"I feel very grateful to you, Mr. Phillips, for this timely rescue," responded Claud, recovering his composure. "This, I suppose, is the far-famed moose?"
"Yes, and a bouncer at that," replied the hunter, going up and, placing his foot on the broad and still quivering flank of the huge animal. "Good twenty hands high, and weighs, well, not much short of fifteen hundred, I should say."
"But are they often thus dangerous?" asked Claud.
"Not very often, perhaps," rejoined the hunter. "But still the bull moose, at this season of the year, is sometimes, when wounded, about as ugly a customer as you meet with in the woods. This fellow I judge to have been oncommon vicious, as he begun his tantrums before he was touched at all, it seems. I dunno but 'twas the woman put the devil into him, as women do into two-legged animals sometimes,—don't they, young man?"
"The woman? O yes, the young lady," said Claud, reminded of his duty as a gallant by the remark, though unwilling to appropriate to himself the prophetic joke with which it was coupled. "Where is she? I must go and see to her."
"She has already seen to herself, I guess," said the hunter. "As I was coming up, I glimpsed her cutting round and running, like a wild turkey, for the clearing, to which the moose had cut off her retreat. She has reached the house by this time, doubtless; for it is hard by, down on the river here, a hundred rods or such a matter."
"Who is she? Do you know the family?" eagerly inquired the young man.
"No," answered the hunter. "They are new-comers in these parts."
"What could have brought her here so far into the woods?" persisted Claud.
"The raspberries, very likely," said the other, indifferently, while taking out and examining the edge of his knife. "But come, we must get this moose into some condition, so that he will keep; then be off to let the settlers know of our luck. And early to-morrow morning, we will, all hands, come up the river in boats, and distribute him. He will make fresh meat enough to supply the whole settlement."