ugh the trees, halting, listening, trying the ground
at every step for telltale twigs ere he put his weight down, that I had
heard no sound, though I was listening intently in the dead hush that
was on the lake.

It may have been curiosity, or the uncomfortable sense of being watched
and followed by the man-fish, who neither harmed nor feared him, that
brought Umquenawis at last to our camp to investigate. One day Noel was
washing some clothes of mine in the lake when some subtle warning made
him turn his head. There stood the big bull, half hidden by the dwarf
spruces, watching him intently. On the instant Noel left the duds where
they were and bolted along the shore under the bushes, calling me loudly
to come quick and bring my rifle. When we went back Umquenawis had
trodden the clothes into the mud, and vanished as silently as he came.

The Indians grew insistent at this, telling me of the hunter that had
been killed, claiming now, beyond a doubt, that this was the same bull,
and urging me to kill the ugly brute and rid the woods of a positive
danger. But Umquenawis was already learning the fear of me, and I
thought the lesson might be driven home before the summer was ended. So
it was; but before that time there was almost a tragedy.

One day a timber cruiser--a lonely, silent man with the instincts of an
animal for finding his way in the woods, whose business it is to go over
timber lands to select the best sites for future cutting--came up to
the lake and, not knowing that we were there, pitched by a spring a mile
or two below us. I saw the smoke of his camp fire from the lake, where I
was fishing, and wondered who had come into the great solitude. That was
in the morning. Towards twilight I went down to bid the stranger welcome
and to invite him to share our camp, if he would. I found him stiff and
sore by his fire, eating raw-pork sandwiches with the appetite of a
wolf. Almost at the same glance I saw the ground about a tree torn up,
and the hoof marks of a big bull moose all about.--

"Hello! friend, what's up?" I hailed him.

"Got a rifle?" he demanded, with a rich Irish burr in his voice, paying
no heed to my question. When I nodded he bolted for my canoe, grabbed my
rifle, and ran away into the woods.

"Queer Dick! unbalanced, perhaps, by living too much alone in the
woods," I thought, and took to examining the torn ground and the bull's
tracks to find out for myself what had happened.

But there was