SPORT I KT1NDAL THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES 3 THOMAS MARTINUALE Sport Indeed By THOMAS MARTINDALE 4 . With illustrations from photographs by the a.\ithor PHILADELPHIA GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO. 103-105 South Fifteenth Street Copyright, 1901 BY GEORGE W. JACOBS & Co . i I SK33 DEDICATORY C IN this devil-may-care age the dedication of a book >. can hold but little interest for the reader. The cus- ee 5 torn has grown somewhat stale, and stale customs, OQ like stale things generally, are unpalatable. Never- theless, it is a gratification to me to dedicate this one ^ to my son James, who, in his love for the huntsman's 8 sport, is a nimble follower in the footsteps of his sire and a promising chip of the old block. T. M. 462380 APOLOGETIC IF it be true that " good wine needs no bush," it ought to be true that a good book needs no apology. " But," my reader may ask, "is your book a good one, or does its goodness rest only on the modest opinion of its author ? " Dear reader, I may safely say, with- out stretching the bounds of modesty, that any book whose aim is to lengthen and make better the life of the American business man and to show him the most enjoyable way to do it must be a good book. " But why the American business man rather than another ? " Because he is the man whose manner of life affords the broadest room for improvement. He is the man who in his fierce chase after the almighty dollar forgets that there are such things as health and happiness and personal comfort, or if he remembers them it is only to see that they step aside and stand not in the way of his chase. To stop for rest or for recreation would be ex- travagance, especially as he knows no need of either. A knowledge of the need, however, is sure to come, and when it does he may thank his stars if it has'nt come too late. You cannot teach an old dog new tricks nor can you disentangle the habits of a lifetime from 6 APOLOGETIC their worry and care and weave the worn threads into youthful toggery. Too late ! Too late ! I am aware of the dangers that lie in wait for the book-writer. " Oh, that mine adversary had written a book ! " was the burden of Job's prayer, 3,500 years ago, and it is doubtful whether the roll of passing cen- turies has flattened the peril. However, flattering myself that I am no man's adversary, I will take the risk and launch my volume, hoping for it fair weather, favoring gales, and a broad harbor from which to spread its wholesome freight wherever it may do the most good. T. M. CONTENTS PAGE DEDICATORY 3 APOLOGETIC 5 MOOSEHEAD LAKE 11 CUPID IN THE WILDERNESS 19 CALLING THE MOOSE 25 AN UNEXPECTED TREAT 33 KILLING THE CARIBOU 36 MORE OF THE MOOSE 45 A LOST MAN AND A WOUNDED MOOSE 52 A CAPRICIOUS BEAST 64 MY FIRST BULL-MOOSE 74 A CARIBOU HUNT 85 A LOST MOOSE 96 THE BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIQUE 101 THE LOST WALLET 125 A CLOSE CALL 132 THE FUN OF HUNTING 149 A FlRE-AND- WATER MEDLEY 156 A DAY IN THE BIG WOODS 161 A DEAD-WATER VIGIL 174 DOG-DAY ADVICE 186 A TALE OF GALLANTRY AND HUNGER 190 A BEARDLESS SPORT 204 A TREACHEROUS COWARD 211 THE GREAT NORTHWEST 227 7 8 Contents PAGE NORTH DAKOTA 273 THE WRECKER 278 BRANT SHOOTING 284 THE QUAINT CAPE-CODDERS 290 A WARY BIRD 295 QUAIL SHOOTING IN NORTH CAROLINA 301 " TROUT TICKLING " AND AN OLD-ENGLAND BLIZZARD . . . . 310 A DANGEROUS RIDE 318 A FIGHT TO THE DEATH 326 A PILGRIMAGE TO THE "WHITE" 332 THE LAST SHOT . 344 ILLUSTRATIONS THOMAS MARTINDALE Frontispiece. PREPARING FOR THE START Page 13 A LOG LANDING ON THE BROOK " 37 His LORDSHIP ; AS GRAND A SPECIMEN AS THE SUN EVER SHONE UPON " 41 THE DRY BOG A FAVORITE HAUNT OF THE CARIBOU . . " 53 A CAMP IN THE WILDERNESS " 61 THE CAMP IN ITS WINTER BEAUTY " 69 MY FIRST MOOSE " 81 A BIT OF MAINE FOREST PENOBSCOT RIVER IN THE DISTANCE " 89 THE CULINARY DEPARTMENT OF A HUNTER'S CAMP ... " 107 A NEW BRUNSWICK TOTE-ROAD " 119 THE FROZEN PENOBSCOT " 129 A SCENE ON THE PENOBSCOT " 135 A TOTE-ROAD IN WINTER " 141 A BEAVER HOUSE " 163 A HUNTER'S FOREST HOME " 169 A DEAD-WATER " 179 LABORIOUS WORK " 193 THE LITTLE TOBIQUE " 201 A YOUTHFUL HUNTER " 207 PRECIOUS TROPHIES, INCLUDING THE LITTLE SPIKE HORN " 219 THE ANGLER'S PARADISE " 259 A FINE TROPHY " 313 AN EXCITING CHASE " 335 9 Moosehead Lake This way lies the game. KING HENKY VI. left home on a Saturday night in September, by the 6:50 express, with the wilderness of Maine for our destination. The night was hot, close and miser- ably uncomfortable. The sleeping-car felt like an oven and before we reached New York we turned into our berths, as that seemed the coolest thing to do. Sunday in Boston was rainy and cold, and when we ar- rived at Bangor we had to put on heavy flannels and get out overcoats. It was election day in Maine ; yet, although it was expected that the Republican ticket would be elected by 30,000 majority, we saw no excitement along the railroad in our ride from Bangor to Greenville, at the head of Moosehead lake. No bands, no men with badges on, pottering around polling places. An occa- sional flag floated on the frosty air, but that was all. Yet there was a silent, unseen something foretelling that an enormous Republican vote would be polled and it was. During our ride in the car a prophetic native sitting behind us broke loose in this fashion : " If it weren't for one thing, darned if I wouldn't bet a dol- ll 12 SPORT INDEED lar to a penny doughnut that the State would go u-nan-i-mus for Powers." " What thing ? " asked his companion. " Why, some smart cuss might hear of my bet and vote for t'other fellow so as to make me lose it." There are a number of little steamboats on Moose- head Lake, which ply backwards and forwards, carry- ing freight and passengers. Upon a time-card, a sort of free-and-easy -go-as-you-please schedule, we were told our boat would leave promptly at six in the morning. So on Tuesday we were up before five o'clock in order to see that our stores, baggage and hunting outfit were aboard on time. Then we had breakfast in a hurry, first asking the landlord to tell the captain of the boat that we would be aboard at six and not to start with- out us. At six we were pacing the deck of the steamer, listening to the captain and pilot piling their " cuss- words " on the head of the engineer for not making his appearance. As the boat couldn't well go without an engineer, we waited. Half-past six came and still we waited. The whistle was blown repeatedly, but it brought no sign of the man who handled the stop- cocks. At eighteen minutes to seven we saw the stop- cock knight coming down a hillside as leisurely as if he were an hour ahead of time. He came aboard and we made a start, crossing to another landing where we took in tow a scow with four horses, a party of ladies and some lumbermen. At a quarter to eight we were PH MOOSEHEAD LAKE 15 off for the Northeast Carry, where we arrived about an hour and a half late, which hour and a half caused us afterwards an exciting time. Northeast Carry is so called because it is a road or " carry " at the northeast end of the lake. The carry is two miles long, and the other end of it lands you on the banks of the Penobscot River. While we were loading our canoes a party from down the river reached our landing. In the centre of one of their canoes a lady was seated on a throne-like chair which was covered with costly Persian rugs. Luxurious air- cushions supported the lady's back and formed a rest for her feet. An oriental robe, tinted with all the hues of the rainbow, was gracefully thrown around her dainty limbs, mingling its colors with those of the autumn leaves which were strung in garlands about the bow of the boat. A pretty picture, indeed, but yet imperfect. It needed a dusky Indian maiden, with no clothes on to speak of, waving a peacock fan. Then the picture might have passed, on a pinch, for that of the proud Cleopatra as she sailed up the Cyd- nus to tickle the fancy and ravish the heart of her Antony. Precisely at two o'clock the next day we paddled away from Northeast Carry. We had a glorious run to the Half- way House, ten miles down. The river scene was bewitching in its beauty. The first frosts had delicately colored the leaves of the maple and 16 SPORT INDEED beech, while the waving masses of ferns that fringe the river's edge had changed their greens for various shades of yellow and brown, and spread their dainty texture along the banks as if anxious to show what nature could do in the way of embroidery. Everything looked radiant and happy save our three guides who were taciturn and troubled. The reason was plain. It was half-past four in the after- noon when we reached the Half-way House. We had stated that we desired particularly to be at Chesun- cook Lake (twenty miles down the river) that night, and there would have been no trouble in making the journey by daylight if the steamer Comet had been more prompt in starting from Greenville. Now, below us, six miles down, is a great stretch of rapids called the Rocky Eips, a mile and a half long. Below these rapids come the Pine Stream Falls, half a mile long. Our three canoes were deeply loaded. Should we risk the run or not ? It was finally decided to risk it, and away we went ; but with all our lively paddling it was dark when we reached the head of the Rips, and we were in for it. 'Tis a beautiful sight in daylight to see the canoes on these rapids rushing one after the other from shore to shore, dodging this rock, sliding over that shelf, or doubling around some intruding ledge, all the while striving to keep in the channel which in some places is MOOSEHEAD LAKE 17 not more than four or five feet wide. At night, how- ever, the sight is not quite so captivating, especially if the night be a dark one and you happen to make up a part of the canoe's cargo. We got through, however, without any greater mis- hap than breaking the rib of one canoe and shipping some water into another. A few minutes after emerg- ing from the boiling Rips we heard the roar of the falls about a mile further down. The sound was grand, and we thought we were going to have another excit- ing run. In this we were disappointed. The guides said that, in order to lighten the canoes, we sports would have to get out and walk through the woods to the bottom of the falls about half a mile. They then rearranged the loads and started down the falls by water while we went down by land ; and it was darker in the woods than it was on the river. We stumbled and tripped over roots and logs, while the guides stumbled and tripped over rocks. We managed to get through and so did they, after a fashion. One man had to jump out of his canoe to save it and another man brought his down leaking. Neither man seemed happy. However, there is very little pure happiness in this world and perhaps the adulterated article tastes all the better for its mixture with a little misery. In a few minutes the loads were changed and we were off again down the river. After a run of about an hour we saw the lights, of the Chesuncook House 18 SPORT INDEED looming up bright and cheery in the distance, and in a little while we stood within its hospitable doors. We found it full of sports and their guides, and among the former was a goodly proportion of " lady sports." No less than four of the short skirt variety ; and these, with their little rifles, their little boots, their little Jerseys, their little fishing rods and their little " fellers," made the scene an interesting and we might say although hanging should be the penalty for such a pun an amooseing one. Cupid in the Wilderness This love will undo us all. O, Cupid! Cupid! Cupid! TEOILUS AND CEESSIDA. HUMAN nature is the same the world over, and Cupid, sly dog that he is, appears to know that the wild woods and lakes and rivers of Maine are no ex- ception to the rule. Ah, me ! if these same woods and lakes and rivers had tongues and knew how to use them, what queer tales they could tell and what in- cidents might come to light that now slide into the past unstoried and unrecorded ! Here, in this very wilderness, hunting, fishing and pleasure parties yearly congregate, and among the latter is plenty of fit food for Cupid's powder young and beautiful girls with enough will, skill and ingenu- ity to paddle their own canoe and make love at the same time, if their chaperons be sleepy enough to permit the performance of such a double-barreled pro- gramme. These fishing and pleasure parties remain no longer than the middle or latter part of September; but while they're here, the little, winged god is up to his chin in business, and to be hit with one of his arrows is as common as trouble. Ah, " Cupid is a knavish lad Thus to make poor females mad." 19 20 SPORT INDEED But, with all due respect to William Shakespeare, I would remind him that it is not from out the female sex alone that Cupid chooses his candidates for the madhouse. The "knavish lad" is no respecter of persons or sex, as the immortal William would dis- cover if his canonized bones could burst their cere- ments, quit their narrow bed and visit this summer habitat of the curly-headed god. Now I come to think of it, William's bones need not go to that trouble. The sad, lamenting tone of his words : " O, love's bow shoots buck and doe," proves that he knew the ambi-sexibility of Cupid's tricks quite as well as he seems to have known every- thing else. Funny indeed are some of the doings of engaged couples. Here is an instance, and I hope the inter- esting couple with " hearts that beat as one " will pardon me for giving it away to the cold and un- appreciating world. They made the sad discovery that their canoe was too small to hold an embryo bride and her best young man at the same time ; but love, that " laughs at locksmiths," surely would not cry at a less serious emergency. Its resources are much too ready for that. They placed two canoes side by side, bound them together with a pair of en- circling arms and, with a guide to paddle in the stern of each love-laden vessel, went on their way rejoicing. CUPID IN THE WILDERNESS 21 Now these guides, while they know how to paddle, know quite as well how to tattle, and tattle, in truth, they do Of the doings and the wooings, Of the billings and the cooings, Of the kissings and the huggings of the pair ; Of the lovings, of the scoldings, Of the rapturous enfoldings Oh, Paradise with lots of fun to spare ! Of course, the guides are only mortals, and, as all this takes place within their easy eye-and-ear-shot, they would be more than mortals or less if they didn't tattle. Bless your heart, the amount of it they have retailed to me might fill a book the size of "Web- ster's Unabridged. You shall have the benefit of it some day, as I intend to pick out a few of the best, the very best, of their stories and print them. Then, look out for something rich and racy ; but not now. We will first allow these turtle doves time to mate and settle in their nest. A new crowd of visitors had appeared in the Maine woods and waters visitors who were bent on killing the succulent deer, the solitude-loving caribou and the lordly moose the noblest Eoman of them all. These visitors, by the force of circumstances, were obliged to have guides whose particular policy it is to speed the parting "sport" and welcome the coming one. In the various places where these guides meet Greenville, Kineo, Northeast Carry, Chesuncook 22 SPORT INDEED House, Mud Carry, Eagle Lake or Churchill Lake and hundreds of other places there is always a comparing of notes of the many things said and the many things done by the departed guests. As I have already hinted, I may at some future time give you the pith of a fe\v of these notes. It was surprising how many men were already in the woods for the fall hunting, which starts October first, and how many more we heard of that were com- ing. Every hotel register was well sprinkled with names of residents of the Quaker City, more, I think, than from any other place. Here is how I came in contact with one of them. One of my guides hurt his knee, and so much that his limb swelled to double its natural size. I was considering how I could send him home, and as this would require a canoe journey of five days, with five more for the return of the guide who took him out, the matter to me was a serious one. He relieved my mind, however, by telling me he had heard of a doctor who was camping at the head of a bog a few miles away. I put my man at once into a canoe and paddled up to the tent of the ./Esculapian disciple whom I found to be an eminent one and a Philadelphian. After looking at the man's damaged limb he said : " Well, I am an expert, or considered so, on insanity, and perhaps on one or two other of nature's calamities, but I am not an expert on swelled legs. However, this is what I advise you to do," CUPID IN THE WILDERNESS 23 And he told him. The doctor's advice seems to have been what a doctor's advice sometimes is not the proper thing, for the leg got well. But before the man could call again to thank him for his mended leg, the learned leech had vanished in the depths of the wilderness and we saw him no more. The natives hereabout are, in money matters, what the Scotch call canny. And some of them are canny enough to give any Scotchman points and beat him with ease. Listen to this. A storekeeper, "a native here and to the manner born," had a mother. I don't wish you to infer, however, that he differed in this particular from any other storekeeper. He was a dutiful son and doted on his mother, showing her every mark of filial affection. This was, of course, very commendable in him ; but she deserved it all, for report says she was a "grand woman." In the course of human events the old lady became " wor- rited." Life's cares and troubles came so thick and fast that they began to choke up the oil in her lamp of life. It commenced to flicker and grow dim and needed only a puff of apoplexy to put it out entirely. When the end came the son's grief was touching, and the more so as there was no place where he could obtain a coffin nearer than a town three days' journey away. The problem how to get there and back in time to bury the old lady decently troubled his mind, for the indecency of burying her in one of their common pine 24 SPORT INDEED receptacles was more shocking to his delicate sense of propriety than planting her in a dry-goods box. At this juncture a man who had long known and revered the departed woman volunteered his services to fetch a coffin. With sturdy strokes of his paddle in the dead waters of the river and the deft use of the pole in pushing up over the quick ones, he hurried on. After reaching a carry, he ran the two miles across it in order to catch the first boat to the town where coffins were for sale. Making his purchase he shoul- dered it and hustled his way back ; then putting the coffin in his canoe he started down the river as rapidly as elbow grease and paddle could drive him. When he landed, the son of the old lady asked him what his charge would be for the trip. The man re- plied that he would make no charge, that the deceased had always been kind to him, and what he had done was little enough to show the good-will and respect he had for her. " I am glad," he said, " to have had the chance to do what I have done ; but I wouldn't mind having a plug of tobacco ; mine was all used up on the trip." The dutiful son handed him a plug from behind the counter and in the most kind-hearted tone said : " Ten cents, please." This he said and nothing more. Calling the Moose This is excellent sport, i' faith. HENRY IV. IN the latter days of September and the early weeks of October the mammoth deer, known as the moose, is mating. Then it is that the woods of Maine, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are traversed by thousands of sportsmen with their guides, all in search of one thing a chance to kill a bull-moose. Now, the female moose, in one particular, is very like some other females of the animal kingdom ; she is coy and capricious, leading her lover " a merry dance o'er moss and fell," through bog and swamp, and along the margins of lakes, ponds and lagoons, or "logans" as they are called in this region. At night she comes down to the water to feed on the roots and tops of the lily-pad which grows so abundantly in sluggish streams. If her mate is her escort he usually stands on the bank, eyeing his spouse tenderly as she feeds, and ever ready to protect her from all danger, real or fancied. If the bull-moose has no cow of his own, but is merely ranging and scouring the country to find a sweetheart that fits his fancy, then is the time he is 25 26 SPORT INDEED apt to fall into a trap and a very sure one. On a still night and, mind you, the night must be still around every lake, pond and river where the moose frequents and feeds, the bull hears the sounds of s \veetest melody sounds filled with such plaintive tones and such a come-to-my-arms sort of cadence that he can- not resist the appeal. These sounds are termed the " call," and their ascending and descending notes are produced by the guides, their instrument being a birch-bark horn. If the call be well made it will be heard by the bull miles away. Pricking up his ears he will start on the run, thrashing through the brake, barking, bellowing, grunting and in his own affectionate manner answering the impassioned notes of his counterfeit mistress. When he reaches the edge of the wood he grows wary and suspicious. He will steal up and down among the bushes, listening and scenting in a she-may -be-fooling-me sort of way ; and sometimes it takes many nights to convince him that he is the very gentleman the lady moose is "stuck on," and for whom she is so lovingly calling. Alas, how many a bull-moose Lothario falls a victim to his own vanity and the alluring notes of a birch-bark horn! Although the bull-moose is a thoroughbred Mormon, having sometimes as many as five wives in his harem, yet when he has one of them specially under his pro- tection he will hardly leave a bird in hand for one in CALLING THE MOOSE 27 the bush. I have myself heard him answer a call while engaged in his protective duty and then make a start, which in this instance was for two miles ; but the loving voice of the real moose arrested the wanderer and brought him back to the family bosom. I heard and saw all this, saw him approach the water, step into it and splash it with his feet, mean- while looking cautiously around as if he scented danger in the air. And there was danger, and a good deal of it. In the front of a canoe sat a hunter with rifle ready cocked, and heart throbbing with thumps that threatened to burst the buttons off his coat. A moment of breathless suspense, and then bang ! goes the 45-90 cartridge, the report sounding and resound- ing through the woods and over the waters for miles around. There was another bang and yet another. "Whether the uncertain light or the uncertainty of the hunter's aim, due to his sitting for hours still as a mouse and in an atmosphere with the thermometer at freezing point, had anything to do with the result, T can't say. But I can say that the moose escaped un- harmed untouched by the bullet that might have forever put an end to his midnight prowlings and Don Juanish intrigues. The sport of moose hunting is one that requires a great deal of patience and perseverance from the hunter, and under such trying difficulties as exposure to cold and loss of sleep. But his reward is ample 28 SPORT INDEED plenty of excitement, and, if successful, a magnificent an tiered head as a trophy of his prowess. One night my guide and I set out to paddle up the inlet of a little lake we were encamped upon, with the intention of calling if it should be still enough to do so. There was some wind on the lake, but we thought there might be little or none in the forest-sheltered inlet. I was tucked down in the front of the canoe with blankets to keep my legs warm (for the night was cold), with heavy woolen socks drawn over my boots and a woolen cap down over my ears. We paddled about a mile and found the wind worse than it was on the lake below, and strong enough to make it hard canoeing. In a big bog on the right-hand side we heard a branch brake. We stopped and listened. A deer, we thought, as another and another branch broke. Then came the sound of heavy footfalls and we knew a moose was " coming to the water." We listened intently so intently that I could hear the ticking of my watch, though it was buried under a sweater, a coat and an overcoat ; nay, more, I heard perhaps it may have been fancy the stretching of my elastic suspenders as I breathed. Soon we dis- tinguished through the dark of the moonless night a great object, big as a hippopotamus, move down the bank and step into the water. The guide pushed up the canoe deftly and silently, but the wind was at its worst at this time and blew the canoe diagonally CALLING THE MOOSE 29 against a tree-top sticking out of the water on the other shore. This made a noise, little, it is true, but yet it seemed, oh, how great ! Just then we saw an- other huge object on the bank. Now, up to this time, we could not make out whether the monster in the water was a bull or a cow-moose, and it was rather important to know which, as a fine of four months' imprisonment is the penalty imposed in Maine for shooting a cow. It was so dark that I could not see whether the big object had horns or not ; but the guide settled the problem with : " be quick ! that's him on the bank now down him ! " I raised my rifle, aimed for what I believed to be his shoulder, and pulled the trigger. Horror of horrors! the hammer wouldn't budge. Again I sighted and pulled, and yet again, but all to no purpose. My rifle was more harmless than a pocket pistol loaded with Jersey applejack. The cow soon took alarm, floundered up the bank and in the twinkling of an eye both were gone ; he bellowing and barking through the alders and crashing down everything before him in his fury ; and she silently stealing away in the darkness. There were two very disgusted men that night; one because the other didn't shoot and the other be- cause his rifle wouldn't let him shoot. On coming into camp I made an examination of the trouble and found that on account of several days' steady rain the 30 SPORT INDEED lock of the rifle had become so rusty, although greased every day, that it would not work. To this that bull moose owed a little longer lease of life. A job also awaited a gunsmith, if one could be found capable of taking a rifle apart and teaching it to obey the trigger at least one time out of three. "We had been in these northern woods of Maine for over three weeks. In that time there were, I think, but two fine days. The rest were made up of winds, rain, snow and ice ; winds from all points of the com- pass ; winds that would start with the strength of a gale, then soften down to the breath of a zephyr. Still they were winds, and we had them of every variety you see we were " moose calling," and you cannot call moose successfully in windy weather ; that is the reason we noticed the wind. Rains ? Yes, of all degrees and conditions; soft rains and hard rains, gentle rains and furious downpours one of which, at the time I speak of, was having things its own way. My guides were building a break-rain, break-weather, break-water or whatever you may please to call it of fir trees, and planning where to put the door ; but, as the rain seemed to blow from everywhere, there was more promised comfort in leaving out the door and carrying the fir grove entirely around the camp. During this miserable, rainy spell I watched the game with some interest what little of it I had been able to see to learn how they relished the damp CALLING THE MOOSE 31 humor of Jupiter Pluvius. They seemed to fancy it no more than do their enemies, the human bipeds. In my watching I observed some partridges hud- dled under a big log, with feathers wet and all the glory of their color and fluffy sleekness departed. The cock bird looked woe-begone and cheap and ragged a dripping, melancholy shadow and I thought of the poet's lament : "Shades of the mighty can it be That this is all remains of thee ? ' ' Once I started a deer from out a clump of young pines where he had been sheltering himself. Again, I came across an old doe standing under a couple of big cedar trees, and after she had " lit out " I stepped into her arbor and sat down. Although the rain was falling in streams, yet none fell on me and I spent there a couple of happy hours watching the capers of the only living things that had the courage to brave the storm the red squirrels. They w r ere busily occupied in laying up their winter stores, which seemingly were to consist of pine cones, as each had one of these in his mouth. I noticed they took good care to run along the ground under the logs, and not on top of them. We took the weather philosophically, because we were w r ell prepared for it. We had plenty of dry clothes, a big camp to shelter us, a roaring fire, an abundance of the finest game in the world to eat, clear, mineral-spring water to drink, good appetites, 32 SPORT INDEED and rugged strength to take a daily tramp whether the weather was what it ought to be or whether it wasn't. It was said that at least fifteen hundred sportsmen were then in the Maine woods. If so, they required fully two thousand guides, making an army of say three thousand five hundred people, many of them with only a week or ten days' time at their disposal, and some of them accompanied by ladies. While the weather-look was bad for us, it was worse for " the other fellers," whose short supply of time wouldn't allow them to wait for the glad sunshine to come. So, after comparing situations, we concluded we had much the better, and good-humoredly pocketing complaint we waited patiently till the sun thought fit to give us the light of his countenance. An Unexpected Treat Who comes here ? My doe ? MEBRY WIVES. ON one of our evenings in the wilderness we had a quiet spell for a few hours, and my guide and I started out moose calling. We pushed our canoe lightly and very cautiously up the inlet of the little lake on which we were camped, stopping frequently to listen, while we peered with expectant eyes into every bunch of alders, every clump of young pines, hoping against hope that we might see a moose " coming to water." It was about five o'clock in the afternoon. The air was still, not a breath was stirring, and the scenery along the brook was clothed in beauty beyond the reach of poet's pen or painter's art. Th brown and green tints of the frosted and unfrosted ferns ; the tufts of waving grasses with their blades tipped with yellow; the alders just beginning to put on their autumn brown ; the red maple, the yellow birch, the dark green pines, the stately juniper, the sad cypress all mirrored in the tawny stream that flowed lazily beneath, without a ripple to disturb their sembled beauty or a murmur to interrupt the reigning silence. 33 34 SPORT INDEED Silence ? Yes ! Nature seemed to be up to her neck in the depths of the hush. The guide now shoved our canoe on a pine root to anchor it, and then took up his birch-bark horn and gave the three calls of the cow moose. First, the short, tremulous wail ; then the more urgent and commanding one, and, lastly, the long resonant, loving, coaxing, imploring appeal, which no bull-moose with any bowels of compassion can resist. To produce this call the guide winds the horn around in continued circles, the motion giving the sound, that trembling, undulating effect which the genuine article always has. Immediately after the call we heard a branch break in the woods to the right of us, perhaps a hundred yards away. I took up my field-glass and watched until I saw a couple of bewitching eyes, a pair of ears erect and vigilant, and the peculiarly graceful neck which I knew could belong only to the doe deer. She stood between two cedars and for awhile watched us intently, then stole carefully up the stream to where it turned sharp to the left and where a bank covered with marsh grass made a pretty foreground for the picture. Here she planted herself, rigid, with nostrils dilated, ears standing straight up, eyes fixed on us, and with every other indication that we were the only target that occupied her attention and curiosity. The guide gave the moose calls every few minutes and they could be heard miles away, yet there she stood, AN UNEXPECTED TREAT 35 " a thing of beauty " that charmed our eyes and rap- tured our conceit. The day waned, the sun dropped behind the hills, twilight came and went, yet there she stood, motion- less, entranced, and silhouetted against the evening sky like a graceful statue. Her eyes were still fast- ened on us, and when the cloak of night shut us from her sight her curiosity seemed to become uncontrolla- ble. "We heard her cross the brook softly, then steal down the left bank, picking her way daintily behind the alders and cedar trees until she was abreast of us. Then she stopped, and in the silence we imagined her letting loose her wild inquisitiveness : " Who can these mortals be ? Poor things ! How can they sit so long on the water and keep so still? What do they want here anyway ? And where did that heav- enly music come from ? " Perhaps she thought all this if she did not speak it. Then she stepped out in the open and came so close to the canoe that we could almost have hit her with a paddle. Did we shoot ? No, sir ! 'No thought had we of kill- ing the soft-eyed, unsuspicious creature whose beauty and grace of form and pose had, for an hour, regaled our sense with such an unexpected treat of loveliness. Yenison ? Why, we would have gone without the dainty dish for many a day rather than have had it through the foul murder of that gentle, gazelle-like doe of Chesuncook Lake. Killing the Caribou Here's sport indeed ! CYMBELINE. had been semi-prisoners for about three weeks, and wearied with rains and high winds which effec- tually prevented the successful bunting of big game in the location of our camp. Early one morning in October my guide said to me " Suppose we go and try to find that dam." We had heard a great many stories about a dam at the head of the stream which forms the inlet to our little lake, but were inclined to think some of these stories Mun- chausenish. None of our guides had ever seen the dam and had only hearsay for its location and dis- tance. One maintained it was but five miles away ; another six, and the third vowed it was a good eight miles off; besides, there are two branches to the stream, and no one knew on which of them the dam was placed. So the guide and I started in light hunt- ing order, with a few bouillon capsules which were to serve us for dinner and supper, and possibly breakfast, if we shouldn't get back that night. We found a spotted path through the woods that led to an old tote-road up which we went splashing through the 36 w a a H fc O KILLING THE CARIBOU 39 water accumulated by weeks of rain ; up to our very knees in mud sometimes, slipping, falling and stum- bling over cedar roots, climbing over and under wind- falls, until we reached an old lumber camp, which the guide thought it his duty to investigate. No Maine guide can pass an old camp for the first time without taking a look in to see if anything has been left that he can make use of. Before he reached the buildings three deer, one of them a big buck, jumped out- of some raspberry bushes and bounded away over the creek and into the woods beyond. I started for them and stalked them for nearly an hour, until I came within shooting distance of the does ; but although I heard the buck I could not get my eyes upon him, and the does I did not want ; so I returned to the road. We now had a journey of three and a half miles over a road probably as bad as could be found anywhere ; that is, if mud, water, alders, alder roots, cedar roots, windfalls and slippery rocks could make it so. There's an end to all things, how- ever, and the road finally led us to a landing on the brook where a large number of logs were left high and dry from the last drive. Some of them, in fact, looked as if they had been there for years. There were probably half a million feet in and near this spot. "We crossed the brook and found a logging road which we followed for a mile or more, but saw no signs of a dam. We heard an occasional deer crack- 4G238O 40 SPORT INDEED ing a dry limb in the dense wood or thicket of small pines which bordered the roadway on either side, but could not get a sight of him. Here the guide said we had better turn back, as we were going in the wrong direction ; but I proposed walking, at any rate half a mile further, and probably we might find something worth shooting at. We made one turn in the road when we heard a branch break in front of us. We stopped to listen, and soon a calf caribou came out from the right hand side. It looked up and down, saw us, then moved into the forest which was here open and filled with stunted spruce trees, growing in a thick bed of moss. The calf was followed a minute later by a cow. The guide whispered, " Now look out for horns ! " Then another cow came out and crossed the road followed by a sight I shall never forget. A pair of monster antlers pushed slowly out into the road, and then came the head and neck of a caribou bull. A second later and the animal came into full view, as grand a specimen of his tribe as the sun ever shone upon. The guide whispered, " Hit him in the shoulder ; be steady and sure." And I was sure, for when I fired my 45-90 rifle, the caribou dropped in his tracks al- most at the same instant. He hadn't moved an inch after being hit. The ball had passed through his left shoulder and out at the neck. We soon covered the hundred yards or more of distance which separated us His LORDSHIP; AS GRAND A SPECIMEN AS THE SUN EVER SHONE UPON KILLING THE CARIBOU 43 from his lordship, whom we found down on his knees unable to rise. And then a battle royal started be- tween the guide and the bull. The guide wanted to finish him with the back of the axe, and in order to do so he would angle around him, trying to get in a blow on the forehead. The caribou, however, although unable to raise himself to his feet, could and did swing his great head and antlers around in every direction with vicious and lightning-like quickness. Had he caught the guide with his antlers it would have been a sorry day for that personage. Another shot from my rifle, however, settled the matter. To keep the caribou in good shape we elevated his head and shoul- ders upon some skids that were in the road, and then tramped back to our camp, a walk of fully six miles. Next day our three guides with my son and myself went back, taking a camera with us, and although the morning was rainy and squally we obtained a fairly good picture of him. As he was frozen pretty stiff, the men raised him up on his feet and fastened a rope^ from each antler to a couple of trees, one on either side of the road. These held up his head and steadied his carcass so that my son was enabled to photograph him in a standing position. The guides skinned him, but took off his head unskinned. The next day, in order to incur no risk of having the head spoiled by the wet weather or care- less skinning, I sent a guide with it to Greenville, a 44 SPORT INDEED three days' journey there and back. The bull was fourteen years old. The antlers are thirty-two inches long from the base of skull to the tips, and have thirteen points on each side. The taxidermist to whom the head was sent said it was the finest he had seen and the largest, from that locality, of which he had any record. On the night of our caribou victory, although very tired and badly used up with our frightfully hard walk, neither the guide nor myself slept much. The big animal would haunt our sleep. We could see him almost every minute of the night ; and even now the memory of the scene is fresh and vivid in my mind and doubtless will be for many a moon to come. More of the Moose The Paragon of Animals. HAMLET. ON the morning of the caribou hunt, we left the old bull lying in the road, and about eleven o'clock tramped back upon our tracks to prosecute our search for the dam which we had originally started out to find. Upon reaching the brook we followed it up- wards some distance, until the guide, who was quite " done up," said he would make a fire and boil some hot water in a tin dipper for my dinner. I decided, how- ever, to push on until I found that dam, telling him to stay where he was until my return. The stream here was choked up with cut logs, which made it nice and easy walking, or easy jumping, from one to another. Twenty minutes of this sort of travel and I reached the long-looked-for dam. Climbing on top of it my eye caught the view of as lovely a spot for big game to feed in as could well be imagined. The water had been drawn off during the late spring, and a luxurious growth of swale grass, cranberry bushes, and young alder shoots, had sprung up in wild and wanton profusion. I sat down on the dam and let my senses wallow 45 46 SPORT INDEED in the sight. A stiff breeze was blowing, swaying the tall grasses into waves of graceful motion and bring- ing to my ear a gentle rustling sound a twittering pianissimo, as it were, in one of Nature's pastorales, and one which all lovers of her rural melodies would have recognized and appreciated. After my fancy had played awhile it ran up against the thought : " What a tempting sanctuary is this for big game ! Surely it won't be long without its antlered heads and arched necks." Instinctively I crept behind some bushes and watched and waited. Fifteen or twenty minutes passed without my ex- pectations being fulfilled. Then I thought of my tin cup of bouillon and, fearing it would be spoiled, reluctantly left the enticing spot and traveled back over the logs to where the guide was waiting for me. After drinking my bouillon I told the guide how near the dam was and what an attractive spot for game it must be ; then I directed him to take my rifle and go up and look at some moose tracks which I had found, and I would boil another cup of water for his dinner while he was gone. The fire had burned down low. I put on more wood and sat and watched the roaring blaze, and whistled, while supreme content- ment oozed out of me from every pore. My reverie lasted till broken by the guide who rushed in with hardly enough wind left to shape his words. He told me that just as he got to the dam a young bull-moose MORE OF THE MOOSE 47 and a monstrously big cow-moose had come out of the woods and were feeding in the open, close to the dam. We jumped like gymnasts across the logs and made some leaps that might have caused the kangaroo to blush and hide her head in her pouch. As we approached the dam our steps grew cautious and when we reached it we peered over its edge and in the open space beyond. The bull was not in sight and the cow was more than five hundred yards away. No doubt they had scented the smoke from our fire, although the wind was almost directly in our favor. But we soon saw that the cow was uneasy and sus- picious. She would stop her feeding, raise her mane, lift her head in the air, holding it there for a minute or so, and then resume her feeding. After repeating this program three times she gave a call that was quickly answered by the bull. A moment later he rushed out of the woods, at the back and to the right of her, while she ran to meet him. Then they wheeled about, threw up their great heads, and with dilating nostrils both sniffed the suspicious scent which had alarmed the cow so much. They were at this moment fully six to seven hundred yards off. Every moment seemed to increase their alarm and it was evident they would soon dash for the woods. I said to the guide : " "What do you think ? Can I down that bull at this distance ? " " I don't think you can, but there's no telling what 48 SPORT INDEED a 45-90 rifle can do. If you're going to try it you'd better begin. They'll soon be off." I decided to try the shot, and from under the edge of the dam I aimed for the bull's shoulder and fired. My shot was a clean miss. Then we saw a scene plainly illustrating the amount of human nature that underlies the instinct of the moose. As the report of the rifle rang out and echoed around the edges of the forest encircling the open space, the cow-moose ran here and there in every direction. Fear seemed to have dethroned her courage and prudence. But the bull stood still, rigid, erect, his mane up, while every hair on his body bristled defiance. I fired cartridge No. 2, making another miss. Then came a repetition of the scene just described, the bull standing still as ever. I reasoned that the strong, quartering wind to the right was deflecting the bullets; so I aimed a little more to the left the third time and fired. And then followed a strange sight. The bullet had reached the bull and he started with a rush and a crash like a locomotive off the rails. Away he went, straight for the woods to the left. The guide and I then sprang upon the top of the dam and watched the cow who was still running about in the open, and thoroughly panic-struck. A couple of minutes elapsed and then the wounded bull ran back from his strong- hold of timber to get the cow away from danger. MORE OF THE MOOSE 49 This gave me a chance to fire three more shots at him. While he was circling around the cow and try- ing to lead her into the safety of the woods, he seemed to say : " You can shoot at me if you like and kill me if you can, but I'll save my frau or perish in the attempt ! " And just as soon as he had her headed and started right, then he got away also, both entering the woods to the left. Then the question came : What shall we do ? The guide said : " Let's go back to camp and give him a chance to lie down. If he's mortally wounded we'll find him, but I fear you've given him only a flesh wound." We stopped at our fire for the guide to drink his bouillon and then commenced our eight-mile journey to our tent. On the road down, and before we reached the logging camp where we had started the buck deer and the two does the day before, I crept along very cautiously, hoping to catch a sight of the big buck. The road that led by the old camp had a path in which were several long logs leading length- wise from the road right to the camp, and walking on these logs with rubber boots made no noise at all. Suddenly I came upon six deer feeding in and around a lot of raspberry bushes. Four of them were so bunched that I could have placed a bullet which would have gone, possibly, through the whole four, certainly through three of them. But they were all 50 SPORT INDEED does ; the buck was not there and I stole back to the tote-road without even alarming them. It was dark when we reached camp, and we were tired ; yet the excitement of the day had been so great that, wearied as we were, we could not sleep. The caribou and the moose and the six deer kept marching through our minds in company with the queries : " Will we find the moose ? Is he killed ? Will any- thing get at the caribou during the night and mutilate him ? " In our mind's eye we saw the old fellow dropping in his tracks ; and again we saw the bull- moose rushing from the woods to coax the wife of his bosom back from the reach of bullets and into a place of safety. Thus the day's adventures would be vividly reen- acted till daylight broke. Then ready and eager to solve our caribou queries, the guides, my son and my- self breakfasted, shouldered camera, axes, rifles and ropes and started off with the intention first to photo- graph and skin the caribou and secure his head, and then to trail the wounded moose. It was half-past one when we reached the dam, and in a few minutes we found the trail of the bull by discovering a pool of blood in the swale grass and another considerable pool on the edge of the woods. After that the trails of the cow-moose and the bull were so intertwined that it was hard to unravel them. But there were five of us and each would discover a trace every minute or two ; some- MORE OF THE MOOSE 51 times a splash of blood on the side of a tree, or a drop on a leaf, or a streak of it on some deadfall the wounded moose had stepped over. At one place he had passed between two trees, evidently a tight fit, as it showed the blood from the left hip, where he was struck, down his leg as far as the knee. At another place he had stopped and quite a circle of blood was formed. But nowhere was there any sign that he had lain down. Nowhere was there blood enough to show that he had been mortally hit. We followed his trail for over two hours and then reluctantly concluded that our moose would live and prosper perhaps for many a year to come, as he would be duly careful in the future to keep as far away from the range of a rifle as his haunts and habits would permit. At all events, he would never again feed in a meadow in daylight during the open season for a moose needs to be shot at but once to make him forever after the most cautious animal that roams the wild woods. A Lost Man and a Wounded Moose I have lost my way. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. IT is the unexpected that always happens in hunt- ing. When you most desire and look for your game, then is the time you don't see it ; and when and where you don't look for it, then and there you are apt to run against it. My guides had told me marvellous tales of the hunt- ing opportunities that flourished around a certain pond or small lake, a couple of days' journey from our camp- ing ground. To find out whether these tales were true or not, I thought it worth while to go there, especially as one of the guides had spent the previous winter in a lumber camp near by, and was familiar, or ought to have been, with the country. There was a very large bog, five miles long and about a mile broad, which was a favorite haunt of the caribou, moose and deer, and they found in it enough rich food for sustenance without resorting to any other locality. Very pretty and promising all this, but there is no rose without a thorn, and this rose of ours had one in the shape of a goose a goose of a sportsman who was camped on a stream some two miles away from the 52 u H 8 H A WOUNDED MOOSE 55 pond. The goose delighted in firing a rifle that burned one hundred grains of powder behind a fifty-calibre bullet, and enjoyed himself hugely in loading up his miniature cannon and banging away at red squirrels, partridges and rabbits. He would leave his camp in the morning, walk to the pond, and make the woods ring for miles around with the noise of his rifle. The unwritten law of Maine in regard to the shoot- ing-rights on ponds or small lakes is that the sports- man who first puts a canoe upon them is safe from intrusion on the part of any other sportsman. Acting upon this hint we determined to paddle up a stream as far as we could, then carry our canoe to the pond and take possession, thus shutting out our noisy friend. So at four o'clock one morning our strongest guide started with his canoe on his back, carried it for a distance of two miles, placed it on the pond and re- turned to camp for breakfast. Then after our morn- ing meal I started with another guide and walked to the pond, loaded only with a tin cup, an axe and a rifle. We reached the pond at about half-past seven and got into the canoe, but at the very first dip of our paddle we heard the boom of the 50-100 rifle fired by our goose who was cracking away at the red squirrels on the other side of the pond. This was not a prom- ising state of affairs for us big game, as a rule don't like cannonading, nor a neighborhood that indulges in it. A few minutes after the noise of the shot and its 56 SPORT INDEED echoes were sobered into silence, \ve saw a pair of deer two hundred yards away. My guide suggested that I try a shot at them, saying it would be a good idea, even if I missed the deer, for it would let the goose know that there was a canoe on the pond, that the pond was mortgaged and he had better find some other spot for his cannonading. The deer, however, were in an awkward place to be shot at with effect. However, I did shoot and missed. They wheeled like a flash and bounded into the woods. The sound of the shot reached the goose with the 50-100 rifle who stepped out into the open, saw us, and started back for his camp. We now paddled to the other side of the pond and as the sun was coming out warm we left our coats and vests in the canoe, took with us a tin cup and four bouillon capsules and left, feeling sure that the goose's cannonading had killed all our chances of seeing any more game that day. "We left the canoe exactly at eight o'clock (I know, for I looked at my watch on starting). Not more than five minutes later my foot stumbled in the bog. Recovering my foothold and looking up I saw a sight that startled me. Not a hundred yards away a great bull-moose, with wide- spreading antlers and dilated nostrils stood looking straight at me from between two trees. The place where he was standing was one where a man would least expect to see him, because, by all rules of pru- A WOUNDED MOOSE 57 dence and safe moose conduct, the noise of the late rifle shots should by this time have driven him miles away from this locality. It appears it did not. And what did I do under the circumstances ? Well, pre- cisely what any other man would have done. Up went my rifle and without sighting or even an attempt to take careful aim, I blazed away. And the moose ? Ah ! Like a ghost he came and like a ghost he dis- appeared. The guide a French Canadian said: " Vat you shoot at ? " "A bull-moose," I replied. " Didn't you see him ? " " No, I no see him ! " " Well," I said, " we'll take up his trail and see if he's hit." " You no hit him," he answered disdainfully. We tramped around trying to find his tracks but without much hope of seeing them or the tell-tale drops of blood ; for the bog was soft and the feet of the moose thus left no mark as he ran, and the red moss that covered the bog prevented the blood if there was any from showing on it. We finally worked out of the bog and took the ground leading up to a ridge. Making careful search as we walked, we found, at last, a drop of fresh, hot blood on a leaf ; then a little further on, a pool of blood that would have filled a bucket. This blood was mixed with the pink tissue of the lungs, showing plainly that the bullet had gone through that organ of his anatomy. I now proposed to spot the trees so that we could find the place again and then go back to camp, giving the 58 SPORT INDEED moose a chance to lie down and bleed to death. My French Canadian, with a whiff of his old clay pipe, gave it as his opinion that the bull was mortally wounded, that we would find him in a few minutes, and advised that we follow him at once. "We did so, find- ing no difficulty whatever in tracking him as his trail was almost a continuous stream of blood, excepting when his wound had apparently become clogged with a piece of the pink tissue, and then for a few yards we would lose his trail ; but only for a few yards, for soon the gushing blood would spurt its passage through and form another pool. And thus we fol- lowed on, over ridges and through swamps and bogs, hoping soon to catch a sight of our expected prize. Sometimes we would strike a place where the bull had stopped to listen ; and again where he had gone around a windfall, showing he was hard hit, if not mortally wounded. How did we reach these conclusions ? Simply enough. The hunter if he be anything of a detective, which he should be on seeing, as we saw, a plainly drawn half circle of blood, would say : " Here he stopped and turned half around to listen." In the second instance, if he had not been hard hit he would have gone over the windfall and not around it. Once we saw where he had leaned against a tree, either to rest or listen, or both, but nowhere was there any evidence that he had lain down. Twice in our pursuit we heard him crashing through the brush A WOUNDED MOOSE 59 ahead of us, but at neither time were we fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of him. Our brain befuddled with the chase, We took no note of time or space; and before we were aware of it the morning hours had gone and we found ourselves on the borders of another lake, miles away from our canoe and our camp. About three o'clock in the afternoon we built a little fire, heated some water in our tin cup and boiled a bouillon capsule for each of us, which we drank. Then came the question : " "What shall we do now ? " The guide said we were about four and a half miles from the canoe, and that in following the twists and turns of the wounded bull we had covered a distance of about eighteen miles. His advice was that we should start at once for our canoe after spotting the trees with the axe to enable us to take up the bull's trail again and track him to his deathbed. So at half-past three we started back, the guide assuring me that he knew the way perfectly well. Maybe he did, but coming events left a shadow of doubt on my mind. He first led through an alder swamp that only needed a Bengal tiger or two to rival an Indian jungle. Lathered with perspiration we finally got through this and faced a high ridge covered with numerous windfalls. After scaling the ridge and getting down 60 SPORT INDEED on the other side of it we found ourselves in a dense cedar swamp, wandering here and there and perspir- ing at every pore with the labor of climbing over and under logs and jumping windfalls. Then came the pleasant conviction : " We are lost ! " The weather had turned cold and suggested that we lose no time in getting some wood together and starting a fire. We were certainly in an unpleasant predicament ; without coat or vest, or blanket, or tent, with nothing to eat and nothing to drink. Could we have found water our remaining two bouillon capsules would have made us a good supper ; but there was no water and consequently no supper. The best and only thing to do now, I did. I pulled off my hip rubber boots, intending to use them for a pillow, dried my few clothes, wet from perspiration, and kept close to the fire to avoid catching cold from the bare ground and freez- ing air. My purpose was not to sleep, but keep awake. " Tired Nature," however, would not be denied her " sweet restorer," and soon I was in a slumber that lasted till eleven o'clock. Then I awoke to find the cold intense. Piling more wood on the fire, I threw myself again on Mother Earth's bosom and slept till two, when the frost, settling on rrn T face like sharp needles, aroused me. Again I replenished the fire and again slept till five. Then I awoke and just in time to catch Aurora at her morning task of decorat- ing the eastern sky. And I watched her w r ith the a u < A WOUNDED MOOSE 63 greatest satisfaction, for never in my recollection was daylight so welcome to me. Our search now was for water, but we succeeded in finding none. We did find, however, a thin sheet of ice under an upturned cedar root. This we broke and melted in our tin cup over the fire and then cooked our capsules in it. Such was our breakfast, and I am rather sure the Roman, glutton, Lucullus never experienced greater satisfaction over one of his ten-thousand-dollar dinners than we did over that simple meal of bouillon. After our breakfast we found a lumber road and followed it for about three miles to a great. marsh or meadow. Here we obtained our bearings, discover- ing that we were about five miles from camp, which we reached at eleven o'clock that forenoon, thankful and happy to see once more our white tent and the guide we had left behind, whose anxious face told plainly of his alarm at our absence. He had been firing shots at frequent intervals during the night, but the distance between us prevented our hearing them. We had been tramping around an ever-widening circle, until night compelled us to stop. My French Cana- dian guide, who was one of the " I-know-it-all " men, had nothing to say in extenuation but this : " I don't compre' how it all did happen. I did know ze way sure, and then I didn't. I feel much sorry, but ze nex' time I go by ze compass, not by ze knows how." A Capricious Beast You are a pair of strange ones. CORIOLANUS. THE moose is a strange animal in many respects. In his outside make-up this strangeness is strongly marked by his large, truncated antlers, his " bell " a tuft of nerves, muscles and hair, hanging from his neck his great mane, his high shoulders, his retreat- ing hips and his stumpy bit of a tail. His " inside," or, so to speak, his mental make-up is quite as strange. He is full of suspicion, ever on the alert for danger, and governed by a disposition stuffed with caprice. What you most expect him to do, when you are after him, he is apt not to do at all ; and what your experi- ence tells you he will never do, he often astonishes you by doing in the most provoking manner. He is an enormous eater, a great traveller, and something of a Lothario in his relish for courtship. He usually feeds in the early morning, rests during the day, and does all his travelling and courting at night; although the whim sometimes seizes him to venture a visit to his sweetheart in the daytime; but it is a perilous venture and one which he often has cause to regret. 64 A CAPRICIOUS BEAST 65 Like the rest of the deer tribe the moose is afraid of fire and smoke ; and yet I have known a bull, when wild with passion, to charge into a camp where a log fire was burning and a French Canadian cook was busy washing his dishes in front of it. The sudden entrance of the bull created considerable excitement and for awhile he made it warm enough in that camp to dispense with any other sort of fire. Without any ceremony, further than bending his head, he went for the cook and chased him out to the water, where the astonished dishwasher jumped into a canoe and paddled hastily from the shore, shouting to the irate moose : " Sacre, mon dieu ! It is a meestake I did not make ze call ! " During the mating season there is no denying the heroism of the bull-moose, nor the courageous care with which he watches over the welfare of his mistress. But when his passion is on the wane, his courage, like that of Bob Acres, oozes out and leaves him with the heart of a chicken. At these times, if he happens to be out on a promenade with his lady, he politely asks her to walk in front of him. Of course such a request would be commendable were it not for the ugly sus- picion that something else than politeness lurks behind it. He is always brimming with caution, and who can say that he is not aware of the hundred-dollar fine and four-months' imprisonment that await the slayer of his mistress ? If he is, then, as " self-preser- 66 SPORT INDEED vation is the first law of nature," his instinct may possibly tell him that the surest way to preserve him- self is to walk behind his lady-love. There is no doubt that his bravery, at times, resembles that of the pigeon-hearted Falstaff; and, as life is probably as precious to him as it was to the fat knight, perhaps he is excusable in taking the same care of it. If two or more bulls meet during the mating season, there is likely to be trouble, and much of it, especially if one of their lady-loves should chance to be in the neighborhood. Here is an instance, however, where they smothered their jealousy a proof of what I have said about their capriciousness in not doing what you expect them to do. A young man who acted as cook for a party, of which I was one, had a strong desire to learn the art of moose-calling. One night the youth went out with a sportsman, in the absence of the regular moose-caller, for the purpose of trying his hand at it. After three or four calls he was delighted with an an- swer. He waited a little while and then heard the bull coming down through the alders that fringed the stream and cautiously steal up and down through them. Now and then the youth could hear him strike his antlers against the alders and break a branch, but further than this the hopes of the young moose-caller were not gratified. All his piping failed to coax the bull to show himself. Disappointed, disheartened, weary, and shivering with cold, the sportsman and his young A CAPRICIOUS BEAST 67 caller returned to their camp and slept until daylight. They were soon up and paddling their canoe to the place of last night's seance. They approached the spot cautiously and saw plenty of moose tracks along the water's edge, but nothing of the animals that made them. The youth, however, took up his moose horn, gave a call, and almost instantly came an answer, and \vith it a sight that made his eyes bulge with wonder. A rush, and a cracking through the alders, and then, not one, but three big bulls stepped quickly into view, gazing inquisitively at the canoe and its contents. The sportsman brought his rifle to his shoulder and picking out the biggest moose of the three for his aim, banged away at him, but well, the youth declares that any man who couldn't hit one bull in a three-ply bunch, in broad daylight, and not more than forty yards away, should swap his rifle for a gatling gun. The trio had escaped, unharmed. Now the point to which I wish to draw attention is not the somewhat queer anomaly that a " sport " should be guilty of missing the big head of a bull at forty yards, but to the fact that three male moose were bunched together in the mating season, and in a sociable Avay, with No leer of battle in their eye ; No clash of antlers in their thought. Speaking of the bull-moose's eccentricities, the cow, 68 SPORT INDEED too, has hers, and they are no less marked. The senses of hearing and smell are believed to be keener in the moose tribe than in any other animal, and yet I have stood within a few feet of a cow-moose, seemingly without her being aware of it. She was coming to- ward me at the time, with her head down, and in a careless sort of way that betokened unconsciousness of danger. I stepped behind a tree. She stopped and listened, drawing in volumes of air through her big nostrils. I waited for a while and then pushed out from my hiding-place and into her full view. She showed neither fright nor surprise, but eyed me inquisitively for a minute or two and then turned her steps leisurely into the woods. Such demure equanimity, however, is but an intermittent characteristic. In the mating season all her artless composure seems to desert her, and then, like her lord and master, with nostrils di- lated and ears erect, she is ever on the qui vive for danger. The instinct of the moose approaches closely to human reason a fact which may be illustrated by an incident that occurred during a violent October snow- storm. A pair of moose were found standing in a clearing near an old lumber camp, and by their tracks it was noticed they had not stirred from the vicinity of the camp since the storm started, on the day pre- vious. Evidently they had been afraid of the falling trees in the woods, which, from the weight of the < u A CAPRICIOUS BEAST 71 snow upon them, were crashing and breaking in every direction. A bull-moose in a passion is not a pleasant fellow to run against, as a lumber operator once discovered. He was taking a gang of men into the woods and jogging along a mile or so ahead of them, with an axe on his shoulder. Hearing a slight noise he looked up, and directly in front of him stood an angry bull. Whether the red shirt the lumberman wore had any- thing to do with the moose's anger I can't say ; but whether it had or not, the bull made a vicious rush for him, giving him barely time to dodge behind a tree. This place of refuge, however, didn't seem to satisfy the lumberman. The bull became so fierce and determined in his attacks that the man decided the top of the tree, and not the bottom, was the only proper place. It required a little finessing to carry out his decision, but he finally succeeded in climbing beyond the reach of the bull who stood at the bottom keeping a sharp eye lest his contemplated victim should escape. He kept up his sentry work until the lumberman's gang came along ; then, at the sight of them, his bullship turned sullenly around and re- treated into the woods. They are sometimes very hard to kill, and then again are killed with more ease than a small deer. A moose was hit at close range by a 40-82 ball, which tore his liver and lungs into fragments, but off he 72 SPORT INDEED went as if he hadn't been touched. A second ball pierced his heart and yet he traveled over sixty yards before he fell. Yes, they are the most uncertain animal to hunt and kill that can be found, and it is partly on account of this uncertainty that the hunting of them is so ex- citing and captivating. The unexpected is always happening in moose territory, and therefore your ex- pectancy is constantly kept on a wire edge. You look at their tracks which, maybe, are very fresh, or, perhaps, very old and say to yourself, " What if he would show himself behind that bend in the road, or on that bit of open bog, or in that bunch of alders, or standing in among those lily-pads ? " Then you think how many hours it was since he passed, and debate in your mind whether it was in the night or early in the morning. You are not sure of anything that relates to him. The water where he planted his big feet as he walked in this muddy spot is roily, but it doesn't follow that the fellow did not make the tracks last night, instead of this morning, as some water takes longer to settle and clear than other. You cannot be exactly certain of the hour that he passed, even by his tracks. I am speaking now of really "fresh" tracks and signs, so called, which keep the hunter continually keyed up to the sharpest pitch of nervous tension, that is, if he is really hunting in earnest, and not killing time A CAPRICIOUS BEAST 73 in examining signs ; or if he be not too lazy to get up in the morning when the frost is sharp and keen and he thinks it too cold to leave his warm and snug bed, to say nothing about going miles away and sitting for hours shivering in a canoe and waiting for an answer to his call. All this he should get used to and must, if he aspires to bear the hunter's " blushing honors thick upon him." My First Bull-Moose But if thou needs will hunt, be ruled by me. VENUS AND ADONIS. I HAVE been asked to narrate the killing of my first bull-moose. I will try to do so, yet it is no easy task. Others with a like experience in moose killing, I think, will agree with me when I say that the anx- iety, the exposure, the suspense, a hunter must un- dergo, and the cunning skill and perseverance he must use in luring the suspicious creature to the water and then killing him are hardly within the power of an ordinary pen to describe. I have known a hunter, who was said to be an expert, to spend nine nights and as many mornings before he could coax his bull to come from shelter ; and when he did show himself, a rifle shot rang out on the air, of course, but with what result ? A dead moose lay there not a " giant of the Maine woods " as the hunter had so fondly hoped but only a four-year-old " spike horn." The difficulties surrounding my first bull-moose ad- venture, while not so great as those which this partic- ular hunter had encountered, were quite great enough to satisfy my appetite for difficulties. And now for a bit of my own experience. On a calm, frosty night while the October moon 74 MY FIRST BULL-MOOSE 75 was yet young, my guide and myself paddled noise- lessly out of the lake, on which we were camped, and into the twisting and beautiful stretch of dead-water that feeds the lake and which is about two miles long. The guide took up his birch-bark horn and ran a little water through it, following up this preliminary by spitting vigorously first on the one side of the canoe and then on the other. I didn't then, nor do I now see the necessity for the expectorating part of his pro- gram, but I hear that all professional moose-callers invariably go through it and therefore I suppose it must be a necessary part of the performance. This prelude being over, the guide put the horn to his lips and gave the famous moose call so often described and yet never described. We sat listening to its tremulous notes quivering on the air and when they died away in the silence we waited impatiently for an answer. Our waiting was fruitless. Save the hoot- ing of an owl or the splash of a muskrat, there came no sound to break the grave-like stillness. Again the guide gave the call and again we waited. Hark ! a crackling of alders now greeted our ears. The sound came from a long distance up stream and told us that a creature of some sort was approaching. A little later we heard a crashing on our left, but no grunting, no barking to indicate that a bull-moose was any- where in the neighborhood. We strained our ears for a sound that would give us a cue to the sort of animal 76 SPORT INDEED that was breaking the bushes and whose tread was not heavy enough for a moose and yet too heavy for a deer. Then we heard a splash and then another. " They're in the water ; we'll soon see what they are," said the guide. "We pushed the canoe softly up the stream, but the creatures, whatever they were, had heard us and left the water. The stream was narrow, not more than twenty feet wide, with high alders on each bank, and on either side of us was some animal, we knew not what, that probably had its eyes and ears open for our every motion, watching us suspi- ciously as though we were freebooters and had no right to be filibustering in its domain. The guide now whispered to me, " If they are moose, you will find the one on the right hand is the bull." We could see nothing, yet we sat there for fully an hour straining our eyes through the darkness and opening our ears for a clue that would tell us at least what sort of creatures they were. The night was getting colder and my teeth began to rattle like a pair of castanets. It was quite nat- ural therefore that I should be anxious for our sus- pense to come to an end of some sort; and it did. With a snort or, rather, two snorts the animals bounded away, and in a twinkling both were gone. They were deer, not moose as we had hoped. Dis- appointed, and chilled to the bone, we paddled sadly back to our camp and turned in, as it seemed unlikely MY FIRST BULL-MOOSE . 77 we should have further use for moose-calling that night. Next morning we were out at half-past four, but we received no answer to our calls. In the evening of the second day we went up the stream as early as five o'clock, running the nose of the canoe into a bunch of swale grass near to the mouth of an old lumber road. This night, like the last, was clear and very cold and the water was freezing in the shallow, quiet parts of the stream, making a turn of the canoe in some places a noisy performance. After the first call had echoed and reechoed around the ridges on our right and left, we were rejoiced to get an answer. At first it was only a smothered grunt ; then followed a hoarse, well-defined bark that seemed to be miles away. Louder and louder and more frequent grew the barking as the bull came nearer for bull it was and it seemed as if each step of his approach was accompanied with a grunt or a bark. To our dismay he came down the very road of which we were nearly in front. When almost at its mouth, he stopped, listened for a moment and then moved up and down the banks, crashing and breaking the alders and listen- ing at every step, as if to catch another whisper from his mistress. Yet he took the best of care not to show himself. In the meanwhile the guide was busy pawing the water with his birch-bark horn or letting some of it pour from the narrow end of the instru- y8 SPORT INDEED ment. These manoeuvres were intended to imitate the motions of the impatient cow and were expressly for the bull's information, telling him that his lady-love, whose voice he had heard and for whose embraces he was longing, was now feeding in the water on lily- pads and almost under the nose of his majesty. But his majesty was cautious. He was most eager, of course, to meet his inamorata and have an embrace or two, but he was not disposed to let his eagerness get the better of his prudence. He evidently scented treachery in the air and was so shy that all the guide's ingenuity failed to coax him to come from out the alders and show himself. Though we could catch no glimpse of him, doubtless he had all the glimpses he wanted of us, and pipe as we might he was in no humor to dance to our music. So we left him, re- turned to camp and turned in, with our brain-pan brimming with visions of a bull-moose with an ounce of lead in his vitals. The morning of the third day found us dressed and in the canoe. It was then three o'clock and as dark as Cimmerian pitch. A swift paddle to the head of the lake, then a silent push up the stream and our calling spot was reached. We gave our first call at four o'clock and then waited fifteen minutes for an answer which didn't come. Then we gave another series of calls and again waited. The guide now leaned towards me and whispered : " Listen ! is that a MY FIRST BULL-MOOSE 79 moose or an owl 'way off there ? " " Can't say yet," I replied ; " it sounds a little like both." "We then gave a third call, and after a rapt silence we again heard the unknown sound. We listened and distinctly heard the breaking of a branch a long distance away. Again we strained our ears, and this time they were rewarded with a decided answer from a bull-moose. He was surely coming, but not with the tearing rush so characteristic of these fellows when they're on their way to their sweetheart. He was taking his own time and approaching very leisurely. Probably he felt sure of the fair one who had so lovingly called him and therefore there was no need of hurry. She could wait. And now the day was breaking. Kosy tints were lighting up the sky and shimmering on the alders, the cranberry bushes and the hazels all freshly clothed in a suit of night frost. It might have seemed to a casual observer that both the guide and myself were clothed in a like manner, for we sat there with a chat- ter of teeth and a shiver of limbs that our blankets, our overcoats, and our heavy gloves could not put a stop to. We kept perfectly still otherwise ; fearing almost to breathe, lest it might create some sound that would reach the sharp ears of the bull. Yet at this critical time my teeth started up a fresh and vig- orous chatter, which the guide's molars and incisors promptly took up, and with the liveliest sort of a staccato movement. Now, I am quite sure that if the 80 SPORT INDEED bull had been within hearing and had an ear for music of that sort, our chatter duet must have been highly entertaining to him. But he either had no musical ear or was too far away to take in our duet, for he continued on his way through the alders at his former slow and dignified gait. At one time he stopped to reconnoitre. Then he passed up and down through the bushes, listened a moment to the guide's pawing of the water, cocked up his ears and suddenly came to the conclusion that he had been fooled. He at once let loose his disappointment with a roar of rage and revenge that might have been heard miles away. The bare thought of being tricked filled him with in- dignation and a strong desire to get away from such a treacherous spot. The guide kept quiet until the angry bull had gotten about a quarter of a mile away from the canoe. Then picking up his horn he gave a low, tremulous and loving call. The moose immedi- ately wheeled about and walked back, answering the call between his steps, and in the most affectionate and apologetic tones. They spoke as plainly as the tongue of a moose knows how to speak : " Forgive me, darling ; I've been fooled so often. I'll soon be with you, pet ! " When he reached the alders he stopped for a minute, and the guide took advantage of that minute to imitate the sounds made by a feed- ing cow. They soon reached the alert ears of the bull and seemed to satisfy and fill him with the MY FIRST BULL-MOOSE 83 thought : " There's no mistake this time. Here she is ! " I don't know whether he thought this or not, but certain it is that he plunged into the water and commenced wading down the stream, which at this place followed the land around a point that formed a long, narrow elbow. We first thought he would burst through the fringe of alders on the thinnest part of this elbow, and therefore pushed in our canoe. How- ever, he passed that point, still wading in the water, and we were compelled to back out of this little cove and into the stream. The guide now shoved the canoe directly towards him, as swiftly as he could, whispering to me " Be steady now ! Don't lose him." Meanwhile I had my rifle to my shoulder, expecting each moment would give me my opportunity to use it. It was now daylight, exactly half-past five ; the bull was coming down the stream and we were going up. My mind was full of what I expected would happen, and I was saying to myself " failure is impossible," when the canoe rounded a sharp point of the elbow, and behold, there stood his majesty ! His head, topped by his grand antlers, was thrown proudly back, while his whole attitude was one of confident expectancy as he marched to meet his pseudo-mistress. He saw me and made a quick movement to the right, bringing his head sideways to me. This was my chance and I fired instantly, aiming at a point an inch or two 84 SPORT INDEED below the base of his antlers. After the shot he whirled around, giving me a broadside chance which I was quick to take advantage of. The next instant a dead bull toppled over into the water. He hadn't moved a step after my first shot, and the whole performance was over in less than half a minute. The first ball had entered just below the ear, and this it was, no doubt, that caused him to whirl. It was in fact the fatal shot. The second one had penetrated his loins. The guide now shoved the canoe up to the shore and we both got out and danced and jumped to warm ourselves. We also did a little dancing for joy at the sight of the great beast lying in the water, with the blades of his antlers showing one half above the sur- face of the stream. We forgot all about our exposure, our suspense, our loss of sleep, and our many disap- pointments, and with one loud hurra we paddled back to camp, and there, over the breakfast-table, we told to our companions hoAV I killed my first bull-moose. Was I proud ? Well, rather ; No chit, in his first pair of breeches ; No swain, in a '* yes " from his loved one ; No spouter, with audience captured ; No General, with victory won - ever felt prouder than did I, as I stood in the Wilds of Maine and over the prostrate carcass of that " Giant of the Northern Forests. " A Caribou Hunt How many goodly creatures are there here ! THE TEMPEST. A BRIGHT morning in one September found me on my way for a caribou hunt in the pine woods of Maine. The train had reached Boston and I was about stepping from the sleeper when a sudden kink in my back warned me that there was trouble ahead for Thomas. In plainer words, I felt it in my bones, or rather muscles, that my ~bete noire, the lumbago, was about to pay me a visit. In one respect that wily disease resembles the rattle-snake it doesn't use its fangs without warning ; but it is very unlike the rattler in another respect ; when its warning does come, its fangs are sure to come with it. From Boston to Greenville, Maine, towards which we were traveling, is a ride of nine hours, and during that time the lumbago had been grinding its fangs into my lumbar regions and twisting my backbone till its owner's contour looked something like the letter S. On reaching Greenville I decided that I must adopt some heroic measure, and do it quickly, or the bottom would be knocked out of my caribou hunt. Expe- 85 86 SPORT INDEED rience told me that exercise was the most effective physic for the complaint and I was not long in thinking of something that would give me plenty of it. I asked the landlord of the hotel at which I stopped if he had a bicycle in the house. He said he had, but it was one of the female gender. " All the better," I replied. " Let me have it." How I mounted that bicycle I leave to the imagi- nation of the reader ; but if he has never seen a man with the lumbago, in the act of mounting the silent steed, his imagination will be of little use to him. To get on the saddle, usually the work of an instant, now consumed many of them, and if " the steed " had been a diamond frame, instead of the female sort, I can't say that I ever would have got there. Once mounted I took a hard ride of a few miles, with plenty of stiff hills to climb. "When I got back I was in a profuse perspiration. Then I sent for the village doctor ; not that I had more faith in a village doctor than any other sort, but because " any other sort " was out of the question. He came, bringing with him an electric battery and a big bottle of iodine. Then baring my back for operations he soon had the battery to work, and it played around my lumbar regions and kept up its tingling sensations for fifteen minutes. After this he painted my entire back with the iodine and left me with the assurance that I A CARIBOU HUNT 87 would soon feel the effect of his treatment ; and I did a little sooner and a little more unpleasantly than I wished. The iodine seemed to be ripping the skin from my back and in so savage a manner that the pain of it kept me awake till four o'clock next morning. By that time the iodine had finished its work. In a few days the scorched cuticle began to peel and continued its peeling until my back was as bare as a skinned catfish. Then I wondered how long it would be before I could boast of a new suit of skin. (I might say in parenthesis that although my back had worn the old one for fifty years it was still a good deal better than none at all.) However, " Everything comes to him who waits " and the new suit reached me as the old one left. I had no fault to find with its fit and it will probably wear me the remainder of my days, unless I should again tumble into the iodine bottle of a village doctor. How about the lumbago? Ah ! I am sorry to say it still lingered and seemed to be in no hurry to leave. But it did leave finally and in this way. I had been out hunting on a caribou bog for six days, jumping from log to log, climbing over " dead-falls " and dodging the branches of the juniper and spruce trees. The motions attendant upon these athletics caused me much discomfort, as my lumbago kinks followed one another with a rapidity and an energy that threatened to throw me off my pins. However, 88 SPORT INDEED I weathered through the exercise, but the lumbago didn't. It soon became disgusted at my stubbornness and left me as suddenly as it came. Whither it went I know not, unless in search for the lumbar districts of some passive victim, where it may get in its work undisturbed. My trip down the Penobscot Kiver consisted of a glorious run of twenty-one miles. We left the carry at one thirty and reached Chesuncook Lake at eight o'clock. Running through Rocky Rips on our way down, we heard two moose wading in the water near the shore. The moon was shining, but the shore was darker where they were than if there had been no moon ; so we couldn't catch even a glimpse of them. Below Pine Stream Falls we heard another of the same sort feeding in the water. We paddled swiftly to where she was feeding (it was a cow-moose), but she heard us and got out of the water in double-quick time, rushing through the woods and crashing through the alders, at the same time giving vent to her alarm in loud trumpetings. At Pine Stream Falls it is customary for the " sport " to get out of the canoe and walk through the woods along a well-defined path which follows the stream. I had brought with me a new invention which is something like a music roll in shape and size and fitted with a powerful lens at one end and a A CARIBOU HUNT 91 dry electric battery at the other. By pressing a ring a fair sized light is produced. Carrying this in one hand to light my path, and with my rifle in the other, I walked leisurely along. As I approached a clump of high swale grass that lay ahead of me, my light flashed along the path and lit upon a deer that stood in the middle of the clump. She straightened herself up and gazed at the light with wondering eyes, as if the unwonted sight had hypnotized her. She allowed me to approach witnin a few feet of her, and as she looked in awe at the light, I looked in wonder at its mystic reflection from her orbs of vision a green, weird glow that fascinated me. Thus we stood gazing at each other for five minutes or more ; then shifting the hypnotizing rays from her eyes I bade her a loving good-night, and, with a laugh at the quickness with which she bounded into the darkness, I trudged on my way. When Thoreau, the naturalist, came down this piece of river in 1853, he found two Indians near the North East Carry camping out and drying and smoking moose meat for their winter's food. He spent a night with them. They had killed twenty moose, mostly cows, and were curing the hides as well as smoking and drying the meat. In his trip down the river he saw one moose, which his com- panion killed, but no deer. He passed down again in 1857, taking the Allagash River and lake in his trip, 92 SPORT INDEED and again his companion killed a moose, and again they saw no deer. It is only of recent years that the latter have become so numerous as to excite little comment, and I firmly believe that the moose also are increasing in numbers ; but the caribou are becoming extinct, or perhaps are leaving because their food the black moss which grows on the juniper trees is becoming scarcer as the years go by. Some lumber- men claim that a disease is killing the juniper trees in Maine. If this be so, the caribou will probably wend his way to the maritime provinces of Canada where he can find moss in abundance. I spent one week on a caribou bog, traversing it from centre to circumference and becoming familiar with all its nooks and crannies, its alleyways and its main rendezvous. Frequently did I sit watching the caribou cows and beautiful they are, too, and as sleek and fat as thoroughbred Jerseys. On one occasion I met one of them face to face, and she was not more than twenty feet from me. She looked at me earnestly for some minutes and then turned slowly about and walked away. Twice she repeated these movements but at neither time did she show the slightest fear or any alarm. I devoted the most of my six days in searching for the " King of the Bog" a fellow with a royal pair of antlers. I picked up what I presumed was the set he had discarded in the previous spring. They Avere A CARIBOU HUNT 93 somewhat eaten away by the mice, but there was still enough regal beauty left to entitle them to an honored place in my collection where they now hang. If I was right in my supposition that they were worn by his highness the year before, their number of points told his age to be twelve. My son and his guide had succeeded in getting a glimpse of him, some two weeks before ; and I, after six days of watching and stalking, sitting and standing and lying down, also got a glimpse. But it was a stingy one. In stepping through the bog I had carelessly broken a twig with my foot. Then I heard a snort away off to my right, and look- ing in that direction I saw a cow bounding away with the gentleman I was after in front of her. I recog- nized the big fellow as he passed between two trees, and that was all. I have heard of a negro melody entitled " Hesitate, Mr. Nigger, Hesitate ! " and possibly his imperial highness had heard of it, too. A dozen times or more had my ears been tickled with the racket he made in rushing through the growth of spruce that borders the bog, and striking his antlers against the trees. Yet he wouldn't step out into the open and show himself. When it seemed certain that he was about to do so, he would hesitate, as if he were listening to the darky melody and deemed it provident to follow its advice. He was wise. " Hesitate, Mr. Nigger " succeeded in 94 SPORT INDEED saving his lordship's bacon at least for a while, for I decided to give the bog a rest for a few days and move to another camp about eight miles away. My week upon this bog that I left was one of the happiest I ever spent in hunting. Two days of it I was in my shirt-sleeves, two days with a vest on, and two with a coat. This tells the story of the weather it was fine. The distance from the camp was a little short of two miles, and, as I took the tramp morning, noon and evening, it made about twelve miles of steady walking. The bog is a " dry bog," its dryness being readily accounted for. The spaces between the trees are filled with a wanton growth of blueberry bushes, whose de- caying leaves, year after year, have helped to raise the surface of the ground so that no water rests upon it. The place teems with all manner of life, except the human variety. The fox hunts his breakfast there, and the bear dines and sups sumptuously on its ripe blueberries. It is the home of the red squirrel, the mole and the field-mouse, and they may be seen dart- ing hither and yon, busily employed in getting their living among the medley of vegetable growth. Here, in this garden spot, I would sit by the hour, secluded from the world and forgetful of its cares and perplexities ; resting both mind and body, and with a species of rest unknown to the busy city man and which, by the way, he will never know, unless he A CARIBOU HUNT 95 will occasionally drop his treadmill work and try it. Doubtless there are some who will think me insane to call the seclusion of a bog restful, or to recommend such an occupation as caribou hunting as a sovereign remedy for the ills of the body and soul. Or they may consider it the essence of absurdity to spend a whole week in tramping over bogs in search of that animal, and then, like a hermit, solitary and alone, to sit down on a log, and meditate. Alone, my friend ? You make a mistake. I was not alone. It must be a man of little soul and less sentiment who thinks himself alone when he has Nature at his elbow. And she was at mine, opening, as it were, a drama before me, and for my express edi- fication. I looked upon it and wondered at the sight ; wondered at the wealth of her life her plant life, and her strange animal life, whose strangeness is so no- tably marked in her caribou. Alone my friend ? No. It is true I was the only mortal among her audience the only human " looker on in Vienna " ; and I will say that no stage representation ever enchained my at- tention so tightly or afforded me more food for thought and study. Alone ? Oh, no ! These " goodly creatures " of the bog were to me more genial com- pany than would have been that of men and women, with nerves and temper and energy and strength jaded and worn by the fantastic fads and customs of civilized life. No, reader ; I was not alone. A Lost Moose Sheathe thy impatience. MERKY WIVES OF WINDSOR. OUT in the Maine wilderness and some eight miles from where we had located our cabin is an old logging camp which is rapidly tumbling to the ground. In the days of its prime it had housed nearly sixty men, but now it is merely a harbor for hedgehogs and legions of field-mice. The portion of the structure which was used for sleeping berths is stripped of the roof, every passing guide and hunter taking a share of the cedar splits to build a fire or sheathe his little cabin. The ends and sides of the building still stand, but they are all that remain to give one an inkling of its former glory. Within its walls the weary choppers, drivers and sawyers were used to take their rest, smoke their pipes, tell their yarns, sing songs, and dry their wet clothes. The shanty, when I saw it last, was damp and mouldy, and smelt very loudly of rotten wood, old clothes and dilapidated rubber boots. A collection of empty medicine bottles and salve boxes had been left in the bunks, telling most plainly that the lumbermen had not escaped their share of the pains and aches and 96 A LOST MOOSE 97 bruises and inflammations that the rest of the world is heir to. A party of gum-pickers were the last occupants, and to keep out the rain and make the place tolerably hab- itable they had patched up a corner of the roof. Under this portion they built a couple of bunks in which they slept at night and sometimes rested during the day when wearied by their toilsome work. A rude table stands in the middle of the floor, and in its decaying wood the gum-pickers had cut their names and told their occupation. The latter was hardly necessary, as the quantity of worthless gum scattered upon the floor should have saved them that trouble. The road that passed by the lumber camp was much traveled by a pair of moose, and runs near a bog where I oftentimes found caribou. Now it struck me that it would be a good idea to spend a night or two in this camp, first fixing up a place on the front part where I could sit at night and watch for passing game. My mind was really bent on getting a shot at the moose whose footprints showed his daily wanderings up and down the road and to the stream, for the pur- pose of feeding along its banks at night. I said to myself " "What an easy thing it will be to sit at the opening in the front of the camp, and when these big fellows come along, put out the muzzle of my rifle and bang away." Of course my plan had nothing to do with the cow-moose, only the bull ; and he must be a 98 SPORT INDEED big one at that. But alas for my program, and for all human speculations when a bull-moose is at the bottom of them ! I directed one of the guides to carry up my bed- ding, a few slices of deer meat, some bread and a large onion ; this he did and then left me to my cogita- tions. These were full of the moose and caribou, and spiced with the thought that, like Selkirk, I was " monarch of all I surveyed." I spent the afternoon on the bog, my heart swelling with a hunter's hope and pumping its valves so fiercely that a caribou might have heard the throb- bings had he been near enough. But he was too wary to venture so close. It is true there were many of them in the bog, and they came near enough to get a scent of me ; but when they got it, it seemed to be all they wanted, for their stay on or around that bog was cut off very short. In a word, they skipped away without my getting even a glimpse of them. As I was stealthily picking my way back again, however, a cow-moose dodged through the trees in front of me. I stopped for several minutes and then crept forward a few feet until a new vista opened up in the spruces. I looked and listened for sounds of any kind, but heard none. Presently a noise came from what appeared at first to be a forked branch away off to my right, and I finally made out that it was a cow-moose. I thought she might have her A LOST MOOSE 99 beau with her, and therefore kept perfectly still so as not to alarm either of them. If the bull wasn't with her he might be somewhere within her call and per- haps would join her. It was half-past three in the afternoon when her form was first fully outlined. I stood motionless and she did the same save once in a while her great ears would be moved a little to catch any strange sounds. The seconds ran into minutes, the minutes into nearly an hour, yet there she stood and in the same pose. It was now so dark that her head, ears and shoulders formed simply a dark, undefined spot. I was com- pletely fagged out and stole softly away. As I left her, she showed no movement of a muscle, and for aught I know, she may be standing there yet. With a sigh of relief I hurried back to mount my point of observation because I felt sure that the pair of " wanderers " I was after would pass my way early in the evening. The guide had fixed up a sort of a platform by laying a door across two boxes on top of the sleeping bunks, and this would bring my shoulders upon a level with the sill of the square window in the gable. Mounting the platform, I sat down to await events. They were not long in coming. I soon heard the sounds of heavy " breaking " down the road, intermingled with the tender tones that char- acterize moose courtship. I now moved a little, to bring my left shoulder clear of the opening, and ioo SPORT INDEED cocked my rifle. The click of the cocking was not loud but it stopped the advancing pair of moose lovers as if they had run up against a stone wall. They stood there for a second or two, and then wheeled about, started for the woods, and got away. This was my last moose experience, so far as they were concerned, and it taught me a lesson. Had I but waited until they were directly in front of me, one good shot and that bull lover of hers would have been " settled for life." It is needless to say that my pride was sadly bruised by the result of my impatience. Every hunter, as you may surmise, is blessed with plenty of pride, and it is so thin-skinned and so easily bruised that if a moose should escape him without, at least, a damaged limb he never forgets his faux-pas nor forgives him- self. Therefore, ye sports, I will hatch a precept for the use of him who may need it, and it would be well for him to paste it in his hat : " Sheathe thy impatience" and you'll miss a multitude of disap- pointments. The Big Moose of Little Tobique A couquest for a prince to boast of. HENRY IV. BOASTING is the badge of the fool. No dyed-in- the-wool sportsman will use it, for he knows too well that his exploits are not due solely to his skill. It is true that the writer succeeded, where other ambitious " sports " had failed, in capturing the " Big Moose of Little Tobique," but this was not because they had been less expert, but for the reason that he had more luck and perseverance. Luck is a potent factor in the hunter's success, and none knows the fact better than himself. And now, in the words of the crook-back Richard, " I will retail my conquest won " and as briefly as its attending incidents will permit. The Tobique River flows into the St. Johns River about a hundred miles from the mouth of the latter at the city of St. Johns, New Brunswick, Canada. The Tobique has four branches and these unite at " The Forks," sixty miles from its mouth, and are named the "Serpentine," the "Sisson," the "Right-hand branch" and the "Left-hand branch" or "Little Tobique." The latter rises in the two Nictau Lakes and these get 101 102 SPORT INDEED their life from a great spring at the base of Bald Mountain the tallest, broadest and longest in the Province, being 2,700 feet high, five miles long, three broad, and surmounted by an almost level plateau. The spring bubbles up volumes of water, so cold that a hand placed in its gush soon becomes numbed ; and so clear that the trout can be seen darting and turn- ing up their speckled sides at the bottom. Whence comes the supply for this inexhaustible spring ? Probably the rainfall on the broad surface of the Bald's top, instead of running off in streams, filters through the mass of earth and rock, to feed a subterranean reservoir, whence through some syphonic power it is forced up to the base of the mountain. For thirty-two miles along the river above the Forks, the country is almost a virgin wilderness. The chopper's axe has not as yet invaded the Nictau Lake region ; and its broad stretches of land give the moose and the caribou all the food they require and the seclusion they covet. The lakes themselves and the " dead-waters " on the small streams are fringed with lily-pads and other aquatic growths that please the palates of these strange animals. Here they may nibble their breakfast, and drink, and attend to their courtship, secluded and undisturbed unless some " Peeping Tom," in the shape of a hunter, should up- set their program. And he often does. During the open season, September 15th to De- BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIQUE 103 ceraber 31st, hunters of all stripes and from almost every civilized nation resort to this region and with one purpose to kill a bull-moose or a bull-caribou. But all are not successful. If they were, the pride of the expert would soon lead his sporting into a more uncertain channel. Uncertainty is the charm that captivates the hunter, and he finds all he wants of it in the chase of the moose and caribou. If he suc- ceeds, he considers himself lucky. If he fails in securing his antlered trophy, he swallows his disap- pointment, and without the sauce of excuse. Mind you, I speak now of the expert hunter. From the lips of the other sort excuses will fall " thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Yallombrosa." By the way, this quotation from Milton is not a happy one, for the blind poet seems to have " put his foot in it " when he created the simile. The forests of Yal- lombrosa are made up of pines whose foliage is not deciduous ; therefore the brooks can never be strewn with thick autumnal leaves. To return to my story. I arrived at " The Forks " on September 19th, and here my guide and cook met me. They said my son was camped some five miles away from the river and near two little mud lakes. On the margin of one the} 7 saw the tracks of a moose, and from their great size were convinced that none other than the Big Moose of Little Tobique could have made them. 104 SPORT INDEED We had some eight miles to paddle up the river be- fore reaching the road that led to the camp, and dur- ing the trip the " big fellow " was the main, topic of our talk. The guide described his enormous tracks, and told of the many places where they were seen. There could be no mistake, for the foot of no ordinary moose would fit them. The shores of many lakes, the dead-waters and the soft places in old roads all bore evidence that he must have been a great stroller, a tramp, the "Weary Willie" of his tribe. All this tramping was, of course, done in his search of some fair one that would listen to his tale of love. Whether he found her or whether the " fair ones " all preferred the fate of a young bull's slave to that of an old one's darling is a question whose answer I will leave to zoological wise-heads. On the river we met my son and his guide. The former had killed a couple of bears a few hours be- fore, and was full of bear-talk rather than moose-talk. But he did take time to corroborate all the marvelous stories of the " big fellow " and his tracks. On our way we passed a lake, reported to be one of his haunts, and we stopped to look for a trace of him. Tracks we found indeed, but I thought they were not made by the fellow we were after. They seemed too long and the hoofs spread too far apart. Moreover, the animal's dew-claws had made a plain impression in the mud, therefore I presumed it to be the footprint of BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIQUE 105 a giant caribou. Unlike the moose's, the caribou's dew- claws are almost on a level with his hoof, and com- bined with the wide opening of the latter they enable him to travel over the snow as glibly and tirelessly as if shod with snow-shoes. The hunter may, and often does, run down the moose in the snow, but if he at- tempts it with the caribou well, in the pithy vernac- ular of the street Arab, he will bite off considerably " more than he can chaw." As we reached camp the sky overclouded and the rain began to fall, and for four days and as many nights it kept on falling. I can assure the reader that when it does rain in this " blue-nosed " region it makes a business of it and does nothing else. I say Uue- nosed, for 'twould be hard to find a New Brunswick man with a nose of any other color. Funny ? Not at all. The nose, as every one knows who has a nose, is the most sensitive of all meteorologic instruments. It is the "poor man's weather-glass" and 'twould be funny indeed if the uninterrupted cold rains and chilly fogs didn't have the effect of changing the color of its tip. During the four days of rain the growth of fungi, edible and inedible, was wonderful. Mushrooms galore, of all shapes, sizes and colors sprang through the earth's crust and so hurriedly that a poet might imagine they had been roused from their embryonic nap by the wand of a magician and were fearful of io6 SPORT INDEED being late to breakfast. However, I am no mushroom crank. My acquaintance with the Basideomyces tribe is slim much too slim to risk my stomach's welfare in their keeping. In other words, I am always in doubt whether Innocence or Death lies hidden under their kid-like caps. But wet weather and mushrooms have nothing to do with the " Big Moose," and so we'll get back on his track. On our first afternoon in camp my guide made the birch-bark horn with which he hoped to lure the old fellow within rifle-reach. Accoutred with this, together with rubber blankets, a lantern and a rifle, we started for the lake, reaching it a few minutes before the daylight vanished into night and the blackest one within my memory. We called and listened and strained our eyeballs trying to peer through the dense pall that hung around us. A pair of moose did come to the water and as their foot- prints indicated next day came very near us. But we didn't see them, and probably would not have seen them had they stepped over us. However, we knew they were there, and fearing they would get on our scent if we stayed through the night, at ten o'clock we groped our way back to camp. Next morning at four o'clock we started again for the lake. The walk was not a pleasant one for the rain was still splashing the road and dripping from the trees. At a quarter to five we reached our " sanctuary " of the night before, u BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIQUE 109 but were too late. The two moose-lovers had de- parted in search of " woods and pastures new." How- ever, they left their tracks behind. One was a young cow-moose ; the other a bull of ordinary size, and we wanted neither of them. Our heart was fixed on big "Weary "Willie" and he had not been in their company. The following night we changed our position to a clump of cedars that stood on a point jutting out into the lake. During the day I had walked twelve miles to reach an old beaver pond and meadow, said to be a haunt of the caribou, and during my absence the guide had " swamped out " a path from the road to the cedar point above mentioned. This enabled us to reach or retire from it silently an impossibility by the old way, as it led through a cedar swamp full of dead branches and rotting wood. About four o'clock the guide, who was alone, heard a branch crack on the edge of the lake, and turning his eyes in the direction of the sound, got his first glimpse of the big fellow upon whose capture we were so eagerly bent. The man had no rifle with him, nothing but his axe, which he laid noiselessly down and crept back to the camp, where he awaited my re- turn. "When I did get back, we started at once for the cedar point, and during our walk, he edified me with a glowing description of the Big Moose-tramp, his marvelous size, his dignified walk, his shape, etc. no SPORT INDEED We reached our hiding-place at the point only to find that "Willie" had left for parts unknown. The guide tried his birch-bark horn, but the dying echoes of its notes were the only reward for his trouble. Once we fancied that the big fellow was listening in the fringe of the woods on the other side of the lake, and when we heard the sound of antlers striking against the branches, we were sure of it. But alas for the certainty of a hunter's calculations ! Antlers they were, but not the antlers we were after. They belonged to one of the lovers that came so near step- ping over us in the darkness of the night before. After we discovered this, we left them to their billing and cooing and returned to camp. The next morning we rose at half-past three. It was still raining, and after a cup of tea and a biscuit we tramped once more to the lake. The moose-lovers were not in sight, but we could hear them as they walked leisurely up the slope of the ridge in front of us. My son had seen this same couple a few days previous and described them to me. " The bull," he said, " has the queerest head I ever saw. The antlers shoot straight up like two half-opened fans standing on end and showing their flat sides to the front. The lady-moose is very tall, graceful and sleek-looking and seemingly without a spark of timidity." I had spent the better part of a day Friday in tramping over a ridge and visiting another pond. BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIQUE 1 1 1 The tramp covered perhaps twenty miles, and when again I reached our clump of cedars, tired nature cried for a rest. As our plan was to lie out all night, we had brought blankets with us, also a steamer rug, but had left the latter under the butt of a fallen tree further down the lake. After the guide had cut a few spruce boughs to make a mattress, I sent him back for the rug and then threw my tired limbs upon the spruce boughs. Twenty minutes or more passed and the guide not returning I thought he might have seen a moose on his way back and feared he might scare him by returning in a direct way to the cedars. Eaising myself slowly from the spruce boughs, I looked around me, and felt convinced that I was right in my conjecture. A hundred and fifty yards away, and directly within the line of trees on the far side of the cove and to my left, I was sure I saw the young bull with the upright antlers. He stood " head on " with his body shielded by the trees, leaving his head and neck alone visible. To shoot or not to shoot was the question, and I had to decide quickly, for the scant daylight was fast melting away in the coming night. A moment of doubt, and then, after careful aim, I fired. I looked, expecting to see the fellow drop. But he didn't drop. This rather astonished me, but there was more astonishment in store he hadn't moved. Putting in another cartridge, again I fired and again I looked. The upright antlers were still there in 112 SPORT INDEED statu quo. " Thomas," I said to myself, " is thee daft or dreaming ? " The question was not an unreason- able one and to satisfy myself whether I was either or both, again I loaded up and again banged away. Before I had time to note the result of the last shot, the guide rushed in out of breath. " What are you shooting at ? " he asked. " A bull-moose ; there he stands ; don't you see his head sticking out from behind that tree ? " "With a loud laugh he replied, " Yes, I see it ; I saw it this morning ; and I would advise you to waste no more of your cartridges on the turned-up root of an old cedar stump." A cedar stump 1 Shades of the mighty Nimrod, had it come to this ? Could it be possible that my eyes could see no difference 'twixt a moose's head and a cedar stump ? The guide's pill was a bitter one, yet I swallowed it, and then asked him if he had found the rug. He said no ; that he had looked under the butt of every fallen tree, but couldn't find it. " Well," I said, " I will go and get the rug, and in the mean- time you keep your eye on that root and tell me if it moves." I then left him mumbling something to him- self about the probability of a cedar stump moving. , On my return, I decided that he should go to the lower end of the lake and " call," for if the pair of moose did come in they would be likely to visit the cove. After he left, I looked for the cedar root and it BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIQUE 1 13 wasn't there. The stump, or whatever it was, had van- ished. Here was a mystery, and not a pleasant one for a sport to ponder on, especially if he prides him- self on being a tolerably good shot. Again I looked and then rubbed my eyes in wonder. The stump was back again and in the identical spot it had occupied before. Just at this moment I heard the guide give a " call " on his birch-bark horn. ISTo echo followed it, for the woods were still soaking wet ; but it sounded very like the plaintive call of a disconsolate lady-moose, and its effect upon the antlers of my cedar stump was mag- ical. They dropped at once out of sight and in a second or two reappeared. The mystery was solved. It was a moose indeed, but only a cow-moose. She had been standing like a statue, and what I thought were antlers were only her big ears which, standing straight up and thrown forward, really looked like the pair of antlers my son had described. The reason why my three shots had missed her was plain enough. She had been standing between two trees, with her head turned towards me almost at right angles with her body, and the bullets had all entered the intercepting tree which, in the uncertain light, I had mistaken for the foreshoulder of a moose. At the sound of the birch-bark horn she changed the position of her ears, and then I had no doubt of her sex. Nor was her gentleman attendant far away. 114 SPORT INDEED The male-moose, though always watchful over his mistress, is very careful to keep in the background if he scents danger in air. He heard the guide's call, and, as he moved up and down behind the shelter of the trees, gave his answer. It was not a loud one, but it was loud enough to reach the ear of his frau, and affectionate enough to arouse her jealousy. A moose-wife is very like the human-wife in her notions of conjugal propriety, and has as little toleration for her husband's flirtations ; therefore, as soon as she heard him answer the guide's loving call she began to scold, and in a manner that told him he must stop that sort of thing or she would know the reason why. I had instructed the guide to call not oftener than once in fifteen minutes, and this intermission gave the bull time to quiet down. But her ladyship still stood there, scolding away with all the vim of an Irish washer- woman, when the horn sounded the second time. Again the unfaithful partner of her bosom began to strut about behind the cedars, breaking the branches with his feet and hitting them with his antlers. At this moment a far-away bark or rather a half- bark and a half-grunt struck our ear. It was another bull-moose answering the call and his answer was bold and clear. The " unfaithful hubby " that had been strutting so proudly heard it too, and the effect on him was curious. He stopped his strutting instantly and became as quiet as a lamb. BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIQUE 1 15 Again came the far-off bark, but this time much nearer than before. The guide answered it with a low, plaintive call intended to indicate that her coun- terfeit cow ship was extremely delighted to have her K. S. V. P. answered so promptly. The birch-bark horn was now laid aside, for the bull was coming with mighty strides, breaking the branches under his feet and crashing his antlers against the trees. In the meanwhile the lady-moose on my left had stepped out into the water. Though I did not see her, I could hear her drinking, and also heard her mate wade in, splashing the water around him. But the other chap we were so eagerly waiting for was quiet. Not a sound came from his direction. He was either stealing down to the water on tiptoe or standing still and listening. And thus the minutes passed. The pair of moose-lovers had drunk their fill, and now we heard them in the darkness nibbling at the lily-pads. To the right of where I was lying, and perhaps fifteen feet away, was another piece of ground with a wet, sticky bottom of gray clay, and in this I first saw the footprints of the Big Moose of Little Tobique. Turning myself to the moose-lovers on the left and looking towards the right, I saw the flash of a light. My first thought was that the guide had struck a match to light his path toward me. But quickly as the flash came, just as quickly did it disappear. I laid for a moment puzzled, and then saw what puz- ii6 SPORT INDEED zled me still more a star peeking through the trees and close to the earth. While I was wondering what business a star had there when there was none over- head, it suddenly flickered out. In the fraction of a second a double star took its place. My comprehen- sion at last was master of the situation. The light of the match, the star and the double star were one and the same phosphorescent gleams from the eyes of the big moose. He had crept stealthily down to the water and was now close to me so close that his breathing and he had no " bellows to mend " was plainly audible. I was lying behind a log and at one time fancied he might take a notion to step over it, and drive me into the earth with those big feet of his. But he didn't. I had my electric lamp with me and turned its rays to the right and to the left of me, then to my head and to my feet ; yet I saw nothing around me but the ghostly, cedar branches. How- ever, the three moose must have seen the illumina- tion, and yet strange to say, it didn't startle them. Just then I heard a whistle out on the road. It mocked the note of a bird and was a signal from the guide that the moose had passed him on the road to the water. Ah, he little knew how near I was to the big fellow ! However, there was one thing that I knew it was essential that I get away, and get away quickly lest some tale-bearing zephyr should inform the intelligent noses of these animals that a human BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIQUE 117 being was on their track. And yet I was afraid to leave until the big fellow would step into the water. This would show me that his suspicions were lulled. Nor could I shoot, because I couldn't see him. Had the guide been with me he might have handled the electric lamp and its flash would have been sufficient to direct my aim, had I been disposed to take advan- tage of it which I would not have done, for such an act would have been unlawful. My hunting experience has often placed me in situ- ations of intense excitement and anxiety, but none of them contained as much of either as the present one. I waited, it seemed to me, an age for the big fellow to move. At last he made one step into the water, and now came my chance. Leaving the blankets and rug where they lay, and pointing the glass bulb of the electric lamp to the ground, I tiptoed over logs and under branches and through bits of water and across bits of corduroy road, and did it all so gently and quietly that none of the creatures I had left be- hind heard me. If they had done so they gave no evidence of it. I was glad to reach the road with the conviction that my moose companions were still nib- bling their lily-pads in peace and in the unconscious- ness of danger. The guide assured me that my friend the moose could be none other than the Big Moose of Little Tobique. " I know this," he said, " by the manner in ii8 SPORT INDEED which he answered my call. But I didn't know you had two others on your string. I was afraid you had fallen asleep." Asleep ? Hardly. If five hours of pent-up anxiety and excitement five hours of close companionship with three moose if this is not enough to keep a hunter's eyes open, he must be drowsy indeed. It was an experience I wouldn't have missed for the price of my vacation ; an experience bulging with events of kaleidoscopic variety. The cedar root the queer antlers my three shots the first bull's attempted infidelity his scolding wife the lighted match the phosphorescent stars the stentorian lungs of the big bull the wait for his step into the water the wait to reach the road surely Queen Mab might find enough material in all this to stuff my dreams for months to come. At three o'clock the following morning we were up and ready for our parts in the last act of our moose drama. A light breakfast, and then with our rifles and electric lamp we trudged again through the mud, the wet and the pitch-like darkness. 'Twas no wonder that the mile-and-a-half to the lake seemed like a dozen of them. Slowly and silently we trod, for we were certain the moose were in the water, and the noisy break of a branch or a stumble would have ended our hope of getting a crack at them. As we came nearer the cove, we listened and caught the A NEW BRUNSWICK TOTE-ROAD THE AUTHOR IN THE DISTANCE BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIOUE 121 welcome sound of splashing. They were there ! But now the most difficult part of our journey lay before us the entrance to the cedar point, and through the cedar swamp. There were two paths ; one by way of the cove and the other in which we would follow the footsteps of our moose No. 3. We took the latter, thinking that all three animals would likely be to- gether in the cove. I led the way, pointing the light to the ground. The guide followed, both of us tread- ing carefully and shying away from every dead twig. We could not have trod with more circumspection had the road been paved with dynamite. Three old, dead trees lay in our path. They were without bark and so slippery with rain that both of us thought it safer to get over them on our hands and knees. Then came the soft strip of gray mud ; then a couple of rotten and moss-covered spruce logs ; and then the clump of cedars. To get inside of the dense cover of the latter we were again forced to resort to our hands and knees, and so crawled into our lair. The day had not yet broke and the darkness was impene- trable. There was but one thing to do or rather two things wait and listen. We felt sure that if the moose would remain. till dawn our victory was certain. And thus in the darkness, waiting and listening, we passed the anxious minutes, hoping and praying for the dawn. It came at last, yet when it did, and I looked into the cove, my eyes as yet saw 122 SPORT INDEED nothing they could shape into a moose. My ears, however, were en-garde, telling me plainly that a moose, perhaps the big fellow himself, was at the bottom of all that wading and splashing. And then my eyes began to get their work in. Something, that in the glimmer of the breaking day they took to be the top of a fallen tree, had changed its shape. 'Twas not a tree now, but a moose and a monstrous one. Was it a bull or a cow ? I couldn't tell for its back was toward me and its head in the water. But our doubt was of short duration. A few minutes, and the great beast turned around and started on a walk straight toward us. And now luck was at my elbow ready to do her part in the capture of the big fellow. Following the line of the shore he came directly around the cedar point where we were waiting for him. His appearance as he walked majestically around the point in the light of the hazy morning reminded me of the picture of a " mammoth " that I had seen in my boyhood days, painted upon the side of a building and used by the firm as their trade mark. Some thirty years have passed, yet I haven't forgotten the "mammoth." To return to the big fellow. He seemed in no hurry, but stepped along as if time were made for slaves and not for a bull of his dignity. He had evidently eaten his fill and was on his way to some favored spot where he might rest and sleep, and so BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIOUE 123 prepare himself for another night's flirtation. But alas! the best-laid plans of a moose, like those of mice and men, "aft gang aglee." Leisurely he ap- proached until he came quite within range. Then the sharp crack of a rifle rang out on the air and the flirtation days of the " Big Moose of Little Tobique " were ended forever. The ball had pierced his heart and he fell in his tracks a few feet from the shore. The guide gave me a shake of the hand and a con- gratulatory hug, and then jumping over the prostrate quarry tried to slew him around so we might pull him out of the water by his hind feet. In this we didn't succeed. So I told the guide to go to the camp and bring the cook a strapping big chap and also a rope. Fastening the latter to one of the moose's hind feet, we managed, after a deal of pulling and twisting and turning, to get our prize on terra firma. Then we took a good look at his tremendous size, and the sight of such a mountain of moose-flesh nearly robbed us of our breath. Examination showed us that we were not the only sports that had followed his big heels with murderous intent, for there was a bullet hole in the left blade of his antlers and two buckshot holes were in the right. His feet were a study. Six and a half inches from toe to heel was the measurement of the largest moose- feet I had hitherto seen, but this fellow's covered eleven and three-quarters. They were chipped and 124 SPORT INDEED ragged and worn awry under the unnumbered miles of his midnight tramps. However, the chiropodistic skill of the taxidermist has remedied all that. He has cured and polished them and now they are quite fit to adorn a room, and quite able to prove their owner's right to his title : THE BIG MOOSE OF LITTLE TOBIQUE. The Lost Wallet Thereby hangs a tale. MEEBY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 'Tis a slippery world that we live in so slippery, indeed, that it often puzzles a man to travel its glib paths and keep on his feet. Nor are its paths the only slippery things. Money, for instance, has a reputation that Avay, and I, for one, can vouch the reputation to be deserved. By the way, what is money? lago defined it as " trash," but the oily rascal's lexigraphy, like his love for the Moor, was a little lop-sided. The world's definition, I think, hits nearer the mark : " Money is a something that no fellow can get along without." As Owen Meredith once said or rather, neglected to say: We may live without wisdom, may live without wit ; We may live without pluck, or the thing we call grit ; We may live without brains if we've plenty of gall We may live without using our noddle at all ; We may live without sweets, without sugar and honey, But where is the fellow can live without money ? No ; the man who lacks it finds himself in what he calls " trouble," and his friends, though willing enough to acknowledge his strait, are not always so willing to help him out of it. 125 126 SPORT INDEED As for the "gay sport," I believe he is seldom afflicted in that way ; although he is thought to be, and probably is, less cautious than other people in his care of the cash. The latter has a go-easy manner of get- ting away from him, but he doesn't care a continental how easy it goes, provided it leave behind its quid pro quo in the shape of his enjoyment. There may be times, however, when a little financial care on his part would be advisable. If, for instance, he happen to be in the wilds of a forest, hundreds of miles away from his bank account, and with all his available funds lying in a wallet in his inside pocket. At such a time prudence should dictate that he keep his mind's eye on the leathern receptacle and not let it get beyond his reach at least, without his knowledge and consent. Now, to a man who " travels on his shape " the ab- sence of a stuffed wallet may be of little consequence. But " the sport " is not built that way. His stock of " shape " is limited, and even if it were not, his man- hood would probably rebel against getting through the world in such a questionable manner. He is in the habit of paying for what he gets, and I speak feelingly sometimes for what he doesn't get. But to return to my mutton, otherwise my wallet, I will relate how that leathern receptacle did get be- yond my reach and without either my knowledge or consent. THE LOST WALLET 127 It was a part of my hunting luck to spend a couple of nights in a series of old camps, one of which was without any roof and the others with only a bit of one large enough to cover a corner. I was alone, so far as the company of mortals was concerned, but of the other sort I had plenty. I was surrounded by wild neighbors whose tracks showed they were in the habit of frequenting the camp yard to eat of the grass that grew upon a pile of camp refuse and manure, and also to take a lick or a nibble at the old salt-pork barrels which lay bleaching and rotting in the sun and rain. The camp wherein I made my bunk was damp and smelt as foul as an old cellar. The rain had free ac- cess to it, but the sun hadn't, therefore it was not strange that the floor should be dank and green with mould. Old boots, and rubbers and discarded clothes were scattered profusely about acting like so many sponges to catch and hold the moisture. At night when I passed from one camp building to the other I carried an electric lamp. This was imperative in order that I might not lose my way or break my neck in winding through the labyrinth of empty butter and nail kegs, old tin cans, etc., etc. During the early part of my first night there I had been watching for a moose from behind an opening in the gable of one of the buildings and had taken my wallet from the inside pocket of my vest. This was a matter 128 SPORT INDEED of precaution, for, with every breath I took, the wallet would give a creak ; not much of a noise, to be sure, but enough to catch the ear of the moose I was ex- pecting to pass that way. When the night became so dark that I could no longer see, I put the wallet in the hip pocket of my trousers and returned to the other building containing my bunk. Then I un- dressed, crawled into my sleeping bag, and was soon in the land of oblivion. About one o'clock I was aroused by the whistling and stamping of a deer close to the camp. During my nap the night had grown so very cold that I reached for my trousers and sweater and, putting them on, crawled again into my sleeping bag and slept till sunrise. My sleep, however, had been troubled by a dream in which my wallet played a conspicuous part. Now I am not posted in the phi- losophy of dreams, but those who profess to be as- sert that these mysterious visions are sure foretellers of coming events. In my case the dream was not out of the way regarding the loss of my wallet, but it slipped up a little on the manner of the loss. I cer- tainly had no hole in my trousers' pocket, which the dream said I had ; nor did the wallet keep me busy in picking it up and replacing it a dozen times before I discovered there was a hole. But these were trivial errors. Suffice it to say the dream was vivid enough to make me jump up, as soon as my eyes opened, and thrust my hand into my trousers' pocket. There was w W H THE LOST WALLET 129 no hole there, neither was there any wallet. There could be no more doubt about my having put the wal- let in that pocket the night before, than there was a certainty now that it was somewhere else. But where ? Could I have dropped it on the bog ? This seemed probable and I started at once on the search. When I tell the reader that there was $135.00 in it for me, he may not wonder that I did my best to suc- ceed. It is true, $135.00 is not a fortune, but it is a good deal better than nothing ; and nothing was sure to be the something I would have if I didn't find that wallet. Therefore. eagerly did I search, following my tracks of the previous day, tramping on them back and forth and examining every place to which they led. But all to no purpose. No wallet was to be seen. Somewhat out of temper I returned to the camp, took off the spruce boughs from the bunk, and shook out the blankets with the hope that the wallet might turn up. But it didn't. Then I went outside and sat me on a log, and I will venture to say that there was more solid thinking done on the top of that log at that time than will ever be done there again. At one end of the log there was a soft piece of ground in which I saw tracks that looked to me like those of the porcupine. Instantly my wits began to work and in detective fashion : " If those are a porcupine's foot- prints his home is probably somewhere under this very camp. If so, may not my wallet have fallen from the 130 SPORT INDEED bunk while I was asleep and have been picked up and carried off by this prickly thief?" The thought started me back to the old camp to examine the floor. It was made of long thin logs, the surfaces of which were chopped off with an axe. Between two of these logs was a space just wide enough to allow the wallet to drop through that is, if it were dropped directly over the crack. But the logs were laid at right angles to the bunk, so that if the wallet had fallen over the side, it must have reversed itself in order to slide down the narrow slit. This seemed improbable, but not enough so to dampen my hopes. I determined to pry up the logs, and with an old axe that was lying in the corner I soon made a wooden crowbar for the purpose. One of the logs had a bend in one end which caused the opening I have referred to. I placed my bar un- der this log, ripped it from its place, and found, as I had expected, that the ground underneath had been well furrowed with porcupines. Striking a match I looked down into the hole. The dim light showed me no wallet, and I struck another match with a like re- sult. Then I tried the electric lamp, and its light en- abled me to explore thoroughly all the nooks and cran- nies of a porcupine's home. And there in one of these nooks, and totally unconscious of the anxiety it had cost its owner, lay my green wallet. It was un- harmed, excepting that it had four marks which it bears to this day. Whether these were made by the THE LOST WALLET 131 claws or teeth of my friend the " fretful porcupine," or by some other agency, was then, and is now, a mys- tery. But there is another and a deeper mystery which neither Time nor mortal ingenuity is likely to solve : how the deuce could that wallet crawl from my trousers' pocket, jump from the bunk, turn a somer- sault, and dive into the household of that porcupine ? A Close Call Escaped with the skin of my teeth. Jos 19 : 20. OF all the things in this world which are not pic- turesque, the breaking of camp after a long season spent in the woods of Maine comes close to being at the top. We had spent many long and exciting days in the wilds of Maine, and camp was broken at six in the morning. The camp had been on a high ledge, overlooking a circular sheet of water known as Moose Pond. The latter is flanked by bogs on two sides, a cove at one side and a stream that runs into it from a small lake above. It was a dismal day, and the three guides looked glum when we started to make our way out of the pond and through the cove into the lake be- yond. The wind blew directly in our faces, and the guides seemed to be afraid of everything. First they were afraid they could not get the canoes around the point, then afraid they would have to camp on the shore of the cove in fact, there was nothing they were not afraid of. Finally, my son and I told them that if they would only put us on the other side of the cove we would lighten the canoes by walking the two miles across the point and through the woods. 132 A CLOSE CALL 133 "Well, we started, and, although it rained buckets of water, I rather enjoyed the experience. We found many fresh tracks of big game, the windfalls were few, and as the path was deeply carpeted with fresh- fallen leaves the walk was anything but tedious. On leaving the forest the road led through a piece of burnt land. I heard a cow-bell jingling and soon spied some cattle feeding off to the right, and, straight in front of me, were two deer. But they had scented me, and as they threw their heels up and bounded away, I tried a shot at the nearest one, but ah, there's that " but " again ! I missed, and the deer, in a twin- kling, were safe in the timber. We reached the lake and then had a long wait for the canoes. On their arrival we found one of them had shipped a good bit of water, and that they all had had a narrow call from capsizing. The wind was in- creasing every minute, and as it was necessary for us to cross the lake (here about a mile and a half wide), we put the baggage into one canoe, and, with our strongest guide to handle the stern paddle and me at the bow paddle, while my son squatted down in the centre of the canoe, we pushed out into the turbulent waters. The wind was blowing a gale straight down the lake, and strong enough to pick the water from the tops of the white caps and blow it around us in the shape of fine spray. Our course lay diagonally across or up the lake in the teeth of the gale, and hardly had 134 SPORT INDEED we gotten a hundred yards from shore before my son's "sou'wester" hat was knocked off by the guide's pad- die. But that was no place nor time to stop for a hat. The canoe mounted and rode the waves beautifully, and yet at times it seemed as if the wind would cap- size it or blow it out of the water, particularly when we reached the centre of the lake, and the canoe was turned obliquely down towards the other shore. Then we had to paddle for our very lives and watch the waves to see that they didn't break over us. When the light canoe was going down the sloping sides or in the hol- low of a big wave, we had to use every pound of our reserve strength to shove her along before another mountain of water caught us. It was indeed a tick- lish trip, for had we capsized we would have had no show whatever in the icy water, as our heavy hip boots would have prevented any chance of our swimming or of a rescue. We fully appreciated the situation. However, we got over without mishap, other than a wetting, a lost hat, and a profuse perspiration from hard paddling. We were safe, and for this we de- voutedly thanked the Ordainer of all things. We stopped for dinner at the little frame hotel, the Chesuncook House, which is the last sign or semblance of a hostelry you see before plunging into the great wilderness beyond. Among those who were making the hotel their headquarters were three sports who went out in the morning to hunt and returned at A CLOSE CALL 137 night to recuperate. They had killed a nice buck the day before our arrival and had set it up on the shore of the lake for inspection. It was hanging from a trident formed of three poles, and while the rain beat upon it and the wind swayed it to and fro the hunters watched it with admiring eyes ; and well they might, for it was a beauty. Now, two of the aforesaid sports were from Wood- bury, N. J., and the other from Boston. The Boston man and one of the Woodbury men were built on the corpulent model, extremely oily, and with a girth that might have rivaled Falstaff's. But they were not sensitive on that point, as some oleaginous men are men to whom the slightest reference or even glance in a stomachward direction would be at once a casus belli. Our conversation at dinner turned upon the treat- ment they had been experiencing from their guides. " Do you know," said the Boston man, " I have had the most unpleasant experience rubbed into me by these guides and I don't care to have the operation repeated." " What was the nature of the operation ? " I ven- tured to ask. "Well, you probably have noticed that I have a good deal of butter in my make-up and I don't care to have it all melted at once, which seemed to be what these guides were after. They told us that the Am- bezuskas meadow was a glorious place to hunt in, and 138 SPORT INDEED so it may be for a lean man ; surely no fat man could find any glory in it unless his fat be of a more un- meltable quality than mine. Imagine three hundred pounds of flesh floundering through mud and water, tripping over cedar roots, falling over logs, struggling for a little temporary foothold in order to pull one- self out of the mud and regain an upright position, while the guide stands at a safe distance away, beckoning and shouting ' come on ! ' After this part of the programme had been repeated several times, always winding up with ' come on,' tired Nature gave out and refused to comply with the guide's man- date. Mounting a stump I gathered together what little strength I had left and put it .all into a shout, * You be d d ! I'll not " come on " any more. " Come on " yourself, that's what I'm paying you for.' " His story, by the way, reminds me of another which is short enough and good enough to fit in here. Two would-be deer hunters, one thin and wiry, the other round and oily, had struck a trail and the thin fellow lifting his eyes saw a big buck bounding di- rectly towards them. " There he comes ! lie down ! " shouted the thin chap, but seeing no reduction in the obtrusive size of his companion again he shouted, " Lie down ! Lie down ! " This time an answer came from the direction of the butter pile. A CLOSE CALL 139 " D n it all, I am lying down ! " " The d 1 you are ! Then stand up and perhaps the buck won't see you." We left Chesuncook Lake at half-past one in the afternoon, fixed our loads in the canoes at a landing stage near the mouth of the river, and in the driving, pitiless rain, we started to paddle up the stream, in- tending to reach the Halfway House, about eleven miles up, before dark. On the trip up the " sport " is expected to leave the canoe and walk around the stream's obstructions known as the Pine Stream Falls, Kocky Rips and the Fox Hole Rapids, while the guide, with the lightened canoe, poles it up against the swift current which swirls and eddies around the huge rocks lying in all sorts of ways and angles in the bed of the stream. "We walked therefore through a path in the woods around Pine Stream Falls and the Rocky Rips, and above them was a stretch of dead-water which ended at the foot of Fox Hole Rapids. Here we left the canoes again and took to the road which runs in a nearly straight direction, while the river makes a great bend off to the right, and the road for the distance of, say a mile and a half, cuts off quite a detour in the river. Just as we entered this road I told my son to walk ahead very carefully until he came to a piece of burnt land which my recollection said was a feeding ground for deer, and he might get a shot. As he emerged from the 140 SPORT INDEED woods I saw him stop on the burnt land and take his rifle from under his arm (it was still pouring rain). I saw him aim and fire and a deer bound away, while the youth jumped over burnt timber and scrambled through stunted brush. Again I saw him aim and fire, and I saw the deer drop. Now we were in a pickle ; night was coming on fast and the canoes were away off to the right. The rain was splashing down in torrents. There was no time to wait, so we at once opened the deer and took out the " inwards," cut a sapling with our knives, ran it through the " hocks " of the deer, slung it on our shoulders and started for the road. This road is called a " tote-road " by courtesy, and in winter it is much used for hauling supplies on when there is a good depth of snow. In summer and fall it is not much used, and there are rocks and roots upon it, and holes in it that would shame the " Slough of Despond." It was now dusk, and soon became pitch dark. And the rain, how it did pour ! We stumbled and slid along over roots and water and mud, swaying from side to side with our unwieldy load, rifle in one hand and the other steadying the pole on our shoulders, every now and then tramping on the deer's head which hung and dragged on the ground. So for the mile and a half we trudged along until the canoes were reached. Here we found the guides angry and alarmed at our prolonged absence, and, as they were soaking wet, A CLOSE CALL 143 we couldn't blame them. "We got into the canoes again and paddled briskly until we saw a welcome light shining ahead at the Halfway House. This house is built away up on a clay bank, and set far enough back from the river to prevent the Spring and Fall floods from washing it away. Now a steep, clayey bank on a night when the water is pouring down is not a nice one for a lot of half-frozen, half- drowned men to clamber up. We slid and slipped here and there, now down and now up, until we were well-covered with clay ; but we were cheerful withal, and that's a great deal towards contentment. We at last reached the house, had our baggage brought in, and to our disgust found everything was wet over- coats, blankets, underclothes, negatives, etc., etc. A big fire was built in a big stove. We ate supper, hung our wet clothes around the fire, emptied all of our luggage sacks and hung the contents of them upon the chairs and benches as well as upon the wall. After this task we went to bed and were soon wrapt in the sweet sleep that comes to all men who labor in the open air and know how to make the best of storm or cold or any other of Nature's unpleasant pranks which she may be pleased to play upon them. At half-past three the next morning we tumbled out of bed, ate a hasty breakfast of bread and butter and bacon and coffee, repacked all our things in their proper sacks, carried them down and placed them in 144 SPORT INDEED the canoes. Then before the goddess of morn had time to get her eyes open, we pushed off for our last canoeing trip of that season. The pouring rain had now ceased and the weather had turned so cold that the water froze upon our paddles, and the river was so nearly frozen that there was little or no spring in the canoes. 'Twas a dead push all the way up to the Northeast Carry. "We had not been able to draw on our leather boots by reason of their soaking of the night before, and rubber boots had to be substituted ; and these, in that biting cold, made it uncomfortable paddling. After a run of four miles we were glad to push the canoes ashore, build a fire and warm up. At about nine o'clock we landed at the Carry, hired a wagon to tote our stuff over to Moosehead Lake and then walked the two miles of good road which constitutes this famous Carry. "When we reached the little hotel at the lake end of the Carry we had to wait several hours for a steam- boat to take us to Greenville, forty miles away, whence the train is taken for Bangor. Here I noticed a youth who looked feeble and sick, as if nigh unto death. He was a farmer's boy whose home was near Hartford, Conn. The boy had read and reread stories of hunters ; of their happy lives in the woods, and their ignorance of restraint, and pored over them until his brain had room for nothing else. The read- ing of Cooper's novels had so fired his imagination A CLOSE CALL 145 that he resolved to live the life of a hunter, and to do it he believed that nothing more was needed than to go into the woods with a rifle and a rubber blanket. This was no theory with him to dream over, but one to act upon. He came alone from his farm, went alone into the woods and very soon stalked a deer which he succeeded in killing. Then his youthful breast beat high with rapture as he saw the noble quarry lying at his feet. But hunger must be ap- peased, and he was hungry, no doubt about that. He dressed the deer, cut a steak, still reeking with animal heat, built a fire, toasted the venison on a stick and greedily ate it. Then spreading his rubber blanket upon the ground and without either a blanket to cover him or a sleeping bag to crawl into he laid him down in the frosty air and slept the sleep of youth and tired-out nature. Next morning he awoke with shivering body and chattering teeth and a burning pain in the intestines. Hanging up his deer in a tree as well as he could, he built a fresh fire and tried to warm his body and dispel the chill which at last gave way to a fever and a splitting headache. The morn- ing passed, noon came, and night, and there he lay. On the morning of the second day, prone upon the ground, with the red squirrels busy about him gather- ing their winter stores, the poor boy lay. Here, sick, far from home, from kindred, from mother's care, or doctor's aid, he was found by a party of lumbermen 146 SPORT INDEED who carried him to their camp and nursed and fed him as well as they could for six days. Then as the winter was fast closing in they sent a man out of the woods with him to the Carry, and here I saw him. His attendant asked me if I would look after him as far as I went. I told him nothing could give me more pleasure than to do so. When the steamboat arrived I took him aboard, got a sofa for him to lie upon, and then looked over my medicine chest. Picking out some tablets, which had a very little of morphia in them, I gave him one of these every three hours and made him drink hot milk with some cayenne pepper in it. We reached Greenville very late at night, left at six the next morning and arrived at Bangor about noon, leaving the latter sometime in the early afternoon. At these places, and wherever and whenever I could get the hot milk, I made the poor boy drink it. At Portland, I had a doctor examine him who said that the boy was certainly in the early stages of typhoid fever and that he also had intestinal catarrh, caused by the eating of the venison before it had parted with its animal heat. The doctor also said that the tablets I had given him were " right " and that the hot milk was " right." We reached Boston at nine o'clock in the evening, and thinking that the train I was to take was the same which was to carry the boy to his home, I took him to the Providence depot, but found I was A CLOSE CALL 147 mistaken, and that he had to go by the Boston and Albany Railway. My time was short and his, too. Checking my own baggage I engaged my berth, then left my son with the remainder of the stuff and started for the other depot. It was raining heavily, and at that time of night I could find neither carriage nor street car, and so was compelled partly to support and carry, and partly to drag the sick boy on the way. "We reached the train with five minutes to spare. After buying his ticket I helped him into a car, laid him down and then hunted up the conductor a portly, pompous, beggar-on-horseback sort of a fellow and asked him if he wouldn't kindly look after the boy to the end of his division and then ask the following conductor also to see to his comfort. His reply was perhaps what I might have expected. " No, sir ! I have no time to look after sick people. I've got my train to attend to, and if the boy gives me any trouble I'll put him off at Worcester and send him to the hospital." A man was standing near him (probably a railway official) who had listened to my story and request and to the conductor's reply. He turned quickly to the man of brass buttons and swinging lantern, and spoke with a frown. The words were few and their purport I did not catch ; but, whatever it may have been, the change was magical. The conductor came toward me and in the most polite and cringing manner promised to look 148 SPORT INDEED after the boy. Then the semaphore over the gate changed from red to white, the bell rang, a shout of " All aboard," and with measured puff the train was on its way. My own train was to leave at midnight and I hur- ried back to it through the rain which pelted in tor- rents and wet me through. However, it took but little time to get undressed and into my berth. A few moments afterward I felt the train moving out of the station, and then all knowledge and recollec- tion took a back seat. I knew nothing until I awoke next morning at my destination, fully aware that the hunting season was over, that I was back among my friends and loved ones, sound in mind and limb, re- vived in brain and ready for any amount of work. Verily, " Hunting is an exercise To make man sturdy, active, wise ; To fill his spirits with delight, To help his hearing, mend his sight, To teach him arts that never slip His memory ; canoemanship, And search and sharpness and defense, And all ill habits chaseth hence." The Fun of Hunting I love the sport well. Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. YES, I love the sport of hunting and love it well, especially if a bull-moose or a caribou be the object of it. To be sure it entails several things which the city- bred tenderfoot might call discomforts, such as wad- ing through watery bogs, tumbling into mudholes, sleeping in wet forests, and, should his lumber muscles have the temper of mine, a struggle or two with lum- bago. My own comfort and the sport itself have often been at loggerheads and had many a spat ; yet I always sided with the sport " Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more." One of my trips found me at the Nictau Lakes, but the continuous high winds in that region interfering with the hunting, our party turned their faces home- ward. We spent part of a day in shoving down the Tobique River to Red Brook, a distance of twelve miles. Here we hid the bulk of our supplies in the mouth of an old lumber road, and taking as much of the stuff as four of us could handle, carried it over two ridges to a " dead-water " on a small brook seven 149 150 SPORT INDEED miles from the river. Then we located ourselves at an abandoned lumber camp and spent the night there. It was decided that my son should take up his quarters at the foot of one piece of dead-water and I at the head of another, a mile and a half away. The sky was threatening and rain began to fall at two o'clock in the morning. We watched and called at intervals till dawn began to break ; then wearied with watching and chilled to the bone I crawled under my blanket. The guide had wandered down the stream, a hun- dred yards or more, to where it is crossed by a little bridge. Here he stopped for the purpose of taking a drink of water. As he stepped on the bridge, he saw a bull-moose move cautiously out of the woods and head for my direction. The guide watched him in- tently, and when the moose would make a step he would do the same, so as to not attract the animal's attention by the noise made in walking. The moose took the opposite bank of the stream, walking a few steps and then stopping to listen. Whenever the bull stopped, the guide also would stop, and thus a consid- erable time was spent before the latter reached the place where I lay snuggled under my blanket. By the time the bull got directly opposite to me, the guide had reached a clump of alders, behind which he stood and within earshot. He did not dare to give the moose a chance to see him, but I heard him say in low, THE FUN OF HUNTING 151 measured tones, " There's a bull-moose standing right across the brook in the edge of the woods. Don't get up too quick, but be swift with your shot and don't miss him." Before the guide had finished his instructions I had my rifle out from under the shelter of the rubber blankets and cocked. Then, slowly raising myself to a standing position, I saw the bull. He saw me, too, and turned quickly around to make his way into the woods. But my rifle was a little quicker than the bull. I fired, and the ball struck him squarely on the left hip-bone, crushing its way through it and drop- ping the big fellow in his tracks. But it took two more bullets to finish him. After breakfast we went to work skinning and quartering him. When this was done we undertook the more delicate task of removing the scalp from the head and cleaning the skull for mounting. Then we hung up the meat to cool off, and salted the hide and head. After dinner we explored and discovered another dead-water two miles off, on the Restigouche "Waters. The little stream that formed it was less than a hun- dred yards from the Tobique waters, upon which we were hunting. A caribou bull broke cover, some three hundred and fifty yards away, and ran directly across the level. This incident decided us to try the same dead- 152 SPORT INDEED water that night, with the hope of getting a shot at one of his tribe. We returned to camp, packed up our bedding, took a few biscuits and a small pail of water to comfort us during the night, and again reached the lower end of the dead-water at five o'clock. We cut an avenue into the alders, cleared off a bit of ground, laid our blankets down, and tried to find out if there wasn't another stretch of dead- water further down. At the very extreme point of an open space was a bottomless mud-hole and diago- nally across it an old cedar tree had fallen. It was necessary to cross over this tree to work our way down the stream. The guide got on the small end of it and, with a pole, worked his way safely over ; then it was my turn and I was equally successful, until the butt-end of the tree was reached. Then the old cedar crushed with my weight, my left foot came in contact with one of its broken slivers, and in a jiffy I was off the log and into the mud-hole. It was lucky for me however unlucky it may be for my readers that an alder branch on the bank hung within my reach. No drowning man ever snatched at his proverbial straw with keener haste than did I at that alder branch. With its aid I began to pull myself out of my predica- ment ; it was slow work, for the mud seemed deter- mined not to let me slip from its slimy clutches. However, I did get out of them, and when I stood on the bank I looked about me for my rifle. Like a THE FUN OF HUNTING 153 faithful friend it had followed me on my plunge, and I now saw it rapidly disappearing in the hole, butt- end first, and, for all I knew, on its way to the antipodes. The guide saw it too, and reaching over caught it by the muzzle, in time to stop its mad, or rather mud-career, and proudly restored it to the hands of its owner. Its " owner's " hands, as well as every other part of him, needed some restoring. My trousers were be- daubed an inch thick with the sticky stuff, and my drawers so thoroughly soaked that I wondered if ever again they would be dry. But I consoled myself with the old Dutchman's proverb : " Dime dries all dings," and thought, in the course of events, it might " dry " mine. But as my comfort was not disposed to wait for time to do the work, I started the guide on a run to camp for fresh clothing. Then I pulled off my boots no easy job divested my legs of the drawers and trousers, and then in bare limbs trudged through the wet grass to a neighboring brook. I brought with me my boots for the purpose of ridding them of the mud that loaded them inside and out, and also brought my watch, cartridges, matches and compass. The latter articles I had taken from my trousers' pocket and tied in a handkerchief for convenient carrying. I reached the brook and commenced my washtub business, but before I got through with one 154 SPORT INDEED boot my task was interrupted by a hungry swarm of black flies. They had discovered my nakedness and began at once to satisfy their hunger, picking out each tender spot and boring into it with such vigor and determination there was nothing left me but flight ; and I flew. Now, to walk or run in bare feet is good for the health at least, so said good Father Kneipp ; but if he had ever had any experience in walking or running through cold spring water, waxey mud and sharp- cutting swale and wire grass he might have admitted some exceptions. When I reached the shelter of the alders, my watch, shells, compass and the other things were missing. They had dropped from the handkerchief unnoticed in my hurried flight and I was forced to tramp back and hunt for them. Twice did I make the trip, each time through a cloud of the flies whose hungry appetite seemed to grow " by what it fed on." As a fretful horse tries to shake off his tormenting biters by stamping his feet, so did I endeavor to rid myself of mine. Nor was it my feet alone that were busy. My hands were quite as fully employed. I whirled them about my face and ears and slapped my neck, my shoulders, and my legs until they grew red and I grew weary. I found the watch at last, hanging by its chain to an alder bush which had caught and dragged it from THE FUN OF HUNTING 155 the handkerchief. The shells and other missing things were under the alders. It did not take long to get me into my sleeping bag, cover up, and forget all about my tormentors. In an hour and a half the guide returned with the dry underclothing which I put on, and was then ready once more to brave the raw air and the hustling flies. I might remark, by the way, that if the plague-fly of the Egyptians was a more accomplished biter than is the black fly of New Brunswick, in the lingo of to- day, he must have been a " dandy." A Ftre-and- Water Medley Spit fire ! Spout, rain ! KING LEAR. "THE property of rain is to wet and fire to burn," a hackneyed truism of which our New Brunswick camp had rather a damp and lucid proof. The rain had been falling heavily all day. We knew it was the intention of a party, consisting of two sportsmen with their guide, and one woman, to come through and camp at the head of the Tobique Kiver, but thought they would prefer to stay at Ked Brook, twelve miles below, until the storm abated, rather than expose themselves to its fury in their canoes. Toward evening the storm let up a little, and with my guide I concluded to venture out for moose- calling. "We stayed out until eleven at night, and then the wind became so strong again and the rain so heavy we paddled back to camp. Our main camp was a rather primitive log structure, with a wooden fireplace, made by setting long split logs on end, forming a chimney and a ventilator, and affording light as well as heat. There was no window of any kind. As a sleeping place the cabin might 156 A FIRE-AND-WATER MEDLEY i $7 have accommodated five men comfortably, had it not been utilized also for cooking purposes ; but being thus used, five sleepers crowded it a little too thickly for comfort. Imagine our surprise when, on this dark and stormy night, we opened the door of the cabin to find its in- side crowded with seven guides, two sportsmen and one woman. They had been all day dragging up from Ked Brook, twelve miles, for the water was so low that the canoes had to be dragged most of the way. The two " Sports " were tolerably dry, but the guides were as wet as the rain and an occasional " header " in the stream could make them. All were huddled round the fire, while the steam from their drying clothes and the smoke from the fire itself had a struggle with each other as to which should be first in its flight up the chimney. Every one seemed in good humor, particularly the lady, who was really the most cheerful one in the camp. She dried her skirts before the fire, laughed at the incidents of the trip, and, while her husband pulled off her rubber boots, made fun of my embarrassment caused by the slim prospect of giving every one a chance to sleep. The weary, water-soaked men around her drank in her jolly humor, for there was a dryness about it that seemed to counteract their damp condition. It is wonderful what an electric 158 SPORT INDEED effect a handsome, healthy and well-built woman can produce upon a bunch of travel-tired men, especially if she be an independent specimen of her sex that is, one who is willing to shoulder her share of work and privation, and ask no odds on account of her womanhood. After some discussion of ways and means, a corner of the cabin was curtained off for the lady, while the guides spent an hour in rigging up a tent outside for themselves and in getting some dry underclothes on in place of wet ones. Bedtime came and the party turned in. By mid- night everything had quieted save the rain that came down the wooden chimney and sputtered on the burn- ing logs. The silence, too, was somewhat interfered with by a choir of snorers or rather two choirs, for truth compels me to say that the melody was not confined to the tent outside. Who the choristers were in the cabin, I can't say ; I don't think the lady was one of them, for I heard no soprano notes. Next day the newcomers started out to explore the lake and its surroundings, and to try the artificial flies on the trout. They had brought a tent with them which was set up some distance from ours, and to which they removed. It was a nast}^ night, so all stayed indoors. At half-past three in the morning the startling cry of " Fire ! fire ! " awoke me. The inside of the cabin was ablaze. The clothes hanging A FIRE-AND-WATER MEDLEY 159 on a line were sizzling, and two rubber coats that were burning gave out a suffocating odor. The cabin was as inflammable as tinder, its roof being of birch bark and full of resinous oils. The wooden chimney was now on fire from top to bottom, and the sides of the cabin a hissing sheet of flame ; so there was no time to do much thinking. I rushed out into the rain in bare feet, grabbed two buckets of water that fortunately stood near the camp and handed them to my companion, who was still lustily yelling " Fire ! " I then ran to an outside camp-fire, where I found a kettle full of water. The guides in the meantime had been aroused and were now throwing the water upon the sides and roof. Their efforts were successful, and the fire subsided almost as quickly as it had started. Since this incident I am not surprised to learn that there are numerous fires, with many casualties, every fall and winter in these dangerously combustible build- ings that are in use all through the lumber district of the province of New Brunswick. Not many years ago three young men were roasted to death in just such a fire trap as ours, and not one of the three had been able to reach the door before death overtook him. One of the victims had apparently gotten up from his bed of boughs, made a step toward the door, and then stumbled and perished in the flames. The other two in their agony had tried to get up, 160 SPORT INDEED but had fallen back again. Their bodies were found, burned to a crisp, and sent home to their friends for burial. Since that night I have had a decided preference for lying outside the camp and on the ground any- where rather than in a wooden cabin with a wooden chimney and a wooden fireplace. Let me thank God, for I have cause, that in His kind Providence He thought fit to save me from a fearful death. A Day in the Big Woods It was my deer. JULIUS CJJSAR. GIST one of our hunting trips through the wilds of Maine we had a series of three camps, and I think it will add interest to my tale to describe these minutely before beginning it. The lower camp is pitched upon a ledge of rock commanding a delightful prospect, embracing a small, circular lake in front, with an open, grassy bog on its sides and back of it, and a thoroughfare leading out of the little lake to a large one, eighteen miles long, some two miles below. "We named this camp " Look- out Point." Back of the camp, and three-quarters of a mile away, there is another small lake, long and irregular in shape, with a muddy bog at the mouth of it, where the busy beavers have built one of their characteristic dams, which, my guide tells me, con- tains two adult beavers and three young ones. How he became so well posted in the number of sprouts on their family tree, I can't say ; but surely there were beavers there, for we saw evidence of their fresh Avork each morning that we inspected their dam. Their house was some two hundred yards away from 161 162 SPORT INDEED their dam and pitched in a piece of deep, spruce woods. It was close to the water and connected with it by various tunnels which the beavers use when the lake is frozen over and they have to forage for their food and exercise. The region around " Lookout Point " camp is well cut up with moose and caribou tracks, and, as it com- mands the two little lakes, is a very desirable camp- ing spot. Four miles up the stream which runs into the first little lake, is a good-sized sheet of water about three and a half miles long and perhaps a half- mile broad. Here we pitched our main camp and built a cabin of bright, clean logs, flanking it on one side with a commodious cooking and dining-room. This we furnished with a modern cook stove and all its appliances, not forgetting plenty of shelves for the dishes and utensils. In the cabin itself we had a small stove, three bunks to sleep in, and plenty of room to " loaf " and take our ease. Within two minutes' walk from this camp is a rocky point overlooking a secluded cove where the deer come out in the early morning or at sundown to drink and play upon the sandy shores. We made this our middle camp, and it was here that we kept all our stores, as well as our surplus clothing. Six miles up the stream that feeds this lake we had our end camp, which we called the " Dam Camp," because it controls a dam a quarter or half a mile further up-stream. ' A DAY IN THE BIG WOODS 165 This dam was formerly used by the lumbermen to store enough water to enable them to rush their logs down the lake below when the snow melted in the Spring. For a couple of miles above the dam the backing up of the water in former years had killed all the trees near the banks of the stream and in their place alder and hazel bushes had grown up in semi-tropical profusion. Here, among the swale and wire-grass, the deer and moose often spend their time, feeding at night and taking their rest during the day. On one side of the stream, where the grass was tall enough to almost hide a man standing upright, I saw one bed that a moose had occupied the night before and more than twenty in which the deer had been lying. Two miles away from this big-game Elysium is a dry bog frequented by caribou and to which, for that reason, we gave the name of " the Caribou Bog." It is not to the bog, however, that my story relates, but to the " Dam Camp " and its environments. Now I warn the reader that he must not look for anything in my story to shake his nerves and make his hair stand on end, porcupine-fashion, although the sharp- quilled animal may and does figure in it to some ex- tent. No, my tale is merely a recital of what any man may see and on any day if he chooses to visit the re- gion of the Dam Camp and keep his eyes open. One morning, a little after five o'clock, I started up the brook to take a look over the dam. It was not 166 SPORT INDEED quite daylight, and objects, even a short distance away, had an undefined and hazy look. A few yards up-stream I saw what I took to be an animal of some sort going slowly along and keeping about the same distance ahead of me. What it was my eyes were un- able to tell me, further than it was very round and very dark-looking. Sometimes it would walk on the stones in the brook, as if afraid of getting its feet wet, and where there were no stones to step on it would take to a path in the grass along the brook. After straining my eyes awhile I decided that the creature was a young bear and I was on the point of shooting him, when it occurred to me that if it were a " cub " the mother couldn't be far away, and it would be the better plan to watch for her, shoot her, and then cap- ture her offspring alive. In the meanwhile the animal was walking leisurely along, turning around occasion- ally to take a look at me, but seeming to be in no wise alarmed. The day now began to dawn and objects about me to grow more distinct and appear in something like their proper shape. I turned my eyes inquisitively in the direction of my cub, but there was no cub there, nor any other animal that looked like one. I had made a singular mistake which it took the daylight to rectify. A big porcupine now stood in the cub's place, staring at me with quills erect and a " hands-off " con- fidence in his prickly armor that amused me. In a A DAY IN THE BIG WOODS 167 moment or two he began rolling himself into a ball, as if to prepare for battle, but when he saw I had no in- tention of making an attack, he unrolled himself and waddled along beside me until \ve reached the dam, under which he crawled, perhaps to take a rest and sleep. Of course I laughed at my mistake, and made all sorts of excuses to my sportsman's self. But ex- cuses were of no avail. The thought would creep to the top of my mind that there must be a screw loose in a hunter's optics or in his education if he doesn't know a bear from a porcupine. My stomach now began hankering for its breakfast. I looked about me for some kind of game that might make a foundation for it, but finding none in sight I baited a fishing line, that I always kept there, made a few casts and caught enough fish for a comfortable morning meal ; then I returned to camp, where the cook dressed and broiled them, and with the breast of a fat, plump partridge, killed the day before, I man- aged to satisfy my inner-man. Then, at a few minutes after seven, I started for the Caribou Bog. On entering the road which begins at right angles from the brook two deer bounded out of the grass into the woods ; they were both does. A half mile further up a good-sized buck jumped out of an old logging yard and disappeared in a jiffy. It now began to drizzle a little, causing the noise made by walking to be almost imperceptible, else why should that most 168 SPORT INDEED crafty of all wild animals, a fox, be ambling on ahead of me in the road, unconscious of the fact that there was a man behind him with a 40-82 rifle ? I thought to myself, " Perhaps Reynard has had a good night's hunt, and captured and eaten a partridge or two with half-a-dozen field-mice by way of dessert, and now he's contented and tired and on his way to his habitation and his bed. I was too near the Caribou Bog to fire at him the noise might alarm the game and so I walked on be- hind him until my foot broke a. branch. He heard the sound and the next instant I saw a streak of yellow color flying through the trees. It was the last appearance and exit of Mr. Fox. I watched for a moment in the direction of his departure and fancied I heard the pounding of a buck's forefoot. Just then the sun shone out bright and warm and I stood for a few minutes enjoying its rays and listening. The pounding continued, but I finally concluded that it came from a giant woodpecker hammering at one of the trees. At this moment, turning my face and looking up the road, I saw something that caused my heart to beat a rataplan. Not thirty feet away and coming toward me was a monstrous cow-moose. She was apparently wrapped in thought, possibly of her last night's happiness when she thrashed through the alders and meadow grass with her lover him of the towering antlers. There was a small sapling bent K < A DAY IN THE BIG WOODS 171 down over the road, and its leaves, at the angle she was carrying her head, prevented her from seeing me. My first thought was that she might be followed by the bull, and I therefore made one step to the right. At the sound of that one step she stopped. She couldn't see me, because of the sapling, and I couldn't see her now, because the trunk of a tree intervened. And there we stood, listening to each other, but neither of us moved. Minute after minute passed and in the meantime I did a heap of thinking, standing there with nearly my whole weight on one foot until the strain became unbearable. Yet I dare not put the other down for fear it might crack the dead branches which lay there and the noise of it be fatal. I calculated that in all probability the bull had come along the road with her, and had stopped a little way behind. If this were so, I would soon have the pleas- ure of seeing two moose instead of one. But my calculations were all out of joint. The minutes passed away and still the old cow stood there, but no bull made his appearance to console me. At last she saw me, and when she did, she turned a little to the left and entered the woods, slowly and quietly, and without showing the slightest sign of alarm. Her tracks proved her to be a moose which had been prowling around the dam for several nights past. After this episode I reached the Caribou Bog, stayed there during the forenoon and thence went back to 172 SPORT INDEED camp for dinner. On returning to the bog, I crept into it very carefully, as the breaking of some dry branches assured me the caribou were feeding there, and spent the afternoon in watching the cows as they passed and repassed my place of concealment. As for the bull, the "King of the bog," I saw nothing of him, and giving up all hope of seeing him left the bog at a quarter to five and started for the camp. I was walking briskly along the weather had grown cold enough to make briskness desirable when I heard a noise in an old logging yard opposite to me. Now, a hunter's ears have need to be sharp, and mine were sharp enough to tell me that either a moose or a deer was behind that noise and to be pre- pared for him. I looked around and, sure enough, a buck was there and making for the woods with leaps that were mighty long and mighty full of lightning. I had barely time to say to myself : " Thomas, this is thy deer. Come now, try thy hand at a flying shot." To cock the rifle and bring it to my shoulder was the work of a second, and at that particular second the deer was springing over the last log that lay be- tween himself and safety. I saw his " flag " fly up as he took the leap, and fired at the very instant he disappeared on the other side of the log. I supposed I had missed him ; but no ; when I reached the log, there he lay behind it, convulsively giving his last A DAY IN THE BIG WOODS 173 kick. The ball had struck him near the tail and ranged through the body, coining out at the fore- shoulder. He was a four-year-old buck, and as fat as he well could be without melting. I dragged him into the road, went down to the camp, had supper, and then, with a lantern and the guide, returned to where he was lying, opened and dressed him and tak- ing the hind-quarters and saddle reached camp at 8:30 P. M. I was in bed at nine, and do you wonder that I slept soundly that night ? Do you wonder that I knew noth- ing of the passing hours ? Nothing of the camp-fire burning in front of the camp? Nothing of a deer which approached our fire close enough to inhale the strange scent of burning wood, and then rush wildly away, whistling as he ran and alarming his kindred far and near ? No, reader ; my psychological and acoustic machineries were both at a standstill. My brain was too drowsy to dream, and my ear- drums had lost all their cunning appetite for sounds even for the snore of my Canadian cook. You have never heard, and perhaps have no desire to hear him ; but I can assure you he is an expert in that line, and knows as much about scientific snoring as he does about scientific cooking. When he turns on his back and gets his fog-horn under way, its spasmodic grunts and snorts and roars would probably drown the noise of a sawmill. A Dead-water Vigil Couching, head on ground, with cat-like watch. As You LIKE IT. VIGILS, as the reader is doubtless aware, may be of all sorts and sizes, and I will now try to entertain him with a short story of a long one. It is of the " dead- water " variety, and if he hasn't had enough hunting experience to know exactly what a " dead-water " is, I will tell him. In a big-game country when a stream widens out to several times its normal breadth and then flows so lazily that the current is almost imper- ceptible, that part of the stream is known to the hunter as a " dead-water." It is a place full of attrac- tion for him, and for the best of reasons. Its banks are usually covered with a growth of rich grasses and low bushes, while near the shore various plants of the lily-tribe lift themselves above the water and nod their tops to the breeze. If the location be secluded, as it generally is, and there be enough growing timber around it to safely shelter the approach of the moose and the deer, the hunter is pretty sure to find their tracks along the shore and in the soft clinging mud. Such a place is a veritable paradise for these shy crea- tures. Here the antlered moose delights to spend his 174 A DEAD-WATER VIGIL 175 early mornings wading and drinking and nibbling his breakfast from the tops and stems of the lily-pads. Here, too, the deer gluts his or her appetite, but con- fines it to the tender shoots and leaves of the hazel and alder bushes. Hence it is that the " dead-water " has a magnetic hold on the hunter. The top-notch of his ambition and desire is to catch the glimpse of a bull-moose wading the stream and indulging here in his lily -pad breakfast. Then, if the glimpse be long enough to allow the " sport " to cock his rifle and bring it to his shoulder, the bull will probably finish his breakfast ; although the " finish " may not be over-pleasant to his antlered majesty. Some four miles from Lake Nictau the source of the Tobique River lies a favorite resort for game. A spotted trail leads to it, running over two or three good-sized ridges and in the most erratic fashion. I have made at least a dozen trips over that trail and therefore am familiar enough with it to know of what I speak. Who the man is, or was, that " spotted " the trail I am not prepared to say, but I do say that the crooked, crab-like manner in which it climbs up and down and over those ridges is strongly suggestive of one thing and it relates to the man himself. Before taking up his little ax and starting on his spotting task he must have gone to Sir John Barleycorn for instructions. 176 SPORT INDEED On my last visit to this place I saw a large cow- moose and a two-pronged bull quietly feeding down the stream. I came close to them without their know- ing it so close, indeed, that I could have slaughtered both, and with a single bullet. But I had no desire to trouble either of them. The bull was too young and too small to fill my fancy ; and as for the cow, her sex made her sacred and as safe from the range of my rifle as a babe at the breast of its mother. After watching them awhile and grumbling at the bull for not coming into the world a few years sooner, I saw them go leisurely on their way down the stream and then pass from my sight. To the guide and myself this incident was full of meaning. It gave us reason to believe that a bull of riper years the sire, maybe, of the youth we had seen might be wandering about somewhere in the neighborhood, and therefore we determined to spend a few nights there for the purpose of making his ac- quaintance. My guide had brought blankets with him, and spreading these under the shelter of some alder bushes and close to the water's edge I lay my- self down, but not to sleep. The night was cold and clear. There was no moon and the darkness was intense. And there under the alders I lay with " head on ground," opening wide my ear-gates for the free entrance of every sound, let it come from whatever quarter it might. Whether the A DEAD-WATER VIGIL 177 eyes of a cat would have helped me to pierce the darkness I know not, but my own were certainly of little use for that purpose. "When the sun dropped behind the ridges and this duskiness began to creep over the face of Nature, it seemed as if the thoughtful dame had given all her creatures except her noctivagant rakes quick notice to finish whatever task they had on hand and get to bed. Black ducks and cranes and birds of every feather, save the owl's, all were in a skurry, and each in a full- tilt-race to be the first to reach his roost. The red squirrel heard the notice, stopped his chatter, and was soon cuddled up with his head pillowed on his bushy tail. To the hunter these red squirrels are something of a nuisance. They abound in this section, as they do in every northern forest, and keep up a constant chat- tering, mingled at times with a sort of ventriloquistic laughter which is very amusing to the hunter if he is not on the lookout for big game. But when he is stealthily creeping along, picking out a soft spot to place his foot where it will make the least noise, and halting and listening at every step for some sound which may tell him that the animal he is looking for is not far away, then the laughter of the bushy-tailed rascal is not so amusing. It is just then, however, that the little fellow delights to get in his mischievous work and he does it most effectively. He will make 1 78 SPORT INDEED for a tree, dash to the top of it and then down again, dancing over the logs that may be in his way but keeping a constant eye on the hunter. Then perhaps he will stop his gambols for a moment to bark and chatter at the " sport," winding up with a peal of de- risive cachination that sounds to the victim's im- agination something like: "What do you want here ? You're a queer-looking chap, anyway. Why you've got no tail ! Here, I'll lend you a bit of mine ! " With this generous offer he will skip out of sight, and the chances are a hundred to one that if a deer or a moose or a caribou has been within earshot of that laugh, he, too, has done some skipping of the same sort. And now to return to my vigil. I heard a cow- moose step softly into the water, drink her fill and then as softly leave the stream and depart from my neighborhood. The next morning we saw by her tracks that she was a cow, and the same old cow we had seen in the daylight. The dead-water, upon whose side I was couching, lies in a wide hollow. On either side of it rises a tall ridge covered with trees of spruce and white birch, and whatever sounds are made on the one ridge are echoed from the other. I heard the bark of a fox on my side of the hollow, and in a moment or two an an- swer came from the other side ; and then another bark and another answer, and these kept duplicating until it A DEAD-WATER VIGIL 181 seemed as if the tribe of Keynard had sole possession of the ridges. Their music was not altogether pleas- ing. The bark of a fox is sharp and snarling and the melody made by a chorus of them will out-snarl and out-reach any amateur quartet that ever punished the ears of an unoffending audience. The night dragged on. I grew sleepy, tired and hungry, while my spirit was depressed and my pa- tience worn out by the tedious length and depth of the darkness. I will say here and I am rather proud to say it that I have no temperament, nor any other quality that fits me for a comrade with the owl ; at least, none that could rob me of my taste for the light of day. Therefore, if the bird of ill-omen insists upon shrieking his " songs of death " he must do it in other company than mine. I'll have none of him. But here is a question that may stagger the wit of the Shakespearean reader to answer : How, in the name of all that is incredible, did the great dramatist discover merriment in the note of an owl ? Yet he did so, un- less his " merry " epithet in Hiems' song, at the end of Love's Labor's Lost, be one of his gibes : " When blood is nipped and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl Tn-who ! Tu-whit ! Tu-who ! A merry note While greasy Joan doth keel the pot." No, no, William, my boy ; though there may be much i8i SPORT INDEED wisdom in the stare of an owl, the merriment in his song is rather too funereal to tickle the ears of Hilarity. There are some who believe the owl to be " well- heeled " with weather- wisdom ; a second edition of Old Probs in feather binding. They say that when he chooses a tree by the edge of a stream or lake from which to shriek his melancholy forecast, there is rain coming and plenty of it. But when he moves his music stand away from the water and fixes it upon the ridges, fair weather is close at hand. I must say that my own experience can partially endorse him as a weather prophet. During my vigil he perched him- self upon a tree near the water's edge and near enough to my watching place to give my ears the full benefit of his melody. His prophecy came true, for it was quickly followed by a hard rain accompanied with a hurricane-like wind. The owl, however, was not the only forecaster of the storm. Before it broke, and in the midst of a dead calm, I heard the fall of a tree some two hun- dred yards away. "Do you hear that?" said the guide. " There's going to be heavy weather. When- ever a tree falls in a calm like this, there's a big storm coming, sure." Now, I knew that Nature sometimes foreruns her storms with a calm, but did not know that she was in the habit of mixing it up with the fall of an old tree. A DEAD-WATER VIGIL 183 If she is, it is a curious habit, and being curious let us consider it curiously. She has endowed her trees with life, why then should she not have given them the needed senses to make their lives worth living? And she has done so, if we can believe those ancient writers who have made the subject their study. They say that all vegetals belong to one sex or the other ; that they know what love is, and are as liable as mortals to become the victims of its fury. Claudian, in referring to Cupid's sway in the vegetal kingdom, says : " Trees are influenced by love, and every flour- ishing tree in turn feels the passion. Palms nod mutual vows, poplar sighs to poplar, plane to plane, and alder to alder." The palms, however, seem to be the most susceptible. Constantine says : " You might see two palm trees bend affectionately toward each other and stretch out their boughs for an embrace and a kiss ; " and Galen avows that they " Sometimes become sick for love and pine away and die." Now if all this be gospel, why shouldn't a tree have enough instinct to foreknow the coming of a storm ? Indeed, if it had lived long enough, it might have no need of calling on the aid of instinct. Suppose its hoary top had battled with the storms of a hundred years or more, wouldn't the old tree be likely to have a rheumatic limb or two ? Wouldn't it have as good a title to the "rheumatiz" as any that antiquated humanity could boast ? And wouldn't the twinges 184 SPORT INDEED furnish the same foreknowledge of bad weather ? You may admit all this and still ask : " But why should the old tree give up the ghost and tumble over at the approach of what it knows is coming ? " Ah, reader, you must go to Nature herself for an answer to your question. It may be that the tree had lived its allotted time and knew it. It may be that its foresight saw two alternatives to tumble over or be blown down. It may be that the latter would have been too great a blow for its pride, and there- fore it embraced the former. These, of course, are only " may-bes," and it may be you will put them on your list of " mayn't-bes." But enough of this digres- sion. I have said that my spirits were losing their elas- ticity under the pressure of the darkness. Possibly you think that an enthusiastic hunter should be able to bear with complacence the incidental plagues of his trade, however unbearable they might be to other people. Perhaps he should, yet I don't hesitate to aver that a fruitless watch through a stretch of dark- ness if the stretch be long enough and black enough will cool the enthusiasm of any " sport," even though it burn with the fervor of Nimrod's. But the end was near. A faint glow began to break the gloom and light the eastern sky. The red squirrels were already awake and busy in stuffing my ears with their bark and chatter ; the black ducks had A DEAD-WATER VIGIL 185 left their water roost on a forage for breakfast ; while the cry of a loon, flying over Nictau Lake, and miles away, could be heard hailing the coming of the morn with its unearthly notes : " Ha ! ha ! Ha ! ha ! " My dead-water vigil was over. The sun peeped above the ridge-tops and saucily threw his glances across my bed of boughs. Hiding my face from his gaze, I lay me down to sleep and dream and treat my slumbering eyeballs to a scene that in their wakeful moments was denied them : " A bull-moose at his breakfast table." Dog-day Advice. This is hot weather, gentlemen. HENRY iv. A BIG city, in the midst of the dog-days, is a big cook-shop a huge grill-room, as it were, wherein the can't-get-aways are flopped on the gridiron of Old Humidity and cooked in their own grease. Man, of course, was never born to be broiled, and common sense says he will avoid the process if he can. If he can't get away from the Old General's gridiron, he is somewhat excusable in bowing to the inevitable and should endure it philosophically if the fat be not entirely grilled out of his philosophy. But, strange to say, there are some who can get away and don't. "What their reasons are, 'twould be hard to say unless they expect a long spell of hot weather in the next world and would season them- selves for it in this. Now, whether these fellows be sports, or merely incogitant chips from the common block of humanity, a bit of advice can do them no harm, indeed it may do them a deal of good, and will if their seasoning theory doesn't stand in the way of their following it. Here it is : 186 DOG-DAY ADVICE 187 "When their mind and body are both " knocked out " in their dog-day rounds with Old Sol ; when they become tired of dodging flies and mosquitoes and perspirations and sunstrokes ; when lemonades and sodas and mint juleps and palm-leaf fans et id genus omne, have resolved into vanity and vexation of spirit ; then is it high time to pick up their duds and over-roasted remains and get. Get where ? Well, let them try a water-trip to St. John, New Brunswick. The transition from their cook-shop to the ocean air will be magical. The sun may still be hot, but only pleasantly so, for the cool and salty breezes temper its rays and make even an overcoat a welcome ad- dition to comfort. I speak knowingly, for my younger son and myself once took the trip prepara- tory to making a sporting pilgrimage to the head- waters of the Nipisiguit River, in search of the giant moose and his partner of the forests, the caribou, and where we also hoped to interview one or more bears, and try the luring qualities of our artificial flies on the square-tailed trout and his big relative, the salmon. This wilderness of swamp, bog, forest, river and lake is a delectable one for the hunter, and to reach it he must travel a whole day by rail, although the dis- tance as the crow flies is less than a hundred miles. Then comes a vehicle ride of thirty-five miles. (The ride was formerly over an old lumber road and in an i88 SPORT INDEED old lumber wagon, consuming some twelve hours' time. Now there is a good road and the conveyance is all that could be desired.) The next day, if the weather and the water both are fit, he takes to his canoe and gets over as much of another thirty-five miles as his muscle can master. If the water be not fit, he must walk and tote his canoe and stuff. This must needs be hard work at least for the guide and yet it is only the beginning of a month's or six weeks' toil. But he shouldn't be discouraged and won't be if his veins run with the blood of a sportsman. The toil may fag his physical framework a little, yet he may find in it an exhilarating oil for his metaphysical machinery. And now to return to the city of St. John. It is scrupulously clean indeed, it couldn't be otherwise, being situated upon high hills and constantly wind- swept either from the ocean or the spruce forest of the valley of the St. John. While the Union Jack that floats from many buildings and from the ship- ping in the harbor speaks plainly of the city's nation- ality, yet a great portion of those who travel its streets are subjects of Uncle Sam. St. John's busi- ness men all have a high regard for the depth of Sam's pocket and look upon it as unfathomable. His dollars, whether silver or paper, are deemed quite as good as their own, and nothing is said about exchange. According to the custom's rule we had to pay a DOG-DAY ADVICE 189 deposit upon our rifles and camera (this was refunded when we finished our hunting trip and returned to St. John), but the officer who demanded the deposit did it in such a gentlemanly way we were almost under the impression he was doing us a favor. New Brunswick must surely gather in a goodly store of greenbacks from the sale of hunting licenses. Every would-be hunter from outside the province is required to pay thirty dollars for the privilege of hunting within its limits ; and in return for this he not only gets his hunting privilege, but is protected from the pot-hunter. The open season commences September 15th, whereas in Maine the open moose season starts October 15th, and caribou cannot be killed there now, nor for five years to come. Hence it is that aspiring Nimrods make .their hegira from all parts of the land and encompass the hunting grounds of the valley of the St. John, the Kestigouche, the Nipisiguit and the Tobique Eivers. All go into camp with the proverbial hope of the hunter. But the re- sult is something of a lottery all cannot be success- ful ; and like other lotteries there are plenty of blanks. A Tale of Gallantry and Hunger Upon my life 'tis true, sir. TIMON OF ATHENS. IT was a rainy, cold and disagreeable morning when my son and myself left St. John, N. B., for Nictau Lake. We had donned our heavy underwear when we started 6:25 A. M. but when we reached Perth Junction on the St. John River at two o'clock the sun came out and ran the thermometer up to 93 in the shade. A return to light underwear became necessary for our comfort and we looked about us for some place, in or around the little station, where such a change could be made with decency. We saw none. However there was a forty-five-minute wait before the train started on its way up the Tobique Valley, and I made use of the time in hunting up some spot secluded enough to hide a bashful man from the outside world while he changed his inside toggery. Walking down the railroad track I came to a gorge in a high hill and behind its shelter accomplished my toilet, but not without some shivering ; for, though the thermometer stood, as I have said, at 93 in the shade, the temperature in that gorge was very dif- ferent. A chilling, goose-flesh wind scurried through 190 GALLANTRY AND HUNGER 191 it and I was glad to get out of its shadow and into the sunshine. "When the train backed down to the station, pre- paring for its start, I found on the platform a Bangor taxidermist whose reputation in that line is almost national. He was bound for nearly the same hunt- ing ground as myself, as was also a noted salmon fisherman with his two sons. The train, which should run every day for it is so nominated in the bond ran only every other day, and was made up of freight cars, gravel cars and a couple of passenger coaches. Among the passengers were a number of Indian guides, lumbermen, a sprinkling of sportsmen, and last, but not least, some very pretty women. The schedule time from Perth to the end of the line is two hours lacking five minutes. As the distance is only twenty-eight miles, it would seem that an engine with any ambition in its piston rod ought to be able to "get in on time." But this particular engine is not particular whether it does or does not meet the schedule's demand, and the common report is that it does not. "When we were about half-way on the trip a comely- looking young woman told the conductor she wished to get off. "When he stopped the train, it chanced to be on a high embankment at the bottom of which ran a road, with the Tobique River just beyond it. The young woman now left the car, the conductor helping 192 SPORT INDEED her down the steps from the platform. I looked from the car window and saw her standing there with a huge telescope in one hand and a bundle of something in the other. She evidently had a desire to get down that steep embankment, but, laden as she was, lacked the courage to try it. None of the train hands showing any disposition to help the young lady out of her dilemma, I jumped down the car steps, took her telescope and bundle, told her to wait for a moment, then scrambled down the hill with my load and deposited it at the bottom. Then climbing half-way up again I beckoned to her to come on. She came, and locking arms we commenced our de- scent. Around like a top we spun, sliding and slip- ping and pirouetting till we reached the bottom. The performance seemed highly entertaining to the passengers, who choked the car windows with their heads, grinning their delight and shouting their ap- plause when it was over. I have said the young woman was good-looking, and youth and beauty are sharp goads to a man's gallantry ; but I don't wish it to be inferred that they were the only spurs to mine. Had she been as old as sin and as ugly as its father, and this accom- modation train accommodating enough to wait for me, I might perhaps have further shown my gal- lantry by toting her baggage to its destination. And then perhaps I mightn't. However, she picked up GALLANTRY AND HUNGER 195 her telescope and bundle and started for her home. I watched her as I stood on the rear platform of the back car and saw her step on the porch of a cozy-look- ing house. Two chubby tots ran to meet her, clapping their hands and puckering up their little mouths for a kiss. Before obliging them she turned, looked back at the train, waved her thanks and a good-bye to the man who had helped her in her time of trouble, and then, like " Ships that pass in the night," we parted. At Plaster Rock we took a wagon for a night's ride to Reilly Brook, twenty-eight miles up the river. We started at quarter to 8 P. M. reaching the Brook at 1 A. M. At five we were off for a wagon trip to the Forks a distance of seven miles and we enjoyed it. The air was " nipping and eager " ; myriads of spider webs were spun by the roadside and hung from the bushes, trees, and logs, coated with the night frost and glittering in the morning sun like gems in a jeweler's window. At the Forks we were joined by our canoemen and also the chiefs of the hunting camps to which we were bound. At quarter to eight we left the Forks, taking to our canoes which were to be poled up the river to Red Brook a distance of twenty miles. The stream winds in a tortuous course over a rocky bed, and, as the water is low at this time of year, poling the canoes was laborious work and hard on the men. To lighten the load of my canoe I suggested and 196 SPORT INDEED it was so arranged that I should get out and walk through the woods, meeting them further up and at a point where the road and stream met again, some two miles away. I took my rifle and started. The walking was good, and my observation, therefore, was not interrupted by any necessity for picking my steps. I saw about me fresh signs of moose and many indications- of caribou. In fact I became so much interested that I forgot all about my canoe and for what I was walking. I had already passed the meeting point without knowing it, and it now lay behind me a mile or more. The road wound back over the ridges quite a dis- tance from the river, but I thought it wouldn't