Moonlight and Moose-call
When Miranda was ready to start, the moon was up, low and large, shining
broadly into the cabin window. Miranda brought forward a small,
tin-covered kettle, containing some little fish for bait.
“Where’s your line an’ hooks?” asked Dave.
“I keep them in a hollow tree by the lake,” said Miranda. “But don’t you
go to take that thing along, or you don’t go with me!” she added
sharply, as the young man picked up his rifle.
He set it down again with alacrity.
“But at night, Mirandy!” he protested. “Air ye sure it’s safe?”
“Don’t come if you’re afraid!” she answered witheringly, stepping out
into the white light and the coldly pungent air.
Dave was at her side in a moment, ignoring a taunt which could touch him
least among men. At Miranda’s other side was the great lumbering form of
Kroof, with the girl’s hand resting lovingly on her neck.
“We’ll not be long, mother,” called Miranda to Kirstie, in the doorway.
But before they had gone twenty paces, Kroof stopped short, and sat down
to deliberate. She regarded it as her own peculiar office to protect
Miranda (who needed no protection) on these nocturnal expeditions to
which the girl was given in some moods. Was the obnoxious stranger to
usurp her office and her privilege? Well, she would not share with him.
She would stay where she was needed.
“Come along, Kroof!” urged Miranda, with a little tug at her fur. But
the jealous bear was obstinate. She wheeled and made for the cabin door.
Miranda was irritated.
“Let her stay, then!” she exclaimed, setting her face to the forest, and
smiling in more gracious fashion upon Young Dave. Kroof was certainly
very provoking.
“That’s all right!” said Dave, more pleased than he dare show. “She’ll
be company for yer mother till we git back.”
“Kroof seems to think she owns me!” mused Miranda. “I love her better
than any one else in the world except mother; but I mustn’t spoil her
when she gets cross about nothing. She oughtn’t to be so jealous when
I’m nice to you, Dave! I’m very angry at her for being so silly. She
ought to know you’re nothing to me alongside of her; now, oughtn’t she?”
“Of course,” assented Dave, with such cheerfulness as he could assume.
Then he set himself craftily to win Miranda’s approval by a minute
account of the characteristics—mental, moral, and physical—of a tame
bear named Pete, belonging to one of the lumbermen at the Settlement.
The subject was sagaciously chosen, and had the effect of making Miranda
feel measurably less remote from the world of men. It suggested to her a
kind of possible understanding between the world of men and the world of
the ancient wood.
As they left the moonlit open, the long white fingers of the phantom
light reached after them, down the dissolving arches. Then the last
groping ray was left behind, and they walked in the soft dark. Dave
found it an exquisite but imperative necessity to keep close at
Miranda’s elbow, touching her very skirt indeed, for even his trained
woodland eyes could at first distinguish nothing. Miranda, however, with
her miraculous vision, moved swiftly, unhesitatingly, as if in broad day
and a plain way.
Soon, however, Dave’s eyes adapted themselves, and he could discern
vague differences, denser masses, semi-translucencies in the enfolding
depth of blackness. For there _was_ a light, of a kind, carried down by
countless reflections and refractions from the lit, wet surfaces of the
topmost leaves. Moreover, clean-blooded and fine-nerved as he was from
his years of living under nature’s ceaseless purgation, his other senses
came to the aid of his baffled sight. He seemed to feel, rather than
see, the massive bulk of the pine and birch trunks as his face
approached them to the nearness of an arm’s length. He felt, too, an
added hardness and a swelling under the moss, wherever the network of
roots came close to the parent trunk. His nostrils discerned the pine,
the spruce, the hemlock, the balsam poplar, the aromatic moose-wood, as
he passed them; and long before he came to it he knew the tamarack swamp
was near. Only his ears could not aid him. Except for Miranda’s
footsteps, feather-soft upon the moss, and his own heavier but skilfully
muffled tread, there was no sound in the forest but an indeterminate
whisper, so thin that it might have been the speech of the leaves
conferring, or the sap climbing through the smaller branches. Neither he
nor Miranda uttered a word. The stillness was such that a voice would
have profaned it. Finding it difficult to keep up without stumbling and
making a rough noise, Dave frankly resigned himself to the girl’s
superior craft.
“You’ve got to be eyes fer me here, you wonderful Mirandy, er I can’t
keep up with ye!” he whispered at her ear. The light warmth of his
breath upon her neck made her tingle in a way that bewildered her; but
she found it pleasant. When he took hold of her arm, very gently, to
steady himself, rather to his surprise he was permitted. He was wise
enough, however, not to attach too much importance to the favour. He
pondered the fact that to Miranda, who was not a Settlement girl, it
meant altogether nothing.
Presently, just ahead of them, they saw a pair of palely-glowing eyes,
about two feet from the ground. Miranda squeezed the hand inside her
arm, as a sign that Dave was not to regret his rifle. As a matter of
fact, he was not disposed to regret anything at that moment.
“_Lou’-cerfie!_” he whispered at her ear, meaning the lynx, or
_loup-cervier_ of the camps.
“No, panther!” murmured Miranda, indifferently, going straight forward.
At this startling word, Dave could not, under the circumstances, refrain
from a certain misgiving. A panther is not good to meet in the dark. But
the palely-glowing eyes sank mysteriously toward the ground and
retreated as Miranda advanced; and in a few seconds they went floating
off to one side and disappeared.
“How on earth do ye do it, Mirandy?” whispered Dave, rather awestruck.
“They know me,” replied the girl; which seemed to her, but not to Dave,
an all-sufficient answer.
There was no more said. The magic of the dark held them both breathless.
They were strung to a strange, electric pitch of sympathy and
expectation. Dave’s fingers, where they rested on the girl’s arm,
tingled curiously, deliciously. Once, close beside them, there was a
sharp rattle of claws going up the bark of a fir tree, and then two
little points of light, close together, gleamed down upon them from
overhead. Both Miranda and Dave knew it was a raccoon, and said nothing.
Farther on they came suddenly upon a spectrally luminous figure just in
their path. It was nearly the height of a man. The ghostly light waxed
and waned before their eyes. A timorous imagination might have been
pardoned for calling it a spirit sent to warn them back from their
venture. But they knew it was only a rotting birch stump turned
phosphorescent. As they passed, Dave broke off a piece and crumbled it,
and for some minutes the bluish light clung to his fingers, like a
perfume.
At last they heard an owl hoot solemnly in the distance.
“_Tw’oh-hoo-hoo-hoo-ooo_,” it went, a cold and melancholy sound.
“We’re near the lake,” whispered Miranda. “I know Wah-hoo; he lives in
an old tree close to the water. We’re almost there.” Then glimpses of
light came, broken and thin, from the far-off moon-silvered surface.
Then a breath of chill, though there was no wind. And then they came out
upon the open shore.
Miranda, with a decisive gesture, removed her arm from Dave’s grasp, and
side by side the two followed the long sweep of sandy beach curving off
to the right.
“See that point yonder,” said Miranda, “with the lop-sided tree standing
alone on it? I’ve got my line and hooks hidden in that tree.”
“How do ye set a night line without a boat?” queried Dave.
“Got one, of course!” answered the girl. “Your father made me a dugout,
last summer a year ago, and I keep it drawn up behind the point.”
The moon was high now, sailing in icy splendour of solitude over the
immensity of the ancient wood. The lake was a windless mirror. The beach
was very smooth and white, etched along its landward edges with the
shadows of the trees. At one spot a cluster of three willows grew very
near the water’s brink, spreading a transparent and mysterious shadow.
Just as Dave and Miranda came to this little oasis in the shining sand,
across the water came the long, sonorous call of a bull moose. It was a
deep note, melodious and far carrying, and seemed in some way the very
spoken thought of the vastness.
“That’s what I call music!” said Dave.
But before Miranda could respond, a thunderous bellow roared in answer
from the blackness of the woods close by; there was a heavy crashing in
the underbrush, and the towering front of another bull appeared at the
edge of the sands, looking for his challenger. Catching sight of Dave
and Miranda, he charged down upon them at once.
“Get up a tree, quick!” cried Dave, slipping his long knife from its
sheath and stepping in front of the girl.
“Don’t you meddle and there’ll be no trouble!” said Miranda, sharply.
“You stand behind that tree!” and seizing him by the arm she attempted
to push him out of sight. But for a second he stupidly resisted.
“Fool!” she flamed out at him. “What do you suppose I’ve done all these
years without you?”
[Illustration: The moose recognized her]
The anger in her eyes pierced his senses and brought wisdom. He realized
that somehow she was master of the situation, and he reluctantly stepped
behind the big willow trunk. It was just in the nick of time, for the
furious animal was almost upon them. At this moment a breath of air from
the water carried Miranda’s scent to the beast’s nostrils, and he
checked himself in doubt. At once Miranda gave a soft whistle and
stepped out into the clear flood of moonlight. The moose recognized her,
stood still, raised his gigantic antlers to their full height, and
stretched toward her his long, flexible snout, sniffing amicably. Then,
step by step, he approached, while she waited with her small hand held
out to him, palm upward; and Dave looked on in wonder from behind his
tree, still doubtful, his fingers gripping his knife-hilt.
At this moment the first call sounded again across the lake. The moose
forgot Miranda. He wheeled nimbly, lowered his head toward the great
challenge, bellowed his answer, and charged along the shore to mortal
combat. As he disappeared around a jutting spur of pines, a tall cow
moose emerged from the shades and trotted after him.
Miranda turned to Dave with an air of triumph, her anger forgotten.
“I swan, Mirandy!” exclaimed the young hunter, “the girl as can manage a
bull moose in callin’ season is the Queen of the Forest, sure. I take
off my cap to yer majesty!”
“Put it on again, Dave,” said she, not half displeased, “and we’ll go
set the night lines.”
Behind the point, hidden in a thicket of mixed huckleberry and ironwood,
they found the wooden canoe, or dugout, in good condition. Dave ran it
down into the water, and Miranda tossed in a roll of stout cod-line,
with four large hooks depending from it, at four-foot intervals, by drop
strings a foot and a half in length. The hooks she proceeded to bait
from the tin kettle.
“Why don’t ye have more hooks on sech a len’th of line?” inquired Dave.
“Don’t want to catch more togue than we can eat,” explained Miranda.
“It’s no fun catching them this way, and they’re not much good salted.”
There was but one paddle, and this Dave captured. “You sit in the bow,
Mirandy, an’ see to the lines, an’ I’ll paddle ye out,” said he.
But Miranda would have none of it. “Look here, Dave,” she exclaimed,
“I’m doing this, and you’re just a visitor. I declare, I’m almost sorry
I brought you along. You just sit where you’re put, and do as I tell
you, or you won’t come with me again.”
The young man squatted himself meekly on his knees, a little forward of
amidship, but not far enough for his superior weight to put the canoe
down by the bow. Then Miranda stepped in delicately, seated herself on a
thwart at the stern, and dipped her paddle with precise and masterful
stroke. The canoe shot noiselessly out of the shadow and into the
unrippled sheen. Just off the point, about twenty yards from shore, lay
a light wooden float at anchor. Beside this Miranda brought her canoe to
a standstill, backing water silently with firm flexures of her wrist. To
a rusty staple in the float she fastened one end of the line.
“Deep water off this here point, I reckon,” commented Dave.
“Of course,” answered Miranda. “The togue only lie in deep water.”
Dave was permitted to make comments, but to take no more active part in
the proceedings. As he was a man of deeds and dreams rather than of
speech, this was not the rôle he coveted, and he held his tongue; while
Miranda, deftly paying out the line with one hand, with the other
cleverly wielded the paddle so that the canoe slipped toward shore. She
was too much absorbed in the operation to vouchsafe any explanation to
Dave, but he saw that she intended making fast the other end of the line
to a stake which jutted up close to the water’s edge.
Miranda now slipped the line under her foot to hold it, and, taking both
hands to her paddle, was about to make a landing, when suddenly there
was a violent tug at one of the hooks. The line was torn from under her
light foot, and at once dragged overboard. Dave saw what had happened;
but he was wise enough not to say, even by look or tone, “I told you
so!” Instead, he turned and pointed to the float, which was now acting
very erratically, darting from side to side, and at times plunging quite
under water. The glassy mirror of the lake was shattered to bits.
“You’ve got him a’ready, Mirandy,” he cried in triumph; and his palpable
elation quite covered Miranda’s chagrin. Two or three strong strokes of
her paddle brought the canoe back to the float, and Dave had his reward.
“Catch hold of the float, Dave,” she commanded, “and pull him aboard,
while I hold the canoe.”
With a great splashing and turmoil he hauled up a large togue, of twelve
pounds or thereabouts, and landed it flopping in the bottom of the
dugout. A stroke in the back of the neck from Miranda’s knife, sharp but
humane, put a term to its struggles.
While Dave gazed admiringly at the glittering spoil, Miranda began
untying the line from the float.
“What air ye doin’ now, Mirandy?” he inquired, as she proceeded to strip
the bait from the remaining hooks, and throw the pieces overboard.
“We won’t want any more togue for a week,” she explained. “This is such
a fine, big one.” And she headed the canoe for the landing-place, under
the shadow of the point.