An 
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Episode of the Deep Snow 
By Edmund F. L. Jenner 
Author of “The Right of Sanctuary,” “The Elimination of Matteou,” 
“Loup Garou, of St. Hillaire,” “The Moose Snarer’s Conversion, etc.” • 
Late in November the still-hunters killed the 
cow and calf. The big bull, L’Orignal, as the 
local guides called him, the moose, as we should 
say in English, escaped with a slight wound in 
his haunch. When he was a calf, some fifteen 
years ago, he had seen his mother killed on 
the March crust; he had been wounded in the 
calling season, snared on two occasions, and 
vyhen he was a three-year-old, he had stood 
for his life against Woodworth’s moose-dogs. 
By a lucky accident the dogs ran him into the 
dooryard of Woodworth’s worst enemy, and he 
owed his life to Satan’s being divided against 
Satan. Neither man would have hesitated to 
have shot him in close season, but neither wished 
to place himself in the other’s power. Wood¬ 
worth’s dogs went home with divers pellets of 
duckshot under their hides, and L’Orignal re¬ 
gained the woods. 
The night the cow and calf .were killed, 
L’Orignal traveled north for many miles until 
he reached the swamp at the south end of Cloud 
Lake, near McGinty’s Mills. There he made his 
winter yard, previously driving out a three- 
year-old bull who had taken up his residence 
there. The swamp was two miles long and a 
mile wide. Externally it consisted of spruce, 
fir and hemlock. When you travel through it, 
you find that it contains a certain amount of 
beech, birch, dogwood and soft maple. The fire- 
swept barrens stretch for miles to the south, 
east and west. To the north there are clearings, 
patches of wood, and finally the Annapolis Val¬ 
ley. L’Orignal could hear the whistle of the 
locomotives, and when the wind blew from the 
west, the scream of the saws in the mills at 
Nictau. He had heard these sounds before, 
and he was not afraid of them. Experience had 
taught him that it was safer to be the only 
moose in a swamp near civilization than to 
be one of many in a distant yard. Here was 
shelter and abundant browse. There was not 
a merchantable log in the swamp to attract the 
timber cruiser; the dense thicket would defy 
the most expert still-hunter. 
By the middle of December the wound in 
L’Orignal’s haunch had healed, and except for 
the presence of another encysted bullet in his 
body, he was no worse for his last passage-at- 
arms with the hunters of the South Woods. On 
December the first, 1904, the snow commenced 
to fall. It fell for a week, then came a day of 
rain, another bright warm day; and then the 
glass fell to zero. The barrens were bare in 
places, but in the woods and swamps there 
was an average depth of three feet of heavily 
crusted snow. L’Orignal did not mind the 
snow or the crust. Browse was abundant in the 
swamp and he could get from place to place 
without much trouble. More snow, more rain 
and another warm day or two followed. The 
crust grew heavier until, on the 15th, a man 
could almost walk on it without snowshoes. 
Then L’Orignal’s instinct warned him that a 
storm was coming. The wind was still in the 
north, but the chickadees and the woodpeckers 
were busy. He commenced to browse early in 
the day, and it was almost night when he bedded 
beside a tangle of windfalls. 
Less than two miles from his lair stood Mc¬ 
Ginty’s deserted cook-house. The stove was 
there, so were the bunks, the eating room was 
dimly lighted by a kerosene lantern; three men 
and half-a-dozen dogs had taken possession of 
the miserable shanty. Bill Woodworth, his son 
Harper, and the half-breed Louis Thibideau, 
were the men. Five of the six dogs were 
mongrel collies, the sixth a brown bull-mastiff. 
He lay apart from the other dogs, and if one of 
them so much as moved toward the bone he 
was mumbling, a growl like muffled thunder and 
the display of a row of yellow but still formid¬ 
able teeth sent the would-be intruder to the 
right-about. He was an old, old dog. The 
broken yellow teeth, his bulk, and the profuse 
gray hairs under his jowl showed that the old 
dog was long past his prime. 
Louis Thibideau was talking. “I go to ole 
man Mitchel’s place. I try sell heem some ax- 
handle, he no buy; he give me my dinner. 
Soon’s I gone ole Rollo, he pick up my trail 
an follow me. My wife wait for me wit’ sleigh, 
I put heem in an’ cover heem wit’ buffalo robe. 
I tell my wife, ‘You drive right home, put ole’ 
Rollo in cellar, feed heem good, an’ show heem 
my gun an' knapsack.’ Den I go to game 
warden s house an’ ask to speak wit’ heem. 
Heem sick in bed wit’ la grippe. I see smoke 
come from both chimbley, an’ I know some 
stranger dere, or some one sick. No light, two 
fire for nottings. While 1 talk wit’ her, ole 
man Mitchel drive up. ‘You seen my ole dog 
Rollo?’ says he. ‘Yes, he follow me piece down 
to were brook crosses de road,’ says I; ‘den I 
trow snowball at him; he go way back on de 
track.’ I tell game warden’s wife I have two 
nice fox skin I want to sell. She says, ‘All 
right, come some time so soon my man out of 
bed, an’ fit to talk wit’ you.’ 
“I go right home. Ole Rollo near crazy 
when he see gun an’ snowshoes again—I guess 
it all of five or six year sin’ he seen ’em last. 
Dis morning, we hitch up, we drive all way so 
far’s sleigh able to go. I haul me own tobog¬ 
gan—let Rollo walk behind me. I see two track 
turn from road. Two men on boughten snow- 
shoes. I follow dem in a piece. Bot’ men’s 
shoes sag right in. I fin’ dis leetle tag—red 
worsted tag. Dem men some young fellow from' 
Nictau Mines, out on snowshoe tramp. Dem 
shoes no good for go in beeg woods. Kinder 
narrow, wit’ long tail b’hind. We all right dis 
trip. We get dat big fellow, same we call 
L’Orignal. 
“No use you try follow him in dat swamp. 
He get your wind, he hear you break leetle stick, 
den he gone. I see heem track, where he come 
’cross de barren, same time we keel cow an’ calf 
on head of Forty-seven River. I know dat 
track, all same I know mink from squirrel 
track. Ole Rollo, he only dog left can handle 
him. Come here, Rollo, ole boy, an’ have talk 
wit’ me.” 
The old mastiff rose and walked over to the 
halfbreed. He laid his head on his knees, and 
gazed lovingly in his face, then he turned to 
the corner of the camp where the guns were 
stacked, smelt them, and wagged his tail. 
“There’s life in the old dog yet,” remarked 
Bill Woodworth, as he filled his pipe. “Here’s 
luck for us to-morrow,” and he drew a bottle 
from his haversack, and, taking a drink himself, 
he passed it to his friends. Shortly afterward 
they turned in for the night, the camp was 
silent, save for an occasional growl from one 
of the dogs or the snapping of a stick in the 
stove. 
For an hour or more after the sun rose, 
L’Orignal lay beside the bunch of windfalls. He 
had eaten to repletion the previous day, and 
though the sun had risen clear of clouds, he knew 
that before it set there would be snow, and ver> 
much snow, too, in the air. He lay within a 
couple of musket shots of his feeding ground 
He was sheltered from the wind, and no living 
man could have seen him ten yards off. Sud¬ 
denly his nose warned him of a taint—-a peculiai 
disagreeable smell, very faint, but unmistake- 
