Nothing was talked about among the campers on the following day but the
forthcoming sport of the evening—moose-calling.
Herb Heal had decided that his call should be given from the water, his
“good calling-place” being an alder-fringed logon at the loneliest
extremity of the lake.
During the afternoon he took Neal and Dol with him into a grove of
poplars and birches which bordered one end of the clearing, leaving
Cyrus lounging by the camp-fire. Here the woodsman began the exciting
work of preparing his birch-bark horn, that primitive but potent
trumpet through which he would sigh, groan, grunt, and roar, imitating
each varying mood of the cow-moose. To her call he had often listened
as he lay for hours on a mossy bed in the far depths of the forest,
learning to interpret the language of every woodland creature.
Unsheathing his hunting-knife, and selecting a sound white-birch tree,
Herb carefully removed from it a piece of bark about eighteen inches in
length and six in width. This he carefully trimmed, and rolled into a
horn as a child would twist paper into a cornucopia package for sweets,
tying it with the twine-like roots of the ground juniper. The tapering
end of the trumpet, which would be applied to the caller’s lips,
measured about one inch across; its mouth measured five.
Returning to camp, Herb dipped the horn in warm water and then let it
dry, saying that this would produce a mellow ring. He stoutly refused
all appeals from the boys to give them a few illustrations of
moose-calling there and then, with a lesson in the art, declaring that
it would spoil the night’s sport, and that they must first hear the
call amid proper surroundings. From time to time he impressed upon them
that they were going to engage in an expedition which required absolute
silence and clever stratagem to make it successful. He vowed to wreak a
woodsman’s vengeance on any fellow who balked it by shaking the boat,
or by moving body or rifle so as to make a noise.
A light, humming breeze had been blowing all day; but as the afternoon
waned, it died down. The evening proved clear, chilly, and still.
“Is this a likely night for calling, Herb?” asked Cyrus anxiously,
taking a survey of sky and lake from the camp-door about an hour before
the start.
“Fine,” answered Herb with satisfaction. “Guess we’ll get an answer
sure, if there’s a moose within hearing. There ain’t a puff of wind to
carry our scent, and give the trick away. But rig yourselves up in all
the clothing you’ve got, boys; the cold, while we’re waiting, may be
more than you bargain for.”
The guide had a light boat on the lake, moored below the camp. At six
o’clock he seated himself therein, taking the oars in his brawny hands.
Cyrus and Neal took their places in the stern; while Dol disposed of
himself snugly in the bow, right under a jack-lamp which Herb had
carefully trimmed and lit. But he had closed its sliding door, which,
being padded with buckskin, could be opened and shut without a sound,
so that not a ray of light at present escaped.
“Moose won’t stand to watch a jack as deer do,” he said. “Twill only
scare ’em off. They’re a heap too cute to be taken in by an onnatural
big star floating over the water. But ’taint the lucky side of the moon
for us. She’ll rise late, and her light’ll be so feeble that it
wouldn’t show us an elephant clearly if he was under our noses. So if I
succeed in coaxing a bull to the brink of the water, I’ll open the
jack, and flash our light on him. He’ll bolt the next minute as quick
as greased lightning on skates; but if you only get a short sight of
him, I promise that ’twill be one you’ll remember.”
“And if he should take a notion to come for us?” said Cyrus.
“He won’t, if we don’t fire. The boat will be lying among the black
shadows, snug in by the bank, and he’ll see nothing but the dazzling
light. But you fellows must keep still as death. Off we go now, boys,
and mum’s the word!”
This was almost the last sentence spoken. Not a syllable moved the lips
of any one of the four, as the boat glided away from camp towards the
south end of the lake, the oars making scarcely a sound as Herb handled
them. By and by he ceased rowing for an instant, took his pipe from his
mouth, knocked out its ashes, and put it in his pocket with a wise look
at his companions, murmuring, “Don’t want no tobacco incense floating
around!”
At the same time, from a distant ridge upon the eastern shore, covered
with evergreens which stood out like dark steeples against the evening
sky, came a faint, dull noise, as if some belated woodsman was driving
a blunt axe against a tree. The sound itself would scarcely have
awakened a hope of anything unusual in the minds of the inexperienced;
but, combined with the guide’s aspect as he pocketed his pipe, it made
Cyrus and his comrades sit suddenly erect, listening as if ears were
the only organs they possessed.
The queer, dull noise was once repeated. Then again there was silence
almost absolute, Herb’s oars moving with the softest swish imaginable,
as the boat skimmed along the lonely, curved bay which he had chosen
for a calling-place. It came to a stop amid shadows so dense and black
that they seemed almost tangible, close to a bank fringed with
overhanging bushes, having a background of evergreens. These last, in
the fast-gathering darkness, looked like a sable array of mourners in
whose ranks a pale ghost or two mingled, the spectres being slim
white-birch trees.
The opposite bank presented a similar scene.
It was amid such surroundings that Neal Farrar heard for the second
time in his life the weird sound of the moose-hunter’s call. He was a
strong, well-balanced young fellow; yet here again he knew the
sensation as if needles were pricking him all over, which he had felt
once before in these wilds, while his heart seemed to be performing
athletic sports in his body.
Cyrus and Dol confessed afterwards that they were “all shivers and
goose-flesh” as the call rose upon the night air.
After he had shipped his oars, and laid them down, Herb Heal
noiselessly turned his body to face the bow, and took up the birch-bark
horn which lay beside him. He breathed into it anxiously once or twice,
then paused, drew in all the air which his big lungs could contain, put
the trumpet again to his lips with its mouth pointing downward, and
began his summons.
The first part of the call lasted half a minute, or so, without a
break. During its execution the hunter moved his neck and shoulders
first to the left, then to the right, and slowly raised the horn above
his head, the rolling, plaintive sounds with which he commenced
gathering power and pitch with the ascending motion. As the birch
trumpet pointed straight upward, they seemed to sweep aloft in a
surging crescendo, and boom among the tree-tops.
Carrying his head again to the left and right, Herb gradually lowered
the horn until it was once more pointed towards the bottom of the boat,
having in its movements described in the air a big figure of eight. The
call sank with it, and died away in a lonely, sighing, quavering grunt.
Two seconds’ pause, two slow, great throbs of the boys’ hearts, so loud
that they threatened to burst the stillness.
Then the call began again, low and grumbling. Again it rose, swelled,
quavered, and sank, full of lonely longing.
A third time it surged up, and ended abruptly in a wild, ear-splitting
roar, which struck the tops of distant hills, and rolled off in
thunder-like echoes among them.
Silence followed. Not a gasp came from Herb after his efforts. Cyrus
and the Farrars tried to still their heaving chests, while each quick
breath was an expectation.
An answer! Surely it was an answer! The boys never doubted it; though
the responding sound they caught was only a repetition of that far-away
chopping noise, which resembled the heavy thud of an axe against wood.
This came nearer—nearer. It was followed once by a sort of short, sharp
bark.
Then the motionless occupants of the boat heard random, guttural
grunts, a smashing of dead branches, crashing of undergrowth, and the
proud ring of mighty antlers against the trees. The lord of the forest,
a big bull-moose, was tearing recklessly through the woods towards the
lake, in answer to the call of his imaginary mate.
To say that the hearts of our trio were performing gymnastic feats
during these awfully silent minutes of waiting, is to say little. All
the repressed motion of their bodies seemed concentrated in these
organs, which raced, leaped, stopped short, and pounded, vibrating to
such questions as:—
“Will he come? Where shall we first see him? How near is he now? Does
he suspect the trick? Will he give us the slip after all?—_Has he
gone_?”
For of a sudden dead stillness reigned in the forest. No more
trampling, grunting, and knocking of antlers. The spirits of the three
sank to zero. Their breathing became thick. The blood, which a moment
before had played like wildfire in their veins, now stirred sluggishly
as if it was freezing. Disappointment, blank and bitter, shivered
through them from neck to foot.
So passed quarter of an hour. A filmy mist rose from the surface of the
water, and drifted by their faces like the brushing of cold wings. For
lack of motion hand and feet felt numb. Mid the pitch-black shadows,
snug in by the bank, no man could see the face of his fellow, though
the trio would have given a fortune to read their guide’s. Not a word
was spoken. Once, when a deep breath of impatience escaped him, Neal
heard the folds of his coat rub each other, and clenched his teeth to
stop an exclamation at the sound, which he had never noticed before.
Nearly twenty minutes had elapsed since the last noise had been heard
in the woods, when Herb took up the horn which he had laid down, and
put it to his mouth. Again the call rolled up. It was neither loud nor
long this time, ending with a quick, short roar.
As it ceased the guide plunged his arm into the water and slowly
withdrew it, letting drops dribble from his fingers.
The novices could only suspect that this manoeuvre was another lure for
the bull-moose, if he chanced to be still within hearing. Its success
took their breath away.
The wary bull which had answered, having doubtless harbored a suspicion
that all was not exactly right with the first call, had halted in his
on-coming rush, with head upreared, and nostrils spread, trying to
catch any taint in the air which might warn him of danger. But in the
dead calm the heavy evergreens stirred not; no whiff reached him. The
second call upset his prudence. Then he heard that splash and dribble
in the water, and imagined that his impatient mate was dipping her nose
into the lake for a cool drink.
A snort! A bellowing challenge quite indescribable! On he came again
with a thundering rush!
Bushes were thrashed and spurned by his sharp hoofs. Branches snapped.
Trees echoed as his antlers struck them.
A musk-rat leaped from the bank ahead, and dived to reach his hole in
the bank. Under cover of the noisy splash which the little creature
made, one whisper was hissed by Herb’s tongue into the ears of his
comrades. It was:—
“Gee whittaker! he’s a big one! Listen to them shovels against the
trees!”
A minute later, with a deep gulp of intense excitement, and a general
racket as if an engine had broken loose from brakes and checks, and was
carrying all before it, the monarch of the woods crashed through the
alders and halted, with his hoofs in the water, scarcely thirty yards
from where the boat lay in shadow.
This was a supreme moment for our travellers. Leaning forward, fearful
lest their heart-beats should betray them, they could barely
distinguish the outlines of the moose, as he stood with his enormous
nose high in air, giving vent to deep gulps and grunts, and looking to
right and left in bewilderment for that cow which he had heard calling.
For fully five minutes he stood thus, badly puzzled, now and again
stamping a hoof, and scattering spray in rising wrath. Then Herb bent
forward, shot out a long arm, and silently opened the jack.
Meteor-like its silver light flashed forth, to reveal a sight which
could never be wiped from the memories of the beholders, though it
affected each of them differently.
Herb Heal involuntarily gripped the loaded rifle which lay beside
him,—he was too wary a woodsman to be unprepared for emergencies; but
he did not cock it, for he remembered the law, and the bargain which he
had made about to-night.
Cyrus’s eyes gleamed like fires in a face pale from eagerness, as he
strove in a minute of time to take in every feature of the monster
before him, from hoof to horn.
Neal sat as if paralyzed.
Dol—well, Dol lost his head a bit. A deep, throaty gulp, which was a
weak reproduction of the sound made by the moose, as if the boy and the
animal were sharing the same throes of excitement, burst from him.
There was a rattle and struggle of his vocal organs, which in another
second would have become a shout, had not Herb’s masterful left hand
gripped him. Its touch held in check the speech which Dol could no
longer control.
The moose was a big one, “about as big as they grow,” as the guide
afterwards declared. Under the jack-light he looked a regular behemoth.
He must have been over seven feet high at the shoulders, for he was
taller than the tallest horse the boys had ever seen. His black mane
bristled. His antlers were thrown back. His great nose, with its
dilated nostrils, looked as if it were drinking in every scent of the
night world. His eyes had a green glare in them, as for ten seconds he
gazed at the strange light which had suddenly burst into view, its
silver radiance so dazzling him that he saw not the screened boat
beneath.
At the rash noise which Dol made his ears twitched. He splashed a step
forward as if to investigate matters, seeing which, Herb held his
Winchester in readiness to fly to his shoulder at a moment’s notice.
But the moose evidently regarded the jack-lamp as a supernatural,
terrible phenomenon. He shrank from it as man might shrink beneath a
flaming heaven.
With one more despairing look right and left for that phantom cow which
had deluded him, he wheeled around, and crashed back into the forest,
tearing away more rapidly than he came.
“He’s off now, and Heaven knows when he’ll stop!” said Herb, breaking
the weird spell of silence. “Not till he reaches some lair where nary a
creature could follow him. Well, boys, you’ve seen the grandest game on
this continent, the king o’ the woods. What do you think of him?”
All tongues were loosened together. There was a general shifting of
cramped bodies, accompanied by a gust of exclamations.
“He was a monster!”
“He was a behemoth!”
“Oh! but you’re a conjurer, Herb. How on earth did you give such a
fetching call?”
“I could never have believed that those sounds came from a human throat
and a birch-bark horn, if I hadn’t been sitting in the boat with you!”
When there was a break in the excited chorus, Herb, without answering
the compliments to his calling powers, asked quietly,—
“Didn’t you think we’d lost him, boys, when he stopped short in the
middle of his rush, and you heard nothing?”
“We just did,” answered Cyrus. “That was the longes half-hour I ever
put in. What made him do it?”
“I guess he was kind o’ criticising my music,” said the guide,
laughing. “Mebbe I got in a grunt or two that wasn’t natural, and the
old boy wasn’t satisfied with his sweetheart’s voice. He was sniffing
the air, and waiting to hear more. But ’twasn’t more ’n twenty minutes
before I gave the second call, though no doubt it seemed longer to you.
A man must be in good training to get the better of a moose’s ears and
nose.”
“I’m going to get the better of them before I leave these woods!” cried
Dol, who was still puffing and gasping with intense excitement. “I’ll
learn to call up a moose, if I crack my windpipe in doing it.”
“Hurrah for the Boy Moose-Caller!” jeered Cyrus, with a teasing laugh,
which Neal echoed.
But Herb Heal, who had from the beginning regarded “the kid of the
camp” with favor, suddenly became his champion.
“Don’t let ’em down you, Dol,” he said. “I hate to hear a youngster, or
a man, ‘talk fire,’ as the Injuns say, which means _brag_, if he’s a
coward or a chump; but I guess you ain’t either. Here we are at camp,
boys! I
tell you the home-camp is a pleasant sort of place, after you’ve been
out moose-calling!”
Thereupon ensued loud cheers for the home-camp, the boys feeling that
they were letting off steam, and atoning for that long spell of
silence, which had been a positive hardship. In the midst of an echoing
hubbub the boat was hauled up and moored, and the party reached their
log shelter.
[Illustration]