breathed into his ear, and he doubled up and laughed noiselessly.

“We will tell him that anything can happen on a fairy night,” he whispered back and stole away to the fence, while I watched the moon settle behind the distant blue hills, and with the ensuing darkness came the breath of the morning breeze. The fairy night was over.

_Part Five_| THE FRIENDSHIP THAT FAILED

_Part Five_ THE FRIENDSHIP THAT FAILED

On the shores of Puget Sound, where the woods come down to the shore to fraternize with the little white-capped waves of the bay, lived Henry, the heron. How old he was before Brother and I came to know him, we could not tell. But an old-man bird he must have been surely, for his was a knowledge of fishing that comes from long experience.

Every day we would watch him from our little log cabin—watch him sail majestically toward the float, pause directly above, and flap down upon it, using his lanky legs as balancing weights. He would stand there for many moments, turning his head slightly from side to side as if revolving in his mind whether he had done the wise thing in coming, and what his next move ought to be.

Such a deliberate bird Henry seemed, but this apparent deliberation was only one of the tricks of his trade. I am sure that had I been a fish, I would have believed there was nothing to fear from the immobile bunch of gray feathers balanced on two skinny stilt legs, and I would have swum merrily under the very tip of his beak. But Henry’s sharp, black eyes missed nothing, as the hapless fish found to their cost when they ventured too near the surface. With one lightning swoop the great bill cleaved the water, and the next instant a shiny fish was wriggling in his beak.

Sometimes he did his fishing while standing in the water up to his knees—or where his knees would be if herons had such things. With his head drawn in between his feathered shoulders and his long beak sticking out at right angles like a lance at rest, he seemed to be taking a siesta, and only the occasional plunge of his long bill into the water, and the accompanying twinkle of a small silver fish as it flapped in amazement before it slid down into his gullet, proved that he was awake—and hungry.

We gave Henry his name when he was but an acquaintance of ours. We never really hoped to have him for a friend, but we liked him, and we felt that he liked us, too. So when he did his fishing on our float or knee-deep in the water of the little cove before the cabin, we threw scraps of bread to him, which he accepted gravely and always dipped in the salt water before swallowing.

We used to hear his strange, mournful cry late at night as he flew northward past the cove on his way to the pine tree where he lived, and we always pretended he was giving us a greeting before he turned in for the night.

We found out, too, where he made his home. We had often seen him land on a bony, fallen tree half a mile up the beach, which jutted straight out into the water and which we called “the Pointing Finger.” Once, in our explorations along the beach trail, we saw Henry standing on the gray shaft of the dead tree, and as we watched, he stooped slightly, then flapped upward and flew into a tall pine tree almost in front of us. When we stood under it, we could distinguish the outlines of a nest high up in the branches. Perhaps at that time there was a Mrs. Henry and maybe some young Henrys—I do not know. But certain it was that when he became a friend of ours by reason of a happening which might have ended in tragedy for him, he seemed to be without family cares or responsibilities.

During the season when the salmon were running, the Old Fisherman, who was at once our mentor and playfellow, spread his nets from the shore-line straight out into the bay for a hundred yards, leaving them there the night through to catch the large silver salmon on their way to the creeks to spawn. One of these nights he had laid his net near the Pointing Finger, and Brother and I, going with him in his creaky, flat-bottomed boat to see the result of the haul, heard ahead of us a great splashing, and saw dimly outlined in the midst of the cork floats a dark body that flapped and struggled.

We whispered excitedly that perhaps a seal had become entangled in the net, but the Old Fisherman thought it only a salmon, or perhaps a dogfish whose pointed snout had been caught in the meshes of the cords.

But it was neither seal nor salmon, for on rowing close to the net we saw by the light of the Old Fisherman’s lantern a huge, gray bird with flapping wings and slashing beak. It was Henry, the heron, who had alighted on one of the cork floaters, perhaps thinking it safe footing, and had thus become hopelessly snared in the net.

What was even worse, he had hurt himself cruelly in his struggles, for one long leg was dangling helplessly, and one of his wide gray wings hung limp at his side. When the Old Fisherman, with gruff words but tender hands, released him from the cords which bound him, he could not fly, but flapped helplessly upon the water. And so it was that we lifted him into the boat and tied a gunnysack around him so that he should not injure himself further, for he did not understand that our intentions were kindly and snapped at us fiercely with his huge beak.

The Old Fisherman, who had lived with the Indians and who had acquired their curative gifts, took Henry, the heron, in charge when we reached the little cabin in the cove, first muzzling him by tying a stout cord about his beak. Then he set the broken wing and put the leg in splints. The grown-ups suggested putting Henry in the hen-house for the night, but Brother and I would not have it so, and with their help we constructed a pen behind the kitchen stove where he could be warm and comfortable. We left him moving his head jerkily from side to side, blinking his beady eyes now and then and snapping his bill as if in troubled retrospect.

But during the next week Henry, the heron, came to know that we were his friends and that he had nothing to fear from us. He allowed us to stroke him and would accept morsels of food from our fingers, even taking care not to nip us with his powerful beak.

When he had finally ceased to fear us, we gave him the liberty of the back-yard, and he would stalk about stiffly like a peg-legged veteran of the wars. But most of the time he would stand with his head drawn in between his shoulders, the picture of dejection, and Brother and I knew he was longing for the freedom of the air and the water which had been his. He was longing for the cool lapping of little waves against his legs, for the silver gleam of fish in the blue depths; and he wanted to fly once more—to circle over the bay, to flap down upon the Pointing Finger. Perhaps he was even lonesome for the nest in the pine tree. At any rate we were sorry for his sadness and set about to remedy it as best we could. We fished indefatigably from the float, and the Old Fisherman brought us smelts and silver perch from his nets.

Then, to make our guest feel more at home, we would put our catch in a washtub filled with water, and Henry would fish for them choosing his prey with calculating eye and gobbling it up with one great peck. It was the best we could do for him, and we felt that he appreciated that, too, for he obligingly hunted down every fish in the tub, and then would turn his grave head toward us, giving us the broadside effect of one shiny eye, whether in thanks or in petition for more we could not determine.