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 longest 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.