Though they would gladly have appropriated the compliment, the "gamy
kids" were obliged to acknowledge that hunting had not been in their
thoughts when they traversed the Atlantic. But they avowed that they
were the luckiest fellows alive, and that the American forest-land, with
its camps and trails and wild offspring, was such a glorious old
playground that they would never stop singing its praises until a swarm
of boys from English soil had tasted the novel pleasures which they
enjoyed.

"Now, then, gentlemen!" said the guide, "I haven't much idea that we'll
be able to haul this moose along to camp whole. If I skin and dress him
here, are you all ready to help in carrying home the meat?"

The trio briskly expressed their willingness, and Herb began the
dissecting business; while from a tree near by that strange bird which
hunters call the "moose-bird" screamed its shrill "What cheer? What
cheer?" with ceaseless persistence.

"Oh, hold your noise, you squalling thing!" said the guide, answering it
back. "It's good cheer this time. We'll have a feast of moose-meat
to-night, and there'll be pickings for you."

He then explained, for the benefit of the English lads, that this bird,
whose cry is startlingly like the hunters' translation of it, haunts the
spot where a moose has been killed, waiting greedily for its meal off
the creature after men have taken their share of the meat. Herb declared
that it had often followed him for hours while he was stealthily
tracking a moose, to be in at the death. And now it kept up the din of
its unceasing question until he had finished his disagreeable work.

As the party started back to camp, each one weighted with forty pounds
or more of meat, Herb carrying a double portion, with the antlers hooked
upon his shoulders, they heard the moose-bird still insatiably shrieking
"What cheer?" over its meal.

"Say, boys," said the guide, as he stalked along with his heavy load,
never blenching, "if you want to get a pair o' moose-antlers, now's your
time. I ain't a-going to sell these, but I'll give 'em outright to the
first fellow who can learn to call a moose successfully while he's
hunting with me. I know what sort of sportsman Cyrus Garst is. He'll go
prowling through the woods, starting moose and coolly letting 'em get
off without spilling a drop of blood, while he's watching the length of
their steps. I b'lieve he'd be a sight prouder of seeing one crunch a
root than if he got the