72 THE MOOSE 



the curious smell of meat cooking brought him 

 back to the hideous reality. 



They had no really hairbreadth escapes, no 

 battling amid rapids, no running into rocks, and 

 only once came within an ace of disaster as the 

 light boat flashed through a thickly timbered valley, 

 where the river channel ran through a rocky caiion, 

 across which the overhanging trees twined arresting 

 arms. Nothing but lying flat in the bottom of 

 the boat saved its human occupants from being 

 swept off into the stream, running like a mill-race. 

 Here the tight ropings proved the salvation of the 

 moose. He could not have moved had he tried. 



One evening a band of eight Indians, out after 

 caribou in the barrens below the foothills, lured by 

 the light of the fire, dropped into camp. Born 

 trackers as they were, a moose taken alive pos- 

 sessed an interest a dead specimen could never 

 evoke. With odd clickings of their tongues and 

 solemn head waggings, they prodded the trembling 

 calf to his feet with the muzzle end of a prehistoric 

 Winchester. His legs, cramped now by the con- 

 stant irk of the rope, refused to hold him, and with 

 a pitiful little sigh he sank to the ground once 

 more. A thwack from an elastic alder brought 



