“Oh! I guess he stood about as high as a good-sized pony. But I’ve shot moose which were taller than any horse. The biggest one I ever killed measured between seven and eight feet from the points of his hoofs to his shoulders, and the antlers were four feet and nine inches from tip to tip. He was a monster—a regular jing-swizzler! A mighty queer way I got him too! I’ll tell you all about it some other time.”
“Oh! you must,” answered Garst. “You’ll have to give us no end of moose-talk by the camp-fire of evenings. These English fellows want to learn all they can about the finest game on our continent before they go home.”
“Why, for evermore!” gasped Herb, in broad amazement. “Are you Britishers? And have you crossed the ocean to chase moose in Maine woods? My word! You’re a gamy pair of kids. We’ll have to try to accommodate you with a sight of a moose at any rate—a live one.”
Though they would gladly have appropriated the compliment, the “gamy kids” were obliged to acknowledge that hunting had not been in their thoughts when they traversed the Atlantic. But they avowed that they were the luckiest fellows alive, and that the American forest-land, with its camps and trails and wild offspring, was such a glorious old playground that they would never stop singing its praises until a swarm of boys from English soil had tasted the novel pleasures which they enjoyed.
“Now, then, gentlemen!” said the guide, “I haven’t much idea that we’ll be able to haul this moose along to camp whole. If I skin and dress him here, are you all ready to help in carrying home the meat?”
The trio briskly expressed their willingness, and Herb began the dissecting business; while from a tree near by that strange bird which hunters call the “moose-bird” screamed its shrill “What cheer? What cheer?” with ceaseless persistence.
“Oh, hold your noise, you squalling thing!” said the guide, answering it back. “It’s good cheer this time. We’ll have a feast of moose-meat to-night, and there’ll be pickings for you.”
He then explained, for the benefit of the English lads, that this bird, whose cry is startlingly like the hunters’ translation of it, haunts the spot where a moose has been killed, waiting greedily for its meal off the creature after men have taken their share of the meat. Herb declared that it had often followed him for hours while he was stealthily tracking a moose, to be in at the death. And now it kept up the din of its unceasing question until he had finished his disagreeable work.
As the party started back to camp, each one weighted with forty pounds or more of meat, Herb carrying a double portion, with the antlers hooked upon his shoulders, they heard the moose-bird still insatiably shrieking “What cheer?” over its meal.
“Say, boys,” said the guide, as he stalked along with his heavy load, never blenching, “if you want to get a pair o’ moose-antlers, now’s your time. I ain’t a-going to sell these, but I’ll give ’em outright to the first fellow who can learn to call a moose successfully while he’s hunting with me. I know what sort of sportsman Cyrus Garst is. He’ll go prowling through the woods, starting moose and coolly letting ’em get off without spilling a drop of blood, while he’s watching the length of their steps. I b’lieve he’d be a sight prouder of seeing one crunch a root than if he got the finest head in Maine. So here’s your chance for a trophy, boys. I guess ’twill be your only one.”