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Show SILVERHORNS ponds again, and Injun Pete tried to 'call' a moose for me. But it was no good. McDonald was dis· gusted with Pete's calling; said it sounded like the bray of a wild ass of the wilderness. So the next day we gave up calling and travelled the woods over toward the burned hills. "In the afternoon McDonald found an enormous moose-track; he thought it looked like a hull's track, though he wasn't quite positive. But then, you know, a Scotchman never likes to commit himself, except about theology or politics." "Humph!" grunted McLeod in the darkness, showing that the stroke had counted. "Well, we went on, following that track through the woods, for an hour or two. It was a terrible country, I tell you: tamarack swamps, and spruce thickets, and windfalls, and all kinds of misery. Presently we came out on a bare rock on the burned hillside, and there, across a ravine, we could see the animal lying down, just below the trunk of a big dead spruce that had fallen. The beast's head and neck were hidden by some bushes, but the foreshoulder and side were in clear view, about two 202 SILVERHORNS hundred and fifty yards away. McDonald seemed to be inclined to think that it was a bull and that I ought to shoot. So I shot, and knocked splinters out of the spruce log. We could see them fly. The animal got up quickly, and looked at us for a moment, shaking her long ears; then the huge, unmitigated cow vamoosed into the brush. McDonald remarked that it was 'a varra fortunate shot, almaist providaintial!' And so it was; for if it had gone six inches lower, and the news had gotten out at Bathurst, it would have cost me a fine of two hundred dollars." "Ye did wee!, Dud," puffed McLeod; "varra wee! indeed-for the coo!" "After that," continued Hemenway, "of course my nerve was a little shaken, and we went back to the main camp on the river, to rest over Sunday. That was all right, wasn't it, Mac ? " "Aye!" replied McLeod, who was astrict member of the Presbyterian church at Moncton. "That was surely a varra safe thing to do, Even a hunter, I'm thinkin', wouldna like to be breakin' twa command· ments in the ane day-the foorth and the saxth!" 203 |