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The adventures of Twinkly Eyes the little Black Bear

Chapter 57: LIV WHAT HAPPENED TO FLEET FOOT
By Allen Chaffee
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Children & Young Adult Reading

About This Book

A series of short, self-contained woodland adventures follows a mischievous little black bear cub and his family as they learn practical survival skills and encounter other creatures and occasional humans. Episodes present moments of peril and play—learning to swim, foraging at berry patches and sugar camps, first aid, encounters with porcupines, snakes, and a forest fire, and seasonal shifts toward first snow—while supplying clear, age-appropriate explanations of animal behavior and outdoor science. Each tale combines action and gentle instruction to highlight maternal care, resourcefulness, and a respectful attitude toward wild animals.

LIV
WHAT HAPPENED TO FLEET FOOT

“What worries me,” said the Boy, with an amused glance after the fleeing hares, “is what we are going to do with the Fawn. She’s far too young to look out for herself,” nodding toward the green depths into which bear and lynx had disappeared.—Twinkly wondered too.

“She is certainly too young to get along without her mother,” agreed the Girl, as the children from the Valley Farm studied the last of the refugees, who gazed into her face with her great trusting eyes.

“The trouble is,” said the Boy, “she probably has a mother somewhere, and then she’s a wild thing. She’d never be really happy with the cows. I suppose the doe just managed to save the other fawn. Aren’t there always two?”

“You think her mother got away then?” asked the Girl.

“Well I don’t know,” returned the Boy, gazing searchingly across the River through the charred tree trunks. Here the ground still smoked yellowly as the fire ate into the damp leaves of the nether layer of the forest floor. Red embers glowed where the flames had raged through the underbrush.

Now, as it happened, the Doe was searching despairingly that very moment for her Fawn. She had made her escape in good season with the larger fawn, but Fleet Foot she had missed from her side when it was too late to return, and a wall of flame had risen between her and her little one.

The lost Fawn had raced, with the other Wood Folk, on before the flames to the River’s brink, where the children had found her.

Meantime her mother had circled clear around the fire with her remaining little one, trotting up-stream until she came to a narrow part where her fawn could cross, peering and searching everywhere for Fleet Foot.

Now suddenly the children heard a dainty stamp and a shrill whistled “H-e-e-e-yew, he-u!” And over a copse of hazel bushes peered a red-brown doe, who instantly turned and leaped out of sight, tail raised like a little white flag behind to show the fawn which way to follow.

And “He-w!” said Fleet Foot, with a tiny stamp, and followed.

And Twinkly Eyes, the bear cub, took it all in, from the hiding of his tree-top.