“What are we going to do with him, now we’ve got him?” asked Jerry, scratching his head.
“All anybody cares for in an old moose like this,” Bluff told him, “is the horns. You couldn’t get your teeth into his flesh, no matter if you filed ’em to a point. Of course, the Indians keep the skin to make moccasins and shoes out of.”
“Yes, I knew that, because I’ve had a pair of moccasins made of elkskin. When it’s tanned right, it makes a tough article for footwear. But suppose we did take the hide and horns, how in the dickens would we ever get them to camp?”
“If we could make some sort of sledge now,” Bluff went on to say reflectively, “with our hatchet, no matter how clumsy it was, we could manage to draw home what we wanted.”
“If we left anything behind that was worthwhile, we’d have to hang it up high, I should think, Bluff. You remember that we heard a wolf howling one night, even if we haven’t come across any of them since.”
Bluff was trying to figure out what their program should be. While they had made all possible arrangements as to how to track the beast and the method of firing by volley so as to better encompass his fall, the boys had not dared go beyond that point.
Jerry was afraid it would be too much like counting their chickens before they were hatched, and on his part Bluff felt perfectly willing to let that part of the future take care of itself.
“I think that would be a good plan to follow, Jerry, and you deserve great credit for thinking of it,” he remarked presently, which of course caused the other chum to feel more or less satisfaction.
“Who’ll do the cutting up; and who wants to make the sledge?” asked Bluff, after a little time had elapsed and they felt that something should be gotten under way looking to a move; for faster now was the snow falling, and it might be that the storm was about to break over their heads.
“I think you’re more experienced about carving and taking pelts off than I am,” Jerry expostulated. “To tell you the honest truth, I never removed a hide in all my life, though I’ve had sections of my own knocked off by a rattan at school many a time.”