176 SPORT INDEED 



On my last visit to this place I saw a large cow- 

 moose and a two-pronged bull quietly feeding down 

 the stream. I «ame close to them without their know- 

 ing it — so close, indeed, that I could have slaughtered 

 both, and with a single bullet. But I had no desire to 

 trouble either of them. The bull was too young and 

 too small to fill my fancy ; and as for the cow, her 

 sex made her sacred and as safe from the range of my 

 rifle as a babe at the breast of its mother. After 

 watching them awhile and grumbling at the bull for 

 not coming into the world a few years sooner, I saw 

 them go leisurely on their way down the stream and 

 then pass from my sight. 



To the guide and myself this incident was full of 

 meaning. It gave us reason to believe that a bull of 

 riper years — the sire, maybe, of the youth we had 

 seen — might be wandering about somewhere in the 

 neighborhood, and therefore we determined to spend 

 a few nights there for the purpose of making his ac- 

 quaintance. My guide had brought blankets with 

 him, and spreading these under the shelter of some 

 alder bushes and close to the water's edge I lay my- 

 self down, but not to sleep. 



The night was cold and clear. There was no moon 

 and the darkness was intense. And there under the 

 alders I lay with " head on ground," opening wide my 

 ear-gates for the free entrance of every sound, let it 

 come from whatever quarter it might. Whether the 



