His anger was in itself a significant thing. In the long, easy-going summer days, Blacktail had almost forgotten what anger was like. He had been content to roam over the ridges, cropping the leaves and grass, avoiding danger and growing fat. But all at once this kind of existence had palled on him. He felt that he wanted only one thing--not food or drink or safety--but a good, slashing, hooking, hoof-carving battle with another buck of his own species. An unwonted crossness had come upon him, and his soft eyes burned with a blue fire. He remembered the does, too--with a sudden leap of his blood--and wondered where they were keeping themselves. Being only a beast he did not know that this new belligerent spirit was just as much a sign of fall as the soft blush that was coming on the leaves. The simple fact was that fall means the beginning of the rut--the wild mating days when the bucks battle among themselves and choose their harems of does. He had rather liked his appearance as he saw himself in the water of the spring. The last of the velvet had been rubbed from his horns, and the twelve tines (six on each horn) were as hard and almost as sharp as so many bayonet points. As the morning dawned, the change in the face of nature became ever more manifest. The leaves of the shrubbery began to change in color. The wind out of the north had a keener, more biting quality, and the birds were having some sort of exciting debate in the tree tops. The birds are always a scurried, nervous, rather rattle-brained outfit, and seem wholly incapable of making a decision about anything without hours of argument and discussion. Their days are simply filled with one excitement after another, and they tell more scandal in an hour than the old ladies in a resort manage in the entire summer. This slow transformation in the color of the leaves, not to mention the chill of the frost through their scanty feathers, had created a sensation from one end of birdland to another. And there was only one thing to do about it. That was to wait until the darkness closed down again, then start away toward the path of the sun in search of their winter resorts in the south.