"There's been moose hereabouts," he told Joe, pointing to the snow. "You could tell it blindfold, for though there ain't no footmarks, there's deep holes. Yer see, a moose is that heavy and his feet so small comparatively, that the hard crust of snow that's frozen ain't strong enough to hold him up. He goes through deep ef he's making a new track, while ef he and his mates has been along afore, there's a deep hard path that there ain't no mistakin'. There's been jest one along here; it's likely they has a yard 'way up here."
"A yard?" asked Joe, ignorant of what that might be. "What's a yard?"
"Jest a place to which moose flock every winter almost. In course it's more or less open ground what's known as a 'barren', and there is always heaps of the class of trees and moss on which they feed. They congregates and treads the snow flat, and lives there till their food is eaten; then off they goes to form another. Jest you slip along easy, lad; a bull moose ain't the sorter fellow one asks to come up aginst."
A mile or so farther on it was evident that the moose whose tracks they were following, and who happened to have preceded them in their own direction, joined a well-worn track which plunged at once into forest. It was then that Hank again came to a sudden halt.
"Did you hear that sort of cough?" he asked. "That's a bull moose fer sure; 'praps we'll come in fer some shootin'. Anyway, reckon we'll get our guns unslung and ready in case."
Slipping cartridges into the breaches of their rifles, the two proceeded cautiously, and before many minutes had passed heard a succession of sounds which puzzled Joe immensely. Someone might have been thrashing the trunks of the trees with a heavy stake; at times the sounds were almost metallic, while now and again an angry cough came to their ears.
"It aer a moose bull fer sure," whispered Hank. "Yer see, the wind's fallen and there ain't a breath, else he'd have scented us long ago; what's more, there's been something happenin' to upset his temper. Bull moose aer the angriest, fiercest things as ever I clapped eyes on. One moment they'll run at the very shadow of a human, and next they'll charge with their heads up and their spreading antlers ready for the enemy. Hark there, he's 'sounding'!"
When our hero had the latter term explained to him, he gathered that it meant that the moose, scenting an enemy or a rival bull moose, perhaps, had halted and was thrashing some tree stump with his antlers, till a succession of blows sounded through the forest, for all the world as if lumbermen were at work with their axes. Then followed a series of lower-toned noises.
"He aer fairly working hisself up fer a fight," whispered Hank, crouching behind a trunk. "That 'ere bull moose aer laying into the trees with his fore hoofs, and lucky we are that it ain't us. Their fore hoofs is just edged as sharp as any axe and would cut badly, while a dig with the antlers would kill a man. You kin lay it as sartin that there's another bull moose around. Mayhap there's been a cow moose a-callin'. That's brought two of the others along, and now, ef I ain't altogether mistaken, there's likely to be an almighty ruction, for it ain't in reason fer one moose to give way to another; they're terrible fighters. Jest about this time o' the year they're in grand condition, and fights take place constantly. I ain't never seed one, but I've come up to moose as was in them as was nigh killed. Come along quietly; we may have a peep at what's happenin'."
Creeping on through the wood, the strange sounds which they had heard were for a time altogether absent. But it was not for long, for a dull croaking cough suddenly reached them from an opposite direction, and was followed instantly by loud and furious "sounding" and by a huge clatter that told of falling branches. Ten minutes later Hank put up his hand and slank in behind a thick mass of underwood.