The track followed the stream bed, and then turned a steep angle and made for the deep shades of the forest, where the moose goes to rest during the heat of the day.
No Man came upon him lying on his side among cool, green bushes. Trees, two hundred feet high and straight as masts, towered above in a twilight of their own making. And there was a mighty hush and silence, the silence of high noon in the forest where no beast stirs save only man.
Then there was a twanging jar and the sound of an arrow cleaving the air and jolting into flesh and muscle.
The great moose rose to his feet, very black, maned, bearded, extended of horn and terrible. He searched for his enemy with little, venomous, blood-shot eyes. But he swayed as he searched, for just behind his fore-shoulder, as if part of him, as if something that had mysteriously grown out of him, there projected a bunch of bright blue feathers, and dark blood throbbed forth like a spring at their root.
UNCONQUERED—BLEEDING TO DEATH
No Man, for he knew that the moose is not good at seeing, had hidden himself among the bushes, and he looked cautiously between the leaves to watch his victim die.
For an hour he did not move. And the moose, save for swaying of the head from side to side, and dartings of his dimming eyes, did not move either. He stood grandly in his tracks, arrogant, fearless, unconquered, and bleeding to death. At the end of the hour he had staggered and recovered. But he only stiffened his legs and held his head the more proudly.
A little later, dizziness overcame him and he fell like a thing struck. But instantly he sprang to his feet, alert and menacing. But he knew that the end was near.