DEATH OF THE MOOSE COW 81 



itself by its zig-zag twists, the moose could have 

 walked away quite easily. Therefore he was tied 

 up again, leg to leg, a precaution that wellnigh 

 broke his heart. Not to be able to stretch his 

 limbs as he wanted, to be forced once more into a 

 painful hobble I And the old longing surged 

 through his veins — the wild, mad desire to be free. 



When the weather moderated a little, he learnt 

 to follow Sadie down the bush trail — the road to 

 anywhere. His untrammelled hoofs went de- 

 corously now. He never skipped or jumped, or 

 sought to throw the halter from his neck. 



The river, still frozen, ran in its lower reaches 

 through a wide, open valley bare of timber, inter- 

 sected by numerous back lakes, from which the 

 barrens rolled like prairie country, bare, low-lying 

 plains, where the vegetation lay flat and dead from 

 the effects of the heavy snow. Typical caribou 

 ground, and sure enough one fine day the ramblers 

 found undoubted traces of the former presence of 

 caribou, numberless antlers lying hitherto un- 

 noticed denoting the fact that in some less hunted 

 era the caribou had sought this corner of the 

 wilderness in the fall of the year. 



Sometimes they put up red-combed ptarmigan, 



11 



