HERE nestling towards the South- 
ern sun, that warmed him all day 
long, he slept and dreamed with weep- 
ing tear ducts closed, or chewed his cud 
by turns, until the waning day began to 
close and lengthening shadows stole 
athwart his lair. 
And so the winter passed and softer 
winds with lengthening days and 
warmer sun proclaimed themselves the 
heralds of approaching Spring. The 
snow began to settle on the woods, and 
down below its crust the water stood 
waiting until a break occurred to join 
the thousand streams that fed the lake. 
The hay piles long ago had dwindled 
down and showed brown trampled 
patches on the meadow’s face. The 
little knolls peeped out and steamed 
beneath the noonday sun. The birds 
that all along had wintered with the 
herd, flew off. The bulls began to 
leave. Each day another place was 
vacant in the band. 
The great King Elk himself, with 
throbbing head, stood hunched among 
the willows. Slowly his mighty antlers 
swung from side to side. Their leaden 
weight was more than he could bear, 
and at their roots his very heart beats 
throbbed like prisoners held behind the 
confines of a heavy door on which they 
beat and clamored to be free. 
S bane Majesty and Glory of the herd 
stood heaped in silent suffering 
there alone. Vaguely he sensed a time 
of change. In blind revolt he stamped 
and tossed his tortured head and down 
one antler fell. Startled, he leaped 
away. The branches caught the other 
and it fell. He turned about and saw 
the giant beams and polished tines that 
fought his last year’s battles lying 
there as dead and useless as the last 
year’s grass. 
The weight was gone. Oh, shame! 
Without the crowning glory of his 
strength he could not meet his cows. 
What would the young bulls do? It 
was unthinkable to take abuse from 
them. The blue peaks far to northward 
beckoned him. He turned away, and, 
leaving all those winter scenes behind, 
with trailing steps he crossed the little 
prairie near the lake and out over the 
blue hills, until he came upon a boiling 
stream, and winding up its course he 
came at length to a small mountain 
lake whose emerald waters mirrored 
back the peaks above. There, in the 
solitude, among familiar haunts of 
other years, he made his home, until 
his antlers grew again in all their 
strength, which gave him means and 
right to fight his foes and hold domin- 
ion over all his herd. 
The throbbing in his head went on, 
and where his antlers had been two 
Page 459 
puffed and thickened pads of blood- 
gorged skin swelled out and grew 
apace, That part which formed the 
beam shot up in broad and sweeping 
curve, and at the proper time and 
place a lump appeared, which came to 
be the first brow tine. Next in its 
order, as the structure grew, the bez 
tine formed in place, and thus each 
branch in ordered sequence grew, until 
on either beam seven well-formed tines 
appeared. 
This grand network of feverish 
pulsing blood vessels absorbed his 
rugged strength and grew accordingly, 
reflecting in their towering majesty his 
perfect health, together with the vigor 
of his prime. 
NEVER in all his eight years had he 
wintered so well. Never had the 
spring found him in such good form. 
Never had all his vital energies so 
concentrated themselves with gripping 
force upon the building of this won- 
drous miracle. 
Through all their growth he hardly 
dared to move, so tender and so sensi- 
tive they were. He cooled them in the 
waters of the lake or wallowed in the 
mud along its edge to ease the tor- 
ment of the pestering flies. The little 
food he picked from close around was 
not enough to meet the great demand, 
and so he failed, and rounded flank 
and shoulder shrunk away. 
But all things have their end, and 
soon a small constricting ring began 
to grow around the base of either 
horn, which stopped the pulsing flow 
of blood that coursed through all the 
network of its veins. The framework 
hardened and grew firm and settled 
solidly upon his head. The throbbing 
pain was gone. No longer did he shun 
the slightest touch upon them. But 
as their velvet covering dried and 
cracked, he rubbed it off upon the 
balsam saplings near at hand. Then 
came bright August days, when 
meadow, field and wood vied with each 
other in the fare they gave. In each 
he fed and fattened, polishing his 
new-grown antlers till they shone, 
until September came and found him 
fat again with sleek and rounded 
sides. He had exchanged his faded 
dusky coat for one of brighter tone, 
trimmed at the neck with shaggy 
chestnut mane and on his rump a disk 
of paler buff. 
IS antlers crowned his head with 
beams that measured five feet four, 
and at their greatest spread were five 
feet two. His body weighed a thou- 
sand pounds and in his lordly bearing 
were displayed the qualities that made 
him thrice a King, 
In mimic fight he turned aside to 
charge a sapling spruce, bent its 
boughs far over and stepped back to 
catch its recoil on his mailed head, and 
then with hooves and horns he stripped 
it branch and bark, leaving a wreck to 
mark his passing by. 
His thirst for battle grew and must 
be satisfied. The fever of sex impulse 
urged him down to join his old com- 
panions of the herd. 
The most amazing phenomenon of 
nature had been achieved. This giant 
of the woods in close seclusion had 
devoted all the vigor and energy of his 
being to developing the means by 
which he could attain the mastery of 
his world—all for one glorious crowd- 
ed month of battle and of love. 
Tingling with life and vigor he 
crashed through the _ brushwood, 
climbed a steep hill, and, lifting his 
muzzle high, threw out from his great 
lungs into the night his thrilling 
bugle call. 
[? began in the lower notes as a bel- 
low, swelled out in rounded volume 
like a steamboat siren, rising and 
rising, till it reached its climax in a 
clear clarion call of challenge, part 
scream, part whistle, trailed off in a 
flute-like note and ended in a deep in- 
dignant snort. Its ringing challenge 
rocked the woods and wakened an echo 
round the hills that flung it back again 
until its last reverberations died away. 
No call that ever echoed through these 
woods expressed such depth of pas- 
sion, had such dominating tone, such 
fierce, free, fighting flavor. He took 
the demoniacal mockery of the loon, 
multiplied it a thousandfold, added to 
it a challenge of unconquerable might, 
instilled the alluring note of sex and 
closed it with a boiling indignation. 
He made it at once a challenge and a 
call, a threat and a denunciation. 
He stood upon the hilltop there and 
called to all the world: “I am the 
Great Bull Elk. Look at my royal 
head. See my sharp hooves. My 
very soul cries out for fight. I want 
my herd again and for them I will 
fight. How dare you challenge me?” 
In haughty pride and anger, down 
from the hill he crashed, and, pausing 
now and then to wake the woodland 
with his note of war, went southward 
to the country where his cows already 
waited his return. 
Next night his challenge was re- 
turned from windward, and turning 
sharply in his tracks, he strode to meet 
his daring adversary. The challenge 
sounded again nearer, and soon he 
paused and watched, until he saw a 
shadowy form emerging from the 
(Continued on page 497) 
