DEATH OF THE MOOSE COW 67 



a moment, their panting sides touching, chaotically 

 meditating escape, until the larger beast, hesitating 

 no longer, broke back, and went down the bed of 

 the stream at the gallop. 



From the cover a tatterdemalion figure issued, 

 and stood leaning on his rifle looking down at his 

 victim complacently. Ample meat lay there, and 

 meat of all things was what the prospector most 

 desired. More than the not-to-be-discovered gold 

 it was just then. Gold means very little in the 

 wilderness when you are hungry. Nature never 

 meant gold to make happiness. That's why so 

 many people love her. Unnatural civilization has 

 done it, and the worst of it is most of us have to be 

 civilized, whether we like it or not 1 



A red-grey mane of hair fell to the big man's 

 shoulders, a wavy beard to his waist, and in the 

 interregnum, between it and the top of his trousers, 

 was a band of leather stuck full of cartridges. 

 When the breeze blew the wavy beard aside, a 

 lump of Cassiar gold was exposed, doing duty as a 

 tie-pin in a dirty white scarf. 



The calf stood bewildered, hardly feeling alive. 

 The shock of his mother's death, which, indeed, he 

 but dimly understood, had paralyzed his reason — 



