on the Intercolonial ever since the road was cut through the woods from
New Brunswick to Quebec. Everyone who travelled often on that line knew
him, and all who knew him well enough to get below his rough crust,
liked him for his big heart.
"Hallo, McLeod," said Hemenway as he came up through the darkness, "is
that you?"
"It's nane else," answered the engineer as he stepped down from his cab
and shook hands warmly. "Hoo are ye, Dud, an' whaur hae ye been
murderin' the innocent beasties noo? Hae ye killt yer moose yet? Ye've
been chasin' him these mony years."
"Not much murdering," replied Hemenway. "I had a queer trip this
time--away up the Nepissiguit, with old McDonald. You know him, don't
you?"
"Fine do I ken Rob McDonald, an' a guid mon he is. Hoo was it that ye
couldna slaughter stacks o' moose wi' him to help ye? Did ye see nane
at all?"
"Plenty, and one with the biggest horns in the world! But that's a long
story, and there's no time to tell it now."
"Time to burrrn, Dud, nae fear o' it! 'Twill be an hour afore the
line's clear to Charlo an' they lat us oot o' this. Come awa' up into
the cab, mon, an' tell us yer tale.' Tis couthy an' warm in the cab,
an' I'm willin' to leesten to yer bluidy advaintures."
So the two men clambered up into the engineer's seat. Hemenway gave
McLeod his longest and strongest cigar, and filled his own briarwood
pipe. The rain was now pattering gently on the roof of the cab. The
engine hissed and sizzled patiently in the darkness. The fragrant smoke
curled steadily from the glowing tip of the cigar; but the pipe went
out half a dozen times while Hemenway was telling the story of
Silverhorns.
"We went up the river to the big rock, just below Indian Falls. There
we made our main camp, intending to hunt on Forty-two Mile Brook.
There's quite a snarl of ponds and bogs at the head of it, and some
burned hills over to the west, and it's very good moose country.
"But some other party had been there before us, and we saw nothing on
the ponds, except two cow moose and a calf. Coming out the next morning
we got a fine deer on the old wood road--a beautiful head. But I have
plenty of deer-heads already."
"Bonny creature!" said McLeod. "An' what did ye do wi' it, when ye had
murdered it?"
"Ate it, of course. I gave the head to Billy Boucher, the cook. He said
he could get ten dollars for it. The next evening we went to one of the
ponds again, and Injun Pete tried to 'call' a moose for me. But it was
no good. McDonald was disgusted 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 bull'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 fore-shoulder and side were in clear view,
about two 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 weel, Dud," puffed McLeod; "varra weel 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 a strict 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 commandments in
the ane day--the foorth and the saxth!"
"Perhaps not. It's enough to break one, as you do once a fortnight when
you run your train into Rivière du Loup Sunday morning. How's that, you
old Calvinist?"
"Dudley, ma son," said the engineer, "dinna airgue a point that ye
canna understond. There's guid an' suffeecient reasons for the train.
But ye'll ne'er be claimin' that moose-huntin' is a wark o' neecessity
or maircy?"
"No, no, of course not; but then, you see, barring Sundays, we felt
that it was necessary to do all we could to get a moose, just for the
sake of our reputations. Billy, the cook, was particularly strong about
it. He said that an old woman in Bathurst, a kind of fortune-teller,
had told him that he was going to have '_la bonne chance_' on this
trip. He wanted to try his own mouth at 'calling.' He had never really
done it before. But he had been practising all winter in imitation of a
tame cow moose that Johnny Moreau had, and he thought he could make the
sound '_b'en bon_.' So he got the birch-bark horn and gave us a sample
of his skill. McDonald told me privately that it was 'nae sa bad; a
deal better than Pete's feckless bellow.' We agreed to leave the Indian
to keep the camp (after locking up the whiskey-flask in my bag), and
take Billy with us on Monday to 'call' at Hogan's Pond.
"It's a small bit of water, about three-quarters of a mile long and
four hundred yards across, and four miles back from the river. There is
no trail to it, but a blazed line runs part of the way, and for the
rest you follow up the little brook that runs out of the pond. We stuck
up our shelter in a hollow on the brook, half a mile below the pond, so
that the smoke of our fire would not drift over the hunting-ground, and
waited till five o'clock in the afternoon. Then we went up to the pond,
and took our position in a clump of birch-trees on the edge of the open
meadow that runs round the east shore. Just at dark Billy began to
call, and it was beautiful. You know how it goes. Three short grunts,
and then a long ooooo-aaaa-ooooh, winding up with another grunt! It
sounded lonelier than a love-sick hippopotamus on the house-top. It
rolled and echoed over the hills as if it would wake the dead.
[Illustration: "Billy began to call, and it was beautiful."]
"There was a fine moon shining, nearly full, and a few clouds floating
by. Billy called, and called, and called again. The air grew colder and
colder; light frost on the meadow-grass; our teeth were chattering,
fingers numb.
"Then we heard a bull give a short bawl, away off to the southward.
Presently we could hear his horns knock against the trees, far up on
the hill. McDonald whispered, 'He's comin',' and Billy gave another
call.
"But it was another bull that answered, back of the north end of the
pond, and pretty soon we could hear him rapping along through the
woods. Then everything was still. 'Call agen,' says McDonald, and Billy
called again.
"This time the bawl came from another bull, on top of the western hill,
straight across the pond. It seemed to start up the other two bulls,
and we could hear all three of them thrashing along, as fast as they
could come, towards the pond. 'Call agen, a wee one,' says McDonald,
trembling with joy. And Billy called a little, seducing call, with two
grunts at the end.
"Well, sir, at that, a cow and a calf came rushing down through the
brush not two hundred yards away from us, and the three bulls went
splash into the water, one at the south end, one at the north end, and
one on the west shore. 'Lord,' whispers McDonald, 'it's a
meenadgerie!'"
"Dud," said the engineer, getting down to open the furnace door a
crack, "this is mair than murder ye're comin' at; it's a buitchery--or
else it's juist a pack o' lees."
"I give you my word," said Hemenway, "it's all true as the catechism.
But let me go on. The cow and the calf only stayed in the water a few
minutes, and then ran back through the woods. But the three bulls went
sloshing around in the pond as if they were looking for something. We
could hear them, but we could not see any of them, for the sky had
clouded up, and they kept far away from us. Billy tried another short
call, but they did not come any nearer. McDonald whispered that he
thought the one in the south end might be the biggest, and he might be
feeding, and the two others might be young bulls, and they might be
keeping away because they were afraid of the big one. This seemed
reasonable; and I said that I was going to crawl around the meadow to
the south end. 'Keep near a tree,' says Mac; and I started.
"There was a deep trail, worn by animals, through the high grass; and
in this I crept along on my hands and knees. It was very wet and muddy.
My boots were full of cold water. After ten minutes I came to a little
point running out into the pond, and one young birch growing on it.
Under this I crawled, and rising up on my knees looked over the top of
the grass and bushes.
"There, in a shallow bay, standing knee-deep in the water, and rooting
up the lily-stems with his long, pendulous nose, was the biggest and
blackest bull moose in the world. As he pulled the roots from the mud
and tossed up his dripping head I could see his horns--four and a half
feet across, if they were an inch, and the palms shining like tea-trays
in the moonlight. I tell you, old Silverhorns was the most beautiful
monster I ever saw.
"But he was too far away to shoot by that dim light, so I left my
birch-tree and crawled along toward the edge of the bay. A breath of
wind must have blown across me to him, for he lifted his head, sniffed,
grunted, came out of the water, and began to trot slowly along the
trail which led past me. I knelt on one knee and tried to take aim. A
black cloud came over the moon. I couldn't see either of the sights on
the gun. But when the bull came opposite to me, about fifty yards off,
I blazed away at a venture.
"He reared straight up on his hind legs--it looked as if he rose fifty
feet in the air--wheeled, and went walloping along the trail, around
the south end of the pond. In a minute he was lost in the woods.
Good-by, Silverhorns!"
"Ye tell it weel," said McLeod, reaching out for a fresh cigar, "fegs!
Ah doot Sir Walter himsel' couldna impruve upon it. An, sae thot's the
way ye didna murder puir Seelverhorrns? It's a tale I'm joyfu' to be
hearin'."
"Wait a bit," Hemenway answered. "That's not the end, by a long shot.
There's worse to follow. The next morning we returned to the pond at
daybreak, for McDonald thought I might have wounded the moose. We
searched the bushes and the woods when he went out very carefully,
looking for drops of blood on his trail."
"Bluid!" groaned the engineer. "Hech, mon, wouldna that come nigh to
mak' ye greet, to find the beast's red bluid splashed ower the leaves,
and think o' him staggerin' on thro' the forest, drippin' the heart oot
o' him wi' every step?"
"But we didn't find any blood, you old sentimentalist. That shot in the
dark was a clear miss. We followed the trail by broken bushes and
footprints, for half a mile, and then came back to the pond and turned
to go down through the edge of the woods to the camp.
"It was just after sunrise. I was walking a few yards ahead, McDonald
next, and Billy last. Suddenly he looked around to the left, gave a low
whistle and dropped to the ground, pointing northward. Away at the head
of the pond, beyond the glitter of the sun on the water, the big
blackness of Silverhorns' head and body was pushing through the bushes,
dripping with dew.
"Each of us flopped down behind the nearest shrub as if we had been
playing squat-tag. Billy had the birch-bark horn with him, and he gave
a low, short call. Silverhorns heard it, turned, and came parading
slowly down the western shore, now on the sand-beach, now splashing
through the shallow water. We could see every motion and hear every
sound. He marched along as if he owned the earth, swinging his huge
head from side to side and grunting at each step.
"You see, we were just in the edge of the woods, strung along the south
end of the pond, Billy nearest the west shore, where the moose was
walking, McDonald next, and I last, perhaps fifteen yards farther to
the east. It was a fool arrangement, but we had no time to think about
it. McDonald whispered that I should wait until the moose came close to
us and stopped.
"So I waited. I could see him swagger along the sand and step out
around the fallen logs. The nearer he came the bigger his horns looked;
each palm was like an enormous silver fish-fork with twenty prongs.
Then he went out of my sight for a minute as he passed around a little
bay in the southwest corner, getting nearer and nearer to Billy. But I
could still hear his steps distinctly--slosh, slosh, slosh--thud, thud,
thud (the grunting had stopped)--closer 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 fiercely 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 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 should get
that moose_."
"Ah didna ken auld Rob had sae much theology aboot him," commented
McLeod. "But noo I'm thinkin' ye went back to yer 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
lived 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 Silverhorns. Billy and I made
McDonald stay, and Thursday afternoon, when the clouds broke away, we
went back to the pond to have a last try at turning our luck.
"This time we took our positions with great care, among some small
spruces on a point that ran out from the southern meadow. I was
farthest to the west; McDonald (who had also brought his gun) was next;
Billy, with the horn, was farthest away from the point where he thought
the moose would come out. So Billy began to call, very beautifully. The
long echoes went bellowing over the hills. The afternoon was still and
the setting sun shone through a light mist, like a ball of red gold.
"Fifteen minutes after sundown Silverhorns gave a loud bawl from the
western ridge and came crashing down the hill. He cleared the bushes
two or three hundred yards to our left with a leap, rushed into the
pond, and came wading around the south shore toward us. The bank here
was rather high, perhaps four feet above the water, and the mud below
it was deep, so that the moose sank in to his knees. I give you my
word, as he came along there was nothing visible to Mac and me except
his ears and his horns. Everything else was hidden below the bank.
"There were we behind our little spruce-trees. And there was
Silverhorns, standing still now, right in front of us. And all that Mac
and I could see were those big ears and those magnificent antlers,
appearing and disappearing as he lifted and lowered his head. It was a
fearful situation. And there was Billy, with his birch-bark hooter,
forty yards below us--he could see the moose perfectly.
"I looked at Mac, and he looked at me. He whispered something about
predestination. Then Billy lifted his horn and made ready to give a
little soft grunt, to see if the moose wouldn't move along a bit, just
to oblige us. But as Billy drew in his breath, one of those tiny fool
flies that are always blundering around a man's face flew straight down
his throat. Instead of a call he burst out with a furious, strangling
fit of coughing. The moose gave a snort, and a wild leap in the water,
and galloped away under the bank, the way he had come. Mac and I both
fired at his vanishing ears and horns, but of course----"
"All aboooard!" The conductor's shout rang along the platform.
"Line's clear," exclaimed McLeod, rising. "Noo we'll be off! Wull ye
stay here wi' me, or gang awa' back to yer bed?"
"Here," answered Hemenway, not budging from his place on the bench.
The bell clanged, and the powerful machine puffed out on its flaring
way through the night. Faster and faster came the big explosive
breaths, until they blended in a long steady roar, and the train was
sweeping northward at forty miles an hour. The clouds had broken; the
night had grown colder; the gibbous moon gleamed over the vast and
solitary landscape. It was a different thing to Hemenway, riding in the
cab of the locomotive, from an ordinary journey in the passenger-car or
an unconscious ride in the sleeper. Here he was on the crest of motion,
at the fore-front of speed, and the quivering engine with the long
train behind it seemed like a living creature leaping along the track.
It responded to the labour of the fireman and the touch of the engineer
almost as if it could think and feel. Its pace quickened without a jar;
its great eye pierced the silvery space of moonlight with a shaft of
blazing yellow; the rails sang before it and trembled behind it; it was
an obedient and joyful monster, conquering distance and devouring
darkness.
On the wide level barrens beyond the Tete-a-Gouche River the locomotive
reached its best speed, purring like a huge cat and running smoothly.
McLeod leaned back on his bench with a satisfied air.
"She's doin' fine, the nicht," said he. "Ah'm thinkin', whiles, o' yer
auld Seelverhorrns. Whaur is he noo? Awa' up on Hogan's Pond,
gallantin' around i' the licht o' the mune wi' a lady moose, an' the
gladness juist bubblin' in his hairt. Ye're no sorry that he's leevin'
yet, are ye, Dud?"
"Well," answered Hemenway slowly, between the puffs of his pipe, "I
can't say I'm sorry that he's alive and happy, though I'm not glad that
I lost him. But he did his best, the old rogue; he played a good game,
and he deserved to win. Where he is now nobody can tell. He was
travelling like a streak of lightning when I last saw him. By this time
he may be----"
"What's yon?" cried McLeod, springing up. Far ahead, in the narrow apex
of the converging rails, stood a black form, motionless, mysterious.
McLeod grasped the whistle-cord. The black form loomed higher in the
moonlight and was clearly silhouetted against the horizon--a big moose
standing across the track. They could see his grotesque head, his
shadowy horns, his high, sloping shoulders. The engineer pulled the
cord. The whistle shrieked loud and long.
The moose turned and faced the sound. The glare of the headlight
fascinated, challenged, angered him. There he stood defiant, front feet
planted wide apart, head lowered, gazing steadily at the unknown enemy
that was rushing toward him. He was the monarch of the wilderness.
There was nothing in the world that he feared, except those
strange-smelling little beasts on two legs who crept around through the
woods and shot fire out of sticks. This was surely not one of those
treacherous animals, but some strange new creature that dared to shriek
at him and try to drive him out of its way. He would not move. He would
try his strength against this big yellow-eyed beast.
[Illustration: There he stood defiant, front feet planted wide apart.]
"Losh!" cried McLeod; "he's gaun' to fecht us!" and he dropped the
cord, grabbed the levers, and threw the steam off and the brakes on
hard. The heavy train slid groaning and jarring along the track. The
moose never stirred. The fire smouldered in his small narrow eyes. His
black crest was bristling. As the engine bore down upon him, not a rod
away, he reared high in the air, his antlers flashing in the blaze, and
struck full at the headlight with his immense fore feet. There was a
shattering of glass, a crash, a heavy shock, and the train slid on
through the darkness, lit only by the moon.
Thirty or forty yards beyond, the momentum was exhausted and the engine
came to a stop. Hemenway and McLeod clambered down and ran back, with
the other trainmen and a few of the passengers. The moose was lying in
the ditch beside the track, stone dead and frightfully shattered. But
the great head and the vast, spreading antlers were intact.
"Seelver-horrns, sure eneugh!" said McLeod, bending over him. "He was
crossin' frae the Nepissiguit to the Jacquet; but he didna get across.
Weel, Dud, are ye glad? Ye hae killt yer first moose!"
"Yes," said Hemenway, "it's my first moose. But it's your first moose,
too. And I think it's our last. Ye gods, what a fighter!"
NOTIONS ABOUT NOVELS
"You must write a novel," said my Uncle Peter to the young Man of
Letters. "The novel is the literary form in which the psychological
conditions of interest are most easily discovered and met. It appeals
directly to the reader's self-consciousness, and invites him to fancy
how fine a figure he would cut in more picturesque circumstances than
his own. When it simplifies great events, as Stevenson said it must, it
produces the feeling of power; and when it dignifies the commonplace,
as Schopenhauer said it ought to, it produces the sense of importance.
People like to imagine themselves playing on a large stage. The most
humdrum of men would be pleased to act a hero's part, if it could be
done without risk or effort; and the plainest of women has the capacity
to enjoy, at least in fancy, a greater variety in the affair of love
than real life is likely to furnish. Novels give these unsatisfied
souls their opportunity. That is why fiction is so popular. You must
take advantage of the laws of the human mind if you want to be a
successful author. Write a novel."
This protracted remark was patiently received by the little company of
friends, who were sitting on a rocky eminence of the York Harbor Golf
Links (near the seventh hole, which was called, for obvious reasons,
"Götterdämmerung"). My Uncle Peter's right to make long speeches was
conceded. In him they did not seem criminal, because they were
evidently necessary. Moreover, in this case, the majority agreed with
him, and therefore were not tempted to interrupt.
"A novel," said the Publisher, "will bear ten times as much advertising
as any other kind of book. This is a fact."
"A novel," said the Critic, "is the most highly developed type of
literature. Therefore, it is the fittest to survive. This is a theory.
And I should like----"
But the Critic did not share the Philosopher's long-speech prerogative.
His audience was inclined to limit him to the time when he could be
pungent.
The Business Man broke in upon him: "A novel is good because it is just
plain reading--no theories or explanations--or at least, if there are
any, you can skip them."