Lightfoot the Deer

All the rest of that day the hunter with the terrible gun lay hidden in the bushes of the pasture where he could watch for Lightfoot the Deer to leave the place of safety he had found.  It required a lot of patience on the part of the hunter, but the hunter had plenty of patience.  It sometimes seems as if hunters have more patience than any other people.

But this hunter waited in vain.  Jolly, round, red Mr. Sun sank down in the west to his bed behind the Purple Hills.  The Black Shadows crept out and grew blacker.  One by one the stars began to twinkle.  Still the hunter waited, and still there was no sign of Lightfoot.  At last it became so dark that it was useless for the hunter to remain longer.  Disappointed and once more becoming angry, he tramped back to the Big River, climbed into his boat and rowed across to the other side.  Then he tramped home and his thoughts were very bitter.  He knew that he could have shot Lightfoot had it not been for the man who had protected the Deer.  He even began to suspect that this man had himself killed Lightfoot, for he had been sure that as soon as he had become rested Lightfoot would start for the woods, and Lightfoot had done nothing of the kind.  In fact, the hunter had not had so much as another glimpse of Lightfoot.

The reason that the hunter had been so disappointed was that Lightfoot was smart.  He was smart enough to understand that the man who was saving him from the hunter had done it because he was a true friend.  All the afternoon Lightfoot had rested on a bed of soft hay in an open shed and had watched this man going about his work and taking the utmost care to do nothing to frighten Lightfoot.

“He not only will let no one else harm me, but he himself will not harm me,” thought Lightfoot.  “As long as he is near, I am safe.  I’ll stay right around here until the hunting season is over, then I’ll swim back across the Big River to my home in the dear Green Forest.”

So all afternoon Lightfoot rested and did not so much as put his nose outside that open shed.  That is why the hunter got no glimpse of him.  When it became dark, so dark that he knew there was no longer danger, Lightfoot got up and stepped out under the stars.  He was feeling quite himself again.  His splendid strength had returned.  He bounded lightly across the meadow and up into the brushy pasture where the hunter had been hidden.  There and in the woods back of the pasture he browsed, but at the first hint of the coming of another day, Lightfoot turned back, and when his friend, the farmer, came out early in the morning to milk the cows, there was Lightfoot back in the open shed.  The farmer smiled.  “You are as wise as you are handsome, old fellow,” said he.