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Nothing was talked about among the campers on the following day but the forthcoming sport of the evening—moose-calling.
Herb Heal had decided that his call should be given from the water, his "good calling-place" being an alder-fringed logon at the loneliest extremity of the lake.
During the afternoon he took Neal and Dol with him into a grove of poplars and birches which bordered one end of the clearing, leaving Cyrus lounging by the camp-fire. Here the woodsman began the exciting work of preparing his birch-bark horn, that primitive but potent trumpet through which he would sigh, groan, grunt, and roar, imitating each varying mood of the cow-moose. To her call he had often listened as he lay for hours on a mossy bed in the far depths of the forest, learning to interpret the language of every woodland creature.
Unsheathing his hunting-knife, and selecting a sound white-birch tree, Herb carefully removed from it a piece of bark about eighteen inches in length and six in width. This he carefully trimmed, and rolled into a horn as a child would twist paper into a cornucopia package for sweets, tying it with the twine-like roots of the ground juniper. The tapering end of the trumpet, which would be applied to the caller's lips, measured about one inch across; its mouth measured five.
Returning to camp, Herb dipped the horn in warm water and then let it dry, saying that this would produce a mellow ring. He stoutly refused all appeals from the boys to give them a few illustrations of moose-calling there and then, with a lesson in the art, declaring that it would spoil the night's sport, and that they must first hear the call amid proper surroundings. From time to time he impressed upon them that they were going to engage in an expedition which required absolute silence and clever stratagem to make it successful. He vowed to wreak a woodsman's vengeance on any fellow who balked it by shaking the boat, or by moving body or rifle so as to make a noise.
A light, humming breeze had been blowing all day; but as the afternoon waned, it died down. The evening proved clear, chilly, and still.
"Is this a likely night for calling, Herb?" asked Cyrus anxiously, taking a survey of sky and lake from the camp-door about an hour before the start.
"Fine," answered Herb with satisfaction. "Guess we'll get an answer sure, if there's a moose within hearing. There ain't a puff of wind to carry our scent, and give the trick away. But rig yourselves up in all the clothing you've got, boys; the cold, while we're waiting, may be more than you bargain for."
The guide had a light boat on the lake, moored below the camp. At six o'clock he seated himself therein, taking the oars in his brawny hands. Cyrus and Neal took their places in the stern; while Dol disposed of himself snugly in the bow, right under a jack-lamp which Herb had carefully trimmed and lit. But he had closed its sliding door, which, being padded with buckskin, could be opened and shut without a sound, so that not a ray of light at present escaped.
"Moose won't stand to watch a jack as deer do," he said. "Twill only scare 'em off. They're a heap too cute to be taken in by an onnatural big star floating over the water. But 'taint the lucky side of the moon for us. She'll rise late, and her light'll be so feeble that it wouldn't show us an elephant clearly if he was under our noses. So if I succeed in coaxing a bull to the brink of the water, I'll open the jack, and flash our light on him. He'll bolt the next minute as quick as greased lightning on skates; but if you only get a short sight of him, I promise that 'twill be one you'll remember."
"And if he should take a notion to come for us?" said Cyrus.
"He won't, if we don't fire. The boat will be lying among the black shadows, snug in by the bank, and he'll see nothing but the dazzling light. But you fellows must keep still as death. Off we go now, boys, and mum's the word!"
This was almost the last sentence spoken. Not a syllable moved the lips of any one of the four, as the boat glided away from camp towards the south end of the lake, the oars making scarcely a sound as Herb handled them. By and by he ceased rowing for an instant, took his pipe from his mouth, knocked out its ashes, and put it in his pocket with a wise look at his companions, murmuring, "Don't want no tobacco incense floating around!"
At the same time, from a distant ridge upon the eastern shore, covered with evergreens which stood out like dark steeples against the evening sky, came a faint, dull noise, as if some belated woodsman was driving a blunt axe against a tree. The sound itself would scarcely have awakened a hope of anything unusual in the minds of the inexperienced; but, combined with the guide's aspect as he pocketed his pipe, it made Cyrus and his comrades sit suddenly erect, listening as if ears were the only organs they possessed.
The queer, dull noise was once repeated. Then again there was silence almost absolute, Herb's oars moving with the softest swish imaginable, as the boat skimmed along the lonely, curved bay which he had chosen for a calling-place. It came to a stop amid shadows so dense and black that they seemed almost tangible, close to a bank fringed with overhanging bushes, having a background of evergreens. These last, in the fast-gathering darkness, looked like a sable array of mourners in whose ranks a pale ghost or two mingled, the spectres being slim white-birch trees.
The opposite bank presented a similar scene.
It was amid such surroundings that Neal Farrar heard for the second time in his life the weird sound of the moose-hunter's call. He was a strong, well-balanced young fellow; yet here again he knew the sensation as if needles were pricking him all over, which he had felt once before in these wilds, while his heart seemed to be performing athletic sports in his body.
Cyrus and Dol confessed afterwards that they were "all shivers and goose-flesh" as the call rose upon the night air.
After he had shipped his oars, and laid them down, Herb Heal noiselessly turned his body to face the bow, and took up the birch-bark horn which lay beside him. He breathed into it anxiously once or twice, then paused, drew in all the air which his big lungs could contain, put the trumpet again to his lips with its mouth pointing downward, and began his summons.
The first part of the call lasted half a minute, or so, without a break. During its execution the hunter moved his neck and shoulders first to the left, then to the right, and slowly raised the horn above his head, the rolling, plaintive sounds with which he commenced gathering power and pitch with the ascending motion. As the birch trumpet pointed straight upward, they seemed to sweep aloft in a surging crescendo, and boom among the tree-tops.
Carrying his head again to the left and right, Herb gradually lowered the horn until it was once more pointed towards the bottom of the boat, having in its movements described in the air a big figure of eight. The call sank with it, and died away in a lonely, sighing, quavering grunt.
Two seconds' pause, two slow, great throbs of the boys' hearts, so loud that they threatened to burst the stillness.
Then the call began again, low and grumbling. Again it rose, swelled, quavered, and sank, full of lonely longing.
A third time it surged up, and ended abruptly in a wild, ear-splitting roar, which struck the tops of distant hills, and rolled off in thunder-like echoes among them.
Silence followed. Not a gasp came from Herb after his efforts. Cyrus and the Farrars tried to still their heaving chests, while each quick breath was an expectation.
An answer! Surely it was an answer! The boys never doubted it; though the responding sound they caught was only a repetition of that far-away chopping noise, which resembled the heavy thud of an axe against wood. This came nearer—nearer. It was followed once by a sort of short, sharp bark.
Then the motionless occupants of the boat heard random, guttural grunts, a smashing of dead branches, crashing of undergrowth, and the proud ring of mighty antlers against the trees. The lord of the forest, a big bull-moose, was tearing recklessly through the woods towards the lake, in answer to the call of his imaginary mate.
To say that the hearts of our trio were performing gymnastic feats during these awfully silent minutes of waiting, is to say little. All the repressed motion of their bodies seemed concentrated in these organs, which raced, leaped, stopped short, and pounded, vibrating to such questions as:—
"Will he come? Where shall we first see him? How near is he now? Does he suspect the trick? Will he give us the slip after all?— Has he gone ?"
For of a sudden dead stillness reigned in the forest. No more trampling, grunting, and knocking of antlers. The spirits of the three sank to zero. Their breathing became thick. The blood, which a moment before had played like wildfire in their veins, now stirred sluggishly as if it was freezing. Disappointment, blank and bitter, shivered through them from neck to foot.
So passed quarter of an hour. A filmy mist rose from the surface of the water, and drifted by their faces like the brushing of cold wings. For lack of motion hand and feet felt numb. Mid the pitch-black shadows, snug in by the bank, no man could see the face of his fellow, though the trio would have given a fortune to read their guide's. Not a word was spoken. Once, when a deep breath of impatience escaped him, Neal heard the folds of his coat rub each other, and clenched his teeth to stop an exclamation at the sound, which he had never noticed before.
Nearly twenty minutes had elapsed since the last noise had been heard in the woods, when Herb took up the horn which he had laid down, and put it to his mouth. Again the call rolled up. It was neither loud nor long this time, ending with a quick, short roar.
As it ceased the guide plunged his arm into the water and slowly withdrew it, letting drops dribble from his fingers.
The novices could only suspect that this manoeuvre was another lure for the bull-moose, if he chanced to be still within hearing. Its success took their breath away.
The wary bull which had answered, having doubtless harbored a suspicion that all was not exactly right with the first call, had halted in his on-coming rush, with head upreared, and nostrils spread, trying to catch any taint in the air which might warn him of danger. But in the dead calm the heavy evergreens stirred not; no whiff reached him. The second call upset his prudence. Then he heard that splash and dribble in the water, and imagined that his impatient mate was dipping her nose into the lake for a cool drink.
A snort! A bellowing challenge quite indescribable! On he came again with a thundering rush!
Bushes were thrashed and spurned by his sharp hoofs. Branches snapped. Trees echoed as his antlers struck them.
A musk-rat leaped from the bank ahead, and dived to reach his hole in the bank. Under cover of the noisy splash which the little creature made, one whisper was hissed by Herb's tongue into the ears of his comrades. It was:—
"Gee whittaker! he's a big one! Listen to them shovels against the trees!"
A minute later, with a deep gulp of intense excitement, and a general racket as if an engine had broken loose from brakes and checks, and was carrying all before it, the monarch of the woods crashed through the alders and halted, with his hoofs in the water, scarcely thirty yards from where the boat lay in shadow.
This was a supreme moment for our travellers. Leaning forward, fearful lest their heart-beats should betray them, they could barely distinguish the outlines of the moose, as he stood with his enormous nose high in air, giving vent to deep gulps and grunts, and looking to right and left in bewilderment for that cow which he had heard calling.
For fully five minutes he stood thus, badly puzzled, now and again stamping a hoof, and scattering spray in rising wrath. Then Herb bent forward, shot out a long arm, and silently opened the jack.
Meteor-like its silver light flashed forth, to reveal a sight which could never be wiped from the memories of the beholders, though it affected each of them differently.
Herb Heal involuntarily gripped the loaded rifle which lay beside him,—he was too wary a woodsman to be unprepared for emergencies; but he did not cock it, for he remembered the law, and the bargain which he had made about to-night.
Cyrus's eyes gleamed like fires in a face pale from eagerness, as he strove in a minute of time to take in every feature of the monster before him, from hoof to horn.
Neal sat as if paralyzed.
Dol—well, Dol lost his head a bit. A deep, throaty gulp, which was a weak reproduction of the sound made by the moose, as if the boy and the animal were sharing the same throes of excitement, burst from him. There was a rattle and struggle of his vocal organs, which in another second would have become a shout, had not Herb's masterful left hand gripped him. Its touch held in check the speech which Dol could no longer control.
The moose was a big one, "about as big as they grow," as the guide afterwards declared. Under the jack-light he looked a regular behemoth. He must have been over seven feet high at the shoulders, for he was taller than the tallest horse the boys had ever seen. His black mane bristled. His antlers were thrown back. His great nose, with its dilated nostrils, looked as if it were drinking in every scent of the night world. His eyes had a green glare in them, as for ten seconds he gazed at the strange light which had suddenly burst into view, its silver radiance so dazzling him that he saw not the screened boat beneath.
At the rash noise which Dol made his ears twitched. He splashed a step forward as if to investigate matters, seeing which, Herb held his Winchester in readiness to fly to his shoulder at a moment's notice. But the moose evidently regarded the jack-lamp as a supernatural, terrible phenomenon. He shrank from it as man might shrink beneath a flaming heaven.
With one more despairing look right and left for that phantom cow which had deluded him, he wheeled around, and crashed back into the forest, tearing away more rapidly than he came.
"He's off now, and Heaven knows when he'll stop!" said Herb, breaking the weird spell of silence. "Not till he reaches some lair where nary a creature could follow him. Well, boys, you've seen the grandest game on this continent, the king o' the woods. What do you think of him?"
All tongues were loosened together. There was a general shifting of cramped bodies, accompanied by a gust of exclamations.
"He was a monster!"
"He was a behemoth!"
"Oh! but you're a conjurer, Herb. How on earth did you give such a fetching call?"
"I could never have believed that those sounds came from a human throat and a birch-bark horn, if I hadn't been sitting in the boat with you!"
When there was a break in the excited chorus, Herb, without answering the compliments to his calling powers, asked quietly,—
"Didn't you think we'd lost him, boys, when he stopped short in the middle of his rush, and you heard nothing?"
"We just did," answered Cyrus. "That was the longest half-hour I ever put in. What made him do it?"
"I guess he was kind o' criticising my music," said the guide, laughing. "Mebbe I got in a grunt or two that wasn't natural, and the old boy wasn't satisfied with his sweetheart's voice. He was sniffing the air, and waiting to hear more. But 'twasn't more 'n twenty minutes before I gave the second call, though no doubt it seemed longer to you. A man must be in good training to get the better of a moose's ears and nose."
"I'm going to get the better of them before I leave these woods!" cried Dol, who was still puffing and gasping with intense excitement. "I'll learn to call up a moose, if I crack my windpipe in doing it."
"Hurrah for the Boy Moose-Caller!" jeered Cyrus, with a teasing laugh, which Neal echoed.
But Herb Heal, who had from the beginning regarded "the kid of the camp" with favor, suddenly became his champion.
"Don't let 'em down you, Dol," he said. "I hate to hear a youngster, or a man, 'talk fire,' as the Injuns say, which means brag , if he's a coward or a chump; but I guess you ain't either. Here we are at camp, boys! I tell you the home-camp is a pleasant sort of place, after you've been out moose-calling!"
Thereupon ensued loud cheers for the home-camp, the boys feeling that they were letting off steam, and atoning for that long spell of silence, which had been a positive hardship. In the midst of an echoing hubbub the boat was hauled up and moored, and the party reached their log shelter.