Part 13

Touching up the edge of his hunting knife on the sole of his larrigan, he skinned the bear deftly, rolled up the heavy pelt, and tied it with osier-withes for convenience in the lugging. Then, after a wash in the lake, he turned back to fetch his partner and the drag, that they might haul the dead moose to the camp and cut it up conveniently at home. Glancing back as he vanished up the trail, he saw the orphaned calf stick its head out from behind a bush and stare after him pathetically.

"Mebbe I'd oughter shoot the little beggar too," he mused, "or the bears 'll jest get it!" But being rather tender-hearted where all young things were concerned, he decided that it might be big enough to look after itself, and so should have its chance.

A half hour later, when Brannigan and his partner, hauling the drag behind them briskly, got back to the lake, they found the calf standing with drooped head beside the body of its mother. At their approach it backed off a dozen yards or so to the edge of the bushes, and stood gazing at them with soft, anxious eyes.

"Best knock the ca'f on the head, too, while we're about it," said Long Jackson practically. "It looks fat an' juicy."

But Brannigan, his own first impulse in regard to the poor youngster now quite forgotten, protested with fervor.

"Hell!" he grunted, good-naturedly. "Ain't yer got enough fresh meat in this 'ere cow I've foraged fer ye? I've kinder promised that there unfortunate orphant she shouldn't be bothered none."

"She's too young yet to fend fer herself. The b'ars 'll git her, if we don't," argued Long Jackson.

But Brannigan's sympathies, warm if illogical, had begun to assert themselves with emphasis.

"This 'ere's _my_ shindy, Long," he answered doggedly. "An' I say the poor little critter 'd oughter have her chance. She _may_ pull through. An' good luck to her, ses I! We got all the fresh meat we want."

"Oh, if ye're feeling _that_ way about the orphant, Tom, I ain't kickin' none," answered Jackson, spitting accurate tobacco-juice upon a small white boulder some ten or twelve feet distant. "I was only thinkin' we'd save the youngster a heap of trouble if we'd jest help her go the way of her ma right now."

"You ax her fer _her_ opinion on that p'int!" grunted Brannigan, tugging the carcass of the moose on to the drag.

Long Jackson turned gravely to the calf.

"Do ye want to be left to the b'ars and the h'a'nts, in the big black woods, all by yer lonesome?" he demanded.

The calf, thus pointedly addressed, backed further into the bush and stared in mournful bewilderment.

"Or would ye rather be et, good an' decent, an' save ye a heap o' frettin'?" continued Long Jackson persuasively.

A bar-winged moose-fly, that vicious biter, chancing to alight at that moment on the calf's ear, she shook her lank head vehemently.

"What did I tell ye?" demanded Brannigan dryly. "She knows what she wants!"

"Kinder guess that settles it," agreed Long Jackson with a grin, spitting once more on the inviting white boulder. Then the two men set the rope traces of the drag over the homespun shoulders, and, grunting at the first tug, started up the trail with their load.

The calf took several steps forward from the thicket, and stared in distraction after them. She could not understand this strange departure of her mother. She bleated several times, hoarsely, appealingly; but all to no effect. Then, just as the drag, with its dark, pathetic burden, was disappearing around a turn of the trail, she started after it, and quickly overtook it with her ungainly, shambling run. All the way to the cabin she followed closely, nosing from time to time at the unresponsive figure on the drag.

Brannigan, glancing back over his shoulder from time to time, concluded that the calf was hungry. Unconsciously, he had come to accept the responsibility for its orphaned helplessness, though he might easily have put all the blame upon the bear. But Brannigan was no shirker. He would have scorned any such sophistry. He was worrying now over the question of what he could give the inconveniently confiding little animal to eat. He decided, at length, upon a thin, lukewarm gruel of corn-meal, slightly salted, and trusted that the sturdiness of the moose stomach might survive such a violent change of diet. His shaggy eyebrows knitted themselves over the problem till Long Jackson, trudging at his side, demanded to know if he'd "got the bellyache."

This being just the affliction which he was dreading for the calf, Brannigan felt a pang of guilt and vouchsafed no reply.

Arriving at the cabin, Jackson got out his knife, and was for setting to work at once on the skinning and cutting up. But Brannigan intervened with prompt decision.

"Don't ye be so brash, Long," said he. "This 'ere's _Mary_. Hain't yer got no consideration for Mary's feelings? She's comin' to stop with us; an' it wouldn't be decent to go cuttin' up her ma right afore her eyes! You wait till I git her tied up 'round behind the camp. Then I'll go an' fix her some corn-meal gruel, seein's we haven't got no proper milk for her." And he proceeded to unhitch the rope from the drag.

Jackson heaved a sigh of resignation, seated himself on the body of the slain cow, and fished up his stumpy black clay pipe from the depths of his breeches pocket.

"So ye're goin' to be Mary's ma, eh?" he drawled, with amiable sarcasm. "If ye'd jest shave that long Irish lip o' yourn, Tom, she'd take ye fer one o' family right enough."

He ducked his head and hoisted an elbow to ward off the expected retort; but Brannigan was too busy just then for any fooling. Having rubbed his hands and sleeves across the hide of the dead mother, he was gently approaching the calf, with soft words of caress and reassurance. It is improbable that the calf had any clear comprehension of the English tongue, or even of Brannigan's backwoods variant of it. But she seemed to feel that his tones, at least, were not hostile. She slightly backed away, shrinking and snorting, but at length allowed Brannigan's outstretched fingers to approach her dewy muzzle. The smell of her mother on those fingers reassured her mightily. Being very hungry, she seized them in her mouth and fell to sucking them as hard as she could.

"Pore little eejut," said Brannigan, much moved by this mark of confidence, "ye shall have some gruel quick as I kin make it." With two fingers between her greedy lips and a firm hand on the back of her neck, he had no difficulty in leading her around behind the cabin, where he tied her up securely, out of sight of the work of Long Jackson's industrious knife.

* * * * *

On Brannigan's gruel Mary made shift to survive, and even to grow, and soon she was able to discard it in favor of her natural forage of leaves and twigs. From the first she took Brannigan _in loco parentis_, and, except when tied up, was ever dutifully at his heels. But she had a friendly spirit toward all the world, and met Long Jackson's advances graciously. By the end of autumn she was amazingly long-legged, and lank, and awkward, with an unmatched talent for getting in the way and knocking things over. But she was on a secure footing as member of the household, petted extravagantly by Brannigan and cordially accepted by Long Jackson as an all-round good partner. As Jackson was wont to say, she was not beautiful, but she had a great head when it came to choosing her friends.

As would naturally be supposed, Mary, being a member of the firm, had the free run of the cabin, and spent much of her time therein, especially at meals or in bad weather. But she was not allowed to sleep indoors, because Brannigan was convinced that such a practice would not be good for her health. At the same time she could not be left outdoors at night, the night air of the wilderness being sometimes infected with bears, lynxes, and wild-cats. A strong pen, therefore, was built for her against the end wall of the cabin, very open and airy, but roofed against the rain and impervious to predatory claws. In this pen she was safe, but not always quite happy; for sometimes in the still dark of the night, when Brannigan and Long Jackson were snoring in their hot bunks within the cabin, she would see an obscure black shape prowling stealthily around the pen, and hungry eyes would glare in upon her through the bars. Then she would bawl frantically in her terror. Brannigan would tumble from his bunk and rush out to the rescue. And the dread black shadow would fade away into the gloom.

When winter settled down upon the wilderness, it did so with a rigor intended to make up for several mild seasons.

The snow came down, and drove, and drifted, till Mary's pen was buried so deep that a tunnel had to be dug to her doorway. Then set in the long, steady, dry cold, tonic and sparkling, but so intense that the great trees would crack under it with reports like pistol shots upon the death-like stillness of the night. But all was warmth and plenty at the snow-draped cabin; and Mary, though she had no means of knowing it, was without doubt the most comfortable and contented young moose in all Eastern Canada. She was sometimes a bit lonely, to be sure, when Brannigan and Jackson were away on their snow-shoes, tending their wide circuit of traps, and she was shut up in her pen. At such times, doubtless, her inherited instincts hankered after the companionship of the trodden mazes of the "moose yard." But when her partners were at home, and she was admitted to the cabin with them, such faint stirrings of ancestral memory were clean forgotten. There was no companionship for Mary like that of Brannigan and Long Jackson, who knew so consummately how to scratch her long, waggling ears.

But Fate, the hag, growing jealous, no doubt, of Mary's popularity, now turned without so much as a snarl of warning and clawed the happy little household to the bone. In some inexplicable, underhanded way, she managed to set fire to the cabin in the night, when Brannigan and Jackson were snoring heavily. They slept, of course, well clad. They awoke choking, from a nightmare. With unprintable remarks, they leapt from their bunks into a scorching smother of smoke, snatched up instinctively their thick coats and well-greased larrigans, fumbled frantically for the latch, and burst out into the icy, blessed air. Mary was bawling with terror, and bouncing about in her pen as if all the furies were after her.

Brannigan snatched her door open, and she lumbered out with a rush, knocking him into the snow, and went floundering off toward the woods. But in a couple of minutes she was back again and stood trembling behind Long Jackson.

At first both woodsmen had toiled like demons, dashing the snow in armfuls upon the blazing camp; but the fire, now well established, seemed actually to regard the fluffy snow as so much more congenial fuel. Knowing themselves beaten, they drew back with scorched faces and smarting eyes and stood watching disconsolately the ruin of their home. Mary thrust her long-muzzled head around from behind her partners, and wagged her ears, and stared.

In the face of real catastrophe the New Brunswick backwoodsman does not rave and tear his hair. He sets his teeth and he does a good deal of thinking. Presently Brannigan spoke.

"I noticed ye come away in a hurry, Long!" he remarked drily. "Did ye think to bring anything to eat with ye?"

"Nary bite!" responded Jackson. "I've brung along me belt--it was kind of tangled up wi' the coat--an' me knife's in it, all right." He felt in the pockets of his coat. "Here's baccy, an' me pipe, an' a bit o' string, an' a crooked nail! Wish't I'd know'd enough to eat a bigger supper last night! I hadn't no sort of an appetite."

"I've got me old _dudheen_," said Brannigan, holding up his stubby black clay. "An' I've got two matches, _jest two_, mind yer! An' that's all I _hev_ got."

They filled their pipes thoughtfully and lit them frugally with a blazing splinter from the wood pile.

"Which is nearest," queried Jackson, "Conroy's Upper Camp, or Gillespie's, over to Red Brook?"

"Conroy's, sure," said Brannigan.

"How fur, would ye say?" insisted Jackson, who really knew quite as much about it as his partner.

"In four foot o' soft snow, an' no snowshoes, about ten thousan' mile!" replied Brannigan consolingly.

"Then we'd better git a move on," said Jackson.

"I'm _thinkin'_ we ain't got no time to waste starin' at bonfires," agreed Brannigan.

They turned their backs resolutely and headed off through the night and the snow toward Conroy's Camp, many frozen leagues to the south-eastward. Mary, bewildered and daunted, followed close at Brannigan's heels. And they left their blazing home to roar and fume and vomit sparks and flare itself out in the unheeding solitude.

Accustomed as they were to moving everywhere on snowshoes in the winter, the two woodsmen found it infinitely laborious and exhausting to flounder their way through a four-foot depth of light snow. They took half-mile turns, as near as they could guess, at going ahead to break the way.

Once they thought of putting this job upon Mary. But it was not a success. Mary didn't want to go ahead. Only with assiduous propulsion could they induce her to lead; and then her idea of the direction of Conroy's Camp seemed quite unformed. Sometimes she would insist upon being propelled sideways. So they soon gave up the plan, and let her take her place in the rear, which her humility seemed to demand.

Both men were in good condition, powerful and enduring. But in that savage cold their toil ate up their vitality with amazing speed. With plenty of food to supply the drain, they might have fought on almost indefinitely, defying frost and fatigue in the soundness of their physique. But the very efficiency of their bodily machinery made the demand for fuel come all the sooner. They smoked incessantly to fool their craving stomachs, till their pipes chanced to go out at the same time. Much too provident to use one of their two matches, which might, later on, mean life or death to them, they chewed tobacco till their emptiness revolted at it.

Then, envious of Mary, who browsed with satisfaction on such twigs and saplings as came in her way, they cut young fir branches, peeled them, scraped the white inner bark, and chewed mouthfuls of the shavings. But it was too early for the sap to be working up, and the stuff was no more eatable than sawdust. They speedily dropped this unprofitable foraging, pulled their belts tighter, and pushed on with the calm stoicism of their breed.

Long Jackson was first to call for a halt. The pallid midwinter dawn was spreading up a sky of icy opal when he stopped and muttered abruptly--

"If we can't eat, we must rest a spell."

Brannigan was for pushing on, but a glance at Jackson's face persuaded him.

"Give us one o' them two matches o' yourn, Long," said he. "If we don't hev' a fire, we'll freeze, with nothin' in our stommicks."

"Nary match, yet," said Jackson doggedly. "We'll need 'em worse later on."

"Then we'll have to warm ourselves huggin' Mary," laughed Brannigan. It was a sound proposition. They scooped and burrowed a deep pit, made Mary lie down, and snuggled close against her warm flanks, embracing her firmly. Mary had been for some time hankering after a chance to rest her long legs and chew her cud, so she was in no way loath. With head uplifted above her reclining partners, she lay there very contentedly, ears alert and eyes half closed. The only sound on the intense stillness was the slow grind of her ruminating jaws and the deep breathing of the two exhausted men.

Both men slept. But, though Mary's vital warmth was abounding and inexhaustible, the still ferocity of the cold made it perilous for them to sleep long. In a half-hour Brannigan's vigilant subconsciousness woke him up with a start. He roused Jackson with some difficulty. They shook themselves and started on again, considerably refreshed, but ravenously hungry.

"Whatever would we have done without Mary?" commented Brannigan.

"Ay, ay!" agreed Jackson.

All the interminable day they pushed on stoically through the soft, implacable snow-depths, but stopping ever more and more frequently to rest, as the cold and the toil together devoured their forces.

At night they decided that one of the precious matches must be used. They _must_ have a real fire and a real sleep, if they were to have any chance of winning through to Conroy's Camp. They made their preparations with meticulous care, taking no risk. After the deep trench was dug, they made a sound foundation for their fire at one end of it. They gathered birch bark and withered pine shavings and kindlings of dead wood, and gathered a store of branches, cursing grimly over their lack of an axe. Then Jackson scratched one match cautiously. It lit: the dry bark curled, cracked, caught; the clear young flame climbed lithely through the shavings and twigs. Just then an owl, astonished, flew hurriedly through the branches far overhead. He stirred a branch heavily snow-laden. With a soft swish a tiny avalanche slid down, fell upon the fire, and blotted it out. Indignantly the two men pounced upon it and cleared it off, hoping to find a few sparks still surviving. But it was as dead as a last year's mullein stalk.

Comment was superfluous, discussion unnecessary. Fire, that night, they must have. They scooped a new trench, clear in the open. They used the last match, and they built a fire so generous that for a while they could hardly endure its company in the trench. Mary, indeed, could not endure it, so she stayed outside. They smoked and they talked a little, not of their chances of making Conroy's Camp, but of baked pork and beans, fried steak and onions, and enormous boiled puddings smothered in butter and brown sugar. Then they slept for some hours. When the fire died down Mary came floundering in and lay down, beside them, so they did not feel the growing cold as soon as they should.

When they woke, they were half frozen and savage with hunger. There were still red coals under the ashes, so they revived the fire, smoked, and got themselves thoroughly warm. Then, with belts deeply drawn in, they resumed their journey in dogged silence. According to the silent calculation of each, the camp was still so far ahead that the odds were all against their gaining it. But they did not trouble to compare their calculations or their hopes. Toward evening Long Jackson began to go to pieces badly. He had a great frame, and immense muscular power, but, being gaunt and stringy, he had no reserves of fat in his hard tissues to draw upon in such an emergency as this. In warm weather his endurance would have been, no doubt, equal to Brannigan's. Now the need of fuel for the inner fire was destroying him. The enforced rests became more and more frequent. At last he grunted--

"I'm the lame duck o' this here outfit, Tom. Ye'd better push on, bein' so much fresher'n me, an' git the boys from the camp to come back for me."

Brannigan laughed derisively.

"An' find ye in cold storage, Long! Ye'd be no manner o' use to yer friends _that_ way. Ye wouldn't be worth comin' back fer." Jackson chuckled feebly and dropped the subject, knowing he was a fool to have raised it. He felt it was good of Brannigan not to have resented the suggestion as an insult.

"Reach me a bunch o' them birch twigs o' Mary's," he said. Having chewed a few mouthfuls and spat them out, he got up out of the snow and plunged on with a burst of new determination.

"That's where Mary's got the bulge on us," remarked Brannigan. "Ef we could live on birch-browse, now, I'd be so proud I wouldn't call the King my uncle."

"If Mary wasn't our pard, now," said Jackson, "we'd be all right. I'm that hungry I'd eat her as she stands, hair an' all."

Responding to a certain yearning note in Jackson's voice, Mary rubbed her long muzzle against him affectionately and nibbled softly at his sleeve.

Brannigan flushed. He was angry because his partner had voiced a thought which he had been at pains to banish from his own consciousness.

"Ef it hadn't a' been fer Mary, we wouldn't be alive now," said he sternly. "She's kep' us from freezin'."

"Oh, ye needn't git crusty over what I've said, Tom," replied Jackson, rubbing the long brown ears tenderly. "Mary's jest as much my pardner as she is yourn, an' I ain't no cannibal. We'll see this thing through with Mary, on the square, you bet. _But_--ef 'twasn't _Mary_--that's all _I_ say!"

"Right ye are, Long," said Brannigan, quite mollified. But later in the day, as he glanced at his partner's drawn, sallow-white face, Brannigan's heart misgave him. He loved the confiding Mary quite absurdly; but, after all, as he reminded himself, she was only a little cow moose, while Long Jackson was a Christian and his partner. His perspective straightened itself out.

At last, with a heavy heart, he returned to the subject.

"Ye was right, Long," said he. "Ef we don't make Conroy's Camp purty soon, we'll hev to--well, it'll be up to Mary! Poor Mary! But, after all, she's only a little moose cow. An' I'm sure she'd be proud, ef she could understand!"

But Jackson was indignant, as he went laboring on, leaning upon Mary's powerful shoulder.

"Not much," he snorted feebly. "Ther' ain't goin' to be no killin' of Mary on my account, an' don't ye forgit it! 'Twouldn't do good, fer I wouldn't tech a sliver of her, not ef I was dyin'. An' it would jest be on-pleasant fer Mary."

Brannigan drew a breath of relief, for this meant at least a postponement of the unhappy hour. "Jest as ye like, Long!" he grunted. But he clenched his teeth on the resolution that, the moment his partner should become too weak for effective protest, Mary should come promptly to the rescue. After all, whatever Mary's own opinion on the subject, it would be an end altogether worthy of her. He drove a whole rabble of whimsical fancies through his mind, as he labored resolutely onward through the snow. But his mittened hand went out continuously to caress Mary's ears, pleading pardon for the treason which it planned.

The midwinter dark fell early, and fell with peculiar blackness on Jackson's half-fainting eyes. He was leaning now on Mary's shoulders with a heaviness which that young person began to find irksome. She grunted complainingly at times, and made good-natured attempts to shake him off. But she had been well trained, and Brannigan's voice from time to time kept her from revolt. Brannigan was now watching his partner narrowly in the gloom, noting his movements and the droop of his head, since he could no longer make much of his face. He was beginning to feel, with a heavy heart, that the end of poor Mary's simple and blameless career was very close at hand.

He was busily hardening his heart with forced frivolities. He felt his long knife. He slipped his mittens into his pocket that his stroke might be sure, swift, and painless, but his fingers shook a little with strong distaste. Then his eyes, glancing ahead, caught a gleam of yellow light through the tree-trunks. He looked again, to assure himself, and calmly pulled on his mittens.

"Mary," said he, "you've lost the chance o' yer life. Ye ain't goin' to be no hero, after all!"

"What're ye gruntin' about, Tom?" demanded Jackson dully, aroused by the ring in his partner's voice.

"There's Conroy's Camp right ahead!" cried Brannigan. Then he fell to shouting and yelling for help. Jackson straightened himself, opened his eyes wide, saw the light, and the sudden increase of it as the camp door was flung open, heard answering shouts, and collapsed sprawling on Mary's back. He had kept going for the last few hours on his naked nerve.