"My soul! Here he comes again!" Jonathan fairly yelled. "Get out o' the way!"
And Nat got out of the way as quickly as possible, taking refuge behind the same rock in the side of the gully.
Again the place resounded to a frightful medley of squeals, bellowings, and crashes in the brush. This time Jonathan had caught up the axe, and approaching the furious mêlée of whirling hoofs and gnashing teeth from one side, attempted to get in a blow. In their wild movements the enraged animals nearly ran over him, but he struck and stumbled.
The blow missed the moose's head, but fell on the animal's foreleg, just below the knee, and broke the bone. The moose reared, and wheeling on its hind legs, plunged down the gully, falling partly into the river, much as Nat had done.
A dozen times it now struggled to get up, almost succeeding, but fell back each time. With the ardour of battle still glowing in him, Jonathan rushed forward with the axe, and finally managed to deal the moose a deathblow; with a knife they then bled it, and stood by, triumphant.
"We've muttoned him! We've muttoned him!" Nat shouted. "But I never had such a fight as that before."
The horse, as it proved, was not seriously injured, but they were obliged to cut away the alder brush in the gully to get the animal back up the bluff, and were occupied for fully an hour doing so.
The body of the moose was a huge one; it must have weighed fully fourteen hundred pounds. The boys could no more have moved it than they could move a mountain. Moreover, it was now beginning to snow fine and fast.
Jonathan had a fairly good knife, however, and by using the axe they succeeded in rudely butchering the carcass and dismembering it. Even then the quarters were so heavy that their full strength was required to drag them up the bluff and load them into the wagon. The head, with its broad, branching antlers, was all that they could lift to the top of their now bulky load.
The task had taken till past four o'clock of that stormy November afternoon. Twilight was upon them, the wintry twilight of a snowstorm, before they made start; and it was long past midnight when they finally plodded home.