FOREST AND STREAM 
89 
July 18, 1908.] 
says he when he saw me looking at him. ‘It 
keeps a fellow’s muscles in good order and keeps 
him occupied, anyway.’ ‘I get exercise enough at¬ 
tending to my business,’ says I. ‘I can lay up my 
two cord of wood in a winter’s day, and portage 
a canoe or a heavy load with the next man, but 
I’d make a mighty poor hand at those circus 
tricks, though they look easy enough.’ 
“ ‘It would take me about two weeks to lay 
up a cord of wood,’ says he; ‘that is, if I didn’t 
cut off one of my feet in doing it, but before J 
go out of the woods I’m going to learn some¬ 
thing about handling an axe; it may come in 
handy some day.’ 
“I told him about the Lonnergans and their 
crowd, and how I had steered them away from 
Rush Lake and Little Beavertail. He said I’d 
done just right.' That evening after supper he 
told me all about the shooting in England. He 
told me -that he had four men of his own who 
did nothing but gather pheasants’ eggs or get 
them from pheasants kept tame and hatch them 
out under hens. Then they fed them and looked 
after them until he and his friends got ready 
to shoot them. He said he had over a hundred 
deer inside a big wire fence, and when they 
wanted one to eat a keeper picked a fat one out 
and shot it. I don’t know if he was lying to 
me or if he was speaking the truth. 
“We called the next morning, but though we 
got a good answer the moose wouldn’t come up. 
He had a cow with him, and I guess he was 
newly mated. I liked the way Wilson handled 
himself. He was just as careful of his gun as 
you or I’d be, and he made mighty little noise 
for a green hand. We heard Lonnergan and his 
crowd banging away to the westward of us. I 
guess they were using black powder and shoot¬ 
ing ducks and partridges. In the afternoon we 
paddled down the Deer Pond deadwater, and 
coming home we ran right on to a cow and a 
little spike horn bull in the water not a hun¬ 
dred yards from us. I’d like mighty well to 
have had that cow for my winter’s meat, but 
Wilson never pulled a trigger at her. ‘Never 
mind,’ says he when I asked him why he didn’t 
down one of them; ‘if you want meat for your 
family I’ll buy you a bullock’—that’s what he 
1 called a steer—‘when we get out. I want a good 
head, and I don’t care a cent about meat. I 
came to get a head, and I’m going to have one 
i if I have to send out half a dozen times for 
grub before I get it. It won’t make one bit of 
difference to you if we kill to-morrow, or to¬ 
day fortnight.’ ‘Never you fret, sir,’ says I. 
‘If it’s possible for me to call a fellow up I’ll 
do so. The shooting rests with you. That gun 
of yours ought to kill anything that doesn’t 
! carry a charm against lead.’ 
“It kind of riled him to hear me make fun 
I of the gun, but by the time he was through with 
me he found why we fellows like an eight-pound 
rifle better than a twelve-pound one. 
“One morning along came Dennis Glode, the 
Indian, with two white men from the city. He 
had another Indian with him and they had two 
canoes and enough rum to make a regiment of 
soldiers drunk. We could hear them hooting 
md hollering a mile off. We got things packed 
up as quick as we could, and just as they got 
0 the landing we were ready to clear out. They 
stayed round that place until all their rum was 
?one, then Dennis and the other Indian went 
)ff and killed a cow for them. They took some 
of the meat and the hide home and lied about 
it; they gave the fore quarters to the Indians. 
“Wilson was mad as a hornet. Going up 
County Line deadwater we met Paddy and his 
American coming down with a nice four-year- 
old head and two rounds. Paddy called him up 
the third morning and the American killed him 
as he was crossing the foot of a little lake. It 
only took two shots from a little .303 weighing 
six pounds to knock him out. Wilson’s eyes 
opened when he saw the gun and the bullets 
Paddy dug out of the moose. Paddy and his 
American hadn’t troubled the country at all. 
They told us there were lots of moose round 
there and they were not coming back. They 
gave us all the fresh meat we wanted and Paddy 
told me where he had all of half a bushel of 
potatoes yarded besides some canned stuff, so 
we were all right for a week longer than our 
own grub would hold out. 
“The American and Wilson got quite chummy 
while they were having lunch. It seems they 
were both great football players and had heard 
of one another in the papers, though they never 
met before. The sight of that head seemed to 
spur Wilson up quite a bit. He wanted Paddy 
to come back with us when he got his American 
to the railway, but Paddy said any spare time 
he had was promised to old Neddy Beavan. 
You see Beaven used to be a terror to snare. 
He couldn’t get his moose for his winter’s meat 
by calling or creeping, and when he quit setting 
ropes, Paddy promised to take him in with him 
every year if he got a chance. If he didn’t get 
a chance he’d beg a fore quarter for him from 
some American he took in and find him more 
or less work portaging. 
“Well, we put in nearly a week round the 
county line. I called up two bulls, but neither 
of them had a head worth carrying out. Wilson 
never even pointed his gun at them. I came 
across a fellow looking for timber land one day, 
and he told me Lonnergan and his crowd were 
still in the woods, but Glode’s gang had drunk 
up all their rum and gone out. He said Lonner¬ 
gan had called one bull, a two-year-old, in very 
good order. He ate some of the meat and saw 
the hide drying. It had nine bullet holes in it 
that he counted. They had moved away to the 
west of us, and we couldn’t hear their shots. 
He told me that the sign was thick and fresh 
about the meadows and bogs round Catfish Lake, 
so Wilson and I took a couple of days’ grub 
and the canoe and went down there that after¬ 
noon. It was a bit late when we got to the 
camping ground, but we didn’t try a call that 
night; it was too foggy. We had my little tent 
with us and we pitched it between two big rocks 
and made a big fire against another one. 
“Wilson hadn’t pulled the cork out of one 
of his bottles of whisky up to that time, but 
that night he felt tired and wanted a drink. It 
was along between nine and ten when he spoke 
about it. I had my socks and moccasins off and 
he had his on, so he went down to the spring 
to get a kettle of fresh water. He came back 
and called me out. ‘Listen,’ says he, ‘isn’t that 
a dog I hear crying?’ I listened, and sure 
enough I heard a dog howl plain and distinct. 
‘That settles us for this shoot,’ says I. ‘That 
dog will scare the moose worse than Lonner- 
gan’s and Glode’s gangs put together.’ ‘That 
dog’s in trouble,’ says he. ‘I can tell by the 
cry of it. Maybe it’s fast in a trap.’ ‘I hope 
it’s got both hind feet in a bear trap,’ says I. 
‘A dog has no right to be traveling these woods 
at this time of the year. I’ll see that he doesn’t 
do any more traveling when I go to him in the 
morning.’ ‘If you think he’s fast in a trap we’ll 
go to him right now,’ says he. 
“I didn’t feel like running through the woods 
in the dark after a dog, but he was boss. We 
followed the sound down an old wood road, and 
about a quarter of a mile from where we were 
camped we found Lonnergan’s bitch fast in a 
wildcat snare. It wasn’t set with a spring pole, 
and the bitch had been snared before, so she 
hadn’t pulled when she felt the noose round her 
throat. She just stood there and kiyied. She 
was wasted to skin and bone and so weak she 
could hardly stand. I felt like knocking the 
brains out of her, but Wilson loosed her out 
of the snare as carefully as if she was his own 
dog. She never tried to bite him; she just 
licked his hands. He carried her back to camp 
and gave her some condensed milk and warm 
water and biscuit. Then he tethered her to a 
tent pin and gave her his coat to lie on. Any¬ 
one who knows the first thing about a dog could 
see she’d been badly used. Every time you 
raised your hand near her she’d flinch away as 
if you were going to whale her. 
“Bright and early next morning we went out 
to call. It was just gray daylight when I gave 
my first call, and the sun was just coming up 
over the tops of the little spruce trees when a 
moose walked out on the bog a hundred yards 
from us. He was a traveling bull and he may 
have come ten miles during the night. Any¬ 
way he hadn’t heard the dog in the snare. 
I don’t think he ever knew what struck him. 
Wilson laid that cannon of his on his fore¬ 
shoulder and loosed her off, and the moose fell 
all in a heap. I gave him a shot from my re¬ 
peater to make sure and then we bled him. I 
never saw such a smash as that bullet made; it 
ruined every bit of fifty pounds of meat. He 
had as pretty a head as you want to see, though 
I’ve helped to carry a good many bigger ones 
out of the woods in my time. 
“It was past noon when we had him skinned 
and cut up. We had to back the meat about 
half a mile to our canoe, then we could get it 
to an old tote road by making two more short 
portages. The tote road runs straight to South 
Francheville without a twist or a turn. I figured 
on getting the meat, head and hide to the road, 
and then going in and getting Ambrose De Vaux 
to haul them out with his oxen. Two hours’ 
work would swamp out the windfalls and make 
the trail fit for oxen to go on. It was almost 
dark when we got back to camp. Wilson was a 
pretty tired boy. He did his share and carried 
as heavy a load as I did. He slept until day¬ 
light, and I had breakfast cooked when I woke 
him up. While we were eating we heard about 
twenty shots not a mile away.. ‘That’s Lonner¬ 
gan’s crowd going out of the woods,’ says I. 
‘They’re cracking off their ammunition at rocks 
in the lake or some other mark, scaring the game 
they havn’t been able to kill. We’ll likely meet 
them at the landing. Lonnergan will be as mad 
as fury when he sees your head. I guess he’ll 
be glad to get his bitch back, though. She*s 
one of the best bird dogs in these parts. He 
was offered fifteen dollars for her once and he 
wouldn’t take it, though he abuses her like he 
does everything else he has the mastery over.’ 
