Jack in the Rockies: A Boy's Adventures with a Pack Train

by George Bird Grinnell

Jack did not wish to frighten them, and so turned his head and body very slowly to look after them, and he did it so carefully that the birds were not alarmed, but finally passed out of sight and hearing without being frightened.

This small adventure gave Jack very great pleasure, and he felt as if he had already been well repaid for his walk. Keeping on through the forest, he went down a gentle slope, and presently found himself at the edge of a little meadow, surrounding a very pretty lake. Nothing was to be seen there, and he stepped out of the bushes to go down to the water.

He was going along rather carelessly, holding his rifle in the hollow of his left arm, when from a bunch of willows just before him a huge black animal with horns rushed out, and trotted up the meadow toward the timber. Instantly Jack knew that it was a moose, and throwing his gun to his shoulder, he fired at the animal just before it reached the fringe of willows at the edge of the meadow. It seemed to him that the creature flinched a little and then went faster, but he could not be sure. What was certain was that it did not fall. Taking up the track, he followed it for some distance through the timber—not a difficult task, for the moose was trotting rapidly and throwing up dirt at every stride. At length, however, he came to a piece of rocky ground, where the tracks were much harder to follow, and presently he lost them and had to circle two or three times to find them, and from that on the work of picking them out was slow. Soon, too, he noticed that it was growing darker, and looking at the sky he concluded that the sun had set. He had a mile or two to go, and as he did not wish to lie out during the night, he reluctantly left the moose track and started back for the camp. He hurried as fast as he could, and made good progress; but after it really got dark it was impossible to go very fast. He did not feel like firing his gun, because that would be as much as to say to the people in the camp that he was lost, and he did not wish to do this. He worked his way along, therefore, keeping toward camp as nearly as he could, but more by guess than anything else, because the trees stood so close that the stars could not be seen. However, the little light that still lingered in the west gave him some idea of direction.

At last the ground began to slope in the direction in which he was going, and before long he saw in the sky the glare of a fire. He made sure that this was the camp, and hurrying along as fast as possible, frequently stumbling over rocks and sticks and occasionally running his face into the twigs of a dry spruce limb, he at last found himself near the bottom of the hill, and could see the gleam of the fire through the tree-trunks. Before long he was close to camp, and saw that Hugh and Joe had built quite a bonfire in front of the lodge. It was the reflection of this that he had seen in the sky.

As he walked up to the fire, Hugh said, "Well, here you are, eh? We didn't know but you calculated to lie out all night."

"Well," said Jack, "I didn't know but I'd have to do that; but I didn't want to, and so I kept going. I think perhaps I would have stopped and built a fire back in the timber if it hadn't been that I saw your fire, and kept coming."

"What kept you?" said Joe.

"Why, Joe," said Jack, "I saw a moose, the first moose I ever saw; and I had a good shot at it, running nearly straight away from me, and I ought to have killed it, but I didn't. I think I must have hit it; anyhow, I thought I saw it flinch when I shot, and it went through the timber in great shape. I followed the tracks quite a long way; but then it got dark, and I had to give it up and come back.

"I'd like to go out and look for it to-morrow, and I will, too, if we stay here."

"Well," said Hugh, "we'll stay here, all right enough. I want to rest up this horse's foot for a day or two. If I stay here and bathe that horse's foot, and keep him quiet, he's likely to be all right in two or three days. If we make him follow us over these hills now, he may get so that he can't use the foot at all.