Since he was ready first, Johnny had struck out alone up the slope. He had heard nothing, seen nothing of the girl all day.
Little game had come his way. Once a ptarmigan had gone fluttering out from a clump of blueberries. He had lost himself at once in tall brush. A great white owl hooted at him. He had bagged him at once, not for food, but because of his broad feathers. He must make more arrows. There was an abundance of wood. Gordon Duncan had offered him steel points. He must provide his own feathers.
The land where he stood was rough, rocky and rolling. In places dark tamarack stood so thick in the narrow bottoms that it was impossible to pass. To his amazement, as he stood there looking, listening, the sound of a tremendous tearing and thrashing suddenly smote his startled senses. No sound came to him save the crashing of brush and rending of branches, yet even as he looked he caught a gleam of bright red among the tamarack trees.
“That’s strange,” he told himself, involuntarily tightening his grip on the six foot bow. “Can’t be a bird. Too big. I’ll see what’s going on.”
Catching at a branch here, another there, without a sound he let himself down the slope. As he dropped lower the spot of color was lost to his view. This did not disturb him. His sense of location was splendid. A tree taller than its fellows, a branch twisted off by some storm, a pine squirrel’s nest, these were his beacons. If he needed further guidance, the surprising tumult continued.
Then of a sudden as he rounded a clump of trees he saw it all at a glance. With a checked cry of surprise he stepped swiftly back to grip his bow and draw an arrow.
His movement was not missed. For a space of ten seconds silence reigned in that bit of northern wild. Then, as his bow sang taut a red-eyed fury, a giant of that wilderness, a bull moose, plunged head on, straight at him as he crouched for a shot.
A bull moose, interrupted in his display of anger, is a terrible creature to behold. As the boy looked into his bloodshot eyes, as he took in at once his huge head, his broad spiked antlers, his powerful neck, he wondered about his chances for life, and in the flash of a second knew as never before what a glorious possession life was. Yet he did not waver for an instant. Another life was at stake, the life of one without means of defense.
In that tense ten seconds before the moose charged he had seen that which caused him to doubt the accuracy of his vision. The flaming red spot in the top of the young tamarack tree was a red sweater worn by Faye Duncan. He had not seen that sweater before. She had worn a gray mackinaw in their travels.
But now, still crouching, he waited his shot. It must be well aimed, back of the shoulder, a perfect shot, or—