Dec 25 1897.] 
FOREST AND STREAM/ 
808 
"Here's the fei'ry," said Pierce, who had been thera be- 
fore; "thank heavens, it isn't $4 this time." 
Bat it was, though Pierce didn't know then. He found 
out later, however. He was so busy, in fact, waking up the 
Indians that he forgot everything else, and by the time we 
were over he had forgotten even that there is a hereafter. 
Such language! 
"But before it was altogether too late some one yelled 
' Tea! ' and ,we all went in to eat. Jones ate, to be sure. 
boiling. Later some one had to take out the potato; that 
was Peter's cooking. 
At the head of Caughwana we camped, and in the morn- 
ing passed on. Jones had been seeing tracks, and so had 
We. Pierce said we two weren't fit company for a man in 
full possession of his faculties, 
"Tracks! Bish!" said he in disgust. "There may be one 
moose in a million miles of here, and he's got a million legs. 
He's hired by the Government to make tracks to keep up the 
THE THOROUGHFARE. 
Pierce and We looked on. It was the only chance we had, 
and when the wreck was cleared away Jones went out and 
looked at the stars, said it was going to rain, fell over a few 
dogs and went to bed. 
And the morning; it did not rain. The sun was out, the 
par value had been knocked out of the thermometer, and the 
mercury was doing business around the 30s. 
"Ucn," said Cbabot, "cold. No got mitten. Must have 
'em." 
Bo Chabot got a brand new pair, which, for the fear of 
spoiling, he carefully put in his pack. That was a little 
way of Chabot's, Moreover, he and Jean Dominick must 
have talked it over. Presently Jean Dominick discovered 
that knickerbockers and pumps were not a costume calculat- 
ed to withstand the rigors of the woods. 
"Must have moccason," said Jean Dominick. He got 
them too, and also carefully put them in his pack. Frugal 
Jean Dominick Francois, being of a mind less agile, could 
not think fast enough, and so missed the opportunity. 
However, he took it out in thinking, while Jean and Chabot 
patched up a trio of birch-bark canoes. This was a mis- 
take. They should have saved time and labor by making 
new canoes. 
"We'll start in by 8 o'clock," said Pierce the night be- 
fore. At 8 A. M. he said 9. At 9 he said iO. Later on he 
said other things, bu*^^ why should they be repeated 2 We 
got away finally, and after a carry of half a mile the waters 
of lower Lindsay burst upon our s'ght. 
At the magnificent spectacle We knelt down and kissed 
the soil. It was a purely involuntary act, no fault of ours. 
We blamed a stub. However, we got over Lindsay without 
casualties, carried into Long Lake, skirted its precipitous 
cliffs and swept up Russell Stream, So far We had seen no 
sign of game, but at the foot of Russell drry, Jones ex- 
hibited strong excitement. Foregathering with him, We 
discovered that he had found fresh tracks. 
"Moose! moose!" he cried, "here's a fresh track!" 
With a snort of disgust Pierce sought solitude, while We 
and Jones waded about in the broolj, finding fresh .sign. 
Jones counted more than 318 tracks, and was still at it 
when he lost count. He was beginning over again when 
Pierce allowed that if we had come into the woods for 
arithmetic we ought to have brought along a blackboard. 
Stung by this, Jones fell into the brook, uttered language 
and proceeded across the carry. Here at the end of First 
Russell, began what proved to be a few million remarks 
about the canoes and the nature of the man that owned 
them. In truth, the canoes were the limit. Outside they 
appeared to be made of pitch, patched here and there with 
a bit of bark, Chabot said a great deal about them, but 
then the Indian tongue was too simple to do them justice. 
An axe would have succeeded better. We traveled about 
800 miles in them and found the lake water exceptionally 
hard. There was always about 2in. of it on the bottoms of 
the canoes. 
From First Russell we walked to the bead of Jthe carry 
on Second Russell, while the Indians poled up stream. It 
would have saved time and energy to carry the canoes too, 
but it was Indian to do it the other way. Lo, the poor In 
dian! From there we carried over into Caughwana, where 
Chabot began to make bread. He never stopped it for two 
weeks. 
"Have brought bread ?" he murmured, inquiringly. 
"No," said Pierce, "and we haven't brought a cow or a 
grand piano or a house and lot, nor a cartload of bricks and 
other things too numerous to mention," 
So Chabot made bread. 
"Why not Peter?" asked Pierce, and Jean and Francois 
smiled sadly, and guessed not in Indian, while Peter looked 
embarrassed and Chabot evasive. So we learned the fearful 
truth. Peter knew not how to make bread. We learned 
subsequently that this ignorance extended over a wide range 
of cooking possibilities. Reduced to its plainer form, Peter 
knew how to boil water and put in a potato when it was 
reputation of the woods. Even if you did shoot him, the 
people would lynch you for destroying their means of liveli- 
hood. Say, what do you ihink this country would do, 
anyhow, without that moose to make tracks for greenhorn 
sports? Bah! you make me tired!" 
The trouble with Pierce was that he was soured. Oa four 
different occasions he has called up his moose and wounded 
it. Each time it has got away, and when anyone says moose 
hs always talks about his past. Say moose, and he'll tell you 
the story of his life. 
But we pacified him at length, and when each of us, to 
the intense gratification of Ihe guides, had sacked about 
SOOlbs. apiece across the carry, we paddled upRa'sicot Lake. 
Jones, who had brought along a surf rod, tried to derrick 
pitched our tents on Hamilton, forty miles from Deux Ri- 
vieres, and in the same spot where Pierce and Ivory had 
campsd two years before. 
"It's the same place," said Pierce. "Here's the same 
table, and there's Ivory's old weather vane, and there's the 
same pond, and no doubt Jones '11 go out and find the same 
old moose tracks we found." 
Jones grinned. Chabot made bread. We rested, and the 
Indians pulled boughs for the beds. Jones and Pierce had 
new-fangled sleeping bags, and insisted upon stringing them 
on poles in the form of cots The result of this was that 
they frozs with patient regularity each and every night. 
We slept on the boughs in a bag made of Hudson Bay 
blankets and a square of rubber cloth. It cost $6 ; theirs 
cost much more, not including cough medicine. The 
open space under their bags caught all the cold air in the 
country, but they wouldn't change. They had paid out 
dollars for their bags; they were going to get their money's 
worth. They got it. 
Taat night, with the camp nearly completed. We slept. So 
did the Indians. But Pierce and Jones lay awake with the 
weather, and swore at the cold and tied themselves in knots. 
Jones had on everything but his boots, and shivered so that 
the trees were in peril. It took nearly a cord of wood to 
warm him in the morning, and then we were sorry we did 
it. With the warming he recovered his appetite. 
"Get um that moose to-day," said Chabot as he shoved off. 
"Try round mountain over there. Good place for big moose, 
that round mountain." 
Thus We began. When We strucls that round mountain 
We found it to be like the remainder of the country — wind- 
falls, swamp holes, mud and indiscriminate water. For five 
hours We walked, admired the scenery and saw tracks, but 
no moose. 
"Big moose here," said Chabot, "big feller; run hard, 
catch 'em cow." 
At the end of the fifth hour it grew monotonous. 
"Let's try calling, Chabot," We suggested. 
So Chabot began looking up at the trees. Presently he 
dodged off in the bush, and the silence of the woods was the 
only thing left for company. It was painful, so We smoked. 
It was wrong, to be sure, but it was consoling to see the thin 
blue cloud drift lazily away into the infinite distance. Half 
an hour later Chabot came back scratching his head. 
"Injun feller cut bark here; no good now. Go across 
pond," 
So We went across the pond, where Chabot got a square 
of good, stout bark. Ten minutes later he had fashioned a 
horn that made up for its lack of beauty in resonant tones. 
He was grinning all over when it was finished. 
"Good horn, that," said Chabot, "you give 'em call." 
We called — softly and with dulcet tone. 
"By gar!" exclaimed Chabot, "you call 'em that moose 
sure enough." 
That was Chabot's compliment. It was his only one. It 
meant business, and We bowed. Then back to the round 
mountain we went, Chabot grinning like an ape. Up to the 
crest the two of us toiled, and Chabot climbed upon a stump. 
"I call now," said he, "you call 'em by-an'-by. Throat 
get sore then." 
Picking up the horn, Chabot hitched up his trousers, spat 
meditatively, and began his Wagnerian obligato. 
"Eee — 2-yunh!" 
Nothing happened. 
"E-ee— e-yunh!" 
No answer. Chabot spat again. Filling his lungs, he 
braced back his shoulders and let her whoop. 
IN THE LAND OF THE VAMOOSING MOOSE. 
out a fish, but didn't get a bite. We did though — that is, 
bites, because the black flies were numerous and impulsive; 
and it was Sept. 28 at that. 
At the Thoroughfare, between Rasicot and Hamilton, 
Jones got out his gun. He had been seeing tracks again. 
We pitied him, but there was some reason for it after all. 
Nowhere in the wilds is a spot more calculated to entice 
moose than that same Thoroughfare. It is a sluggish, mud- 
bjttomed stream running between boggy banks, and fringed 
by a dark and almost impenetrable swamp. We called out 
a big bull there subsequently. But We didn't get him. 
Hence these tears. 
After a brief but spirited argument with the Indians we 
' 'Muu-uu o-oo-0oo-ooo-o-o-o-unh 1" 
The call boomed through the forest silence, filling the 
wilderness with sound. A meat bird, far in the distance, 
cackled in reply. Then silence held her own again. 
Chabot, with the horn held to his left ear, lay in wait fof 
vagrant sounds. Once a twig broke sharply down at 
foot of the hill, and Chabot's eye glistened. 
"Coming!"' he whispered. 
Chabot was wrong. The moose was going. We 
covered that later. 
"You take that horn — blow good. Chabot's t'roat 
sore." 
Twenty minutes later We called. There was an auawer- 
the 
dis- 
got 
