“I can’t just say I did; but then it all happened so quick I couldn’t be dead sure either way. It’s a good-sized critter anyway, I think, Phil.”
“Yes, no doubt about that, Ethan. But let’s get started on the trail.”
That pleased Ethan, for he was full of eagerness. The love for hunting ran full and strong in his veins. Phil used to be built in the same way, but since discovering the peculiar fascination of hunting with a flashlight camera he seemed to be losing much of his former liking for killing game. He would much rather spend his time playing his skill and brains against the natural caution of the wearers of fur, in endeavoring to photograph them in their native haunts.
For a while they continued to move along. Sometimes they could make pretty good speed, where the going was easy; and then again it became necessary to push through thickets where the branches were so thick as to hold them up.
“Have you any idea yet whether it’s a bull or a cow?” asked Ethan, after they must have been going fully two hours.
“Not absolutely,” returned Phil; “but I’ve got an idea we’re going to find it the latter.”
“Tell me what you base your judgment on, please, Phil.”
“I may be all wrong at that,” replied the other, who never set himself up as infallible. “There have been a few places where the chase led us through thick woods, with the lower limbs of the trees hanging down under their snow burden just so far. If the moose had big horns, which would be the case in a bull, no matter how far back on his shoulders he laid them they would be apt to break some of the twigs loose above, and we’d have seen them lying on the snow.”
“Then I take it from what you say there were none of these signs, eh, Phil?”
“Not that I could see, and I looked carefully, not once but several times. I’m afraid, Ethan, your moose is going to turn out a big cow after all.”