226 ADVENTURES OF DR. ALLEN. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



THE AMERICAN GAZELLE. A LAST BATTLE. 



The family of fan-tail deer (gazella dorcas) which once 

 inhabited the great Northwest, and the whole Rocky Moun- 

 tain region, has gradually disappeared, and to-day there is 

 scarcely a vestige left to remind one of the little groups 

 that were seen so frequently, twenty years ago, along the 

 streams and in the foothills. Little has been written about 

 them, but careful observers have found some of the skeletons 

 and tiny horns, which, in many instances, have passed for 

 those of small white-tail deer. 



But old-timers, who were more intimately acquainted 

 with them, and who have often seen them in the far-off 

 jungles where they retired to raise their young, cannot be so 

 mistaken. There, away from the lion and other enemies, 

 was the nursery for the gazelles, of whose large brown eyes 

 the poets love to sing. Such haunts are unapproachable to 

 animals of prey without giving sufficient warning to the 

 mother, whose eyes and ears are ever alert. 



These deer or gazelles, resemble in color the white-tail, 

 or Virginia deer, turning from brownish gray in winter to a 

 reddish brown in summer. Their stomachs and throats are 

 white, and they are from two to two and one-half feet high at 

 the shoulders. The tail is almost eighteen inches in length, 

 and when erect and spread out, it is nearly six inches wide 

 and resembles a large fan. When running slowly, they twist 



