228 THE DRAMA OF THE FORESTS 



munching sound of a large animal's jaws. Oo-koo-hoo rose 

 slightly from his stooped position, peered through the branches 

 of a dense spruce thicket, crouched again, turned aside for 

 perhaps twenty paces . . . looked up again . . . 

 raised his gun and saying in a gentle voice: "My brother, I 

 need . . ." he fired. 



Instantly there was a great commotion beyond the thicket, 

 one sound running off among the trees, while the other, the 

 greater sound, first made a brittle crash, then a ponderous thud 

 as of a large object falling among the dead under-branches. 



The hunter now straightened up and with his teeth pulled 

 the plug from his powder horn, poured a charge into his gun, 

 spat a bullet from his mouth into the barrel, struck the butt 

 violently upon the palm of his left hand, then slipping a cap 

 upon the nipple, moved cautiously forward as he whispered: 

 " Its neck must be broken." Soon we saw what had happened. 

 One moose was lying dead, the ball had struck it in the 

 neck; it was a three-year-old cow — the one Oo-koo-hoo had 

 selected — while the other, a bull, had left nothing but its 

 tracks. 



Presently The Owl re-loaded his gun with greater care, then 

 we returned for our snowshoes and to recover our toboggan 

 before we started to skin the carcass. On the way Oo-koo-hoo 

 talked of moose hunting, and I questioned him as to why he 

 had turned aside for the last time, just before he fired, and he 

 answered : 



"My son, I did it so that in case I should miss, the report 

 of my gun would come from the right direction to drive the 

 moose toward home and also toward our sled; and in case, 

 too, that I hit the moose and only wounded it, the brute would 

 run toward our sled and not take us farther away from it. 

 Also, my son, if I had merely wounded the beast, but had seen 

 from the way it flinched that it had been struck in a vital spot, 

 I would not have followed immediately, but would have sat 



