The fawns had long since been driven away to shift for themselves and one of the does had gone of her own free will. When the patriarch approached the remaining doe, she slashed viciously at him with a front hoof and ran a few steps. The second time he came near, she slashed again and disappeared in the swamp grass. Still in the grip of the rutting season's urge, the angry buck scraped the ground with his antlers.
Frosty watched with interest. He had never met his superior. Except for Andy, he had never even met his equal, so he understood this enraged beast. The cat soft-footed to an aspen that grew in front of a ledge of rocks and gauged the exact distance to a crevice beneath the ledge. Then he deliberately showed himself. At once the buck charged.
Frosty scrambled up the aspen and looked down contemptuously as the great creature raked the tree with his antlers, snorted and fell to scraping the earth with a front hoof. He reared—a move Frosty had anticipated—and the black cat dug his nose with a single lightning-like thrust of his paw. Then he leaped out of the tree and, with the buck pounding behind him, dodged into the crevice.
Snorting and puffing, the buck stamped angrily back and forth. He stopped and tried to edge an antler into the crevice. When his nose came near enough, Frosty scratched it again. The buck, all fury, thought only of reaching and killing this insignificant thing that had dared defy him.
For a time Frosty amused himself by scratching the patriarch's nose every time it came within reach. Then he withdrew to the rear of the crevice and went to sleep. The buck could not reach him, and while the furious beast stood guard, nothing else would try. Frosty slept peacefully, wholly at ease.
Daylight had bloomed when he was awakened by footsteps. From their rhythm and cadence, he knew they were Andy's. The cat waited. He'd be happy to meet his partner again, providing Andy had left the shotgun home.
Then came a blast that outdid even the shotgun's and Frosty crouched very quietly in his crevice. Andy was still mad, the cat decided, for he was still going about making noises that could not possibly be tolerated by anything in its right mind. However, the buck had hit the ground very hard and very suddenly, and now it lay very still. Frosty heard Andy's amazed,
"I'll be dog-goned! Hunt this buck for three years and then stumble right over him! Wonder how he got his nose dug that way?"
