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Show SILVERHORNS But I could still hear his steps distinctly-slosh, slosh, slosh-thud, thud, thud (the grunting had stopped)-doser came the sound, until it was directly behind the dense green branches of a fallen balsam-tree, not twenty feet away from Billy. Then suddenly the noise ceased. I could hear my own heart pounding at my ribs, but nothing else. And of Silverhorns not hair nor hide was visible. It looked as if he must be a Boojum, and had the power to • Softly and silently vanish away.' "Billy and Mac were beckoning to me fercely and pointing to the green balsam-top. I gripped my rifle and started to creep toward them. A little twig, about as thick as the tip of a fishing-rod, cracked under my knee. There was a terrible crash behind the balsam, a plunging through the underbrush and a rattling among the branches, a lumbering gallop up the hill through the forest, and Silverhorns was gone into the invisible. "He had stopped behind the tree because he smelled the grease on Billy's boots. As he stood U!t SILVERHORNS there, hesitating, Billy and Mac could see his shoulder and his side through a gap in the branches-a dead-easy shot. But so far as I was concerned, he might as well have been in Alaska. I told you that the way we had placed ourselves was a fool arrangement. But McDonald would not say anything about it, except to express his conviction that it was not predestinated we slwuld get that moose." "Ah didna ken auld Rob had sae much theology aboot him," commented McLeod. "But noo I'm thinkin' ye went back toyer main camp, an'lat puir Seelverhorrns live oot his life?" "Not much, did we! For now we knew that he wasn't badly frightened by the adventure of the night before, and that we might get another chance at him. In the afternoon it began to rain; and it poured for forty-eight hours. We cowered in our shelter before a smoky fire, and Jived on short rations of crackers and dried prunes-it was a hungry time." "But wasna there slathers o' food at the main camp? Ony fule wad ken eneugh to gae doon to the river an' tak' a guid fill-up." "But that wasn't what we wanted. It was Silver- 213 |