“Here’s the place,” Frank told them, a short time afterward. “You can see the tree with the hole in it over there, and I think I even saw a squirrel frisk out of sight as we came up.”
“Yes, and here’s where Will made himself a seat,” added Bluff. “He fixed it so he could sit comfortably, and not have to frighten the family of bushy-tails by moving. Now, he didn’t say he turned his head; just looked up when first he heard that queer noise.”
“Yes,” said Jerry, “which would make it over there that the thing showed up. Let’s take a look at the ground, and see if Will was dreaming or not.”
Before half a minute had passed, Frank was pointing to certain marks plainly seen in the inch and more of snow that had fallen on the previous night, perhaps as a sort of forerunner of the coming storm.
“There you are, fellows!” he announced.
All stared hard at the monstrous tracks. Bluff even got down on hands and knees in order to see better.
“It was a moose, all right, Frank!” said Jerry.
“From the prints made by its big split hoofs, I’m pretty sure of that,” Frank asserted; “I’m beginning to believe Will was not so far out of the way, after all, when he said it might be the giant of all Maine moose!”
Bluff got up again, shaking his head.
“Oh, the meanest luck that ever was!” he lamented. “Why couldn’t I have taken a notion to step out here with Will, to watch the way he took the pictures of that squirrel family? I’d have had my gun across my knees, with buckshot in every shell, of course. Think how easy I could have dropped him, with such a short distance between. It’s cruel, that’s what it is!”