“Moose won’t stand to watch a jack as deer do,” he said. “Twill only scare ’em off. They’re a heap too cute to be taken in by an onnatural big star floating over the water. But ’taint the lucky side of the moon for us. She’ll rise late, and her light’ll be so feeble that it wouldn’t show us an elephant clearly if he was under our noses. So if I succeed in coaxing a bull to the brink of the water, I’ll open the jack, and flash our light on him. He’ll bolt the next minute as quick as greased lightning on skates; but if you only get a short sight of him, I promise that ’twill be one you’ll remember.”
“And if he should take a notion to come for us?” said Cyrus.
“He won’t, if we don’t fire. The boat will be lying among the black shadows, snug in by the bank, and he’ll see nothing but the dazzling light. But you fellows must keep still as death. Off we go now, boys, and mum’s the word!”
This was almost the last sentence spoken. Not a syllable moved the lips of any one of the four, as the boat glided away from camp towards the south end of the lake, the oars making scarcely a sound as Herb handled them. By and by he ceased rowing for an instant, took his pipe from his mouth, knocked out its ashes, and put it in his pocket with a wise look at his companions, murmuring, “Don’t want no tobacco incense floating around!”
At the same time, from a distant ridge upon the eastern shore, covered with evergreens which stood out like dark steeples against the evening sky, came a faint, dull noise, as if some belated woodsman was driving a blunt axe against a tree. The sound itself would scarcely have awakened a hope of anything unusual in the minds of the inexperienced; but, combined with the guide’s aspect as he pocketed his pipe, it made Cyrus and his comrades sit suddenly erect, listening as if ears were the only organs they possessed.
The queer, dull noise was once repeated. Then again there was silence almost absolute, Herb’s oars moving with the softest swish imaginable, as the boat skimmed along the lonely, curved bay which he had chosen for a calling-place. It came to a stop amid shadows so dense and black that they seemed almost tangible, close to a bank fringed with overhanging bushes, having a background of evergreens. These last, in the fast-gathering darkness, looked like a sable array of mourners in whose ranks a pale ghost or two mingled, the spectres being slim white-birch trees.
The opposite bank presented a similar scene.
It was amid such surroundings that Neal Farrar heard for the second time in his life the weird sound of the moose-hunter’s call. He was a strong, well-balanced young fellow; yet here again he knew the sensation as if needles were pricking him all over, which he had felt once before in these wilds, while his heart seemed to be performing athletic sports in his body.
Cyrus and Dol confessed afterwards that they were “all shivers and goose-flesh” as the call rose upon the night air.
After he had shipped his oars, and laid them down, Herb Heal noiselessly turned his body to face the bow, and took up the birch-bark horn which lay beside him. He breathed into it anxiously once or twice, then paused, drew in all the air which his big lungs could contain, put the trumpet again to his lips with its mouth pointing downward, and began his summons.