A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



made two plunges sideways and stopped again to watch us. 

 While John was following the tracks made by the bull, I forced 

 my way among the spruces, enveloped by a cloud of dislodged 

 snow, and after going about one hundred yards, stopped to 

 listen. At once I heard the hard breathing of a wounded 

 animal in a thicket to my left. Stealing quickly forward, 

 guided by this sound and the noise of smashing and crackling 

 of branches, I found myself within a few yards of the moose, 

 which was struggling forward with a shattered hip. 



Then followed a strange procession through the thick New 

 Brunswick woods. First came a cow moose pushing her small 

 calf before her, and followed closely by the lurching bull. The 

 forest was so dense that although I was quite close to these 

 animals, it was only occasionally that I had a glimpse of the bull. 

 Each time that this happened I fired at the part of the beast ex- 

 posed. John and the inquisitive cow moose brought up the rear 

 of the procession. He could not see me distinctly, on account of 

 the thick spruces, but hearing the rifle reports, and imagining 

 that the bull was leaving us behind, he kept up a succession of 

 grunts from the horn, in hopes of stopping it long enough for 

 me to get in another shot. He had been packing a freshly 

 killed moose head into camp the day before, and the odor of 

 this clinging to the one suit of clothes John took into the woods, 

 combined with low, appealing grunts from the horn, caused 

 the cow moose to tramp on his moccasined heels every time 

 that he brought the horn to his lips. 



John's first version of the affair was that he kept calling with 

 the horn in one hand and beating the friendly moose across the 

 face with his hat in the other. Since then the story has lost 

 nothing in the telling. Within two hundred yards the bull 

 pitched forward with a crash, stone dead. He had been raked 

 with bullets from almost every known angle. When the bull 

 fell the remaining three moose immediately vanished into the 

 forests. The dead animal had a very handsome set of antlers 



28 



