“That’s what it was, boy,” he declared, with a black scowl. “If you look, you can see where my bullet struck him in the body, just back of where I aimed. A deer or moose will always run a long distance after being hit between the ribs that way; ain’t that so, Whalen?”
Whalen made no reply. Perhaps he was so astonished by the audacity of Bill’s claim that he could not catch his breath.
“Well, now, that’s queer,” Bluff went on, determined to have some say in the matter, even if finally cheated out of his just rights; “here my chum and I have been thinking we were following that moose’s trail all the way from our camp, a matter of as much as eight miles, more or less. And, say, we even believed we fired a double shot just now at him, while he was standing here browsing on that branch. Jerry, we sure must have been dreaming all that!”
“I guess you were, kid,” the man continued, without allowing a flicker of a smile to cross his face, although both of his companions wore wide grins. “You may have got up just in time to set eyes on my moose before he keeled over; but don’t let me catch you trying to claim a hand in landing him; hear that?”
“If, as you say, Mr. Nackerson,” Bluff went on doggedly, “you shot him a long ways back and he’s just dropped here through exhaustion, why, of course you can show us marks of blood all along his trail.”
“What’s that you say, you young cub?” demanded the other angrily.
“When a deer’s badly wounded, he leaves a trail of red on the snow that even a half-blind man could see,” Bluff told him boldly. “If you can show us even one mark twenty feet away from here we’ll never put in any claim for the killing.”
It was a fair challenge; but of course, as Bill Nackerson’s claim was founded on sand, he would never dream of accepting it. Bluff knew as much when he said what he did, for he had sized the other up long ago for just what he was—a bully and an unfair sportsman, who did not care how he secured his game so long as he got it.
“What do you take me for, to be forced to prove my word against a couple of impudent kids?” he roared; for when men realize that they are in the wrong they often like to whip themselves into a passion.
“But if you look, you’ll find there are two bullets in that moose; and they’ll turn out to be of the same pattern we use in our guns,” Bluff continued, meaning to rub it in as hard as he could before being compelled to retreat, as he fully expected would be the ultimate outcome of the encounter.