Moose Calling 93 



of Noel Glode's extended finger. Through the 

 haze I peer across the " barren," and, saints and 

 snakes ! there, two hundred yards away, black as 

 midnight, gigantic as all outside, just sneaking out 

 as 't were from the dense growth of young pines, is 

 the great bull moose, slowly turning his ponderous 

 head, with its massive, palmated, whitish brown 

 horns and " prehensible muffle," to right, to left, as he 

 warily gazes around him. " Aha ! my artful one, if 

 you had come out in the moonlight I might have 

 missed you from want of light. If you had charged 

 me in the bush I might have missed you from — 

 Two hundred, Noel ? Crack ! Missed ! Nose thrown 

 up. A moment's pause. Crack ! Slap ! Habet ! and 

 he's gone ! The wall of greenery hath devoured 

 him ! Gone, and shut the door after him, it seems, 

 so utterly is all trace of his passage instantly erased 

 by the closing branches. After him we go ! Noel 

 points at a black mass under the birches. I fire, 

 hit it, and am none the better for expending a 

 bullet on a rotten log. But the shot awakens the 

 echoes, and something more. What a plunging and 

 a crashing to the right ! Our moose, in a temper or 

 dying. " Let us sit and wait a bit while he bleeds 

 and cools and stiffens " — bless us ! how brutal it 

 looks on paper — say I. " No ! " squawks the Indian. 

 " We lose him in the hardwood ! " Against my 

 will, I advance into the thickest of the thicket. 

 What a stamping and a floundering ! And what a 

 rush as we near the noise ! Away he goes ! Away 



