Ramsdale, we witnessed a strange thing. The plain at
that place was covered with a dense growth of cardoon-thistle or wild
artichoke, and leaving the estancia house in our trap, we followed the
cattle tracks as there was no road on that side. About half-way home
we saw a troop of seven or eight deer in an open green space among the
big grey thistle-bushes, but instead of uttering their whistling
alarm-cry and making off at our approach they remained at the same
spot, although we passed within forty yards of them. The troop was
composed of two bucks engaged in a furious fight, and five or six does
walking round and round the two fighters. The bucks kept their heads
so low down that their noses were almost touching the ground, while
with their horns locked together they pushed violently, and from time
to time one would succeed in forcing the other ten or twenty feet
back. Then a pause, then another violent push, then with horns still
together they would move sideways, round and round, and so on until we
left them behind and lost sight of them.
This spectacle greatly excited us at the time and was vividly recalled
several months afterwards when one of our gaucho neighbours told us of
a curious thing he had just seen. He had been out on that cardoon-
covered spot where we had seen the fighting deer, and at that very
spot in the little green space he had come upon the skeletons of two
deer with their horns interlocked.
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