ning antler tips appeared
above the near willows, and swiftly, silently, there glided into view a
huge bull Moose.

"How solid and beefy he looks!" was my first thought. He "woofed" again,
and the guide, with an eye always to the head, whispered to my partner:
"Take him! he's a stunner."

Striding on he came, with wonderful directness, seeing I had not called
for twenty minutes, and that when he was a mile or more away.

As he approached within forty yards, the guide whispered, "Now is your
chance. You'll never get a better one." My partner whispered, "Steady
the canoe." I drove my paddle point into the sandy bottom, the guide did
the same at the other end, and she arose standing in the canoe and
aimed. Then came the wicked "crack" of the rifle, the "pat" of the
bullet, the snort and whirl of the great, gray, looming brute, and a
second shot as he reached the willows, only to go down with a crash, and
sob his life out on the ground behind the leafy screen.

It all seemed so natural, so exactly according to the correct rules of
sporting books and tales, and yet so unlovely.

There were tears in the eyes of the fair killer, and heart wrenches were
hers, as the great sobs grew less and ceased; and a different sob was
heard at my elbow, as we stood beside the biggest Moose that had been
killed there in years. It was triumph I suppose; it is a proud thing to
act a lie so cleverly; the Florentine assassins often decoyed and
trapped a brave man, by crying like a woman. But I have never called a
Moose since, and that rifle has hung unused in its rack from that to the
present day.

[Illustration]

THE BIGGEST OF OUR GAME--THE BUFFALO

"Yes, that's a buffalo-bird," said the old Indian, pointing to some
black birds, with gray mates, that flitted or ran across the plain.
"Pretty bad luck when the Buffalo gone. Them little birds make their
nest in a Buffalo's wool, right on his head, and when the Buffalo all
gone, seem like the buffalo-bird die too; 'cause what's the use, no got
any nest."

This is a fragment that reached me long ago in Montana. It seemed like a
lusty myth, whose succulent and searching roots were in a bottomless
bog, with little chance of sound foundation. But the tale bore the
searchlight better than I thought. For it seems that the buffalo-bird
followed the Buffalo everywhere, and was fond of nesting, not in the
shaggy mane between the horns of the ruling monarch, but on any huge
head it might find