'Ah, now, we must be ver' careful, ver' careful, not make no noise,' whispered Wikonaie to his companions, who nodded eager assent. Yard by yard they crept upon their unconscious prey. The giant creature had struck a small bunch of particularly young and juicy trees, and he was enjoying them to his heart's content.
When Wikonaie deemed they were sufficiently near, he gave the signal for them to be ready to fire. The next moment the woods rang out with a strange wild shout, which would have startled anything in the way of man or beast: and the moose, thus rudely interrupted in his rich repast, flung up his head with a snort, partly of fear and partly of defiance.
This was the moment for which Wikonaie was waiting. 'Now fire!' he cried, drawing the trigger of his own gun as he spoke.
Almost as one, the three reports startled the echoes of the woods, and the moose, suddenly wheeling round, the incarnation of fury and of fright, was met by the two dogs, Dour and Dandy, who sprang gallantly at him, barking and leaping for his great nose. Bewildered by this novel attack, he thought flight the best thing, and sped off into the woods at an amazing pace. Indeed, he went so fast that Hector, who had fully expected to see the great creature drop instantly, began to fear lest he might not be mortally wounded after all, and they should lose him in the woods. Wikonaie's countenance showed no such anxiety. True the moose had disappeared with the dogs at his heels, but he left on the spotless snow the sure sign of a stricken animal—great splashes of red, which told that he could not go very far.
'We follow heem now, eh?' cried Wikonaie, rapidly reloading his gun, the others doing the same. Off they set along the blood-marked trail, and, about the end of a mile, Wikonaie gave a shout of joy, for there, just ahead of him, fallen at the foot of an unusually large tree, was their quarry, to all appearances dead. Now, for the first time, Wikonaie showed a rashness which he had not before; for dropping his gun, and drawing his hunting-knife, he went triumphantly up to the fallen monarch, and waved the keen steel above his massive antlers in token of victory.
The next instant, with a roar of startling ferocity, the moose sprang to his feet, hurling Wikonaie over on his back, right in front of him, where a single stroke from one of his tremendous forelegs would have made of the Indian a bleeding lifeless hulk.
Fortunate indeed was the presence of the dogs, Dour and Dandy, as they, realizing the crisis, sprang at the moose's head with utter fearlessness, and one of them succeeded in securing a temporary hold upon the thick neck. This bewildered the monster for a moment, and that gave Hector an opportunity, to which the boy, all of a tremble as he was, happily proved equal.
To free himself from the dogs the moose tossed his head high in the air, thereby flinging Dour to one side, but at the same time exposing in the completest way his magnificent breast. Hardly pausing to take aim, Hector fired, and the bullet went straight to the heart of the noble creature.
With a despairing bellow, almost like a great human groan, he once more sank at the foot of the tree, this time to rise no more.
How those three rejoiced over their great triumph, Baptiste claiming that his first shot had been fatal; Wikonaie proud of his little Ti-ti-pu, now a strong young brave, skilled in the chase, and a man to be feared in war: and Hector, thankful for the opportunity which had enabled him to save his Indian friend.