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The following day was spent by our trio in exploring the woods near Millinokett Lake, in listening to more moose-talk, and in attempting the trick of calling. Herb gave them many persistent lessons, making the sounds which he had made on the preceding night, with and without the horn, and patiently explaining the varied language of grunts, groans, sighs, and roars in which the cow-moose indulges.
Perhaps the woodsman expended extra pains on the teaching of his youngest pupil, whom he had championed. And certainly Dol's own talent for mimicry came to his aid. No matter to what cause the success was due, each one allowed that Dol made a brilliant attempt to get hold of "the moose-hunter's secret," and give a natural call.
The boy had been a genius at imitating the voices of English birds and animals; many a trick had he played on his schoolfellows with his carols and howls. And his proficiency in this line was a good foundation on which to work.
"You'll get there, boy," said Herb, surveying him with approval, as he stood outside the camp-door with the moose-horn to his lips. "Make believe that there's a moose on the opposite shore of the lake now, and give the whole call, from start to finish."
Whereupon Dol slowly carried his head to left and right, as he had seen the guide do on the previous night, raising and lowering the horn until it had described an enormous figure of eight in the air, while he groaned, sighed, rasped, and bellowed with a plaintive intensity of expression, which caused his brother and his friend to shriek with laughter.
"You'll get there, Kid," repeated the woodsman, with a great triumphant guffaw. "You'll be able to give a fetching call sooner than either of the others. But be careful how you use the trick, or you'll be having the breath kicked out of you some day by a moose's forefeet."
For days afterwards, the birch-bark horn was rarely out of Dol Farrar's hands. The boy was so entranced with the new musical art he was mastering, which would be a means of communication between him and the behemoth of the woods, that he haunted the edges of the forest about the clearing, keeping aloof from his brother and friend, practising unceasingly, sometimes under Herb's supervision, sometimes alone. He learned to imitate every sound which the guide made, working in touching quavers and inflections that must tug at the heart-strings of any listening moose. He learned to give the call, squatting Indian fashion, in a very uncomfortable position, behind a screen of bushes. He learned to copy, not the cow's summons alone, but the bull's short challenge too; and to rasp his horn against a tree, in imitation of a moose polishing its antlers for battle.
And now, for the first time, Dol Farrar of Manchester regarded his education as complete. He was prouder of this forest accomplishment, picked up in the wilds, than of all triumphs over problems and 'ologies at his English school. He had not been a laggard in study, either.
But the finishing of Dol's education had one bad result. If there happened to be another moose travelling through the adjacent forests, he evidently thought that all this random calling was too much of a good thing, had his suspicions aroused, and took himself oft to wilder solitudes. Though the guide tried his powers in persuasive summons every night at various calling-places, he could not again succeed in getting an answer.
At last, on a certain evening, after supper, a solemn camp-council was held around an inspiring fire, and Herb Heal suggested that if his party were really bent on seeing a moose again, before they turned their faces homeward, they had better rise early the following morning, shoulder their knapsacks, and set out to do a few days' hunting amid the dense woods near the base of Katahdin.
"I killed the biggest bull-moose I ever saw, on Togue Ponds, in that region," said the guide meditatively; "and I got him in a queer way. I b'lieve I promised to tell you that yarn."
"Of course you did!"
"Let's have it!"
"Go ahead, Herb! Don't shorten it!"
Thus encouraged by the eager three, the woodsman began:—
"It is five years now, boys, since I spent a fall and winter trapping in them woods we were speaking of—I and another fellow. We had two home-camps, which were our headquarters, snug log shelters, one on Togue Ponds, the other on the side of Katahdin. As sure as ever the sun went down on a Saturday night, we two trappers met at one or other of these home-camps; though during the week we were mostly apart. For we had several lines of traps, which covered big distances in various directions; and on Monday morning I used to start one way, and my chum another, to visit these. Generally it took us five or six days to make the rounds of them. While we were on our travels we'd sleep with a blanket round us, under any shelter we could rig up,—a few spruce-boughs or a bark hut. When the snow came, we were forced to shorten our trips, so as to reach one of the home-camps each night.
"Well, it was early in the season, one fine fall evening, that I was crossing Togue Ponds in a canoe. I had been away on the tramp for a'most a week; and though I had a rifle and axe with me, I had nary an ounce of ammunition left. All of a sudden I caught sight of a moose, feeding on some lily-roots in deep water. Jest at first I was a bit doubtful whether it was a moose or not; for the creature's head was under, and I could only see his shoulders. I stopped paddling. I tried to stop breathing. Next, I felt like jumping out of my skin; for, with a big splash, up come a pair of antlers a good five feet across, dripping with water, and a'most covered with green roots and stems, which dangled from 'em.
"Good land! 'twas a queer sight. 'Herb Heal,' thinks I, 'now's your chance! If you can only manage to nab that moose-head, you'll get two hundred dollars for it at Greenville, sure!' And mighty few cents I had jest then.
"I could a'most have cried over my tough luck in not having one dose of lead left. But the bull's back was towards me. The water filled his ears and nose, so that he couldn't hear or smell. And he was having a splendid tuck-in. It was big sport to hear him crunch those lily-roots."
"I should think it was!" burst out Cyrus enviously. "But did you have the heart to kill him in cold blood, in the middle of his meal?"
"I did. I guess I wouldn't do it now; anyhow, not unless I was very badly off for food. But I had an old mother living at Greenville that time,"—here there was the least possible tremble in the woodsman's voice,—"and while I paddled alongside the moose, without making a sound, I was thinking that the price I'd be sure to get from some city swell for the head would come in handy to make her comfortable. The creature never suspicioned danger till I was close to him, and had my axe lifted, ready to strike. Then up came his head. Out went his forefeet. Over spun the canoe. There was as big a commotion as if a whale was there.
"I managed to keep behind the brute so as to dodge his kicks; and gripping the axe in one hand, I dug the other into his long hair. He was mad scared. He started to swim for the opposite shore, which was about half a mile distant, with me in tow, snorting like a locomotive. As his feet touched ground near the bank, I jumped upon his back. With one blow of the axe I split his spine. Perhaps you'll think that was awful cruel, but it wasn't done for the glory of killing."
"And what became of the head? Did you sell it?" asked Dol, who was, as usual, the first to break a breathless silence.
There was no reply. Herb feigned not to hear.
"Did you get two hundred dollars for the head?" questioned the impetuous youngster again, in a higher key, his curiosity swelling.
"I didn't. It was stole."
The answer was a growl, like the growl of a hurt animal whose sore has been touched. The tone of it was so different from the woodsman's generally strong, happy-go-lucky manner of speech, that Dol blenched as if he had been struck.
"Who stole it?" he gasped, after a minute, scarcely knowing that he spoke aloud.
Unnoticed in the firelight, Cyrus clapped a strong hand over the boy's mouth, to stifle further questions.
"Keep still!" he whispered.
But Herb, who was, as usual, perched upon the "deacon's seat," leaned forward, with a laugh which was more than half a snarl.
"Who stole it?" he echoed. "Why, the other fellow—my chum; the man whom I carried for a mile on my back, through a snow-heaped forest, the first time I saw him, when I had lugged him out of a heavy drift. He stole it, Kid, and a'most everything I owned with it."
The Camp On Millinokett Lake.
The Camp On Millinokett Lake.
With a savage kick of his moccasined foot, the woodsman suddenly assaulted a blazing log. It sent a shower of sparks aloft, and caused a bright flame to shoot, rocket-like, from the heart of the fire, which showed the guide's face. His fine eyes reminded Cyrus of Millinokett Lake when a thunder-storm broke over it. Their gray was dark and troubled; the black pupils seemed to shrink, as if a tempest beat on them; fierce flashes of light played through them.
Muttering a half-smothered oath, Herb flung himself off his bench, stamped across the cabin to the open camp-door, and passed into the darkness outside.
The boys, who had been stretched out in comfortable positions, drew themselves bolt upright, and sat aghast. They stared towards the camp-door, murmuring disjointedly. Into the mind of each flashed a remembrance of some story which Doctor Phil had told about a thieving partner who once robbed Herb Heal.
"You've stirred up more than you bargained for, Dol," said Cyrus. "I wish to goodness you hadn't been so smart with your questions."
But the words were scarcely spoken when the guide was again in their midst, with a smile on his lips.
"It's best to let sleeping dogs lie, young one," he said, looking down reassuringly on Dol, who was feeling dumfounded. "I guess you all think I'm an awful bearish fellow. But if you had lived the lonely life of a trapper, tramping each day through the dark woods till you were leg-weary, visiting your steel traps and deadfalls, all to get a few furs and make a few dollars; and turned up at camp one evening to find that your partner had skipped with every skin you had procured, I reckon 'twould take you a plaguy long time to get over it."
"I'm pretty sure it would, old man," said Cyrus.
"And I minded the loss of the furs a sight less than I minded losing that moose-head," continued Herb, taking his perch again upon the "deacon's seat." "The hound took 'em all. Every woodsman in Maine was riled about it at the time, and turned out to ketch him; but he gave 'em the slip. Now, boys, I've got to feeling pretty chummy with you. Cyrus is an old friend; and, to speak plain, I like you Britishers. I don't want you to think that I bust up your fun to-night for nothing. I'll tell you the whole yarn if you want to hear it."
The looks of the trio were sufficient assent.
"All right, boys. Here goes! Since I was a kid in Maine woods I've worked at a'most everything that a woodsman can do. Six year ago I was a 'barker' in a lumber-camp on the Kennebec River. A 'barker' is a man who jumps onto a big tree after a chopper has felled it, and strips the bark off with his axe, so that the trunk can be easily hauled over the snow. Well, it's pretty hard labor, is lumbering. But our camp always got Sunday for rest.
"Well, I was prowling about in the woods by myself one Sunday afternoon, when an awful snow-storm come on, a big blizzard which staggered the stripped trees like as if 'twould tumble 'em all down, and end our work for us. I was bolting for camp as fast as I was able, when I tripped over something which was a'most covered over in a heavy drift. 'Great Scott!' says I, 'it's a man!' And 'twas too. He was near dead. I hauled him out, and set him on his legs; but he couldn't walk. So I threw him across my shoulders, same way as I carry a deer. He didn't weigh near as much as a good buck, for he was little more'n a kid and awful lean. But 'twas dreadful travelling, with the snow half blinding and burying you. I was plumb blowed when I struck the camp, and pitched in head foremost.
"For an hour we worked over that stranger to bring him round, and we succeeded. We saw at once that he was a half-breed. When he could use his tongue, he told us that his father was a settler, and his mother a Penobscot Indian. He was sick for a spell and wild-like, then he talked a lot of Indian jargon; but when he got back his senses, he spoke English fust-rate. Chris Kemp he said was his name. And from the start the lumbermen nicknamed him 'Cross-eyed Chris; for his eyes, which were black as blackberries, had a queer squint in 'em.
"Well, in spite of the squint, I took to Chris, and he to me. And the following year, when I decided to give up lumbering, and take to trapping fur-bearing animals in the woods near Katahdin, he joined me. We swore to be chums, to stick to each other through thick and thin, to share all we got; and he made one of his outlandish Indian signs to strengthen the oath. A fine way he kept it too!
"Now, if I'm too long-winded, boys, say so; and I'll hurry up."
"No, no! Tell us everything."
"Spin it out as long as you can."
"We don't mind listening half the night. Go ahead!"
At this gust of protest Herb smiled, though rather soberly, and went ahead as he was bidden.
"We made camp together—him and me. We had two home-camps where I told you, and met at the end of each week, bringing the skins we had taken, which we stored in one of 'em. We got along together swimmingly for a bit. But Chris had a weakness which I had found out long before. I guess he took it from his mother's people. Give him one drink of whiskey, and it stirred up all the mud that was in him. There's mud in every man, I s'pose; and there's nothing like liquor for bringing it to the surface. A gulp of fire-water changed Chris from an honest, right-hearted fellow to a crazy devil. This had set the lumbermen against him. But I hoped that in the lonely woods where we trapped he wouldn't get a chance to see the stuff. He did, though, and when I wasn't there to make a fight against his swallowing it.
"It happened that one week he got back to our camp on Togue Ponds,—where most of our stuff was stored, and where I kept that moose-head, waiting for a chance to take it down to Greenville,—a day or two sooner'n me. And the worst luck that ever attended either of us brought a stranger to the camp at the same time, to shelter for a night. He was an explorer, a city swell; and I guess he didn't know much about Injuns or half-breeds, for he gave Chris a little bottle of fiery whiskey as a parting present. The man told me about it afterwards, and that he was kind o' scared when the boy—for he wasn't much more—swallowed it with two gulps, and then followed him into the woods, howling, capering, and offering to sell him my grand moose-head, and all the furs we had, for another drink of the burning stuff. I guess that stranger felt pretty sick over the mischief he had done. He refused to buy 'em. But when I got back to camp next day, to find the skins gone, antlers gone, Chris gone; when I ran across the traveller and ferreted out his story,—I knew, as well as if I seen it, that my partner had skipped with all my belongings, to sell 'em or trade 'em at some settlement for more liquor. We had a couple of big birch canoes,—one of 'em was missing too,—and a river being near, the thing could be easy managed.
"I'll allow that I raged tremendous. The losses were bad; but to be robbed by your own chum, the man you had saved and stuck to, the only being you had said a word to for months, was sickening. I swore I'd shoot the hound if I found him. I spread the news at every camp and farm-settlement through the forest country, and we had a rousing hunt after the fellow; but he gave us the slip, though I heard of him afterwards at a distant town, where he sold the furs."
"I suppose he left the State," said Cyrus.
"I guess he did. But for a big while I used to think he'd come back to our camp some day, and let me have it out with him; for he wasn't a coward, and we had been fast chums."
"And he didn't?"
"Not as I know of. The next year I gave up trapping, which was an awful cruel as well as a lonely business, and took to moose-hunting and guiding. I haven't been anear the old camps for ages."
"Perhaps you will come across him again some day," suggested Dol, with unusual timidity.
"P'raps so, Kid. And, faith, when I think of that, it seems as if there were two creatures inside o' me fighting tooth and claw. One is all for hammering him to a jelly. The other is sort o' pitiful, and says, 'Mebbe 'twasn't out-an'-out his fault.' Which of them two'll get the best of it, if ever I'm face to face with Cross-eyed Chris, I dunno."
Cyrus Garst rose suddenly. He kicked the camp-fire to make a blaze, then looked the woodsman fair in the eyes.
"I know, Herb," he said; "the spirit of mercy will conquer."
"Glad you think so!" answered Herb. "But I ain't so sure. Sho! boys, I've kept you up till near midnight with my yarns. We must go to roost quick, or you'll never be fit to light out for Katahdin to-morrow."
Before daybreak next morning Herb Heal was astir. Apparently even a short night's sleep had driven from him all disturbing memories. He whistled and hummed softly, like the strong, hopeful fellow he was, controlling his notes so that they should not awaken his companions, while he hauled out and overlooked the canvas for a tent, to see if it was sound. Next he surveyed the camp-stores, and put up a supply of flour, pork, and coffee in a canvas bag, enough for four persons to subsist upon with economy during an excursion of six or seven days. For he knew that his employers would follow his suggestion, and be eager to start for the woods near Katahdin soon after they got their eyes open.
He had been doing his work with a candle held in his brown fingers; but as dawn-light began to enter the cabin, he quenched its dingy, yellow flicker, opened the camp-door, and surveyed the morning sky.
"It'll be a good day to start out, I guess," he muttered. "Let's see, what time is it?"
The stars had not yet paled, and Herb forthwith fell to studying them; for they were his jewelled time-piece, by which he could tell the hour so long as they shone. Watch he had none.
While he gazed aloft at the glinting specks, he unconsciously began to croon, in a powerful bass voice, with deep gutturals, some words which certainly weren't woodsman's English.
" N'loan pes-saus, mok glint ont-aven,
Glint ont-aven, nosh morgan ."
"What on earth is that outlandish thing you're singing, Herb?" roared Neal Farrar from the bunk, awakened by the sounds. "Give us that stave again—do!"
The guide started. He had scarcely been aware of what he was humming, and his laugh was a trifle disconcerted.
"So you're waking up, are ye?" he said. "Tain't time to be stirring yet; I ought to be kicked for making such a row."
"But what's that you were singing?" reiterated Neal. "The words weren't English, and they had a fine sort of roll."
"They're Injun," was the answer. "I guess 'twas all the talking I done last night that brung 'em into my head. I picked 'em up from that fellow I was telling you about. He'd start crooning 'em whenever he looked at the stars to find out the hour."
"Are they about the stars?"
"I guess so. A city man, who had studied the redskins' language a lot, told me they meant:—
'We are the stars which sing,
We sing with our light.'" 2
Then Herb chanted the two lines again in the original tongue.
"There was quite a lot more," he said; "but I can't remember it. I learned some queer jargon from Chris, and how to make most of the signs belonging to the Indian sign-talk. The fellow had more of his mother than his father in him. I guess I'd better give over jabbering, and cook our breakfast."
It was evident that Herb did not want to dwell upon his reminiscences. And Neal had tact enough to swallow his burning curiosity about all things Indian. He asked no more questions, but rolled off the fir-boughs, and dressed himself.
Cyrus and Dol sprang up too. All three were soon busy helping forward preparations for the start. They packed their knapsacks with a few necessaries; and after a hearty breakfast had been eaten,—their last meal off moose-steaks for a while, as Herb informed them he "could not carry any fresh meat along,"—the guide's voice was heard shouting:—
"Ready, are ye, boys? Got all yer traps? Here, Cyrus, jest strap this pack-basket on my shoulders. Now we're off!"
The pack contained the tent, the camp-kettle, and frying-pan, together with the aforementioned provisions, a good axe, etc. It was an uncomfortable load, even for a woodsman's shoulders. But Herb strode ahead with it jauntily. And many times during that first day's tramp of a dozen miles, his comrades—as they trudged through rugged places after him, spots where it was hard to keep one's perpendicular, and feet sometimes showed a sudden inclination to start for the sky—threw envious glances at his tall figure, "straight as an Indian arrow," his powerful limbs, and unerring step. Even the horny, capable hands came in for a share of the admiration.
"I guess anything that got into your grip, Herb, would find it hard to get out again without your will," said Cyrus, studying the knotted fists which held the straps of the pack-basket.
"Mebbe so," answered the guide frankly. "I've a sort of a trick of holding on to things once I've got 'em. P'raps that was why I didn't let go of Chris in that big blizzard 'till I landed him at camp. But I hope"—here Herb's shoulders shook with heaving laughter, and the cooking utensils in his pack jingled an accompaniment—"I hope I ain't like a miserly fellow we had in our lumber-camp. He was awful pious about some things, and awful mean about others. So the boys said, 'he kept the Sabbath and everything else he could lay his hands upon.' He used to get riled at it.
"Not that I've a word to say against keeping Sunday," went on Herb, in a different key. "Tell you what, out here a fellow thinks a heap of his day o' rest, when his legs can stop tramping, and his mind get a chance to do some tall thinking. Now, boys, we've covered twelve good miles since we left Millinokett Lake, and you needn't go any farther to-day unless you've a mind to. We can make camp right here, near that stream. It will be nice, cold drinking-water, for it has meandered down from Katahdin."
He pointed to a brook a little way ahead, shimmering in the rays of the afternoon sun, of which they caught stray peeps through the gaps in an intervening wall of pines and hemlocks. A few minutes brought them to its brink. Tired and parched from their journey, each one stooped, and quenched his thirst with a delicious, ice-cold draught.
"Was there ever a soda-fountain made that could give a drink to equal that?" said Cyrus, smacking his lips with content. "But listen to the noise this stream makes, boys. I guess if I were to lie beside it for an hour, I'd think, as the Greenlanders do, that I could hear the spirits of the world talking through it."
"That's a mighty queer notion," answered Herb; "and I never knew as other folks had got hold of it. But, sure's you live! I've thought the same thing myself lots o' times, when I've slept by a forest stream. Who'll lend a helping hand in cutting down boughs for our fire and bed? I want to be pretty quick about making camp. Then we'll be able to try some moose-calling after supper."
At this moment a peculiar gulping noise in Neal's throat drew the eyes of his companions upon him. His were bright and strained, peering at the opposite bank.
"Look! What is it?" he gasped, his low voice rattling with excitement.
"A cow-moose, by thunder!" said Herb. "A cow-moose and a calf with her! Here's luck for ye, boys!"
One moment sooner, simultaneously with Neal's gulp of astonishment, there had emerged from the thick woods on the other bank a brown, wild-looking, hornless creature, in size and shape resembling a big mule, followed by a half-grown reproduction of herself.
Her shaggy mane flew erect, her nostrils quivered like those of a race-horse, her eyes were starting with mingled panic and defiance.
A snort, sudden and loud as the report of a shot-gun, made the four jump. Neal, who was standing on a slippery stone by the brink, lost his balance and staggered forward into the water, kicking up jets of shining spray. The snort was followed by a grunt, plaintive, distracted, which sounded oddly familiar, seeing that it had been so well imitated on Herb's horn.
And with that grunt, the moose wheeled about and fled, making the air swish as she cut through it, followed by her young, her mane waving like a pennon.
"Well, if that ain't bang-up luck, I'd like to know what is," said the guide, as he watched the departure. "I never s'posed you'd get a chance to see a cow-moose; she's shyer'n shy. Say! don't you boys think that I've done her grunt pretty well sometimes?"
"That you have," was the general response. " We couldn't tell any difference between your noise and the real thing."
"But she wasn't a patch on the bull-moose in appearance," lamented Dol.
"No more she was, boy. Most female forest creatures ain't so good-looking as the males! And that's queer when you think of it, for the girls have the pull over us where beauty is concerned. We ain't in it with 'em, so to speak."
There was a big gale of laughter over Herb Real's gallant admiration for the other sex, and the sigh which accompanied his expression of it. He joined in the mirth himself, though he walked off to make camp, muttering:—
"Sho! You city fellows think that because I'm a woodsman I never heard of love-making in my life."
"Perhaps there is a little girl at some settlement waiting for a home to be fixed up out of guide's fees," retorted Cyrus.
And the three shouted again for no earthly reason, save that the stimulus of forest air and good circulation was driving the blood with fine pressure through their veins, and life seemed such a glorious, unfolding possession—full of a wonderful possible—that they must hold a sort of jubilee.
Herb, who perhaps in his lonely hours in the woods did cherish some vision such as Cyrus suggested, was so infected with their spirit, that, as he swung his axe with a giant's stroke against a hemlock branch, he joined in with an explosive:—
"Hurrup! Hur-r-r-rup!"
This startled the trio like the bursting of a bomb, and trebled their excitement; for their guide, when abroad, had usually the cautious, well-controlled manner of the still-hunter, who never knows what chances may be lurking round him which he would ruin by an outcry.
"Quit laughing, boys," he said, recovering prudence directly he had let out his yell. "Quit laughing, I say, or we may call moose here till crack o' doom without getting an answer. I guess they're all off to the four winds a'ready, scared by our fooling."
"I told you so, boys," breathed the guide two hours later, with an overwhelming sigh of regret, after he had given his most fetching calls in vain. "I told you so. There ain't anything bigger'n a buck-rabbit travelling. That tormented row we made scared every moose within hearing."
Herb was standing on the ground, horn in hand, screened by the great shadows of a clump of hemlocks; the three were perched upon branches high above him, a safe post of observation if any moose had answered.
"You may as well light down now," he continued, turning his face up, though the boys were invisible; "I ain't a-going to try any more music to-night. I guess we'll stretch ourselves for sleep early, to get ready for a good day's work to-morrow. An eight-mile tramp will bring us to the first heavy growth about the foot of Katahdin, and I'll promise you a sight of a moose there."
His companions dropped to earth; and the four sought the shelter of their tent, which had been pitched a few hundred yards from the calling-place. Some dull embers smouldered before it; for Herb, even while preparing supper, had kept the camp-fire very low, lest any wandering clouds of smoke should interfere with the success of his calling.
Now he heaped it high, throwing on without stint withered hemlock boughs and massive logs, which were soon wrapped in a sheet of flame, making an isle of light amid a surrounding sea of impenetrable darkness.
Many times during the night the watchful fellow arose to replenish this fire, so that there might be no decrease in the flood of heat which entered the tent, and kept his charges comfortable. Once, while he was so engaged, the placid sleepers whom he had noiselessly quitted were aroused to terror—sudden, bewildering night-terror—by a gasping cry from his lips, followed by the leaping and rushing of some brute in flight, and by a screech which was one defiant note of unutterable savagery.
"Good heavens! What's that?" said Cyrus.
"Is it—can it—could it be a panther?" stammered Dol.
"Get out!" answered Neal contemptuously. "The panthers have got out long ago, so every one says."
"A lynx! A Canada lynx, boys, as sure as death and taxes!" panted Herb Heal, springing into the tent on the instant, with a burning brand in his hand. "'Tain't any use your tumbling out, for you won't see him. He's away in the thick of the woods now."
Cyrus gurgled inarticulate disappointment. At the first two words he had sprung to his legs, having never encountered a lynx.
"The brute must have been prowling round our tent," went on Herb, his voice thick from excitement. "He leaped past me just as I was stooping to fix the fire, and startled me so that I guess I hollered. He got about half a dozen yards off, then turned and crouched as if he was going to spring back. Luckily, the axe was lying by me, just where I had tossed it down after chopping the last heap of logs. I caught it up, and flung it at him. It struck him on the side, and curled him up. I thought he was badly hurt; but he jumped the next moment, screeched, and made off. A pleasant scream he has; sounds kind o' cheerful at night, don't it?"
No one answered this sarcasm; and Herb flung himself again upon his boughs, pulling his worn blanket round him, determined not to relinquish his night's sleep because a lynx had visited his camp. The city fellows sensibly tried to follow his example; but again and again one of them would shake himself, and rise stealthily, convinced that he heard the blood-curdling screech ringing through the silent night.
It was nearly morning before fatigue at last overmastered every sensation, and the three fell into an unbroken sleep, which lasted until the sun was high in the sky. When they awoke, their sense of smell was the first sense to be tickled. Fragrant odors of boiling coffee were floating into the tent. One after another they scrambled up, threw on their coats, and hurried out to find their guide kneeling by the camp-fire on the very spot from which he had hurled his axe at the lynx a few hours before. But now his right hand held a green stick, on which he was toasting some slices of pork into crisp, appetizing curls.
"'Morning, boys!" he said, as the trio appeared. "Hope your early rising won't opset ye! If you want to dip your faces in the stream, do it quick, for these dodgers are cooked."
The "dodgers" were the familiar flapjacks. Herb set down his stick as he spoke to turn a batch of them, which were steaming on the frying-pan, tossing them high in air as he did so, with a dexterous turn of his wrist.
The boys having performed hasty ablutions in the stream, devoted themselves to their breakfast with a hearty will. There was little leisure for discussing the midnight visit of the lynx, or for anything but the joys of satisfying hunger, and taking in nutrition for the day's tramp, as Herb was in a hurry to break camp, and start on for Katahdin. The morning was very calm; there seemed no chance of a wind springing up, so the evening would probably be a choice one for moose-calling.
In half an hour the band was again on the march, the business of breaking camp being a swift one. The tent was on Herb's shoulders; and naught was left to mark the visit of man to the humming stream but a bed of withering boughs on which the lynx might sleep to-night, and a few dying embers which the guide had thrashed out with his feet.
No halt was made until four o'clock in the afternoon. Then Herb Heal came to a standstill on the edge of a wide bog. It lay between him and what he called the "first heavy growth;" that is, the primeval forest, unthinned by axe of man, which at certain points clothes the foot of Katahdin.
The great mountain, dwelling-place of Pamolah, cradle of the flying Thunder and flashing Lightning, which according to one Indian legend are the swooping sons of the Mountain Spirit, now towered before the travellers, its base only a mile distant.
"I've a good mind to make camp right here," said Herb, surveying the bog and then the firm earth on which he stood. "We may travel a longish ways farther, and not strike such a fair camping-ground, unless we go on up the side of the mountain to that old home-camp I was telling you about, which we built when we were trapping. I guess it's standing yet, and 'twould be a snug shelter; but we'd have a hard pull to reach it this evening. What d'ye say, boys?"
"I vote for pitching the tent right here," answered Cyrus.
The English boys were of the same mind, and the guide forthwith unstrapped his heavy pack-basket. As he hauled forth its contents, and strewed them on the ground, the first article which made its appearance was the moose-horn; it had been carefully stowed in on top. Dol snatched it up as a dog might snatch a bone, and touched it with longing in every finger-tip.
"There's one bad thing about this place," grumbled Herb presently, surveying the landscape wherever his eye could travel, "there isn't a pint of drinking-water to be seen. There may be pools here and there in that bog; but, unless we want to keel over before morning, we'd better let 'em alone. Say! could a couple of you fellows take the camp-kettle, and cruise about a bit in search of a spring?"
"I volunteer for the job!" cried Dol instantly, with the light of some sudden idea shining like a sunburst in his face.
"You don't budge a step, old man, unless I go with you," said Cyrus. "Not much! I don't want to patrol the forests like a lunatic for five mortal hours in search of you, and then find you roasting your shins by some other fellow's camp-fire. One little hide-and-seek game of that kind was enough."
"Well! the fact that I did bring up by Doc's camp-fire shows that I am able to take care of myself. If I get into scrapes, I can wriggle out of them again," maintained the kid of the camp, with a brazen look, while his eyes showed flinty sparks, caused by the inspiring purpose hidden behind them, which had little to do with water-carrying.
"Why can't you both go without any more palaver?" suggested Herb, as he started away towards a belt of young firs to cut stakes for the tent. "Cruise straight across the bog, mark your track by the bushes as you go 'long, don't get into the woods at all, and 'twill be plain sailing. I guess you'll strike a spring before very long."
Cyrus caught up the camp-kettle, and stepped out briskly over the springy, spongy ground. Dol Farrar followed him. The two were half-way across the bog before the elder noticed that the younger was carrying something. It was the moose-horn.
"If we run across any moose-signs, I'm going to try a call," said Dol, his strike-a-light eyes fairly blazing while he disclosed his purpose. "You may laugh, Cy, and call me a greenhorn; but I bet you I'll get an answer, at least if there's a bull-moose within two miles."
"That's pretty cheerful," retorted the Boston man; "especially as neither of us has brought a rifle. Mr. Moose may be at home, and give you an answer; but there's no telling what sort of temper he'll be in."
"I left my Winchester leaning against a tree on the camping-ground," said the would-be caller regretfully. "But you know you wouldn't fire on him, Cy, unless he came near making mince-meat of us. If he should charge, we could make a dash for the nearest trees. Let's risk it if we run across any tracks!"
"And in the meantime, Herb will be wondering where we are, vowing vengeance on us, and waiting for the kettle while we're waiting for the moose," argued Garst. "It won't do, Chick. Give it up until later on. We undertook the job of finding water, and we're bound to finish that business first."
"If I wait until later on, I may wait forever," was the boy's gloomy protest. "Tonight, when Herb is there, Neal and you will just sit on me, and be afraid of my making a wrong sound, and spoiling the sport.
"And I know we'll see moose-tracks before we get back to camp!" wound up the young pleader passionately. "I've been working up to it all day. I mean I've felt as if something—something fine—was going to happen, which would make a ripping story for the Manchester fellows when we go home. Do let me have one chance, Cy,—one fair and honest chance!"
There was such a tremendous force of desire working through the English boy that it set his blood boiling, and every bit of him in motion. His eyes were afire, his eyelids shut and opened with their quick snap, his lips moved after he had finished speaking, his fingers twitched upon the moose-horn.
He was a picture of heart-eagerness which Cyrus could not resist, though he shook with laughter.
"I'll take mighty good care that the next time I go to find water for the camp-supper, I don't take a crank with me, who has gone mad on moose-calling," he said. "See here! If we do come across moose-signs, I'll get under cover, and give you quarter of an hour to call and listen for an answer—not a second longer. Now stop thinking about this fad, and keep your eyes open for a spring."
But, unfortunately, this seemed to be a thirsty and tantalizing land for travellers. The soft sod under their feet oozed moisture; slimy, stagnant bog-pools appeared, but not a drop of pure, gushing water, to which a parched man dare touch his lips.
They crossed the wide extent of bog, Cyrus breaking off stunted bushes here and there to mark his pilgrimage; they reached the dense timber-growth at the base of the mountain, longing for the sight of a spring as eagerly as ever pilgrims yearned to behold a healing well; but their search was unsuccessful.
Decidedly nonplussed, Dol all the time keeping one eye on the lookout for water and the other for moose-signs, they took counsel together, and determined to "cruise" to the right, skirting the foot of Katahdin, hoping to find a gurgling, rumbling mountain-torrent splashing down. Having travelled about half a mile in this new direction, with the giant woods which they dared not enter rising like an emerald wall on the one hand, and the dreary bog-land on the other, they at last, when patience was failing, came to a change in the landscape.
The desired water was not in view yet; but the bog gave way to fairer, firmer ground, covered with waving grasses, studded with rising knolls, and having no timber growth, save stray clumps of birches and hemlocks, several hundred yards apart.
"Now, this is jolly!" exclaimed Dol. "This looks a little bit like an English lawn, only I'm afraid it's not a likely place for moose-tracks. But I'm glad to be out of that beastly bog."
"Confusion to your moose-tracks," ejaculated Cyrus, half exasperated. "I wish we could find a well. That would be more to the purpose. Listen, Dol, do you hear anything?"
"I hear—I hear—'pon my word! I do hear the bubbling and tinkling of water somewhere! Where on earth is it? Oh! I know. It comes from that knoll over there—the one with the bushes."
Dol Farrar, as he finished his jerky sentences, pointed to an eminence which was two or three hundred yards from where they stood, and a like distance from the wall of forest.
"Well! It's about time we struck something at last," grumbled Garst. "Catch me ever coming on a water pilgrimage again! I'll let Herb fill his own kettle in future. Now, I believe that fellow could smell a spring."
"Just as I smelt this one!" exclaimed Dol triumphantly. "I told you 'twas on the side of the knoll. And here it is!"
"Bravo, Chick! You've got good ears, if you are crazy upon one subject."
And so speaking, Cyrus, with a chuckle of joy, unslung the tin drinking-cup which hung at his belt, filled and refilled it, drinking long, inspiriting draughts before he prepared to fill the camp-kettle.
"The best water I ever tasted, Dol!" he exclaimed, smacking his lips. "It's ice-cold. There's not much of it, but it has quality, if not quantity."
The long-sought well was, in truth, a tiny one. It came bubbling up, clear and pellucid, from the bowels of the earth, and showed its laughing face amid a cluster of bushes—which all bent close to look at it lovingly—half-way up the knoll. A wee stream trickled down from it,—dribble—dribble—a rivulet that had once been twice its present size, judging from the wide margin of spattered clay at each side.
Dol had been following his companion's example, and drinking joyfully before thinking of aught else. When the moment came for him to straighten his back, and rise upon his legs, instead of this natural proceeding, he suddenly crouched close to the ground, his breath coming in quick puffs, his eyes dilating, a froth of excitement on his lips.
"What on earth are you staring at?" asked Cyrus. "You look positively crazy."
For answer, the English boy shot up from his lowly posture, seized his companion by the arm, making him drop the camp-kettle, which he was just filling, and forced him to scan the soft clay by the rivulet.
"Look there—and there!" gurgled Dol, his voice sounding as if he was being choked by suppressed hilarity. "I told you we'd find them, and you didn't believe me! Aren't those moose-tracks? They're not deer-tracks, anyhow; they're too big. I may be a greenhorn, but I know that much."
"They are moose-tracks," Cyrus answered slowly, almost unbelievingly, though the evidence was before him. "They certainly are moose-tracks," he repeated, "and very recent ones too. A moose has been drinking here, perhaps not half an hour ago. He can't be far away."
Garst was now warming into excitement himself. His bass tones became guttural and almost inarticulate, while he lowered them to prevent their travelling. On the reddish clay at his feet were foot-marks very like the prints of a large mastiff. He studied them one by one, even tracing the outline with his forefinger.
"Then I'm going to call," whispered Dol, his words tremulous and stifled. "Lie low, Cy! You promised you'd give me a fair chance; you'll have to keep your word."
"I'll do it too," was the answering whisper. "But let's get higher up on the knoll, behind those big bushes at the top. And listen, Dol, if a moose makes a noise anywhere near, we must scoot for the trees before he comes out from cover. I've got to answer to your father for you."
It was an intense moment in Dol Farrar's life; sensation reached its highest pitch, as he crouched low behind a prickly screen, put the birch-bark horn to his mouth, and slowly breathed through it with the full power of his young lungs, marvellously strengthened by the forest life of past weeks.
There was a minute's interval while he removed it again, and drew in all the air he could contain. Then a call rose upon the evening air, so touching, so plaintive, with such a rising, quavering impatience as it surged out towards the woods,—whither the boy-caller's face was turned,—that Cyrus could scarcely suppress a "Bravo!"
The summons died away in a piteous grunt. A second time the call rose and fell. On the third repetition it broke off, as usual, in an abrupt roar, which seemed to strike the tops of the giant trees, and boom among them.
A froth was on Dol Farrar's lips, his eyes were reddened, he puffed hard through spread nostrils, like a young horse which has been trying its mettle for the first time, as he lowered that moose-horn, lifted his head, and cocked his ears to listen.
Two soundless minutes passed. Dol, who, if he had mastered the hunter's call, had certainly not mastered his patience, put the bark-trumpet again to his lips, determined to try the effect of a surpassingly expressive grunt.
But he never executed this false movement, which would have given away the trick at once.
A bellow—a short, snorting, challenging bellow—burst the silence, coming from the very edge of the woods. It brought Cyrus to his feet with a jump. It so startled the ambitious moose-caller, that, in rising hurriedly from his squatting position, he lost his balance, and rolled over and over to the bottom of the knoll, smashing the horn into a hundred pieces.
He picked himself up unhurt, but with a sensation as if all the bells in Christendom were doing a jumbled ringing in his head. And loud above this inward din he heard the sound, so well remembered, as of an axe striking repeatedly against a tree, the terrible chopping noises of a bull-moose, not two hundred yards away.
No sooner had he scrambled to his legs, than Garst was at his side, gripping his arm, and forcing him forward at a headlong run.
"You've done it this time with a vengeance!" bawled the Bostonian. "He's coming for us straight! And we without our rifles! The trees! The trees! It's our only chance!"
With the belling still in his head, and so bewildered by his terrible success that he felt as if his senses were shooting off hither and thither like rockets, leaving him mad, Dol nevertheless ran as he had never run before, shoulder to shoulder with his comrade, dashing wildly for a clump of hemlocks over a hundred yards distant. Yet, for the life of him, he could not help glancing back once over his shoulder, to see the creature which he had humbugged, luring it from its forest shelter, and which now pursued him.
The moose was charging after them full tilt, gaining rapidly too, his long thin legs, enormous antlers, broad, upreared nose, and the green glare in his starting eyes, making him look like some strange animal of a former earth. Dol at last trembled with actual fear. He gave a shuddering leap, and forced his legs, which seemed threatened with paralysis, to wilder speed.
"Climb up that hemlock! Get as high as you can!" shrieked Cyrus, stopping to give him an upward shove as they reached the first friendly trunk.
Dol obeyed. Gasping and wild-eyed, he dug his nails into the bark, clambering up somehow until he reached a forked branch about eight feet from the ground. Here strength failed. He could only cling dizzily, feeling that he hung between life and death.
The moose was now snorting like a war-horse beneath. The brute stood off for a minute, then charged the hemlock furiously, and butted it with his antlers till it shook to its roots, the sharp prongs of those terrible horns coming within half an inch of Dol's feet.
With a gurgle of horror the boy tried to reach a higher limb, and succeeded; for at the same moment a timely shout encouraged him. Cyrus was bawling at the top of his voice from a tree ten feet distant:—
"Are you all right, Dol? Don't be scared. Hold on like grim death, and we can laugh at the old termagant now."
"I'm—I'm all right," sang out Dol, though his voice shook, as did every twig of his hemlock, which the moose was assaulting again. "But he's frantic to get at me."
"Never mind. He can't do it, you know. Only don't you go turning dizzy or losing your balance. Ha! you old spindle-legged monster, stand off from that tree. Take a turn at mine now, for a change. You can't shake me down, if you butt till midnight."
Garst's last sentences were hurled at the moose. The Bostonian, having reached a safe height, thrust his face out from his screen of branches, waving first an arm, and then a leg, at the besieging foe, hoping that the force of those battering antlers would be directed against his hemlock, so that his friend's nerves might get a chance to recover.
The ruse succeeded. The moose, reminded that there was a second enemy, charged the other tree; stood off for a minute to get breath, then charged it again, snorting, bellowing, and knocking his jaws together with a crunching, chopping noise.
"Ha! that's how he makes the row like a man with an axe—by hammering his jaws on each other. Well, well! but this is a regular picnic, Dol," sang out Cyrus jubilantly, caring nothing for the shocks, and forgetting camp, water, peril, everything, in his joy at getting a chance to leisurely study the creature he had come so far to visit.
"I owe you something for this, little man!" he carolled on in triumph, as he watched every wild movement of the moose. "This is a show we'll only see once in our lives. It's worth a hundred dollars a performance. Butt and snort till you're tired, you 'Awful Jabberwock!'"—this to the bull-moose. "We've come hundreds of miles to see you, and the more you carry on the better we'll be pleased."
Indeed, the wrathful king of forests seemed in no hurry to cut short his pantomime. He ramped and raged, tearing from one tree to another, expending paroxysms of force in vain attempts to overturn one or the other of them. The ground seemed to shake under his thundering hoofs. His eyes were full of green fire; his nostrils twitched; the black tassel or "bell" hanging from his shaggy throat shook with every angry movement; his muffle, the big overhanging upper lip, was spotted with foam.
As he gulped, grunted, snorted, and roared, his uncouth, guttural noises made him seem more than ever like a curious creature of earth's earliest ages.
"We came pretty near to being goners, Dol, I tell you!" carolled Cyrus again from his high perch in the hemlock, carrying on a by-play with the enemy between each sentence. "How in the name of wonder did you manage such a call? It would have moved the heart-strings of any moose. I was lying flat, you know, peeping through a little gap in the bushes, and you had scarcely taken the horn from your mouth when I saw the old fellow come stamping out of the woods. My! wasn't he a sight? He stood for a minute looking about for the fancied cow; then he bellowed, and started towards the knoll. I knew we had better run for our lives. As soon as he saw us he gave chase."
"And 'the fancied cow' should go tumbling down the knoll like a rolling jackass, and smash that grand horn to bits!" lamented Dol, who now sat serenely on his bough, with a firm clasp of the hemlock trunk, and a reckless enjoyment of the situation which far surpassed his companion's.
Cyrus began to have an occasional twinge of uneasiness about the possible length of the siege, after his first exuberance subsided; but the younger boy, his short terror overcome, had no misgivings. He coquetted with the moose through a thick screen of foliage, shook the branches at him, gibed and taunted him, enjoying the extra fury he aroused.
But suddenly the old bull, having kept up his wild movements for nearly an hour, resolved on a change of tactics. He stood stock-still and lowered his head.
"Goodness! He has made up his mind to 'stick us out!'" gasped Cyrus.
"What's that?" said Dol.
"Don't you see? He's going to lay siege in good earnest—wait till we're forced to come down. Here's a state of things! We can't roost in these trees all night."
The hemlocks were throwing ever-lengthening shadows on the grass. A slow eclipse was stealing over everything. The motionless moose became an uncouth black shape. Garst muttered uneasily. His fingers tingled for his rifle—a very unusual thing with him. His eyes peered through the creeping darkness in puzzled search for some suggestion, some possibility of escape.
"If it were only myself!" he whispered, as if talking to his hemlock. "If it were only myself, I wouldn't care a pin. 'Twould do me no great harm to perch here for hours. But an English youngster, on his first camping-trip! Why, the chill of a forest night might ruin him. He wouldn't howl or make a fuss, for both those Farrar boys have lots of grit, but he'd never get over it. Dol!" he wound up, raising his voice to a sharp pitch. "Say, Dol, I'm going to try a shout for help. Herb must be getting anxious about us by this time. If we could once make him hear, he could try some trick to lure this old curmudgeon away, or creep up and shoot him. Something must be done."
Fetching a deep breath, Cyrus sent a distance-piercing "Coo-hoo!" ringing through the night-air. He followed it with another.
But, so far as he could hear, the hails fetched no answer, save from the moose-jailer. The brute was stirred into a fresh tantrum by the noise. He charged the hemlocks once more, butted and shook them like a veritable demon.
When his paroxysm had subsided, and he stood off to get breath, Garst hailed again.
Glad sound! An answer this time! First, a shrill, long "Coo-hoo!" Next, Herb's voice was heard pealing from far away in the bog: "What's up, boys? Where in the world are you?"
"Here in the trees—treed by a bull-moose!" yelled Cyrus. "He's the maddest old monster you ever saw. Could you coax him off, or sneak up and shoot him? He means to keep us prisoners all night."
There was no wordy answer. But presently the treed heroes heard an odd, bird-like whistle. Dol thought it came from a feathered creature; his more experienced companion guessed that the guide's lips gave it as a signal that he was coming, but that he didn't want to draw the moose's attention in his direction just yet.
Such a quarter of an hour followed! With the fresh spurt of anger the bull-moose became more savage than ever. He grunted, tramped, and hooked the trees with his horns, so that the pair who were perched like night-birds on the branches had to hold on for dear life, lest a surprising shock should dislodge them. Whenever the creature stood off, to gather more fury, they could have counted their heart-beats while they listened, breathlessly anxious to, know what action the approaching woodsman would take.
Once Cyrus spoke.
"Dol Farrar," he said, "I guess this caps all the adventures that you or I have had up to date. No wonder you felt all day as if you were working up to something. I'll believe in presentiments in future."
The words had scarcely passed his lips, when there was the sharp bang! bang! of a rifle not twenty yards distant. A bright sputter of fire cut the darkness beneath the hemlocks.
The moose's blind rage threatened to be his own undoing. While he was fighting an imaginary danger, ears and nostrils half-choked by fury, through the calm night Herb Heal, Winchester in hand, had crept noiselessly on, till he reached the very trees which sheltered his friends.
Once, twice, three times the rifle snapped. The first shot missed altogether. At the second, the moose rose upon his hind-legs, with a sharp sound of fright and pain, quite unlike his former noises. Then he gave a quick jump.
"Great Governor's Ghost! he's gone;" yelled Cyrus, who had swung himself down a few feet, and was hanging by one arm, in his anxiety to see the result of the firing. "You needn't shoot again, Herb! He's off! Let him go!"
"I guess that second shot cut some hair from him, and drew blood too," answered Herb, his deep voice giving the pair a queer sensation as they heard it right beneath. "It was too dark to see plain, but I think he reared; and that's a sign that he was hurt, little or much. Don't drop down for a minute, boys, till we see whether he has bolted for good."