Having gained a little insight into the art of casting the fly, Don and his friends became eager and enthusiastic fishermen. They were on the pond almost all the time, and as they tried hard to follow the instructions that were willingly and patiently given them, and would not allow themselves to become discouraged by their numerous blunders and failures, they finally became quite expert with their light tackle. They wound up the season with a glorious catch, and then oiled their rods and put them into their cases with many sighs of regret. “Never mind,” said Curtis, soothingly. “There’s no loss without some gain, and now we will turn our attention to bigger things than speckled trout. To-night we will try this.”
As he spoke, he took from a chest something that looked like a dark-lantern with a leather helmet[361] fastened to the bottom of it. And that was just what it was. When Curtis put the helmet on his head, the lantern stood straight up on top of it.
“This is a jack,” said he, “and it is used in fire-hunting. As soon as it grows dark some of us will get into a canoe and paddle quietly around the pond just outside of the lilies and grass. The fellow who is to do the shooting will wear this jack on his head. It will be lighted, but the slide will be turned in front of it, making it dark. When he hears a splashing in the water close in front of him he will turn on the light by throwing back the slide, and if he makes no noise about it and is quick with his gun, he will get a deer, and we shall have venison to take the place of the trout.”
This was something entirely new to the Southerners, who carefully examined the jack and listened with much interest while Curtis and his friends told stories of their experience and exploits in fire-hunting. Deer were so abundant about Rochdale that those who hunted them were not obliged to resort to devices of this kind, and in Maryland, where Hopkins lived, they were followed[362] with hounds and shot on the runways. Egan had never hunted deer. He devoted all his spare time to canvas-backs and red-heads. They spent the forenoon in talking of their adventures, and after dinner Bert and Hutton, who had become inseparable companions, strolled off with their double-barrels in search of grouse, and Curtis and Don pushed off in one of the canoes to make a voyage of discovery to the upper pond; the former, for the first time, taking his rifle with him. He was afterward glad that he had done so, for he made a shot before he came back that gave him something to talk about and feel good over all the rest of the year.
Don and his companion paddled leisurely along until they reached the upper end of the pond, and then the canoe was turned into the weeds, through which it was forced into a wide and deep brook communicating with another pond that lay a few miles deeper in the forest. Curtis said there was fine trapping along the banks of the brook, adding that if Don and Bert would stay and take a Thanksgiving dinner with him, as he wanted them to do, they would put out a “saple line.”
“What’s that?” asked Don.
[363]
“Nothing but a lot of traps,” replied Curtis. “When a man starts out to see what he has caught, he says he is going to make the rounds of his saple line. There are lots of mink, marten and muskrats about here, and now and then one can catch a beaver or an otter; but he’s not always sure of getting him if he does catch him, for it’s an even chance if some prowling luciver doesn’t happen along and eat him up.”
“What’s a luciver?” inquired Don.
“It’s the meanest animal we have about here, and is as cordially hated by our local trappers as the wolverine is by the trappers in the west. It’s a lynx. A full-grown one would scare you if you should happen to come suddenly upon him in the woods; and after you had killed him and taken his hide off you would feel ashamed of yourself, for you would find him to be about half as large as you thought he was. They don’t average over thirty or forty pounds—one weighing fifty would be a whopper—but they’re ugly, and would just as soon pitch into a fellow as not. I have heard some remarkable stories——”
Curtis did not finish the sentence. He stopped suddenly, looked hard at the bushes ahead of him,[364] listening intently all the while, and finally he drew his paddle out of the water and gently poked Don in the back with the blade. When Don faced about to see what he wanted, Curtis laid his finger upon his lips, at the same time slowly and silently turning the bow of the canoe toward the nearest bank. Just then Don heard twigs snapping in front of him, the sound being followed by a slight splashing in the water as if some heavy animal were walking cautiously through it. His lips framed the question: “What is it?” and Curtis’s silent but unmistakable reply was: “Moose!”
For the first and only time in his life Don Gordon had an attack of the “buck-ague.” His nerves, usually so firm and steady, thrilled with excitement, and his hand trembled as he laid down his paddle and picked up his rifle. He had not yet obtained the smallest glimpse of the animal, but his ears told him pretty nearly where he was.
As soon as he had placed his rifle in position for a shot, Curtis gave one swift, noiseless stroke with his paddle, sending the canoe away from the bank again, and up the stream, Don trying hard[365] to peer through the bushes, and turning his body at all sorts of angles in the hope of obtaining a view of the quarry; but the alders were thick, and he could not see a dozen yards in advance of him, until Curtis brought him to a place where the bank was comparatively clear, and then Don discovered something through a little opening in the thicket. He raised his hand, and the canoe stopped.
“That thing can’t be a moose,” thought Don, rubbing his eyes and looking again. “It’s too big, and besides it’s black.”
In twisting about on his seat to obtain a clearer view of the huge creature, whatever it was, Don accidentally touched the paddle, the handle of which slipped off the thwart and fell to the bottom of the canoe. The effect was magical. In an instant the dark, sleek body at which Don had been gazing through the opening in the bushes gave place to an immense head, crowned with enormous ears and wide-spreading palmated antlers, and a pair of gleaming eyes which seemed to be glaring straight at him. It was a savage looking head, taken altogether, but Don never took his gaze from it as his rifle rose slowly to his[366] shoulder. He looked through the sights for an instant, covering one of the eyes with the front bead, and pressed the trigger. The rifle cracked and so did the bushes, as the animal launched itself through them toward the bank with one convulsive spring. Their tops were violently agitated for a moment, then all was still, and Don turned about and looked at Curtis.
“You’ve got him,” said the latter, dipping his paddle into the water and sending the canoe ahead again.
“I’ve got something,” replied Don, “but it can’t be a moose.”
“What is it, then?”
“I think it is an elephant.”
Curtis laughed until the woods echoed.
“I don’t care,” said Don, doggedly. “He’s got an elephant’s ears.”
“Do an elephant’s ears stick straight out from his head, and does he carry horns?” demanded Curtis, as soon as he could speak. “Elephants don’t run wild in this country—at least I never heard of any being seen about here. It’s a moose, easy enough. I saw his horns through the alders, and I tell you they are beauties. If you were a[367] taxidermist now, you could provide an ornament for your father’s hall or dining-room that would be worth looking at.”
It was a moose, sure enough, as the boys found when they paddled around the bushes and landed on the bank above them. There he lay, shot through the brain, and looking larger than he did when he was alive. His shape was clumsy and uncouth, but his agility must have been something wonderful; his expiring effort certainly was. He lay fully six feet from the bank, which was about five feet in height. The place where he had been feeding, which was pointed out to the boys by the muddy water and by the trampled lilies and pickerel grass, was thirty feet from the foot of the bank; so the moose, with a ball in his brain, must have cleared at least thirty-six feet at one jump. His long, slender legs did not look as though they were strong enough to support so ponderous a body, to say nothing of sending it through the air in that fashion.
“Do you know that I was afraid of him?” said Don, after he had feasted his eyes upon his prize and entered in his note-book some measurements he had made. “When he was staring at me[368] through those bushes, I thought I had never seen so savage a looking beast in all my life.”
“He was savage, and you had good reason to be afraid of him,” answered Curtis, quickly. “If you had wounded him he would have trampled us out of sight in the brook before we knew what hurt us. When his horns are in the velvet the moose is a timid and retiring animal; but after his antlers are fully grown, and he has sharpened and polished them by............