“G—et th’ gun, quick—tigers, lions, an’ nobody knows what not—on the rampage to beat the band, too!”
Jack stared and then seemed to fairly double-up as though to him there might be something worth laughing at in the hurried retreat of his pal.
“He’s more scared than you can be, Perk!” he managed to cry out. “See him making off, will you, taking steps that are nearly as long as your own. Watch him shake those new horns of his, as if to tell you he’d be willing to fight it out only his head pieces are so new like, and soft!”
“W-hy—what in tarnation thunder is that big monster, Jack?” gasped the astonished Perk, staring with all his might after the towering beast that was passing out of sight around a vast mound of tumbledown rocks.
“Only a bull moose, partner—he must have heard you make some sound and reckoned it was an old rival of his, which was what made him give that roar. I never ran across a moose up to now, but I know what they can do. If it had been in the Fall of the year, when his horns, just rutting lately, were firm and hard, you’d have had him jumping you mighty quick.”
“Wow! he had me jumpin’ even as it was,” confessed honest Perk, deigning now to break into a silly grin since the supposed danger was past and the coast clear. “He’s some jim dandy I’d say an’ mebbe I wouldn’t like to knock a bull moose over. Used to hear about ’em when I was a kid up in Maine and over the line in Canada too (but never met one o’ the breed before). Bet you that ol’ boy c’n run a blue streak too, once he lets go. Well, since there ain’t any tigers at large nor yet a catamount lyin’ in ambush, guess I orter go ashore again an’ hurry up my fire. Breakfast ready in ten minutes, ’member, Jack ol’ hoss.”
While working over his fire and starting breakfast Perk must have been sketching in his mind the nerve racking encounter so lately in the spot-light, for once he stopped doing what he was engaged in, to look seriously up at the blue sky where a few floating white clouds had taken on a faint pink blush, showing that the rising sun was not far below the horizon though not scheduled to appear to any one in that deep valley for several hours yet—then he might have been heard holding communion with himself and saying:
“I kinder guess moose steak wouldn’t taste so bad but then what’s the use o’ cryin’ over spilt milk? Mister Moose has skipped out an’ then Jack wouldn’t let me shoot, even if the ol’ critter hung around lookin’ for trouble. Didn’t he say the close season was on with all game that you c’n eat and that the Mounties might get me if I took chances and nailed that big boy? Oh well! I’m all to the good and no tellin’ what he might have done to me if we got mixed up in a sure enough scrap.”
Breakfast was almost as enjoyable as supper had been—not just wholly so for no one is ever quite so hard pressed by hunger in the early morning as seems to be the case toward close of day when all cares are tossed aside.
Jack did not appear to be in any hurry to leave the scene of their night’s bivouac for he puttered around, doing numerous small chores that, according to Perk’s mind, could have just as well been postponed to another time without the sky falling.