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The hunter was the only one who slept soundly that night on the fragrant boughs. Nevertheless, the moose was on his mind. Again in his dreams he imagined himself back by the quiet, shining logon, listening to the ring of the antlers as they struck the trees, and to the heaving snorts and deep grunts of the noble game as it tore through the forest to its death.
The moose was on the minds of his companions too. Again and again they awoke, and pictured him lying by the pond, where he had fallen,—a dead monarch. They tossed and grumbled, longing for day.
Neal and Dol surprised themselves and their elders by being up and dressed shortly after five, before a streak of light had entered the cabin. But their guide was not much behind them. Herb had the camp-fire going well, and was preparing breakfast before six o'clock. The campers tucked away a substantial meal of fried pork, potatoes, and coffee. The first glories of the young sun fell on their way as they started across the clearing and away through the woods beyond, towards the distant pond where the hunter had got his moose.
Lying amid the small growth and grasses, by a lonely, glinting logon, they found the conquered king, sleeping that sleep from which never sun again would wake him. A bullet-hole, crusted with dark blood, showed in his side. The slim legs were bent and stiff, and the mighty forefeet could no more strike a ripping blow which would end a man's hunting forever. The antlers which had made the forest ring were powerless horn.
"Do you know, boys," said Herb, as he stooped and touched them, fingering each prong, "I've hunted moose in fall and winter since I was first introduced to a rifle. I've still-hunted 'em, called 'em, and followed 'em on snowshoes; but I never felt so thundering mean about killing an animal as I did about dropping this fellow. After his antics in the woods, when he tramped out onto the open patch where I was waiting under cover of those shrubs, I popped up and covered him with my Winchester. He just raised the hair on his back and looked at me, with a way wild animals sometimes have, as if I was a bad riddle. Like as not he'd never seen a human being before, and a moose's eyes ain't good for much as danger-signals. It's only when he hears or smells mischief that he gets mad scared.
A Fallen King.
A Fallen King.
"Well, I was out for meat, and bound to have it; so I pulled the trigger, and killed him with two shots. When the first bullet stung him he reared up, making a sharp noise like a wounded horse. Then he swung round as if to bolt; but the second went straight through his heart, and he fell where you see him now. I made sure that he was past kicking, and crept close to his head, thinking he was dead. He wasn't quite gone, though; for he saw me, and laid back his ears, the last pitiful sign a moose makes when a hunter gets the better of him. I tell you it made me feel bad—just for a minute. I've got my moose for this season, and I'm sort o' glad that the law won't let me kill another unless it's a life-saving matter."
"How tall should you say this fellow was when alive?" asked Cyrus, stroking the creature's shaggy hair, which was a rusty black in color.
"Oh! I guess he stood about as high as a good-sized pony. But I've shot moose which were taller than any horse. The biggest one I ever killed measured between seven and eight feet from the points of his hoofs to his shoulders, and the antlers were four feet and nine inches from tip to tip. He was a monster—a regular jing-swizzler! A mighty queer way I got him too! I'll tell you all about it some other time."
"Oh! you must," answered Garst. "You'll have to give us no end of moose-talk by the camp-fire of evenings. These English fellows want to learn all they can about the finest game on our continent before they go home."
"Why, for evermore!" gasped Herb, in broad amazement. "Are you Britishers? And have you crossed the ocean to chase moose in Maine woods? My word! You're a gamy pair of kids. We'll have to try to accommodate you with a sight of a moose at any rate—a live one."
Though they would gladly have appropriated the compliment, the "gamy kids" were obliged to acknowledge that hunting had not been in their thoughts when they traversed the Atlantic. But they avowed that they were the luckiest fellows alive, and that the American forest-land, with its camps and trails and wild offspring, was such a glorious old playground that they would never stop singing its praises until a swarm of boys from English soil had tasted the novel pleasures which they enjoyed.
"Now, then, gentlemen!" said the guide, "I haven't much idea that we'll be able to haul this moose along to camp whole. If I skin and dress him here, are you all ready to help in carrying home the meat?"
The trio briskly expressed their willingness, and Herb began the dissecting business; while from a tree near by that strange bird which hunters call the "moose-bird" screamed its shrill "What cheer? What cheer?" with ceaseless persistence.
"Oh, hold your noise, you squalling thing!" said the guide, answering it back. "It's good cheer this time. We'll have a feast of moose-meat to-night, and there'll be pickings for you."
He then explained, for the benefit of the English lads, that this bird, whose cry is startlingly like the hunters' translation of it, haunts the spot where a moose has been killed, waiting greedily for its meal off the creature after men have taken their share of the meat. Herb declared that it had often followed him for hours while he was stealthily tracking a moose, to be in at the death. And now it kept up the din of its unceasing question until he had finished his disagreeable work.
As the party started back to camp, each one weighted with forty pounds or more of meat, Herb carrying a double portion, with the antlers hooked upon his shoulders, they heard the moose-bird still insatiably shrieking "What cheer?" over its meal.
"Say, boys," said the guide, as he stalked along with his heavy load, never blenching, "if you want to get a pair o' moose-antlers, now's your time. I ain't a-going to sell these, but I'll give 'em outright to the first fellow who can learn to call a moose successfully while he's hunting with me. I know what sort of sportsman Cyrus Garst is. He'll go prowling through the woods, starting moose and coolly letting 'em get off without spilling a drop of blood, while he's watching the length of their steps. I b'lieve he'd be a sight prouder of seeing one crunch a root than if he got the finest head in Maine. So here's your chance for a trophy, boys. I guess 'twill be your only one."
"Hurrah! I'm in for this game!" cried Neal.
"I too," said Cyrus.
"I'm in for it with a vengeance!" whooped Dol. "Though I'm blessed if I've a notion what 'calling a moose' means."
"How much have you larned, anyhow, Kid, in the bit o' time you've been alive?" asked the woodsman, with good-humored sarcasm.
"Enough to make my fists talk to anybody who thinks I'm a duffer," answered Dol, squaring his shoulders as if to make the most of himself.
"Good for you, young England!" laughed Cyrus.
Herb turned his eyes, and regarded the juvenile Adolphus with amused criticism.
"Britisher or no Britisher, I'll allow you're a little man," he muttered. "Keep a stiff upper lip, boys; we're not far from camp now."
A word of cheer was needed. Not one of the trio had growled at their load, but the flannel shirts of the two Farrars clung wetly to their bodies. Their breath was coming in hard puffs through spread nostrils. A four-mile tramp through the woods, heavily laden with raw meat, was a novel but not an altogether delightful experience.
However, the smell of moose-steak frying over their camp-fire later on fully compensated them for acting as butcher's boys. When the taste as well as the smell had been enjoyed, the rest which followed by the blazing birch-logs that evening was so full of bliss that each camper felt as if existence had at last drifted to a point of superb content.
Their camp-door stood open for ventilation; and a keen touch of frost, mingling with the night air which entered, made the fragrant warmth delightful.
When supper was ended, and the tin vessels from which it had been eaten, together with all camp utensils, were duly cleaned, Herb seated himself on the middle of the bench, which he called "the deacon's seat," and luxuriously lit his oldest pipe. His brawny hands had performed every duty connected with the meal as deftly and neatly as those of a delicate-fingered woman.
"Well, for downright solid comfort, boys, give me a cosey camp-fire in the wilderness, when a fellow is tired out after a good day's outing. City life can offer nothing to touch it," said Cyrus, as he spread his blankets near the cheerful blaze, and sprawled himself upon them.
Neal and Dol followed his example. The three looked up at their guide, on whose weather-tanned face the fire shed wavering lights, in lazy expectation.
"Now, Herb," said Garst, "we want to think of nothing but moose for the remainder of this trip; so go ahead, and give us some moose-talk to-night. Begin at the beginning, as the children say, and tell us everything you know about the animal."
Herb Heal swung himself to and fro upon his plank seat, drawing his pipe reflectively, and letting its smoke filter through his nostrils, while he prepared to answer.
"Well," he said at last, slowly, "it seems to me that a moose is a troublesome brute to tackle, however you take him. It's plaguy hard for a hunter to get the better of him, and if it's only knowledge you're after, he'll dodge you like a will-o'-the-wisp till you get pretty mixed in your notions about his habits. I guess these English fellows know already that he's the largest animal of the deer tribe, or any other tribe, to be seen on this continent, and as grand game as can be found on any spot of this here earth. I hain't had a chance to chase lions an' tigers; but I've shot grizzlies over in Canada,—and that's scarey work, you better b'lieve!—and I tell you there's no sport that'll bring out the grit and ingenuity that's in a man like moose-hunting. Now, boys, ask me any questions you like, an' I'll try to answer 'em."
"You said something to-day about moose 'crunching twigs,'" began Neal eagerly. "Why, I always had a hazy idea that they fed on moss altogether, which they dug up in the winter with their broad antlers."
"Land o' liberty!" ejaculated the woodsman. "Where on earth do you city men pick up your notions about forest creatures—that's what I'd like to know? A moose can't get its horns to the ground without dropping on its knees; and it can't nibble grass from the ground neither without sprawling out its long legs,—which for an animal of its size are as thin as pipe-stems,—and tumbling in a heap. So I don't credit that yarn about their digging up the moss, even when there's no other food to be had; though I can't say for sure it's not true. In summer moose feed about the ponds and streams, on the long grasses and lily-pads. They're at home in the water, and mighty fine swimmers; so the red men say that they came first from the sea.
"In the fall, and through the winter too, so far as I can make out, they eat the twigs and bark of different trees, such as white birches and poplars. They're powerful fond of moose-wood—that's what you call mountain ash. I guess it tastes to them like pie does to us."
"Well, Dol, I feel that you're twitching all over with some question," said Cyrus, detecting uneasy movements on the part of the younger boy who lay next to him. "What is it, Chick? Out with it!"
"I want to hear about moose-calling," so spoke Dol in heart-eager tones.
The guide swung his body to the music of a jingling laugh.
"Oh; that's it; is it?" he said. "You're stuck on winning those antlers; ain't you, Dol? Well, calling is the 'moose-hunter's secret,' and it's a secret that he don't want to give away to every one. When a man is a good caller he's kind o' jealous about keeping the trick to himself. But I'll tell you how it's done, anyhow, and give you a lesson sometime. Sakes alive! if you Britishers could only take over a birch-bark trumpet, and give that call in England, you'd make nearly as much fuss as Buffalo Bill did with his cowboys and Injuns. Only 'twould be a onesided game, for there'd be no moose to answer."
The young Farrars were silent, breathlessly waiting for more. The camp-firelight showed their absorbed faces; it played upon bronzed cheeks, where the ruddy tints of English boyhood had been replaced by a duller, hardier hue. On Neal's upper lip a fine, fair growth had sprouted, which looked white against his sun-tinged skin. As for Cyrus, he had never brought a razor into the woods since that memorable trip when the bear had overhauled his knapsack; so the Bostonian's chin was covered with a thick black stubble.
Neither of the youths, however, was at present giving a thought to his hirsute adornment, about which questionable compliments were frequently bandied. Their minds were full of moose, and their ears alert for the guide's next words.
"P'raps you folks don't know," went on the woodsman, "that there are four ways o' hunting moose. The first and fairest is still-hunting 'em in the woods, which means following their signs, and getting a shot in any way you can, if you can. But that's a stiff 'if' to a hunter. Nine times out o' ten a moose will baffle him and get off unhurt, even when a man has tracked him for days, camping on his trail o' nights. The snapping of a twig not the size of my little finger, or one tramping step, and the moose'll take warning. He'll light out o' the way as silently as a red man in moccasins, and the hunter won't even know he's gone.
"The second way is night-hunting, going after 'em in a canoe with a jack-light; same thing as jacking for deer. I guess you've tried that, so you'll know what it's like—skeery kind o' work."
Neal nodded an eloquent assent, and Herb went on:—
"The third method is a dog's trick. It's following 'em on snowshoes over deep snow. I've tried that once, and I'm blamed if I'll ever try it again. It's butchery, not sport. The crust of snow will be strong enough for a man to run on, but it can't support the heavy moose. The creature'll go smashing through it and struggling out, until its slim legs are a sight to see for cuts and blood. Soon it gets blowed, and can stumble no farther. Then the hunter finishes it with an axe."
Disgust thickened the voices of the listening three, as with one accord they raised an outcry against this cruel way of butchering a game animal, without giving it a single chance for its life. When their indignation had subsided, the hunter went on to describe the fourth and last method of entrapping moose—the calling in which Dol was so interested.
"P'raps you won't think this is fair hunting either," he said; "for it's a trick, and I'll allow that there's times when it seems a pretty mean game. Anyhow, I'd rather kill one moose by still-hunting than six by calling. But if you want to try work that'll make your blood race through your body like a torrent one minute, and turn you as cold as if your sweat was ice-water the next, you go in for moose-calling. I guess you know all about the matter, Cyrus; but as these Britishers do not, I'll try and explain it to' em.
"Early in September the moose come up from the low, swampy lands where they have spent the summer alone, and begin to pair. Then the bull-moose, as we call the male, which is generally the most wide-awake of forest creatures, loses some of his big caution, an' goes roaming through the woods, looking for a mate. This is the time for fooling him. The hunter makes a horn out o' birch-bark, somewheres about eighteen inches long, through which he mimics the call of the cow-moose, to coax the bull within reach of his rifle-shots."
"What is the call like?" asked Neal, his heart thumping while he remembered that strange noise which had marked a new era in his experience of sounds, as he listened to it at midnight by Squaw Pond.
"Sho! a man might keep jawing till crack o' doom, and not give you any idea of it without you heard it," answered Herb Heal, the dare-all moose-hunter. "The noise begins sort o' gently, like the lowing of a tame cow. It seems, if you're listening to it, to come rolling—rolling—along the ground. Then it rises in pitch, and gets impatient and lonely and wild-like, till you think it fills the air above you, when it sinks again and dies away in a queer, quavery sound that ain't a sigh, nor a groan, nor a grunt, but all three together.
"The call is mostly repeated three times; and the third time it ends with a mad roar as if the lady-moose was saying to her mate, ' Come now, or stay away altogether!'"
"Joe Flint was right, then!" exclaimed Neal, in high excitement. "That's the very noise I heard in the woods near Squaw Pond, on the night when we were jacking for deer, and our canoe capsized."
"P'raps it was," answered Herb, "though the woods near Squaw Pond ain't much good for moose now. They're too full of hunters. Still, you might have heard the cow-moose herself calling, or some man who had come across the tracks of a bull imitating her."
"But if the bull has such sharp ears, can't he tell the real call from the sham one?" asked Dol.
"Lots of times he can. But if the hunter is an old woodsman and a clever caller, he'll generally fool the animal, unless he makes some awkward noise that isn't in the game, or else the moose gets his scent on the breeze. One whiff of a man will send the creature off like a wind-gust, and earthquakes wouldn't stop him. And though he sneaks away so silently when he hears anything suspicious, yet when he smells danger he'll go through the forest at a thundering rush, making as much noise as a demented fire-brigade."
"Good gracious!" ejaculated Neal and Dol together.
"Is the moose ever dangerous, Herb?" asked the former.
"I guess he is pretty often. Sometimes a bull-moose will turn on a hunter, and make at him full tilt, if he's in danger or finds himself tricked. And he'll always fight like fury to protect his mate from any enemy. The bulls have awful big duels between themselves occasionally. When they're real mad, they don't stop for a few wounds. They prod each other with their terrible brow antlers till one or the other of 'em is stretched dead. If a moose ever charges you, boys, take my advice, and don't try to face him with your rifles. Half a dozen shots mightn't stop him. Make for the nearest tree, and climb for your lives. Fire down on him then, if you can. But once let him get a kick at you with his forefeet, and one thing is sure— you'll never kick again. Are you tired of moose-talk yet?"
"Not by a jugful!" answered Cyrus, laughing. "But tell us, Herb, how are we to proceed to get a sight of this 'Jabberwock' alive?"
"If to-morrow night happens to be dead calm, I might try to call one up," answered the guide. "There's a pretty good calling-place near the south end of the lake. As this is the height of the season, we might get an answer there. We'll try it, anyhow, if you're willing."
"Willing! I should say we are!" answered Garst. "You're our captain now, Herb, and it's a case of 'Follow my leader!' Take us anywhere you like, through jungles or mud-swamps. We won't kick at hardships if we can only get a good look at his mooseship. Up to the present, except for that one moonlight peep, he has always dodged me like a phantom."
"Are you going to be satisfied with a look?" The guide's eyes narrowed into two long slits, on which the firelight quivered, as he gazed quizzically down upon Cyrus. "If the moose comes within reach of our shots, ain't anybody going to pump lead into him? Or is he to get off again scot-free? I've got my moose for this season, and I darsn't send my bullets through the law by dropping another, so I can't do the shooting."
"My friends can please themselves," said the Bostonian, glancing at the English lads. "For my own part I'll be better pleased if Mr. Moose manages to keep a whole skin. Our grand game is getting scarce enough; I don't want to lessen it. I once saw the last persecuted deer in a county, after it had been badgered and wounded by men and dogs, limp off to die alone in its native haunts. The sight cured me of bloodthirst."
"I guess 'twould be enough to cure any man," responded Herb. "And we don't want meat, so this time we won't shoot our moose after we've tricked him. Good land! I wouldn't like any fellow to imitate the call of my best girl, that he might put a bullet through me. Come, boys, it's pretty late; let's fix our fire, and turn in."