THE DAYS AFTER FALINE HAD gone were filled with bright excitement. Geno and Gurri played at being grownups. They behaved always with the greatest circumspection, sniffing and analyzing the wind, peering closely into every shadow, leaving their hideaway only when the thicker evening shadows gathered, and returning with the first shaft of morning sun.
Perri the squirrel watched them with approval, her merry, beady eyes twinkling with recollection.
“Ah, me,” she said, “how well I remember the finding of my first nut alone! It was, I assure you, a magnificent nut. A very prince of hazels. The taste of it still lingers round my teeth.” She sucked at them longingly.
“Do you hear anything of our parents?” Geno asked.
“No. But be sure that if anything bad happened, I should hear at once. Bad news travels rapidly. . . .” She stopped and cocked her ears to listen, her tail bushing up higher than her head. “It’s very peculiar,” she said worriedly. “I’ve had a feeling all day that something wasn’t as it should be!”
“With our parents?” Geno cried, startled.
“Oh, no! Nothing to do with them. But hereabouts.”
“Nonsense,” Gurri snapped. “Geno and I have been peering and poking around for three days now, and we haven’t seen a thing more threatening than a polecat. And all the time the days are wasting and the meadow spreads out cool and green. It makes me quite tired!”
“Oo-y, oo-y!” cried the screech-owl very loudly, flying overhead.
He still remembered Geno’s rudeness and he had not forgiven it. Geno was becoming quite hardened to a sudden, evil screech just above his head when his nerves were lulled to peace and calmness.
Perri said thoughtfully, “You annoyed the screech-owl very much, Geno. That wasn’t wise. He’s really not a bad old bird, and as far as wisdom is concerned—well, we all think we’re pretty good at something.”
“At least, his being here is a sign it’s time to go to the meadow,” Gurri said relievedly. “If I don’t get a scamper pretty soon, I’ll break something.”
Geno looked around. The blackbird was still singing, the woodpecker hammered at his tree. Overhead a covey of ducks flew squawking toward the plain, and a solitary heron traced his majestic course.
“It’s too early,” he remonstrated. “You can’t go yet.” But a swishing sound among the bushes warned him that he was too late.
The blackbird and the woodpecker fell abruptly silent. A jay shrieked savagely, a magpie scolded. The hare, in the pathway, made a frantic leap for safety.
“Gurri!” Geno cried.
Like a bullet from a gun, Perri shot among the higher branches of the trees.
“Back, stupid girl! Back!” she chattered; but she was too late.
Swift as a red flash, the fox sprang from the path-side. Gurri heard a deep, menacing growl in his throat. His weight bore down on her. She felt the tearing pain of teeth high in her shoulder as she fell. He stood over her worrying for her throat. She heard, as through the mist of a dream, her brother’s cry of anguish and Perri’s high upbraiding. Then came a sound like a brief clap of thunder. The fox somersaulted as though he had been dealt a powerful blow and fell heavily on his side. She heard, before the last remnant of consciousness left her, a strange and puzzling sound like hoofs deliberately and slowly placed. Something bent over her, something whose very scent was terror.
“Poor little brute!” said a deep and roaring voice.
The forest gamekeeper bent over Gurri, with sun-browned face and hair and bright blue eyes. His shooting suit and shirt were also brown and blue, and his heavy boots and leather puttees were brown. He knelt over her, examining the wound.
“A torn muscle,” he said thoughtfully. “That’ll heal. We’ll take care of that. Lucky I happened to be around.”
He slung his gun over his left arm and took the wounded roe-deer in his arms. To all the watchers in the trees the sound of his steps was like the echo of doom.
Geno could stand it no longer. Almost frantic he rushed from the scene, his brain, numb with disaster, forgetting his father’s explicit command.
“Mother!” he shrieked. “Mother!”
He did not even see her when she came, but went on galloping aimlessly in widening circles, crying endlessly:
“Mother!”
“Geno!” she said sharply. “Here I am! What is it?”
Geno cried in a strangled voice: “Gurri! Gurri, she . . .”
Bambi sprang into sight.
“Father!”
“What is it, son?” The deep voice was imperative but kind.
“It’s Gurri . . . the fox . . . and He . . . !”
Haltingly he told his story. At the end of it all three of them stood silent, knowing that dumb agony only animals can know.
“Show me the place,” Bambi said at last.
Geno took them both to where the fox was lying. The strong smell of blood was dreadful in their nostrils.
“Sometimes He brings justice,” Bambi said.
“Do you suppose . . . ?” Faline said without much hope. She was thinking, they both realized, of Gobo. “Do you suppose . . . ?”
With his muzzle to the ground Bambi moved along the path and out into the dark meadow. That was the last they were to see of him for several days.