“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 finest head in Maine.  So here’s your chance for a trophy, boys.  I guess ’twill be your only one.”

“Hurrah!  I’m in for this game!” cried Neal.

“I too,” said Cyrus.

“I’m in for it with a vengeance!” whooped Dol.  “Though I’m blessed if I’ve a notion what ‘calling a moose’ means.”

“How much have you larned, anyhow, Kid, in the bit o’ time you’ve been alive?” asked the woodsman, with good-humored sarcasm.

“Enough to make my fists talk to anybody who thinks I’m a duffer,” answered Dol, squaring his shoulders as if to make the most of himself.

“Good for you, young England!” laughed Cyrus.

Herb turned his eyes, and regarded the juvenile Adolphus with amused criticism.

“Britisher or no Britisher, I’ll allow you’re a little man,” he muttered.  “Keep a stiff upper lip, boys; we’re not far from camp now.”

A word of cheer was needed.  Not one of the trio had growled at their load, but the flannel shirts of the two Farrars clung wetly to their bodies.  Their breath was coming in hard puffs through spread nostrils.  A four-mile tramp through the woods, heavily laden with raw meat, was a novel but not an altogether delightful experience.