"I guess," Gram said, "that a body needn't tell all he knows and is a fool if he does. Whatever it is you mustn't do, don't do it. I'm sure Delbert will do the milking tonight. Why don't you go for a walk in the woods?"
He sprang up with renewed energy and went outside. Shep rose to tag along with him and together they entered the cool forest.
Bud walked slowly. He did not know how to interpret the things he saw and heard around him, but he did not doubt that all of it was wonderful. He jumped when an owl cried, was frightened for a moment when a dead snag crashed with an unearthly noise and laughed when a jay shrieked. His confidence mounted so that when he heard two sharp, blasting snorts, he continued to advance.
Two minutes later he stopped in his tracks. Not twenty feet away, its wobbly feet braced to keep it from falling, a tiny fawn no more than two hours old stared at him in wide-eyed wonder.
chapter 2
The fawn trembled on legs so new and untried, and so slender that they seemed scarcely able to support his jack-rabbit-sized body. His ears were ridiculously long and his staring, fascinated eyes were all out of proportion to his tiny head. The white stripes and spots that mark the young of all white-tailed deer stood out against an undercoating of hair that was abnormally dark; on the neck and shoulders it was nearly black.
The gentle Shep wagged his tail and took a step nearer this tiny wild baby. Raising a front foot, the fawn tapped a hoof no bigger than a twenty-five-cent piece and looked back over his shoulder at the laurel copse where the doe had left him. Scenting the approach of a dog and a human being, she had fled. The little buck should have stayed in hiding, but his natural curiosity had overridden the doe's warning not to move.
For a moment Bud was too bewildered and delighted to think clearly. Then he was lifted on a cloud of ecstasy and sympathy. He was sure the fawn had been abandoned by his father and mother or that they were dead. Like Bud, the little buck was left to shift for himself in a cheerless and friendless world, and Bud felt that he was forever bound to this tiny deer. There was a bond between them that nothing else could share and nothing could ever break. As long as either endured, Bud decided, each would love the other because each understood the other. They were brothers.
"Hi, little guy," Bud said softly.
Shep, tail wagging, head bent and ears tumbled forward, stayed beside him as he took the fawn in both arms. Soft as a cloud, the fawn surrendered to his embrace and gravely smelled his arm with a nose as delicate as an orchid.