We were near the edge of the cranberry flat; and just as Rod was bemoaning our poor luck, a slight crackling out in the thick cranberry bushes came to our ears.
“Hark!” whispered Rod; “something out there. The bear, perhaps.”
Standing on tiptoe, we peeped quietly over the tops of the bushes, now laden with the green cranberries. Off some seventeen or eighteen rods, something was slowly moving. We could see it plainly—something which, at first sight, looked like the roots of an old dry pine stump, a great mass of stubs and prongs.
“A moose!” exclaimed Rod, in an eager whisper. “A moose browsing the cranberries! Quick with your rifle! Together now!”
We both fired. The huge animal, fully nine feet in height beneath his antlers, bounded into the air at the reports, with a wild, hoarse cry, which I can compare to nothing I have ever heard for hideousness. In a frightful way it resembled the neigh of a horse, or, rather, the loud squeal of that animal when bitten or otherwise hurt—bounded up, then fell, floundering and wallowing amid the cranberries, uttering hideous moans.
As quickly as we could for the thick and tangled bushes, we made our way out towards the spot. The fearful struggles stilled as we drew near. Our aim, at so short a distance, had been thoroughly fatal. A great opening in the bushes had been smashed down, in the midst of which lay the moose, with its large nostrils dilated, gasping and quivering. But its great ox eyes were set, and rapidly glazing. The bushes were all besprinkled and drenched with blood. One bullet had struck and broken the skull into the brain; that was Rod’s. Mine had gone into the breast, striking the lungs,—probably, from the profuse bleeding.
“A pretty good shot!” exclaimed Rod, looking upon the slaughter from a purely business stand-point. “Moosehide is always worth something. So are those antlers. A noble set—aren’t they? All of four feet broad across the top. Pretty heavy to lug; we can put them in the canoe, though.”
“Then there’s the meat,” said I.
“That’s so,” cried Rod, smacking his lips. “No more rabbit’s broth for us at present. O, won’t we have some grand moose steaks! Do you hear that, old boy? How does that strike your fancy? Come, let’s skin him, and cut him up. I long to behold some of that surloin broiling! Rabbit meat, indeed!” and Rod whipped out his hunting-knife, and fell upon the carcass with the zeal of a hungry bald eagle.
In a few minutes we had stripped off the skin. Rod then wrenched off the antlers, cut out the muffle (the end of the nose), and also about a hundred weight of what he considered the choicest of the meat. The rest of it—nine or ten hundred pounds—we could only leave where it had fallen. It would be of no use to us, so far from the settled lands.