176 ’MIDST THE LITTLE STREAMS. 
halted together. Then the horse stood on 
end, and the cattle, turning about as one 
beast, went, and the noise of their going was 
like the voice of the thunder- gods among 
the hills. Heaven knows if they stopped 
before they reached their ranch again! I 
doubt it. And all because they had scented 
that old, silent grizzly bear, if you please. 
Day left old Ephraim grubbing for willow- 
berries, which he took by way of medicine, as 
dogs eat grass, I think; but the next day did 
not find him there. In fact, the first gray 
haze of dawn discovered him nowhere, because 
he was most carefully hidden from all dis- 
covery by anything at all, he trusted, in the 
depths of a thicket on the edge of a balsam- 
wood five miles away. But he seemed to be 
doing quite a lot of hard thinking. 
Apparently he was waiting for something, 
and it came. On the first carpet of snow, 
which had fallen overnight, there were tracks 
leading past his thicket, and about an hour 
after dawn, following these tracks, came a 
mighty form. It was a young bull-moose 
following the herd; and the moose, be it 
said, is the giant of all deer, rivalling even 
old Ephraim in weight. 
When he was just opposite the thicket 
the young bull stopped short, and stood rigid, 
