decent
moose path, and a moose can go anywhere that a bird can. A carry is
meant to be the shortest distance between two given places and it
doesn't strive for luxury. It will go under and over logs, through
scratchy thickets and gardens of poison ivy. It will plow through swamps
and quicksands; it will descend into pits; it will skin along the sharp
edge of slippery rocks set up at impossible angles, so that only a
mountain goat can follow it without risking his neck. I believe it would
climb a tree if a big one stood directly in its path.

We did not get through with entire safety. The guides, shod in their
shoepacks, trained to the business, went along safely enough, though
they lurched a good deal under their heavy cargoes and seemed always on
the verge of disaster. Eddie and I did not escape. I saw Eddie slip, and
I heard him come down with a grunt which I suspected meant damage. It
proved a serious mishap, for it was to one of his reels, a bad business
so early in the game. I fell, too, but I only lost some small areas of
skin which I knew Eddie would replace with joy from a bottle in his
apothecary bag.

But there were things to be seen on that two-mile carry. A partridge
flew up and whirred away into the bushes. A hermit thrush was calling
from the greenery, and by slipping through very carefully we managed to
get a sight of his dark, brown body. Then suddenly Eddie called to me to
look, and I found him pointing up into a tree.

"Porky, Porky!" he was saying, by which I guessed he had found a
porcupine, for I had been apprised of the numbers in these woods. "Come,
here's a shot for you," he added, as I drew nearer. "Porcupines damage a
lot of trees and should be killed."

I gazed up and distinguished a black bunch clinging to the body of a
fairly large spruce, near the top. "He doesn't seem to be damaging that
tree much," I said.

"No, but he will. They kill ever so many. The State of Maine pays a
bounty for their scalps."

I looked up again. Porky seemed to be inoffensive enough, and my killing
blood was not much aroused.

"But the hunters and logmen destroy a good many more trees with their
fires," I argued. "Why doesn't the State of Maine and the Province of
Nova Scotia pay a bounty for the scalps of a few hunters and logmen?"

But Eddie was insistent. It was in the line of duty, he urged, to
destroy porcupines. They were of no value, except, perhaps, to eat.

"Will you agree to eat this one if I s