Kings in Exile Part 3

By this time the matter became of interest to the guides. The stories gathered in from different quarters, so it was hard to guess just where the gigantic stranger was most likely to be found. To north and northeast of the mountain went the two Armstrongs, seeking the stranger's trail; while to south and southeastward explored the Crimmins boys. If real, the giant bull had to be located; if a myth, he had to be exploded before raising impossible hopes in the hearts of visiting sportsmen.

Then suddenly arrived corroboration of all the stories. It came from Charley Crimmins. He was able to testify with conviction that the giant bull was no figment of Indian's imagination or lumberman's inventive humor. For it was he whose search had been successful.

In fact, he might have been content to have it just a shade less overwhelmingly successful. That there is such a thing as an embarra.s.sment of success was borne in upon him when he found himself jumping madly for the nearest tree, with a moose that seemed to have the stature of an elephant cras.h.i.+ng through the thickets close behind him. He reached the tree just in time to swing well up among its branches. Then the tree quivered as the furious animal flung his bulk against it. Crimmins had lost his rifle in the flight. He could do nothing but sit s.h.i.+vering on his branch, making remarks so uncomplimentary that the great bull, if he could have appreciated them, would probably have established himself under that tree till vengeance was accomplished. But not knowing that he had been insulted, he presently grew tired of snorting at his captive, and wandered off through the woods in search of more exciting occupation. Then, indignant beyond words, Charley descended from his retreat, and took his authoritative report in to the Settlements.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He reached the tree just in time to swing well up among the branches."]

At first it was thought that there would be great hunting around Old Saugamauk, till those tremendous antlers should fall a prize to some huntsman not only lucky but rich. For no one who could not pay right handsomely for the chance might hope to be guided to the range where such an unequalled trophy was to be won. But when the matter, in all its authenticated details, came to the ears of Uncle Adam, dean of the guides of that region, he said "_No_" with an emphasis that left no room for argument. There should be no hunting around the slopes of Saugamauk for several seasons. If the great bull was the terror they made him out to be, then he had driven all the other bulls from his range, and there was nothing to be hunted but his royal self. "Well,"

decreed the far-seeing old guide, "we'll let him be for a bit, till his youngsters begin to grow up like him. Then there'll be no heads in all the rest of New Brunswick like them that comes from Old Saugamauk." This decree was accepted, the New Brunswick guides being among those who are wise enough to cherish the golden-egged goose.

In the course of that season the giant moose was seen several times by guides and woodsmen--but usually from a distance, as the inconsiderate impetuosity of his temper was not favorable to close or calm observation. The only people who really knew him were those who, like Charley Crimmins, had looked down upon his grunting wrath from the branches of a substantial tree.

Upon certain important details, however, all observers agreed. The stranger (for it was held that, driven by some southward wandering instinct, he had come down from the wild solitudes of the Gaspe Peninsula) was reckoned to be a good eight inches taller at the shoulders than any other moose of New Brunswick record, and several hundredweight heavier. His antlers, whose symmetry and palmation seemed perfect, were estimated to have a spread of sixty inches at least. That was the conservative estimate of Uncle Adam, who had made his observations with remarkable composure from a tree somewhat less lofty and st.u.r.dy than he would have chosen had he had the time for choice.

In color the giant was so dark that his back and flanks looked black except in the strongest sunlight. His mighty head, with long, deeply overhanging muzzle, was of a rich brown; while the under parts of his body, and the inner surfaces of his long, straight legs, were of a rusty fawn color. His "bell"--as the s.h.a.ggy appendix that hangs from the neck of a bull moose, a little below the throat, is called--was of unusual development, and the coa.r.s.e hair adorning it peculiarly glossy. To bring down such a magnificent prize, and to carry off such a trophy as that unmatched head and antlers, the greatest sportsmen of America would have begrudged no effort or expense. But though the fame of the wonderful animal was cunningly allowed to spread to the ears of all sportsmen, its habitat seemed miraculously elusive. It was heard of on the Upsalquitch, the Nipisiguit, the Dungarvan, the Little Sou'west, but never, by some strange chance, in the country around Old Saugamauk. Visiting sportsmen hunted, spent money, dreamed dreams, followed great trails and brought down splendid heads, all over the Province; but no stranger with a rifle was allowed to see the proud antlers of the monarch of Saugamauk.

The right of the splendid moose to be called the Monarch of Saugamauk was settled beyond all question one moonlight night when the surly old bear who lived in a creva.s.se far up under the stony crest of the mountain came down and attempted to dispute it. The wild kindreds, as a rule, are most averse to unnecessary quarrels. Unless their food or their mates are at stake, they will fight only under extreme provocation, or when driven to bay. They are not ashamed to run away, rather than press matters too far and towards a doubtful issue. A bull moose and a bear are apt to give each other a wide berth, respecting each other's prowess. But there are exceptions to all rules, especially where bears, the most individual of our wild cousins, are concerned. And this bear was in a particularly savage mood. Just in the mating season he had lost his mate, who had been shot by an Indian. The old bear did not know what had happened to her, but he was ready to avenge her upon any one who might cross his path.

Unluckily for him, it was the great moose who crossed his path; and the luck was all Charley Crimmins's, who chanced to be the spectator of what happened there beside the moonlit lake.

Charley was on his way over to the head of the Nipisiguit, when it occurred to him that he would like to get another glimpse of the great beast who had so ignominiously discomfited him. Peeling a sheet of bark from the nearest white birch, he twisted himself a "moose-call,"

then climbed into the branches of a willow which spread out over the edge of the s.h.i.+ning lake. From this concealment he began to utter persuasively the long, uncouth, melancholy call by which the moose cow summons her mate.

Sometimes these vast northern solitudes seem, for hours together, as if they were empty of all life. It is as if a wave of distrust had pa.s.sed simultaneously over all the creatures of the wild. At other times the lightest occasion suffices to call life out of the stillness. Crimmins had not sounded more than twice his deceptive call, when the bushes behind the strip of beech crackled sharply. But it was not the great bull that stepped forth into the moonlight. It was a cow moose. She came out with no effort at concealment, and walked up and down the beach, angrily looking for her imagined rival.

When the uneasy animal's back was towards him, Crimmins called again, a short, soft call. The cow jumped around as if she had been struck, and the stiff hair along her neck stood up with jealous rage. But there was no rival anywhere in sight, and she stood completely mystified, shaking her ungainly head, peering into the dark undergrowth, and snorting tempestuously as if challenging the invisible rival to appear. Then suddenly her angry ridge of hair sank down, she seemed to shrink together upon herself, and with a convulsive bound she sprang away from the dark undergrowth, landing with a splash in the shallow water along sh.o.r.e. At the same instant the black branches were burst apart, and a huge bear, forepaws upraised and jaws wide open, launched himself forth into the open.

Disappointed at missing his first spring, the bear rushed furiously upon his intended victim, but the cow, for all her apparent awkwardness, was as agile as a deer. Barely eluding his rush, she went shambling up the sh.o.r.e at a terrific pace, plunged into the woods, and vanished. The bear checked himself at the water's edge, and turned, holding his nose high in the air, as if disdaining to acknowledge that he had been foiled.

Crimmins hesitatingly raised his rifle. Should he bag this bear, or should he wait and sound his call again a little later, in the hope of yet summoning the great bull? As he hesitated, and the burly black shape in the moonlight also stood hesitating, the thickets rustled and parted almost beneath him, and the mysterious bull strode forth with his head held high.

He had come in answer to what he thought was the summons of his mate; but when he saw the bear, his rage broke all bounds. He doubtless concluded that the bear had driven his mate away. With a bawling roar he thundered down upon the intruder.

The bear, as we have seen, was in no mood to give way. His small eyes glowed suddenly red with vengeful fury, as he wheeled and gathered himself, half crouching upon his haunches, to meet the tremendous attack. In this att.i.tude all his vast strength was perfectly poised, ready for use in any direction. The moose, had he been attacking a rival of his own kind, would have charged with antlers down, but against all other enemies the weapons he relied upon were his gigantic hoofs, edged like chisels. As he reached his sullenly waiting antagonist he reared on his hind-legs, towering like a black rock about to fall and crush whatever was in its path. Like pile-drivers his fore-hoofs struck downwards, one closely following the other.

The bear swung aside as lightly as a weasel, and eluded, but only by a hair's breadth, that destructive stroke. As he wheeled he delivered a terrific, swinging blow, with his armed forepaw, upon his a.s.sailant's shoulder.

The blow was a fair one. Any ordinary moose bull would have gone down beneath it, with his shoulder-joint shattered to splinters. But this great bull merely staggered, and stood for a second in amazement. Then he whipped about and darted upon the bear with a sort of hoa.r.s.e scream, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng with a veritable madness. He neither reared to strike, nor lowered his antlers to gore, but seemed intent upon tearing the foe with his teeth, as a mad horse might. At the sight of such resistless fury Crimmins involuntarily tightened his grip on his branch and muttered: "That ain't no _moose_! It's a--" But before he could finish his comparison, astonishment stopped him. The bear, unable with all his strength and weight to withstand the shock of that straight and incredibly swift charge, had been rolled over and over down the gentle slope of the beach. At the same moment the moose, blinded by his rage and unable to check himself, had tripped over a log that lay hidden in the bushes, and fallen headlong on his nose.

Utterly cowed by the overwhelming completeness of this overthrow, the bear was on his feet again before his conqueror, and scurrying to refuge like a frightened rat. He made for the nearest tree, and that nearest tree, to Crimmins's dismay, was Crimmins's. The startled guide swung himself hastily to a higher branch which stretched well out over the water.

Before the great bull could recover his footing, the fugitive had gained a good start. But desperately swift though he was, the doom that thundered behind him was swifter, and caught him just as he was scrambling into the tree. Those implacable antlers ploughed his hind-quarters remorselessly, till he squealed with pain and terror.

His convulsive scrambling raised him, the next instant, beyond reach of that punishment; but immediately the great bull reared, and struck him again and again with his terrible hoofs, almost crus.h.i.+ng the victim's maimed haunches. The bear bawled again, but maintained his clutch of desperation, and finally drew himself up to a safe height, where he crouched on a branch, whimpering pitifully, while the victor raged below.

At this moment the bear caught sight of Crimmins eying him steadily.

To the cowed beast this was a new peril menacing him. With a frightened glance he crawled out on another branch, as far as it could be trusted to support his weight. And there he clung, huddled and s.h.i.+vering like a beaten puppy, looking from the man to the moose, from the moose to the man, as if he feared they might both jump at him together.

But the sympathies of Crimmins were now entirely with the unfortunate bear, his fellow-prisoner, and he looked down at the arrogant tyrant below with a sincere desire to humble his pride with a rifle-bullet.

But he was too far-seeing a guide for that. He contented himself with climbing a little lower till he attracted the giant's attention to himself, and then dropping half a handful of tobacco, dry and powdery, into those snorting red nostrils.

It was done with nice precision, just as the giant drew in his breath.

He got the fullest benefit of the pungent dose; and such trivial matters as bears and men were instantly forgotten in the paroxysms which seized him. His roaring sneezes seemed as if they would rend his mighty bulk asunder. He fairly stood upon his head, burrowing his muzzle into the moist leaf.a.ge, as he strove to purge the exasperating torment from his nostrils. Crimmins laughed till he nearly fell out of the tree, while the bear forgot to whimper as he stared in terrified bewilderment. At last the moose stuck his muzzle up in the air and began backing blindly over stones and bushes, as if trying to get away from his own nose. Plump into four or five feet of icy water he backed. The shock seemed to give him an idea. He plunged his head under, and fell to wallowing and snorting and raising such a prodigious disturbance that all the lake sh.o.r.es rang with it. Then he bounced out upon the beach again, and dashed off through the woods as if a million hornets were at his ears.

Weak with laughter, Crimmins climbed down out of his refuge, waved an amiable farewell to the stupefied bear, and resumed the trail for the Nipisiguit.

CHAPTER II

For the next two years the fame of the great moose kept growing, adding to itself various wonders and extravagances till it a.s.sumed almost the dimensions of a myth. Sportsmen came from all over the world in the hope of bagging those unparalleled antlers. They shot moose, caribou, deer, and bear, and went away disappointed only in one regard. But at last they began to swear that the giant was a mere fiction of the New Brunswick guides, designed to lure the hunters. The guides, therefore, began to think it was time to make good and show their proofs. Even Uncle Adam was coming around to this view, when suddenly word came from the Crown Land Department at Fredericton that the renowned moose must not be allowed to fall to any rifle. A special permit had been issued for his capture and s.h.i.+pment out of the country, that he might be the ornament of a famous Zoological Park and a lively proclamation of what the New Brunswick forests could produce.

The idea of taking the King of Saugamauk alive seemed amusing to the guides, and to Crimmins particularly. But Uncle Adam, whose colossal frame and giant strength seemed to put him peculiarly in sympathy with the great moose bull, declared that it could and should be done, for he would do it. Upon this, scepticism vanished, even from the smile of Charley Crimmins, who voiced the general sentiment when he said,--

"Uncle Adam ain't the man to bite off any more than he can chew!"

But Uncle Adam was in no hurry. He had such a respect for his adversary that he would not risk losing a single point in the approaching contest. He waited till the mating season and the hunting season were long past, and the great bull's pride and temper somewhat cooled. He waited, moreover, for the day to come--along towards midwinter--when those t.i.tanic antlers should loosen at their roots, and fall off at the touch of the first light branch that might brush against them. This, the wise old woodsman knew, would be the hour of the King's least arrogance. Then, too, the northern snows would be lying deep and soft and enc.u.mbering, over all the upland slopes whereon the moose loved to browse.

Along toward mid-February word came to Uncle Adam that the Monarch had "yarded up," as the phrase goes, on the southerly slope of Old Saugamauk, with three cows and their calves of the previous spring under his protection. This meant that, when the snow had grown too deep to permit the little herd to roam at will, he had chosen a sheltered area where the birch, poplar, and cherry, his favorite forage, were abundant, and there had trodden out a maze of deep paths which led to all the choicest browsing, and centred about a cl.u.s.ter of ancient firs so thick as to afford covert from the fiercest storms.

The news was what the wise old woodsman had been waiting for. With three of his men, a pair of horses, a logging-sled, axes, and an unlimited supply of rope, he went to capture the King.

It was a clear, still morning, so cold that the great trees snapped sharply under the grip of the bitter frost. The men went on snowshoes, leaving the teams. .h.i.tched in a thicket on the edge of a logging road some three or four hundred yards from the "moose-yard." The sun glittered keenly on the long white alleys which led this way and that at random through the forest. The snow, undisturbed and acc.u.mulating for months, was heaped in strange shapes over hidden bushes, stumps, and rocks. The tread of the snowshoes made a furtive crunching sound as it rhythmically broke the crisp surface.

Far off through the stillness the great moose, lying with the rest of the herd in their shadowy covert, caught the ominous sound. He lurched to his feet and stood listening, while the herd watched him anxiously, awaiting his verdict as to whether that strange sound meant peril or no.

For reasons which we have seen, the giant bull knew little of man, and that little not of a nature to command any great respect.

Nevertheless, at this season of the year, his blood cool, his august front shorn of its ornament and defence, he was seized with an incomprehensible apprehension. After all, as he felt vaguely, there was an unknown menace about man; and his ear told him that there were several approaching. A few months earlier he would have stamped his huge hoofs, thrashed the bushes with his colossal antlers, and stormed forth to chastise the intruders. But now, he sniffed the sharp air, snorted uneasily, drooped his big ears, and led a rapid but dignified retreat down one of the deep alleys of his maze.

This was exactly what Uncle Adam had looked for. His object was to force the herd out of the maze of alleys, wherein they could move swiftly, and drive them floundering through the deep, soft snow, which would wear them out before they could go half a mile. Spreading his men so widely that they commanded all trails by which the fugitives might return, he followed up the flight at a run. And he accompanied the pursuit with a riot of shouts and yells and laughter, designed to shake his quarry's heart with the fear of the unusual. Wise in all woodcraft, Uncle Adam knew that one of the most daunting of all sounds, to the creatures of the wild, was that of human laughter, so inexplicable and seemingly so idle.

At other times the great bull would merely have been enraged at this blatant clamor and taken it as a challenge. But now he retreated to the farthest corner of his maze. From this point there were but two paths of return, and along both the uproar was closing in upon him.

Over the edge of the snow--which was almost breast-high to him, and deep enough to bury the calves, hopelessly deep, indeed, for any of the herd but himself to venture through--he gave a wistful look towards the depths of the cedar swamps in the valley, where he believed he could baffle all pursuers. Then his courage--but without his autumnal fighting rage--came back to him. His herd was his care.

He crowded the cows and calves between himself and the snow, and turned to face his pursuers as they came running and shouting through the trees.

When Uncle Adam saw that the King was going to live up to his kingly reputation and fight rather than be driven off into the deep snow, he led the advance more cautiously till his forces were within twenty-five or thirty paces of the huddling herd. Here he paused, for the guardian of the herd was beginning to stamp ominously with his great, clacking hoofs, and the reddening light in his eyes showed that he might charge at any instant.

He did not charge, however, because his attention was diverted by the strange action of the men, who had stopped their shouting and begun to chop trees. It amazed him to see the flas.h.i.+ng axes bite savagely into the great trunks and send the white chips flying. The whole herd watched with wide eyes, curious and apprehensive; till suddenly a tree toppled, swept the hard blue sky, and came down with a cras.h.i.+ng roar across one of the runways. The cows and calves bounded wildly, clear out into the snow. But the King, though his eyes dilated with amazement, stood his ground and grunted angrily.

A moment more and another tree, huge-limbed and dense, came down across the other runway. Two more followed, and the herd was cut off from its retreat. The giant bull, of course, with his vast stride and colossal strength, could have smashed his way through and over the barrier; but the others, to regain the safe mazes of the "yard," would have had to make a detour through the engulfing snow.

Though the King was now fairly cornered, Uncle Adam was puzzled to know what to do next. In his hesitation, he felled some more trees, dropping the last one so close that the herd was obliged to crowd back to avoid being struck by the falling top. This, at last, was too much for the King, who had never before known what it was to be crowded.

While his followers plunged away in terror, burying themselves helplessly before they had gone a dozen yards, he bawled with fury and charged upon his tormentors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "For perhaps thirty or forty yards the bull was able to keep up this almost incredible pace."]

Though the snow, as we have seen, came up to his chest, the giant's strength and swiftness were such that the woodsmen were taken by surprise, and Uncle Adam, who was in front, was almost caught. In spite of his bulk, he turned and sprang away with the agility of a wildcat; but if his snowshoes had turned and hindered him for one half second, he would have been struck down and trodden to a jelly in the smother of snow. Seeing the imminence of his peril, the other woodsmen threw up their rifles; but Uncle Adam, though extremely busy for the moment, saw them out of the corner of his eye as he ran, and angrily ordered them not to shoot. He knew what he was about, and felt quite sure of himself, though the enemy was snorting at his very heels.

For perhaps thirty or forty yards the bull was able to keep up this almost incredible pace. Then the inexorable pull of the snow began to tell, even upon such thews as his, and his pace slackened. But his rage showed no sign of cooling. So, being very accommodating, Uncle Adam slackened his own pace correspondingly, that his pursuer might not be discouraged. And the chase went on. But it went slower, and slower, and slower, till at last it stopped with Uncle Adam still just about six feet in the lead, and the great moose still blind-mad, but too exhausted to go one foot farther. Then Uncle Adam chuckled softly and called for the ropes. There was kicking, of course, and furious lunging and wild snorting, but the woodsmen were skilful and patient, and the King of Old Saugamauk was conquered. In a little while he lay upon his side, trussed up as securely and helplessly as a papoose in its birch-bark carrying-cradle. There was nothing left of his kings.h.i.+p but to snort regal defiance, to which his captors offered not the slightest retort. In his bonds he was carried off to the settlements, on the big logging-sled, drawn by the patient horses whom he scorned.