But the moose.  Zing-ha and he had gone out that day to play at hunting after the manner of their fathers.  On the bed of the creek they struck the fresh track of a moose, and with it the tracks of many wolves.  “An old one,” Zing-ha, who was quicker at reading the sign, said—­“an old one who cannot keep up with the herd.  The wolves have cut him out from his brothers, and they will never leave him.”  And it was so.  It was their way.  By day and by night, never resting, snarling on his heels, snapping at his nose, they would stay by him to the end.  How Zing-ha and he felt the blood-lust quicken!  The finish would be a sight to see!

Eager-footed, they took the trail, and even he, Koskoosh, slow of sight and an unversed tracker, could have followed it blind, it was so wide.  Hot were they on the heels of the chase, reading the grim tragedy, fresh-written, at every step.  Now they came to where the moose had made a stand.  Thrice the length of a grown man’s body, in every direction, had the snow been stamped about and uptossed.  In the midst were the deep impressions of the splay-hoofed game, and all about, everywhere, were the lighter footmarks of the wolves.  Some, while their brothers harried the kill, had lain to one side and rested.  The full-stretched impress of their bodies in the snow was as perfect as though made the moment before.  One wolf had been caught in a wild lunge of the maddened victim and trampled to death.  A few bones, well picked, bore witness.

Again, they ceased the uplift of their snowshoes at a second stand.  Here the great animal had fought desperately.  Twice had he been dragged down, as the snow attested, and twice had he shaken his assailants clear and gained footing once more.  He had done his task long since, but none the less was life dear to him.  Zing-ha said it was a strange thing, a moose once down to get free again; but this one certainly had.  The shaman would see signs and wonders in this when they told him.

And yet again, they come to where the moose had made to mount the bank and gain the timber.  But his foes had laid on from behind, till he reared and fell back upon them, crushing two deep into the snow.  It was plain the kill was at hand, for their brothers had left them untouched.  Two more stands were hurried past, brief in time-length and very close together.  The trail was red now, and the clean stride of the great beast had grown short and slovenly.  Then they heard the first sounds of the battle—­not the full-throated chorus of the chase, but the short, snappy bark which spoke of close quarters and teeth to flesh.  Crawling up the wind, Zing-ha bellied it through the snow, and with him crept he, Koskoosh, who was to be chief of the tribesmen in the years to come.  Together they shoved aside the under branches of a young spruce and peered forth.  It was the end they saw.

The picture, like all of youth’s impressions, was still strong with him, and his dim eyes watched the end played out as vividly as in that far-off time.  Koskoosh marvelled at this, for in the days which followed, when he was a leader of men and a head of councillors, he had done great deeds and made his name a curse in the mouths of the Pellys, to say naught of the strange white man he had killed, knife to knife, in open fight.