DAYS IN THE WOODS 293 



where she was : how we crept and crawled, inch 

 by inch, through bushes, and over dry leaves and 

 brittle sticks, till we got within sight and easy 

 shot of three moose — a big bull, a cow, and a 

 two-year-old. Suffice it to say, that the big bull 

 died ; he paid the penalty. Female loquacity cost 

 him his life. If his lovely but injudicious com- 

 panion could have controlled her feminine dis- 

 position to talk, that family of moose would still 

 have been roaming the woods, happy and united. 



" There are still many things which I should like 

 to have told you," said Willie, " if there had been 

 time ; but by the smell of the air this spell will have 

 broken before morning, and we shan't have another 

 night of yarning. I should like to have given you 

 one run with buffalo on the plains, and told you of 

 a successful stalk up in the Colorado mountains 

 that brought me the finest known specimen of the 

 mountain sheep, and showed me grizzlies feeding 

 on heaps of locusts just under the snow line. I wish 

 I could have described a mountain lion which I 

 once saw in the middle of a warm summer's night 

 in Estes Park, when I was lying awake in bed, and 

 which I pursued some distance in the costume 

 peculiar to that part of the four-and-twenty hours 



