“P’raps you folks don’t know,” went on the woodsman, “that there are four ways o’ hunting moose.  The first and fairest is still-hunting ’em in the woods, which means following their signs, and getting a shot in any way you can, if you can.  But that’s a stiff ‘if’ to a hunter.  Nine times out o’ ten a moose will baffle him and get off unhurt, even when a man has tracked him for days, camping on his trail o’ nights.  The snapping of a twig not the size of my little finger, or one tramping step, and the moose’ll take warning.  He’ll light out o’ the way as silently as a red man in moccasins, and the hunter won’t even know he’s gone.

“The second way is night-hunting, going after ’em in a canoe with a jack-light; same thing as jacking for deer.  I guess you’ve tried that, so you’ll know what it’s like—­skeery kind o’ work.”

Neal nodded an eloquent assent, and Herb went on:—­

“The third method is a dog’s trick.  It’s following ’em on snowshoes over deep snow.  I’ve tried that once, and I’m blamed if I’ll ever try it again.  It’s butchery, not sport.  The crust of snow will be strong enough for a man to run on, but it can’t support the heavy moose.  The creature’ll go smashing through it and struggling out, until its slim legs are a sight to see for cuts and blood.  Soon it gets blowed, and can stumble no farther.  Then the hunter finishes it with an axe.”

Disgust thickened the voices of the listening three, as with one accord they raised an outcry against this cruel way of butchering a game animal, without giving it a single chance for its life.  When their indignation had subsided, the hunter went on to describe the fourth and last method of entrapping moose—­the calling in which Dol was so interested.

“P’raps you won’t think this is fair hunting either,” he said; “for it’s a trick, and I’ll allow that there’s times when it seems a pretty mean game.  Anyhow, I’d rather kill one moose by still-hunting than six by calling.  But if you want to try work that’ll make your blood race through your body like a torrent one minute, and turn you as cold as if your sweat was ice-water the next, you go in for moose-calling.  I guess you know all about the matter, Cyrus; but as these Britishers do not, I’ll try and explain it to’ em.

“Early in September the moose come up from the low, swampy lands where they have spent the summer alone, and begin to pair.  Then the bull-moose, as we call the male, which is generally the most wide-awake of forest creatures, loses some of his big caution, an’ goes roaming through the woods, looking for a mate.  This is the time for fooling him.  The hunter makes a horn out o’ birch-bark, somewheres about eighteen inches long, through which he mimics the call of the cow-moose, to coax the bull within reach of his rifle-shots.”

“What is the call like?” asked Neal, his heart thumping while he remembered that strange noise which had marked a new era in his experience of sounds, as he listened to it at midnight by Squaw Pond.