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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 2 8 F rom Chapter 40: "The Spirits of Cerro Venado Macho" . . . And then I saw him – my old friend Crockett lying 60 yards below me, down on one side and appearing completely exhausted from his frantic dash, a panting grey wraith barely visible in the edge of the dusky oaks, head cocked, eyes pleading, his face raised to me with a beckoning, imploring countenance. "Crockett!" I begged. "C'mon bud—we need you up here!" But he did not stir. Then Frank appeared 40 yards below and also spotted him. "Crockett?" he called, then took a couple of steps toward him before abruptly halting. Frank lowered his shoulders, lowered his head, lowered his gaze, then slowly turned and looked up the ridge to me with a big cowboy grin in his voice and declared, "Hey ol' buddy, here's your deer!" We had clearly been on the wrong trail, for the buck had died only seconds after being hit, his last impulse to burrow deep into the darkened thicket where, without Crockett, we would likely have not found him until daybreak. He was stone cold dead, a big beautiful blessing of a deer, buried in the thick oak brush with Crockett nestled tight up against him and wearing a smug, self-congratulatory smirk on his big furry face that seemed to say, What took you boys so long? And as Frank and I eased the deer out into the open, the old dog romped around us in victory, and for a moment we were all pups again. F rom Chapter 39: "The Far Side of Darkness" Crockett was Frank's best friend, a big Australian shepherd who was as integral a part of their three-way partnership as either of them. He had been closer to that dog than to most humans he'd ever known, and he always had a few choice cheese crackers stowed away for him in his Crockett and Mike Altizer with the big buck of Cerro Venado Macho in New Mexico's San Juan Mountains.