As he approached within forty yards, the guide whispered, "Now is your chance. You'll never get a better one." My partner whispered, "Steady the canoe." I drove my paddle point into the sandy bottom, the guide did the same at the other end, and she arose standing in the canoe and aimed. Then came the wicked "crack" of the rifle, the "pat" of the bullet, the snort and whirl of the great, gray, looming brute, and a second shot as he reached the willows, only to go down with a crash, and sob his life out on the ground behind the leafy screen.
It all seemed so natural, so exactly according to the correct rules of sporting books and tales, and yet so unlovely.
There were tears in the eyes of the fair killer, and heart wrenches were hers, as the great sobs grew less and ceased; and a different sob was heard at my elbow, as we stood beside the biggest Moose that had been killed there in years. It was triumph I suppose; it is a proud thing to act a lie so cleverly; the Florentine assassins often decoyed and trapped a brave man, by crying like a woman. But I have never called a Moose since, and that rifle has hung unused in its rack from that to the present day.
THE BIGGEST OF OUR GAME—THE BUFFALO
"Yes, that's a buffalo-bird," said the old Indian, pointing to some black birds, with gray mates, that flitted or ran across the plain. "Pretty bad luck when the Buffalo gone. Them little birds make their nest in a Buffalo's wool, right on his head, and when the Buffalo all gone, seem like the buffalo-bird die too; 'cause what's the use, no got any nest."
This is a fragment that reached me long ago in Montana. It seemed like a lusty myth, whose succulent and searching roots were in a bottomless bog, with little chance of sound foundation. But the tale bore the searchlight better than I thought. For it seems that the buffalo-bird followed the Buffalo everywhere, and was fond of nesting, not in the shaggy mane between the horns of the ruling monarch, but on any huge head it might find after the bull had fallen, and the skull, with mane attached, lay discarded on the plain. While always, even when nesting on the ground, the wool of the Buffalo was probably used as lining of the black-bird's nest. I know of one case where an attendant bird that was too crippled to fly when autumn came, wintered in the mane of a large Buffalo bull. It gathered seed by day, when the bull pawed up the snow, and roosted at night between the mighty horns, snuggling in the wool, with its toes held warm against the monster's blood-hot neck.
In most of the Northwest the birds have found a poor substitute for the Buffalo in the range-cattle, but oh! how they must miss the wool.