it that ye
couldna slaughter stacks o' moose wi' him to help ye? Did ye see nane
at all?"

"Plenty, and one with the biggest horns in the world! But that's a long
story, and there's no time to tell it now."

"Time to burrrn, Dud, nae fear o' it! 'Twill be an hour afore the
line's clear to Charlo an' they lat us oot o' this. Come awa' up into
the cab, mon, an' tell us yer tale.' Tis couthy an' warm in the cab,
an' I'm willin' to leesten to yer bluidy advaintures."

So the two men clambered up into the engineer's seat. Hemenway gave
McLeod his longest and strongest cigar, and filled his own briarwood
pipe. The rain was now pattering gently on the roof of the cab. The
engine hissed and sizzled patiently in the darkness. The fragrant smoke
curled steadily from the glowing tip of the cigar; but the pipe went
out half a dozen times while Hemenway was telling the story of
Silverhorns.

"We went up the river to the big rock, just below Indian Falls. There
we made our main camp, intending to hunt on Forty-two Mile Brook.
There's quite a snarl of ponds and bogs at the head of it, and some
burned hills over to the west, and it's very good moose country.

"But some other party had been there before us, and we saw nothing on
the ponds, except two cow moose and a calf. Coming out the next morning
we got a fine deer on the old wood road--a beautiful head. But I have
plenty of deer-heads already."

"Bonny creature!" said McLeod. "An' what did ye do wi' it, when ye had
murdered it?"

"Ate it, of course. I gave the head to Billy Boucher, the cook. He said
he could get ten dollars for it. The next evening we went to one of the
ponds again, and Injun Pete tried to 'call' a moose for me. But it was
no good. McDonald was disgusted with Pete's calling; said it sounded
like the bray of a wild ass of the wilderness. So the next day we gave
up calling and travelled the woods over toward the burned hills.

"In the afternoon McDonald found an enormous moose-track; he thought it
looked like a bull's track, though he wasn't quite positive. But then,
you know, a Scotchman never likes to commit himself, except about
theology or politics."

"Humph!" grunted McLeod in the darkness, showing that the stroke had
counted.

"Well, we went on, following that track through the woods, for an hour
or two. It was a terrible country, I tell you: tamarack swamps, and
spruce thickets, and windfalls, and all kinds of misery. Presently we
came out on a