Part 13

How do I know it was a bull? At this season the bulls travel constantly, and the points of the hoofs are worn to a clean, even curve. The cows, which have been living in deep retirement all summer, teaching their ungainly calves the sounds and smells and lessons of the woods, travel much less; their hoofs, in consequence, are generally long and pointed and overgrown.

Two miles above our camp was a little brook, with an alder swale on one side and a dark, gloomy spruce tangle on the other--an ideal spot for a moose to keep her little school, I thought, when I discovered the place a few days later. There were tracks on the shore, plenty of them; and I knew I had only to watch long enough to see the mother and her calf, and to catch a glimpse, perhaps, of what no man has ever yet seen clearly; that is, a moose teaching her little one how to hide his bulk; how to move noiselessly and undiscovered through underbrush where, one would think, a fox must make his presence known; how to take a windfall on the run; how to breast down a young birch or maple tree and keep it under his body while he feeds on the top,--and a score of other things that every moose must know before he is fit to take care of himself in the big woods.

I went there one afternoon in my canoe, grasped a few lily stems to hold the little craft steady, and snuggled down till only my head showed above the gunwales, so as to make canoe and man look as much like an old, wind-blown log as possible. It was getting toward the hour when I knew the cow would be hungry, but while it was yet too light to bring her little one to the open shore. After an hour's watching, the cow came cautiously down the brook. She stopped short at sight of the floating log; watched it steadily for two or three minutes, wigwagging her ears; then began to feed greedily on the lily pads that fringed all the shore. When she went back I followed, guided now by the crack of a twig, now by a swaying of brush tops, now by the flip of a nervous ear or the push of a huge dark body, keeping carefully to leeward all the time and making the big, unconscious creature guide me to where she had hidden her little one.

Just above me, and a hundred yards in from the shore, a tree had fallen, its bushy top bending down two small spruces and making a low den, so dark that an owl could scarcely have seen what was inside. "That's the spot," I told myself instantly; but the mother passed well above it, without noting apparently how good a place it was. Fifty yards farther on she turned and circled back, below the spot, trying the wind with ears and nose as she came on straight towards me.

"Aha! the old moose trick," I thought, remembering how a hunted moose never lies down to rest without first circling back for a long distance, parallel to his trail and to leeward, to find out from a safe distance whether anything is following him. When he lies down, at last, it will be close beside his trail, but hidden from it; so that he hears or smells you as you go by. And when you reach the place, far ahead, where he turned back he will be miles away, plunging along down wind at a pace that makes your snowshoe swing like a baby's toddle. So you camp where he lay down, and pick up the trail in the morning.

When the big cow turned and came striding back I knew that I should find her little one in the spruce den. But would she not find me, instead, and drive me out of her bailiwick? You can never be sure what a moose will do if she finds you near her calf. Generally they run--always, in fact--but sometimes they run your way. And besides, I had been trying for years to see a mother moose teaching in her little school. Now I dropped on all fours and crawled away down wind, so as to get beyond ken of the mother's inquisitive nose if possible.

She came on steadily, moving with astonishing silence through the tangle, till she stood where I had been a moment before, when she started violently and threw her head up into the wind. Some scent of me was there, clinging faintly to the leaves and the moist earth. For a moment she stood like a rock, sifting the air in her nose; then, finding nothing in the wind, she turned slowly in my direction to use her ears and eyes. I was lying very still behind a mossy log by this time, and she did not see me. Suddenly she turned and called, a low bleat. There was an instant stir in the spruce den, an answering bleat, and a moose calf scrambled out and ran straight to the mother. There was an unvoiced command to silence that no human sense could understand. The mother put her great head down to earth--"Smell of that; mark that, and remember," she was saying in her own way; and the calf put his little head down beside hers, and I heard him sniff-sniffing the leaves. Then the mother swung her head savagely, bunted the little fellow out of his tracks, and drove him hurriedly ahead of her away from the place--"Get out, hurry, danger!" was what she was saying now, and emphasizing her teaching with an occasional bunt from behind that lifted the calf over the hard places. So they went up the hill, the calf wondering and curious, yet ever reminded by the hard head at his flank that obedience was his business just now, the mother turning occasionally to sniff and listen, till they vanished silently among the dark spruces.

For a week or more I haunted the spot; but though I saw the pair occasionally, in the woods or on the shore, I learned no more of Umquenawis' secrets. The moose schools are kept in far-away, shady dingles beyond reach of inquisitive eyes. Then, one morning at daylight as my canoe shot round a grassy point, there were the mother and her calf standing knee-deep among the lily pads. With a yell I drove the canoe straight at the little one.

Now it takes a young moose or caribou a long time to learn that when sudden danger threatens he is to follow, not his own frightened head, but his mother's guiding tail. To young fawns this is practically the first thing taught by the mothers; but caribou are naturally stupid, or trustful, or burningly inquisitive, according to their several dispositions; and moose, with their great strength, are naturally fearless; so that this needful lesson is slowly learned. If you surprise a mother moose or caribou with her young at close quarters and rush at them instantly, with a whoop or two to scatter their wits, the chances are that the mother will bolt into the brush, where safety lies, and the calf into the lake or along the shore, where the going is easiest.

Several times I have caught young moose and caribou in this way, either swimming or stogged in the mud, and after turning them back to shore have watched the mother's cautious return and her treatment of the lost one. Once I paddled up beside a young bull moose, half grown, and grasping the coarse hair on his back had him tow me a hundred yards, to the next point, while I studied his expression.

As my canoe shot up to the two moose they did exactly what I had expected; the mother bolted for the woods in mighty, floundering jumps, mud and water flying merrily about her; while the calf darted along the shore, got caught in the lily pads, and with a despairing bleat settled down in the mud of a soft place, up to his back, and turned his head to see what I was.

I ran my canoe ashore and approached the little fellow quietly, without hurry or excitement. Nose, eyes, and ears questioned me; and his fear gradually changed to curiosity as he saw how harmless a thing had frightened him. He even tried to pull his awkward little legs out of the mud in my direction. Meanwhile the big mother moose was thrashing around in the bushes in a terrible swither, calling her calf to come.

I had almost reached the little fellow when the wind brought him the strong scent that he had learned in the woods a few days before, and he bleated sharply. There was an answering crash of brush, a pounding of hoofs that told one unmistakably to look out for his rear, and out of the bushes burst the mother, her eyes red as a wild pig's, and the long hair standing straight up along her back in a terrifying bristle. "Stand not upon the order of your mogging, but mog at once--eeeunh! unh!" she grunted; and I turned otter instantly and took to the lake, diving as soon as the depth allowed and swimming under water to escape the old fury's attention. There was little need of fine tactics, however, as I found out when my head appeared again cautiously. Anything in the way of an unceremonious retreat of the enemy satisfied her as perfectly as if she had been a Boer general. She went straight to her calf, thrust her great head under his belly, hiked him roughly out of the mud, and then butted him ahead of her into the bushes.

It was stern, rough discipline; but the youngster needed it to teach him the wisdom of the woods. From a distance I watched the quivering line of brush tops that marked their course, and then followed softly. When I found them again, in the twilight of the great spruces, the mother was licking the sides of her calf, lest he should grow cold too suddenly after his unwonted bath. All the fury and harshness were gone. Her great head lowered tenderly over the foolish, ungainly youngster, tonguing him, caressing him, drying and warming his poor sides, telling him in mother language that it was all right now, and that next time he would do better.

* * * * *

There were other moose on the lake, all of them as uncertain as the big cow and her calf. Probably most of them had never seen a man before our arrival, and it kept one's expectations on tiptoe to know what they would do when they saw the strange two-legged creature for the first time. If a moose smelled me before I saw him, he would make off quietly into the woods, as all wild creatures do, and watch from a safe distance. But if I stumbled upon him unexpectedly, when the wind brought no warning to his nostrils, he was fearless, usually, and full of curiosity.

The worst of them all was the big bull whose tracks were on the shore when we arrived. He was a morose, ugly old brute, living apart by himself, with his temper always on edge ready to bully anything that dared to cross his path or question his lordship. Whether he was an outcast, grown surly from living too much alone, or whether he bore some old bullet wound to account for his hostility to man, I could never find out. Far down the river a hunter had been killed, ten years before, by a bull moose that he had wounded; and this may have been, as Noel declared, the same animal, cherishing his resentment with a memory as merciless as an Indian's.

Before we had found this out I stumbled upon the big bull one afternoon, and came near paying the penalty of my ignorance. I had been still-fishing for togue (lake trout), and was on my way back to camp when, doubling a point, I ran plump upon a bull moose feeding among the lily pads. My approach had been perfectly silent,--that is the only way to see things in the woods,--and he was quite unconscious that anybody but himself was near.

He would plunge his great head under water till only his antler tips showed, and nose around on the bottom till he found a lily root. With a heave and a jerk he would drag it out, and stand chewing it endwise with huge satisfaction, while the muddy water trickled down over his face. When it was all eaten he would grope under the lily pads for another root in the same way.

Without thinking much of the possible risk, I began to steal towards him. While his head was under I would work the canoe along silently, simply "rolling the paddle" without lifting it from the water. At the first lift of his antlers I would stop and sit low in the canoe till he finished his juicy morsel and ducked for more. Then one could slip along easily again without being discovered.

Two or three times this was repeated successfully, and still the big, unconscious brute, facing away from me fortunately, had no idea that he was being watched. His head went under water again--not so deep this time; but I was too absorbed in the pretty game to notice that he had found the end of a root above the mud, and that his ears were out of water. A ripple from the bow of my canoe, or perhaps the faint brush of a lily leaf against the side, reached him. His head burst out of the pads unexpectedly; with a snort and a mighty flounder he whirled upon me; and there he stood quivering, ears, eyes, nose,--everything about him reaching out to me and shooting questions at my head with an insistence that demanded instant answer.

I kept quiet, though I was altogether too near the big brute for comfort, till an unfortunate breeze brushed the bow of my canoe still nearer to where he stood, threatening now instead of questioning. The mane on his back began to bristle, and I knew that I had but a small second in which to act. To get speed I swung the bow of the canoe outward, instead of backing away. The movement brought me a trifle nearer, yet gave me a chance to shoot by him. At the first sudden motion he leaped; the red fire blazed out in his eyes, and he plunged straight at the canoe--one, two splashing jumps, and the huge velvet antlers were shaking just over me and the deadly fore foot was raised for a blow.

I rolled over on the instant, startling the brute with a yell as I did so, and upsetting the canoe between us. There was a splintering crack behind me as I struck out for deep water. When I turned, at a safe distance, the bull had driven one sharp hoof through the bottom of the upturned canoe, and was now trying awkwardly to pull his leg out from the clinging cedar ribs. He seemed frightened at the queer, dumb thing that gripped his foot, for he grunted and jumped back and thrashed his big antlers in excitement; but he was getting madder every minute.

To save the canoe from being pounded to pieces was now the only pressing business on hand. All other considerations took to the winds in the thought that, if the bull's fury increased and he leaped upon the canoe, as he does when he means to kill, one jump would put the frail thing beyond repair, and we should have to face the dangerous river below in a spruce bark of our own building. I swam quickly to the shore and splashed and shouted and then ran away to attract the bull's attention. He came after me on the instant--unh! unh! chock, chockety-chock! till he was close enough for discomfort, when I took to water again. The bull followed, deeper and deeper, till his sides were awash. The bottom was muddy and he trod gingerly; but there was no fear of his swimming after me. He knows his limits, and they stop him shoulder deep.

When he would follow no farther I swam to the canoe and tugged it out into deep water. Umquenawis stood staring now in astonishment at the sight of this queer man-fish. The red light died out of his eyes for the first time, and his ears wigwagged like flags in the wind. He made no effort to follow, but stood as he was, shoulder deep, staring, wondering, till I landed on the point above, whipped the canoe over, and spilled the water out of it.

The paddle was still fast to its cord--as it should always be in trying experiments--and I tossed it into the canoe. The rattle roused Umquenawis from his wonder, as if he had heard the challenging clack of antlers on the alder stems. He floundered out in mighty jumps and came swinging along the shore, chocking and grunting fiercely. He had seen the man again and knew it was no fish--Unh! unh! eeeeeunh-unh! he grunted, with a twisting, jerky wriggle of his neck and shoulders at the last squeal, as if he felt me already beneath his hoofs. But before he reached the point I had stuffed my flannel shirt into the hole in the canoe and was safely afloat once more. He followed along the shore till he heard the sound of voices at camp, when he turned instantly and vanished in the woods.

A few days later I saw the grumpy old brute again in a curious way. I was sweeping the lake with my field glasses when I saw what I thought was a pair of black ducks near a grassy shore. I paddled over, watching them keenly, till a root seemed to rise out of the water between them. Before I could get my glasses adjusted again they had disappeared. I dropped the glasses and paddled faster. They were diving, perhaps--an unusual thing for black ducks--and I might surprise them. There they were again; and there again was the old root bobbing up unexpectedly between them. I whipped my glasses up--the mystery vanished. The two ducks were the tips of Umquenawis' big antlers; the root that rose between them was his head, as he came up to breathe.

It was a close, sultry afternoon; the flies and mosquitos were out in myriads, and Umquenawis had taken a philosophical way of getting rid of them. He was lying in the water, over a bed of mud, his body completely submerged. As the swarm of flies that pestered him rose to his head he would sink it slowly, drowning them off. Through my glass, as I drew near, I could see a cloud of them hovering above the wavelets, or covering the exposed antlers. After a few moments there would be a bubbling grumble down in the mud, as Umquenawis blew the air from his great lungs. His head would come up lazily to breathe among the popping bubbles; the flies would settle upon him like a cloud, and he would disappear again, blinking sleepily as he went down, with an air of immense satisfaction.