CHAPTER XXXIII
DAPPLE DISAPPEARS
AS her second summer came to an end, Dapple was seen to be more and more vain. Every day she licked her fur till it shone. She had even made friends with a young cow of almost equal vanity, who did her the service of washing her neck where she could not reach it, a service she returned in kind.
Then one day she disappeared. The children were mystified, but Fuzzy could have told them what had become of her.
His wanderings had often taken him into the haunts of the mule deer. Not that he ever got very near them. Even had he trusted the antlers of the bucks he saw summering together in the high country,—they had prongs even before the tall branching antlers came in September,—he could nothave escaped observation, so keen were both their eyes and their ears.
Then in the wooded valleys he had watched the blacktail does with their dappled fawns.
Seeing in the little fellows something so like what Dapple had been the year before, he sometimes tried to play tag with them, but no sooner would he make a movement toward them than off they would bound in great leaps that took them clear over the tops of the bushes, and in two seconds they were clear out of sight, doe and fawns together.
Not even when they slept could he surprise them, for they slept with all four feet under them, and at the slightest sound, crack would go the brush about them, as they rose into the air, then off they would bounce, like so many rubber balls, thud, thud, thud!
It became a game that Fuzzy played with himself, to try to catch them unawares, but let him approach never so softly, with the wind blowing his scent in entirely the other direction, their big ears were sure to hear him, though they had been sound asleep.
Yes, sir, Fuzzy could have told the childrenwhat had become of Dapple. But he didn’t, and they mourned her as lost, finally deciding that she must have fallen victim to a mountain lion.
He had seen the bucks come down from the high country as autumn crisped the air, their double branched antlers gleaming proudly. He had watched them battling on the lake shore o’ moonlight nights, their antlers clashing angrily at one another, while the does—and Dapple—watched them from safe covert.
And before ever he began his winter’s sleep he had seen them gather into herds, does and bucks together,—and Dapple with them,—as many as he had toes and fingers put together, in a sheltered canyon where they could winter.