DEATH OF THE MOOSE COW 89 



That something untoward might somewhere un- 

 expectedly fall on him was a vague dread at first. 

 His life in the wild had been so short and sheltered. 

 What if there existed some unreckoned-with force 

 with which no yearling moose could hold his own I 

 But as he travelled farther and farther through the 

 night into lands similar to those he had known 

 since infancy, such unconscious joy came to him 

 that fear passed before it, and left him with the 

 wide, free, unconscious spirit of the explorer to 

 whom the unknown means but the unconquered. 



Crossing a swamp, he put his splay hoof through 

 the hollow base of a half-submerged tree-stump 

 and disturbed an otter. Like lightning the flexuous 

 body shot out, and in the dim half-light of dawn 

 Moosewa caught a flashing glimpse of a bull-dog 

 head, bristling whiskers, and small black eyes, 

 glistening like dewdrops in a spider's web. 



He knew the look of daybreak. That the human 

 ones could not imprison, and it had come to him in 

 his small corral just as surely as it came now in the 

 wide wilderness. 



But — how differently I 



Everywhere the close Alaskan fog hung about 

 the forest, blending the trees with the sky, lurking 



12 



