As the Rocket drew in close to shore and came alongside the heavy logs of the landing place, they heard a hail from a long, low, rambling building and saw a bewhiskered man, old in looks behind the beard, but youthful in his agile bound as he came leaping down the hewn log steps and took charge.
“Mighty glad to see you, boys. Where are you going?” he called out heartily as he shook hands in a big, frank way.
“Camping over on Old Moose Lake,” said Frank. “Came up from Columbia this afternoon and going to tie up here until we are ready to go back.”
“Fine! Fine! Come along in and get warmed up. I’ll take care of the boat and the packs. Just get in there by the fire,” and he waved a hand toward the door from which he had come.
Within the place a great log fire was burning in an open fireplace, and two men, dressed in heavy woollen shirts and wool-topped boots, turned to nod a hearty welcome as the lads trooped in.
“Going to Old Moose Lake, eh?” one of the men asked, when told by the boys that was where they were headed. “Well, it’s a great place right now. What camp, did you say—old man Parsons’s?”
Both men were interested in the boys’ tale of their big camping expedition, and Frank led up to a question about the old bull moose they had heard so much about.
“Old King, eh?” laughed one of the men, filling his pipe after having knocked out the ashes on the heel of his heavy boot. “By the great horn spoon, you’ll never get old King. That’s a foxy critter. Say, old man Van Kirk—know him? Old man Van Kirk came up here a couple of seasons ago, before he had that accident, and old King almost got him for true. Yes, sir, I was up there with him, just north of Old Moose Lake, and that bull moose nigh got him.”
This whetted the appetite of the boys for more news, and they got plenty of it—a great deal of it being legend, pieces of tales that had been handed about from one guide to another, for it seemed that the big moose bull had been roaming the woods in that section for a long time.
When they sat down to a meal spread for all on one large table, with a roaring log fire warming up the dining room, oil lamps hanging from the rafters overhead to light the place, the run of conversation about the moose kept on, with these two guides, not so old, as the boys soon discovered, adding more and more to the stories. Frank caught the wink of one of them during a particularly exciting recital of an episode, and he then took all they said with a large pinch of salt.