At the End of the Trail

EASTWARD from the head of the Little Tobique, the breasting ridges sweep upward into the pinnacle of Bald Mountain in the north. Austere and lonely, the peak, mantled with gloomy conifers, frowns down upon the houseless forest marches where Nictau and Bathurst gleam like gems lost among the trees ; at the south writhes the Mamoziekel through swamp and barren ground, while on the other hand is forgotten country, until one comes into the upper reaches of the Upsalquitch.¹ Thus in the solitude it stands, genius of the untrammeled wild, long ago the place of Manitou where the pagan Milicete prayed when thunder muttered among its crags. Even to-day the moose and the uneasy caribou ply among its thickets ; for, in a word, it is the wilderness itself.

It snowed. The flaws flew across the breast of the mountain in blue, bewildering flurries. It was spring, to be sure, but even in the lowlands winter lingered. The moose herd, haggard from battle with the passing season, had broken yard, and were abroad in search of food. Along the awakening streams the red willow was bursting into bud, and on the southern slopes rare sprigs of green showed bravely between the wasting drifts. One by one, the old bull, the cows, and last year’s calves wandered from the winter resting place ; and after months of frozen bark and acrid evergreen the tender buds were delicious morsels. They reveled in the feast, feeding heavily, and with the rising day lay down to ruminate in content. All were uncouth and gaunt; there were cavernous hollows in their flanks, while, rusty black, their winter coat fell in patches from their sides. In the lead walked the stiff-legged bull, guarding from the trees the horns just sprouting sorely from their pedicels ; and at his heels was a companion cow, weary and big with her burden ; behind her, a last year’s calf skipping awkwardly, with awakening spirits. Thus they bore down into the lowlands, and there a little stranger came into the world.

Surely it was a cheerless coming into life. The snow pellets flipped freezing among the trees ; its first sensation was of chill. The wind, rioting down from the mountain, roared a rough lullaby among the treetops, while the shuddering cow stood over her calf, swaying like a weaving horse. Then the snow flaw passed, and the sun broke weakly through the cloud bank, dimly lighting the copse wherein the uncouth little one lay. Uncouth, yes ; for there was neither strength nor beauty in the calf. Its legs were long, too long for grace. Its puny body seemed hanging unfitly upon these shambling stilts, and their thinness and utter inability were displayed more obviously when, later, it shuffled loosely to its feet. But mother pride saw much even in the spindly yellow shanks and quivering form. The cow moose, whimpering like an eager hound, drooled over her offspring, mouthing it with tender concern. She rubbed her cheek along its flank, her beady eyes for once doting softly, while the heir to all this heritage of trackless solitude trembled in the wind.

It was a bull calf, and this much the mother saw : its legs, though seeming puny, were really big of bone ; there was a telling breadth of brow ; and the dip of the chest told, too, that it would have heart and a strenuous power of lungs. She noted the reach of its hocks, and the height between its elbow and the crest of the hump, and knew from these that, one day, as a great bull, this her offspring should be a lord among the giants of the hard-wood ridges and the swamp. So she was satisfied.

The first steps of the heir were in the blind valley where it was born. The place was shut in at each side by thickets of birch poles and straggling, stunted spruce. At one end was a steep acclivity; at the other a shallow stream, that leaped and bubbled down the pitch from the dead water above to the big bay in Nictau below. Life seemed a pleasing fancy, indeed, until one day the calf learned that there are contrasts in existence. It did not learn then, though, that life is a struggle to the last, and that the last struggle is the last of life. All that came gradually. Its first fear was in its first fortnight. The herd had ranged up to the head of the blind valley, and lay in a tangled windfall under the hill. The calf, rising to turn around in the little hollow it had worn among the leaves, saw something lithe and bright sweep like a shadow from one fallen trunk to another. Softly, as slowly as ever, the lithe creature on the tree trunk crawled nearer, its eyes glittering, its pads velvety upon the bark. Then a gust of wind swung down the hill, and the cow lumbered frantically to her feet. The calf, too, smelled something, and, in sudden concern, frisked back to its mother’s side. Simultaneously the creature on the windfall leaped, but missed its prey. With a muffled roar, the cow lunged at the intruder, who fled abruptly, with a screech. Then the calf learned that this was something to be feared for a while, a great, gray Canada lynx, — a coward to big moose, but a terror to the young. With its nostrils still rank with the scent of the marauder, the calf clung trembling to its mother’s side, while they clattered away from this perilous place, seeking rest anew in the black cedar swamp across the caribou barren.

After this encounter the calf’s nerves were on edge for a week, at least. A creaking tree trunk or a sudden gust among the tops set its heart pattering with fierce, impulsive beats. But timidity is the first great lesson of life for the creature of the woodland, where eternal vigilance is the only hope of existence, and suspicion the only reasonable impulse. With this terror in its breast, it learned to try the wind at every breath, its nostrils wrinkling tremulously at each unwonted sound. Its mulelike ears were forever whirling about, like vanes upon a steeple, eager at every turn, and at the least false note in the droning monotone of the forest it would stiffen into rigidity, with every nerve aquiver, every sense alert. It learned, too, that when a moose lies down it never fails to make a loop to leeward on the back track, so that it may be warned by scent of any enemy hunting along its track.

Another adventure taught this when the cow, one time at eveningtide, had slipped down the bank to water at the brook. The calf, lying like a leveret in its form, was trying all the lessons it had learned of artfulness and concealment, when a crackling in the brush set every sense alert in verity. It listened acutely, its ears fixed immobile. Again the brush crackled, and something wheezed, Snoooof! In the dusk, the calf saw a rolling, black-haired thing, rollicking through the thicket, rise upright across a fallen log. Its forearms lolled upon its breast, and a sharp, thin nose stretched upward, sniffing. Behind were two other bundles of fur, small and fuzzy, scampering along with ludicrous imitation of every gesture of the bigger one. It seemed amusing, — very amusing, — amusing until a sudden shift in the wind brought to the calf a rank and evil odor. At the horrid, terrifying scent the calf crouched lower ; it would not be seen. But here there was another thing to be learned, — here something that was trying along the forest with a sense of scent sharper than any sight. The big, black figure of fur could not see the calf crouching in the nest of leaves, but it could smell. Snoo-oo-oof! The first slant of wind had brought the scent to the bear; for this was the marauding enemy that had fallen upon the trail. Snoo-ooo-oof! The calf heard. The bear stood as rigid as stone, its head alone moving as it swept to and fro, searching the idle air. A pause followed, the cubs sitting up on their hams and wondering at their mother’s manner. Snoo-oof! The hair on her neck ruffled forward and her eyes gleamed. It seemed like a dream ; was the creature moving ? Yes, softly, catlike, step by step forward, a shadow dark and menacing. On came the bear, — nearer, nearer. The calf closed its eyes to shut out the horrid sight.

A crash — a thunder of feet! The brush crackled with a heavy tread ; there was a snort of fierce angriness. The eyes of the calf flew open. There was the mother cow charging down the hill, her beady orbs flashing red, her mane upright. Her rush carried her down upon the cubs, and with one dexter stroke she trampled down the bigger of the pair, maiming it for life. Roaring in turn, the she-bear, with open paw, struck a swinging sweep at the cow’s flank, but failed to stop her onslaught. She rushed the hill with broadening stride, and butted the calf to its feet. Possessed of every terror, the little moose swung into its mother’s gait, when a long cry sounded behind them, — a thin, wailing note. It was the cub in agony. Hooting and whooping like a thing bereft, the she-bear whirled in her tracks, abandoning the futile chase, while the cow and her calf, splashing across the shallow dead water, rejoined the herd, and swung away to the northward through the dark forest closes. With the rising of the moon they had turned the shoulder of the mountain and were footing the oozy shallows of Mud Pond, where high above the whispering trees frowned the pinnacle, gray with lunar light.

With all these perils, timidity became the second nature of the calf, fear its first instinct, and flight a ready impulse. It learned to skulk and crouch like an overharried deer, in coverts whose color shaded into the hue of its hide. It came to distinguish sounds and their meanings, to school itself in the sense and scent of woodland ways, to fear or to ignore as the circumstance showed. Meanwhile it grew.

Man then came into the wilderness. The summer was well under way, and at eveningtide the cow and calf stood breast-deep in a dead water, guzzling the tender grasses, — skimming the surface with distended maws, while they tore away great mouthfuls. They fed with the eager movement of wild fowl, drawing in their necks and then distending them at full length, their flaccid lips fingering the vegetation. Their mouths made a busy, clucking sound while they ate, and sometimes they plunged their heads to the muddy bottom and wrenched the grasses by the roots. Beyond them stood the bull upon the bog, wagging his ears in a cloud of pestering flies, but otherwise soberly content. The last year’s calf was there, too, up to his back in the water, and only his hump and head showing. He had finished feeding, and was laving his flanks in the tepid swamp water. With dreamy eyes the little one looked about, and there out in the pond was something loglike floating softly along. Curiously the calf gave it a second glance. It did not seem like driftwood; there was neither wind nor current to set it along, yet it moved, gliding nearer and nearer to the moose family faring at the mouth of the bogan. The calf turned around; the bull saw, too. He muttered once, and in fixed rigidity stared across the pond. But, like all moose, the bull, despite his sagacity, lacked the power of distinguishing form. Movement he could discern at a glance ; a muskrat or a mink skittering across the pond would have caught his attention. But his mortal enemy, man, might have sat on a log ten yards away and passed unnoticed, were the wind wrong and the man unmoving. However, there was something familiarly evil in this floating bulk out there upon the pond. He had seen such before, far down the Little Sou’west Miramichi, when a flash of flame streamed from a log like this, and something wheening through the air bit him deeply upon the shoulder. In memory, too, his ears dinned, as if he still heard the crash of thunder that followed the spurt of flame. Niff-ff ! The bull drew in a deep breath, his nose ranging upward slowly, like a halter-bound horse. They were all standing stiffly now, peering at the yellow tree-thing out there in the water. It did not move ; there was no sound ; and they felt their confidence return.

Across the pond a rising gust flickered the leafy treetops. The flaw came on, blurring the glassy surface and stirring the sedges on the shallows. It sped murmuring on its way, a momentary visitor, and wheeled southward over the mountain’s flank. Plunging about in his tracks, the big bull pounded across the bog, the water flying in his trail ; with crash after crash, he sought the forest cover. At his heels shacked the last year’s calf, crazy with fright, while the cow, in a sudden flurry, ploughed up the bank, driving her own before her. Scent told its story. Mindful of its lessons, the calf nosed the passing gust, and sniffed in that harbinger of evil, — a subtle, terrifying taint, noways like the scent of the marauding bear and lucifee. The cow’s terror inspired the calf to haste, but as it followed the flight it took opportunity to read with its nose, for future reference, the telltale warning in the wind. Thus they flew across the bog at energetic speed, and, trampling through the fringe of high-water drift, dived into the forest blackness as a rabbit skips into a warren.

This was the first meeting with man. Fraught with vague terrors, the calf breasted through the brush in the wake of the cow, leaping the windfalls with a snorting breath and the clatter of swiftpounding hoofs. Through the swamp they plunged, routing out a herd of woodland caribou, who fled before, their round, broad hoofs clacking like castanets, and the din lending desperation to the calf’s endeavor. It had seen and scented man, and terror and frenzy fixed the memory in its mind forever.

Autumn found the moose family ranging on the long ridge at the north of Nictau. The calf, lusty with gathering strength, forgot a few of its fears. It was alone with its mother ; for between Nictau and the Mamoziekel the cow had lost the big bull and the last year’s calf, and it was not sorry. With the first touch of September rutting wrath the bull had grown rough. His horns, hardened and strung with ragged strings of velvet, seemed menacing ; and besides, he had a way of shouldering the others in a manner annoying. Once he charged the calf, who sought refuge in a bunch of birch poles, where the big bull, with his wide - spreading antlers, could not follow. Grunting savagely, the bull turned on the last year’s calf, and, roaring, drove the youngster over the crown of the hill. The last year’s calf had been swaggering about before this in the proud consciousness of a pair of stubs. He had tried them once upon the calf, after an evening spent in brushing them up against an alder pole, when the calf squealed in pain. These spikes were less than a span long, and were not handsome ; but the last year’s calf thought them mighty weapons. So when the big bull chased the roistering braggart down the ridge, the calf was sincerely glad. It hearkened while the pursuit clattered down among the hard wood, the last year’s calf squealing in terror, and at this juncture the cow turned and made off in the opposite direction. The calf had no alternative but to follow. Deserting the others, they rounded the mountain again, and once more returned to the thick swamp at the head of Mud Pond and the Bathurst Carry. Here they made their stay, clinging to the cover during daylight, and stealing down to the shore of the pond only when darkness drew its mantle over the woods.

Here they were standing one night when the calf heard from the other shore a long-drawn note go droning over the moonlit water. It was simple and low, ending abruptly in a plaintive guttural. The cow and the calf cocked their ears, listening, while the faint echo spoke from hill to hill. Then silence fell anew on the forest, and the cow went on feeding. A half hour passed. The same moaning intonation droned again, now louder and more appealing. The calf lifted its head, looking eagerly at the cow, and wondering why she did not move away from this vexatious sound. But the cow knew the meaning of the disturber: it was only another cow calling, and what heed should she give to this intruder’s untoward plaint ? She sniffed as if in disdain, and resumed her feeding; and the calf, convinced that this was not a source of peril, was guzzling at the grasses once more, when still another note struck a discord upon the silent night. Unh ! The calf had heard that sound ! It had not heard the love call of a cow moose before, but it remembered how the big bull had grunted when he chased the last year’s calf. Unh-oonh ! Was it the big bull still hectoring the arrogant stripling? The calf listened. The bull, whoever he was, swung over the crest of the ridge, stirring the night with the clanging of his horns upon the hard wood, and at every other stride grunting, Unh-unh-oonh !

E-ee-eee-u-uu-o-ooo-eunh! It was a cow’s answering call, soft and muffled, — a dulcet murmur of invitation. On the ridge there was silence for an instant; then Unh-unh-unh ! — the bull was coming on. He was eager, — too eager, for safety. He plunged down into the pond, — slosh, slosh, slosh, — grunted once, and was silent.

A ripping detonation crashed upon the stillness. The roar rattled against the mountain side, and beat back with staccato echoes pealing heavenward in a chaos of sound. A second followed; then night became abominable with the rattling, crashing reports. Dimly the calf heard between the shots a heavy splashing on the shallow shore, a turmoil of pealing echoes, and a cry, “ He’s down ! ”

The cow and the calf fled from what they knew was a horror — for them. But it was a triumph for the men beyond on the pond. The big bull had been sacrificed to his pride of conquest. He had been tolled in to die in the pursuit of a graceless, grotesque imitation. His last liturgy had been his own masterful, deep-lunged answer to the hollow cheat of the birch-bark horn. He lay on his side now in the mud, one broad-palmed antler jutting from the water that was red from the slaughter. For the first time the calf had been in the presence of death.

They abandoned the precarious place, ranging leagues northward into the untold fastnesses of the Upsalquitch. Here they found refuge again, clinging to this drear, unlovely solitude; the cow, lorn in her lonesomeness, making sorrowful the darkness with her call. At the waning of the moon she was solaced, for across the night came the bark of an unmated bull hastening to the courtship. She answered ; the bull drew nearer. At length he stood in a thicket across the bogan, and beat the bushes with his horns, striving to draw the cow to him. He was taking no chances ; but when the calf squealed for the cow to return, the bull knew this was no cheat, and came rioting across the bogan, bristling and bold with ardor. The calf hung about, complaining, but the others gave no heed, and for once in its life the heir was left to its own devices. Then, when the dawn came, all three slunk into a thicket, the calf forlorn and drear.

It was growing cold, — bitter cold. The bull, the cow, and the calf wandered southward, homeward once more to the mountain. Between Nictau and the Mamoziekel was a long hard-wood ridge, where they would yard for the winter. The bull’s interest in possible rivals soon ceased. He was no longer the eager, braggart bully of the rut, but once more a suspicious, slinking creature, shy and timorous. With the first of the snow they shortened the range, and settled down in preparation for the long winter siege. At the base of the hill was a brook, and over the crest a hollow pocket sheltered from the wind. Thickets stood on every side, and the browse was rich and limitless. With all this food and water comfort seemed assured.

Into this haven wandered, one day, another moose. He was battered and lean ; one ear was slit almost to the butt, and a long, fresh scar lay on his flank like a burn, —the marks of encounters with other bulls. With a sudden concern, the calf saw that the frayed newcomer was its early enemy, the last year’s calf. But there was no more insolence or oppression remaining. He was content to take a peaceful place with the herd, and to feed about, insignificant and almost unnoticed.

Softly fell the snow, day after day. It sifted through the trees silently as the falling of a star, clogging the brush with its heavy mantle. Erelong the herd’s excursions were cut down to passage along the ridge upon which they ranged. In their prospecting for feed the moose trod great paths to and fro, breaking out fresh lanes through the heavy banks as the browse became exhausted. Ice and snow had transformed them before December ended. The bull’s horns were caked with frozen slush; his mane was a tinkling fringe of icicles. Their hair, too, was heavy and often blurred with dirt, and they walked laggardly and with hanging heads. Their struggle against wind and weather had begun.

Over the crest of the hill came a crouching figure, — a man. He was peering here and there eagerly, crawling onward a step at a time. His eyes were sharp and keen; his swart Indian features were drawn with the striving passion of the chase. On the soft going his snowshoes made no sound, and as silently the twigs parted across the smooth fabric of his mackinaw as he shouldered a way through the brush.

Something moved the cow to suspicion. She rose heavily and whirled about, staring at the figure on the hill. The Milicete’s head rested on his arm, and a brief pause intervened. Then the woods dinned with the rifle’s roar, and the cow plunged forward on her knees. Leaping to their feet, the other moose halted, snorting. A second shot added its clamor to the reverberating echoes, and, wheeling in their tracks, they hurled onward down the hill, the brush cracking and crashing in their wake. Again the rifle cracked, and the calf lunged forward. It felt the lead rip like fire along its flank, and, spurred to mad desperation, it pushed ahead, the crack-crack of the gun following as it fled. Then it plunged over the dip of the hollow among the hills, and silence once more fell in its train. It was alone ; for, far behind, the cow lay on her side, her head resting across the round of a fallen tree, the snow red and dreadful about her. Eastward went the calf, and then, miles beyond, unable to stagger farther, it rounded to on the ridge overlooking the second and third Bathurst lakes. Convinced now that its safety lay in solitude, it drew away from the other moose, and, worn and lonely, yarded the remainder of the winter, orphaned and dull.

Spring came, freeing it from the prison of snow. Remembering the quiet of the Upsalquitch, it wandered northward, and, unmolested in this desert of swamp and bogland, grew lustily. By the end of the summer it had become as sly and crafty as any creature in the wilderness ; also, it was growing a pair of stubs on its forehead, and dignity was in its ways. As the fall came, with a brush of reds and browns for the trees, a new, whimsical humor seized it. In its heart was a longing to wander, to return once more to the mountain in the south, to see what things were happening on the range, and above all to seek the society of a mate. Leaving the Upsalquitch, it rambled on its way ; pausing at times to paw up potholes in a swamp, or to beat its stubs upon an alder bush, as the big bulls did.

Ranging to the shore of Mud Pond, the yearling sloshed across the shallows, treading the soft ooze and spattering mud head-high while he pushed his way through the tangled bush upon the shore. There in the thicket he paused, listening to the soft voices of the night. His heart was filled with ardor, and the lust of battle surged dimly in his mind. He longed to prove himself among the other bulls, but discretion warned. Yet once, to try himself, he grunted the guttural challenge of the mating bull, and the answer was electrical. E-ee-eunh! He heard the soft and wooing response, — E-eeeunh ! His mane bristled, and the hair on his neck puffed outward. After a moment’s pause he grunted anew, — Unh-uoonh! Many minutes passed, while silence fell again upon the wilderness. Then again, E-ee-eunh ! — a short, muffled call. Unh! UNH! the yearling grunted, — Unh ! oonh ! Like a whirlwind he roared out of the thicket, a deep guttural punctuating every stride. At full speed he drove across the mud bank, smearing himself to the flanks, and with his hair bristling, his eyes red and snapping, he swung about the point, and snorting hunched himself to a standstill.

There, almost under his nose, was a canoe, clearly revealed in the moonlight, and the air was strong with the scent of man, — man, his mortal, terrifying enemy. Too frightened to flee, he stood there staring down on the birch bark, and softly and silently it moved. Palsied, he beheld it drawing near, yet flight was forgotten. Nearer and nearer it came; then the bowman dropped his elbows, and at this gesture the moonlight glinted on a gun barrel.

“ It’s a calf! ” said a voice disgustedly.

At this the canoe swung abruptly around, but still the calf stood there in stupid astonishment.

“ Sartin fool moose — hunh ! ” spoke another voice, unmistakably Milicete.

A setting pole hurled through the air end on like a spear, its blunt end banging the calf in the ribs. A sudden bellow of terror burst from him, and, leaping like a lucifee, he sought the bank and sped away sweating in an agony of fear. That ended his romancing for a time, but still the season had another lesson in store for him. The encounter on the pond taught him then and there that circumspection and craft are needed even in matters of love ; but it did not teach him that age and weight count much in a tilt at arms. He had ranged over to the dead water north of the Mamoziekel, when he came face to face with the sliteared bull, his old acquaintance.

Oonh ! said the slit-eared bull.

Unh! challenged the yearling.

They came together with a crash of flying deadwood, the yearling forced back on his haunches. He struggled to his feet, and resumed the charge gamely. But by a sudden turn the spike-horn bull caught him on the hip, pierced him almost to the vitals, and then, pressing the onslaught, drove the yearling, baffled and bellowing, down the closed reaches of the cedar swamp, and away to safety over a near-by hill. That finished the yearling for the season ; but he laid by, for future reckoning, a memory of this shameless, unmerciful beating. Fate destined that he must wait. The year passed, and a second season found him glorying in the company of a mate, a sleek, velvet-sided cow, who had never walked abroad before in the glamour of a honeymoon. Jealously he guarded her from the attentions of another stripling who was plying about the premises. There on the caribou barren he had beaten him off in a battle royal, and, scarred and bleeding, but withal triumphant, he returned to find his old enemy, the slit-eared bull, in charge. For an hour they fought and trampled upon the oozy battleground, until once more the younger bull was an outcast and a wanderer, beaten, disgraced, and without heart. He slouched away to his old retreat between Nictau and the Upsalquitch.

The years had passed, — six, eight, ten, perhaps. Plenty snows, mebbe, as Tom Bear, the Milicete, said. Somewhere between the Sisson Branch and the head of the Little Tobique the bull was wandering, black, bulky, and heavyhumped. He was a colossus now ; no longer like the weakling that had come into life in the blind valley on the mountain’s flank. His horns, broadly palmed and fixed with a fringe of bayonet prongs, were the terror and envy of the herds. He had run a long course, and in the burnt ground below the Wabsky and the Odell he was a monarch absolute, his crest scarred with the wounds of a violent sway. Time had taught him nearly all that a moose can know. He could discern the cheat of a birch-bark horn almost as far as he could hear it; he had been tracked, hunted, and fired at, until the crack of a rifle was almost as familiar as the crash of a tree falling in the woodlands. Yet he still lived, mammoth and noble.

“ Oh, so big — hunh ! ” exclaimed Tom Bear, the Milicete, stretching both arms to match a spread of horns. Tom was in difficulties. He was in jail at Andover, and with no vision of relief before him. But there had come a man from the lower settlements, looking for moose, and had sought Bear in his enforced retreat.

“ Yeh — umph ! They got a wickhagan² on Tom. Ain’t so bad be in lockup. Only debt, this time.”

“ Only for debt, eh ? How much ? ”

It was not a great amount, and the man from the settlements freed Tom Bear by a payment. Then they journeyed north, the Tobique in their wake, and the Sisson Branch before them. And about this time, perhaps, far up at the head of the brook where the flying caribou traffic among the barrens, a mighty contest was waging on the forest edge.

Once more the bull confronted his slit - eared rival. The other’s strength and resources had grown, too. His horns matched, almost, in their bigness, the bull’s broad spread, and he was big, too, in bulk and limb. Oonh ! Unh ! he grunted. His cow, lying hidden in a thicket, revealed herself, walking with a slow, stretching stride out into the open barren. The bulls’ crests hung low before their swollen necks and manes bristling with eager rage. The cow coaxed urgently, as if gleeful of the coming encounter for her sake. She plied back and forth along the prospective battleground, watching, waiting; then the champions swung together with a crash.

The night clattered with the sound. The bulls’ antlers clanged like meeting metal. Their palms gritted as they strove and struggled, grunting, gasping, fire in their eyes. Unh-unh! They locked their horns anew, their shaggy heads shaking, and the froth flying with the strokes. The moon arose, staring down upon their baresark frenzy, while they drove their hoofs into the soggy soil; and each time they shocked together the solemn reaches of the wilderness clanged with the tumult. Standing at a distance, the cow whimpered and whined and drooled across the open ground with moaning intonation. At the call the two fought with further maddened energy ; and at last, inch by inch, the slit-eared rival began to give way. His head was matted with blood and froth, his eye was dim and evil. At the first sign of conquest the coming victor plied himself afresh to conquer. He lunged back suddenly, and again sweeping forward, his hocks straining for the impulse, launched himself upon his foe. Clang ! clang! Their antlers struck together, wrestling. The slit-eared bull fell back. He tried to turn and fly, but the victor unmercifully pressed him down. They wrestled then anew, their antlers grappling like arms, when, with a sudden, swift onslaught, the slit-eared bull was hurled backward, vanquished and half dead. With his last remaining strength he fled to cover, the victor’s prongs thudding a quickstep on his ribs and thighs, while the cow, calling low and clearly, bade the victor return to her charms. Thus, in the rising dawn, old scores were wiped out, and a memory of disgraced defeat lived down.

Across the bog, at noon, came Tom Bear and the man from the settlements.

“Uh! ” exclaimed Tom Bear, clutching him by the elbow. “ So — see ! ”

The ground in a dozen different ways was torn and trodden, and hoofbeats marked the acres. The Milicete ranged to and fro like a working hound, marking a fleck of blood or a patch of hair upon the wasted moss. He saw the battle in these signs, and pointed at last where the beaten bull had fled to cover for his life. Then, ranging wider, he found the slots of the victor and the cow, moving northward across the barren to the heavy covert where the caribou had beaten an open trail. Swiftly and softfooted he followed, and at the edge of the open hard wood halted, and raised a warning finger.

“So — big moose — big fellow. Call him out, mebbe. Think same one — yes, mus’ be big fellow — so big.” He spread his arms again, his dark features lighting with elation and the lust to kill. “ Call him out to-night, mebbe — dunno. Try all same.”

Every instinct of the Milicete was aroused in his awakened craft. He pitched his pack into a windfall, and strode off, catlike, into the forest. Presently he was back again, satisfied that the bull was resting not far away from the rigor of the conquest. He drew out his bark horn, and shaped and trimmed it anew, a lurking smile on his dark visage, yet, as if ashamed of his outburst of excitement, more taciturn than ever. He watched the sun sweep across the zenith, and at last, when it was setting behind a dusky fringe of brush upon a distant hill, the two crawled out upon the bog, and sought concealment in a bushy island at the centre. There the first sorrowing of the moose call spread its tremolo across the forest passes, whining away into the distance in low appeal. The hills gave back the call; then silence followed, while the dusky shadows trooped across the solitude. So rose the moon, her pale light transforming the woodland aisles, now ghostly dim and supernaturally quiet.

The echo of the horn beckoned from ridge and summit, at last tapering away into a perspective of hollow sound. Then silence fell. Somewhere in the distance a night bird cried, its booming note trying the straining silence anew, while the dead air lay soundless among the sleeping trees. Once more the Indian called, the birch-bark horn persuasively ringing the sonorous cadence of a calling cow, — E-ee-ee-uu-ooo-uuu-o-unh ! Their ears roared in the stillness as they strained to catch the faintest sound. Minutes passed ; they called again, and then out of the distance came the answer, — Unh ! Unh! Oonh!

“ Zut! Listen ! ” The Milicete bent his ear to the earth, his nostrils quivering. “ Moose comin’ now — big bull — huh — listen ! ”

Far distant was the sound, — sharp, abrupt. It was half the stroke of an axe, half the bark of a dog. They heard it draw nearer; now a deep guttural, emphatic with passionate rage. It swung across the edge of the barren, drawing nearer, while the Milicete’s tense respiration roared like steam from a vent.

“ Big moose — mus’ be careful. Let him come ’long slow ! ”

Over the night floated a low, imploring call. The Indian held up a warning finger. “ Cow try call him back — huh ! ” He put the birch bark to his lips, and, with the horn close to the ground, moaned softly,—E-euh ! A crash in the brush answered, and again the real cow complained to the deserting bull. Strong in the faith of his recent conquest, he plunged on through the brush, beating his antlers upon the trees and grunting harshly. But his craftiness and learning did not forsake him in this venture. He strayed only to the edge of the bog, and there stood grunting and threshing in the thicket, eager but suspicious. In vain the Milicete coaxed and besought, the forest sorrowful with the horn’s pleading; the bull clung to cover, and would not show himself. Even the squealing bawl of a calf moose failed to stir him.

“ Mebbe him mad yet,” muttered Tom Bear. “ Try him wit’ fight.”

Rasping the horn among the bushes, beating and striking at the bushes with the bark, he simulated the noise of a bull threshing his antlers in a fury. Unh ! Unh ! he called ; then Ooonh ! It was the last stroke of cunning. Ploughing through the covert, the bull dashed out on the open, his fury awesome, his inane and the hair upon his neck bristling with his spleen. He charged the bushy island, grunting at every stride, a figure of terrifying rage.

Crack ! pealed a rifle shot, its splitting stroke clattering thunderously. Crack ! again it sounded. Wheeling in his tracks, his frenzy spent in sudden fear, the bull sought safety in flight as speedy as his charge. “ Shoot ! ” cried the Milicete, his voice pitching across the babel of echoes following in the train of the rifle shot. “ Shoot ! ” Again the world reverberated with the shattering explosion, but the bull kept on, unchecked. With a crash of breaking wood, an uproar of cries, of treading hoofs, he was gone, convulsed with terror, yet once more unharmed.

“ Hunh! ” the Indian muttered, “ big moose — so big ! ”

His contempt was obvious. He turned his back upon the shuddering sportsman, and drawing a blanket from his pack, rolled himself in the folds and ungraciously sought sleep. Meanwhile, across the forest, driving his way before him, and with the timorous cow clattering at his heels, the bull once more turned his way northward, seeking safety from man in the untracked depths at the north of the Tobique.

“ Moose gone ; Injun go home now,” said Bear at dawn. He ignored the other’s protests, and sullenly set along the back trail for home. Two days later another wickhagan sprung on Tom Bear; for he was taken up in the road at Andover, too drunk to stagger, yet muttering and murmuring under his breath, “ Huh — so big moose — damn ! ”

Northward, ever northward, worked the big bull. He swept across the bogs and barrens of the Sisson Branch, swinging a little eastward to round the edge of Nictau. But one glimpse through the trees of Bald Mountain looming large upon his path drew his heart away from flight. He turned, and, crossing the head of Mud Carry, ranged southward anew, but along the eastern flank of the peak. There, between Bathurst and the Mamoziekel, he halted, and once more, after a week’s passage, was unrestrained of fear. So, until the coming of the first snow, he plied his way along the ridges, a master of the range, jealous of his solitude, and ready to try the issue with any other bull.

In his jail retreat, Tom Bear’s memory dwelt upon the moose that had come charging across the open that night upon the bog. Fretting and peevish, he awaited freedom, intent upon returning into the wilderness to take up the trail again. Once out of the limbo of the law, he plunged into the heart of the forest; and then for many days they heard no more of Tom Bear, — no, nor for many months.

December was waning. The last bear had gone hooting to its den, while the caribou were “ using ” now along the open bogs. The prowling marten, the black cat, and the lucifee were already growing lean on winter fare, and the black hide of the moose was dingy and thick in the face of the bitter weather. Following the trails the Indian came into Nictau, where the peak was bluewhite with the clustering snows. Thence he ranged southward, ever looking for that track, searching the winter ranges, trying the ridges one after the other, and in the end falling upon a slot a span’s length long.

“ Huh ! him so big moose ! ” he muttered.

It was late in the afternoon ; another hour and the dusk would slink into dark. He gazed a moment at the sky; then wet a forefinger and tested the wind. Settling his blanket coat about him, he set off almost at right angles to the trail, swinging slowly to a parallel course, and, cautiously working onward step by step, sought along the forest for his quarry. His craft told him that the moose was near, and the Milicete’s knowledge — “ White man go fast; moose go faster ; Injun go slow, catch him lying down ” — was before him. He crawled along, in fact, peering over the crest of the hills and searching the hollows before he showed himself. Then, on the brink of a little pitch, he straightened suddenly and threw up his gun.

The bull was lying in the same blind valley where he had been born into the world. Man, for the moment, was forgotten ; yet, there on the crown of the hill, man, evil and destructive, was staring down with glittering eyes. His memory fled back to the day when he had ranged this covert as a feeble calf. There was the place where the leaping lucifee had crouched to spring; here the very windfall under which the mother cow had rested at the time. Overhead, even as in the ages past, the peak loomed heavenward, confronting the clouds with its majesty, its breast clothed with wisps of vapor, and the ageless forests at its feet.

Listlessly the wind stirred round the gully, and the bull shambled to his feet. He stared up the slope, and saw the Indian’s rifle spring to aim. An instant’s pause, a moment of baffling effort; he swung ponderously about, his heavy bulk moving undeterminedly in the close confines. Then the woods clattered again with reverberating echo ; he strode the windfall at a single step, and from his shoulder a gush of blood spattered the untracked snow. In his wake followed the repeating thunder of the gun, while his ears sang with the whimpering bullets flying after. Heaving up the farther slope, he drove madly through the copse; a riot of sounds, of crashing stubs, of horn ringing upon hard wood, marked his way through the thickness. Away to the northward, and behind, a patient, merciless enemy was picking the way, and gloating over the red blurs upon the trail.

Night fell, yet still the bull ranged on. The blood had ceased to flow, but his shoulder was stiff and working sorely. Through the silent forest he took his way, clinging to the ridges where his horns were unimpeded, skirting whiteveiled ponds, — northward, northward toward the black depths of the Upsalquitch, the one safe haven in this hour of unwonted peril. With the dawn he circled on his back track, and lay down on the crest of a hill, where he might see an enemy from afar. A few hours of inactivity stiffened his shoulder until it was an agony to move. Looking backward, he saw something loping along, keeping steadfast to his trail, and peering eagerly ahead. It was his enemy — coming. Wearily he struggled to his feet, stood watching for a moment with lowered crest, and then took up again the flight. Over hill and barren, northward across the tangled sweep of lake and stream, sounding the ice with staggering feet, the bull plodded, the foam freezing upon his jaws and the wound burning upon his shoulder. Miles farther on he paused again, browsing scantly, and lying down once more. But his rest was vain. The loping figure, persistent, unmerciful, was still clinging to the chase, following the broad slots in the snow, and with the one object of destruction before it. Night fell when the chase had crossed far beyond the upper end of the Nepisiquit Carry, the bull lagging along, blundering his way through the brush, his breath heavy and hoarse. Here he rested during the dark hours, rising at the dawn to plod still farther northward in weariful effort. So far he had outwitted the destroyer; but then, whose persistence was to win in the end ? The Milicete, with the obstinate purpose of his race, had determined. It was ordained, for had not nature given the moose for his food and covering ? He had taken up the trail pledged to follow the quarry till endurance on one side or the other should fail. At night he camped on the track, resuming it when the light was high enough to show the way. Onward, ever onward, went the chase, the miles falling in their wake, and the distant pinnacle growing blue in the perspective.

A sudden frenzy of rage overwhelmed the hunted creature. He turned, a living, quivering form of fury. He beat the bushes with his horns, grunting, his mane bristling as in the days of rutting wrath. The Milicete, far behind, heard the challenge, and smiled darkly. He knew. Erelong, now, the quarry would be at bay. But a shift in the wind brought the taint sweeping forward to the swaying prey, and, his fury deserting, he fled as before.

Desperation fell upon the heart of the fleeing creature. He felt his strength departing, and a longing, deep as the desire of love, suffused his breast. He paused at the crest of a ridge, and looked backward across the rolling stretch of forest to where the mountain swept up from the plain and clothed its breast among the clouds. There he had drawn the inspiration of life, and there he should die. The fastnesses of the Upsalquitch were too remote for him to hope that his remaining strength would bear him to them. Yet irresolutely he felt that safety lay in that dark region far in the north, and irresolutely he turned. Gathering his forces together, he swung westward, and by a long loop cleared his pursuer. Then, with the goal set before him, he shacked away to the south, the last fires of vitality burning with renewed vigor. Night came again, and at the following dawn he was still going. His eye was dull and sickly, and the breath had frozen in long icicles upon his muffle and fringe. He lurched along through the trees, his head hanging low and a fever burning in his wound.

The first flakes of the coming storm fell among the trees, and the chase hurried on. It crossed the ice at the foot of Nictau, and, skirting the edge of the cedar-bound bay, made onward along the mountain’s western flank. The moose hobbled painfully, every step an agony to his burning shoulder. But across the ice, when he paused on the edge of the forest to look back, was the same loping figure, inevitable as the passages of death. He hurried. Climbing the edge of the valley, he plunged over into the hollow, and there before him stood the place of his last mortal struggle. Behind a flanking windfall he paused, his breath roaring, his head to the foe, and a grim resolve manifest in his eye.

A sound stirred him. A loping figure was swinging through the woods, brushing its way through the thickets, and peering along the vistas. Haste and eagerness bespoke themselves in the Milicete’s manner ; the time for the killing had come. The bull drew himself together, his orbs bloodshot and the breath whistling through his flaccid nostrils. Once more fury possessed him. He waited ; the figure of death drew nearer. He gathered his energies in mad earnest. Skulking like a caribou calf, he waited until the Milicete was almost upon him ; then, silent, he hurled himself upon his destroyer.

A spurt of flame flared through the dusk ; a din of thunders surged in his ears. He felt something shock his very vitals with a touch of fire. Blindness was upon him. He plunged forward ; another crash. There was man, and the rage of the moose was sublime. His enemy, appalled, sought to leap aside. His snowshoe tripped upon a stub; he stumbled and fell. With a downward, cutting stroke of a fore foot the bull struck him to earth as he sought to rise, and stood over the prostrate, battered form, trampling in insensate fury. But he could not see ; his knees were weak beneath him; with a last, gasping roar, he lunged forward, strove to rise, and fell back, with his antlered crown resting across the bole of a fallen tree. Then the snow fell, soft and white and obliterating. Overhead was the mountain, dark and austere, looming large upon the houseless woods, and in its shadow the tragedy cloaked with silence.

Maximilian Foster.