98 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
and a horse climbing a tree. Presently he passed 
a farmhouse on the road to the reservation. The 
farmer called Snyder on the telephone. 
“ There was a dog chasing him,” he reported. 
“ Poor dog,” said Snyder. 
But Bill wasn’t running from the dog. He 
was running in answer to a challenge in his blood, 
an instinct which told him that night he would 
hear the cow moose call. Leaving the road, he 
sprang up the wild, steep ravine of Roaring 
Brook, leaving the baffled dog far behind, and 
came crashing and swishing into the spruces and 
hemlocks of the reservation swamp. 
It was twilight now, with the hint of a moon 
aglow in the east, and presently, from the other 
side of the shadowy water of the little, hidden 
pond, came the thrilling call of a cow. Old Bill 
coughed, loudly, like a challenge, his head up, his 
nostrils expanded. He heard an answer, off to 
the left, and swished his antlers under the low- 
hanging limbs as he made toward it. | 
The big old bull was standing in an open glade, 
awaiting him. ‘There were no preliminaries— 
only a mutual charge, a crash of locking antlers, 
