BAMBI CAME DOWN FROM THE cave in the hillside which was his private dwelling. He had been sleeping. Life and strength gave brilliance to his eyes, a spring to his step.
He went quietly as usual, headed up-wind. Not for Bambi the carelessness of winter’s armistice. He tested the air from habit, gathering in all the scents, setting each in proper order in his mind.
There a hare had passed, here a deer had lain to rest, there a squirrel had his winter hideaway. The wind was slight. The cold cut off the living scent. Yet the messages were there to be sorted out and understood.
Bambi stopped suddenly. This was a fresh odor on the breeze, strong and violent. It was the stench of a killer.
Scent had played its part. The hunt was up, but the hunt for what?
His pricked ears leaned forward to the breeze, his quivering nerves allied themselves with them. His breathing almost stopped.
He caught Geno’s faint, despairing cry, subdued by fear and lack of breath:
“Help! Help!”
Bambi’s great muscles flexed and sprang. Wind streamed by his flattened ears. The naked trees and bushes flew past him.
Three feet of air divided Nero from the racing Geno. Like a sharpened knife, Bambi cut through it. The wolf-dog’s nose grazed his buttock. Amazed, the great dog stopped, his forelegs braced and stiff.
Bambi stumbled, fell and got up limping.
So the female pheasant will protect her fledglings from the hungry fox. Hopping and stumbling, beating a wing that seems to be useless, she leads the marauder from her chicks with the promise of a better meal. Then, when her young are safely hidden, her great wings beat the air, she rises rocket-like, leaving the fox to view in disappointment the shadow of the food he might have had.
Bambi stumbled. The wolf-dog sprang. Geno rushed on to safety.
The wolf-dog sprang again. Just an elusive span beyond those reaching jaws, Bambi led him on, a little faster now. A little faster—faster, until again the chase was on; but a different sort of chase.
Now muscles matched, and the cruel heart of the maddened wolf-dog encountered the kingly heart of the leader. Bambi’s strategy, made keen by forest lore, surpassed the cunning of the dog who had spent his life by the hearth. On through the forest, up the hill, a sharp turn by a bushy laurel and a great leap to the invisible haven of the secret cave.
To the wolf-dog, rounding that last sharp curve, it seemed that Bambi must be made of air. For an instant he stopped, puzzled. Then he got the waft of Bambi’s scent. He sprang for the cave-mouth.
It was too high a jump. The wolf-dog’s claws scrabbled the earth two feet below it. Again and again he tried, foam flying from his jaws.
And then again the instinct of his wild fore-fathers spoke to him. Wolves do not waste their strength in useless effort. They have patience. They can wait.
Nero lay down quietly at the hill’s base, waiting.
Bambi was content. He, too, had endurance. Moreover, while the wolf-dog remained where he was, the other creatures of the forest could go their way in peace.
Hours passed, watcher and watched maintaining perfect silence. A crescent moon shot high above the treetops. The Kings, their naked heads shrouded in the gloaming, began to seek the tender bark that grew on the younger trees.
The forest marched uninterrupted by the path that led to Bambi’s cave. Saplings in plenty leaned toward the light the path afforded. A young stag had discovered these tender growths. Every night he came, pressing confidently upward, secure in the peace that for a season ruled the wild.
The breeze had dropped entirely. The glimmer of the moon shone wanly on the shadowed snow. Nero glanced over his shoulder. The stag was clearly visible. He looked like Bambi.
Streaking sideways, the wolf-dog silently approached. Some premonition tapped the young stag’s brain. He sprang around, side-stepped as Nero sprang and rushed with leaping bounds for safety.
Dodging left and right, the stag ran round the base of Bambi’s hill. It was exactly what the wolf-dog wanted. Swinging in a wider circle than the stag, he drove the frantic animal upward until the hill cut off all chance of further flight.
His back to the frozen earth, the young stag stood at bay. Without his antlers, the only weapons he had were his flying forehoofs.
Twice the wolf-dog sprang and twice recoiled. Rearing on his hind legs, the stag delivered lightning blows. The third spring saw the end. Reared almost upright, the stag’s hind hoofs slipped on a treacherous patch of ice. The dog’s jaws snapped, found flesh. The stricken stag struggled desperately, but the wolf-dog hung on.
The end came swiftly. Bambi, dozing in the scentless security of his hideaway, sprang to his feet with horror when he heard the wolf-howl.
Nero crept home very late that night.