"HE 'BELLED' HARSHLY SEVERAL TIMES ACROSS THE DARK
WASTES."]

As the light spread down the mountain to the edge of the shelf, and
the moon rose into his view, he "belled" harshly several times across
the dark wastes outspread below him.

Receiving no answer to his defiance, the great bull turned his
attention again to the ooze around the spring. After sniffing it all
over he fell to furrowing it excitedly with the two lowermost
branches of his antlers,--short, broad, palmated projections thrust
out low over his forehead, and called by woodsmen "the ploughs." Every
few seconds he would toss his head fiercely, like an ordinary bull,
and throw the ooze over his shoulders. Then he pawed the cool,
strong-smelling stuff to what he seemed to consider a fitting
consistency, sniffed it over again, and raised his head to "bell"
a fresh challenge across the spacious solitudes. Receiving no answer,
he snorted in disgust, flung himself down on the trampled ooze,
and began to wallow with a sort of slow and intense vehemence,
grunting massively from time to time with volcanic emotion.

The wallow was now in the full flood of the moonlight. In that
mysterious illumination the caribou, encased in shining ooze, took on
the grotesque and enormous aspect of some monster of the prediluvian
slimes. Suddenly his wallowing stopped, and his antlers, dripping mud,
were lifted erect. For a few moments he was motionless as a rock,
listening. He had caught the snapping of a twig, in the trail below
the edge of the shelf. The sound was repeated; and he understood.
Blowing smartly, as if to clear the mud from about his nostrils, he
lurched to his feet, stalked forth from the wallow, and stood staring
arrogantly along the trail by which he had come. The next moment
another pair of antlers appeared; and then another bull, tall but
lean, and with long, spiky, narrow horns, mounted over the edge of the
shelf, and halted to eye the apparition before him.

The newcomer was of a darker hue than the lord of the wallow, and of
much slimmer build,--altogether less formidable in appearance. But he
looked very fit and fearless as, after a moment's supercilious survey
of his rival's ooze-dripping form, he came mincing forward to the
attack. The two, probably, had never seen each other before; but in
rutting season all caribou bulls are enemies at sight.

The white bull--no longer white now, but black and silver in the
moonlight--stood for some seconds quite