CHAPTER VII.

THE BIRCH BARK CHALLENGE.

“Eli says we’re now in the big game country, fellows!”

Giraffe was rubbing at his gun when he made this remark. They sat about a fire among the pines that bordered the river; and another day had elapsed since we last saw them in camp, at the time of the visit made by the Maine sheriff, and his posse.

“That sounds good to me,” Step Hen observed. “Now, as for myself, I never claimed to be great shakes at doing any hunting; but all the same, I feel a longing to see a great moose standing up before me while I proceed to bore him through and through with my trusty rifle.”

Giraffe laughed scornfully as he continued to rub away with a rag he had greased with vaseline.

“You just take it from me, son, though I’m not a great woodsman myself, that if you ever do shoot that popgun of yours at a full grown moose, the quicker you shin up a good tree, the better. For if you delay, he’s going to help you with his horns.”

“Popgun, nothing,” remonstrated Step Hen; “now, I’d just like to know what you mean by that? I took advice before I had my dad buy me that gun. It was Allan here who told me the good points about it. Just because you carry one of those old-fashioned, big-bore rifles, that carry half a pound of lead, more or less, you think a light thirty-thirty gun is a plaything. But, my friend, investigate, and you’ll discover that it all lies in the ammunition you use, not the bore of the gun. Ain’t that a fact, Thad?”

“It certainly is,” replied the other; “and I’ll prove it when I borrow that new repeating rifle of yours, Step Hen, to try and bring down my moose—when I get a chance to strike one.”

“Huh! don’t see how you make that out,” grumbled Giraffe. “This here gun is one of the hardest hitters ever made. It is some hefty, I admit; and in a long jaunt you’d come off much better than me, Step Hen. But what harm could your little pea-shooter do against a big black bear, or a savage moose, not to speak of a panther, or a wolf?”

“Looky here, and I’ll show you, old scoffer,” replied Step Hen. “Just take note of the cartridge that goes in the magazine of my rifle. Do you see how extra long it is, and how the powder chamber swells much larger than the end that holds the bullet? Well, the power is all there. But that ain’t all, not by a long sight.”

“Go on!” said Giraffe, fretfully, as the other paused, dramatically.

“Well, this is what they call a soft-nosed bullet. They’ve tried to prevent the use of them in war, because they are so terrible in their results. When it strikes even the flesh of a deer, it mushrooms out till it makes a larger hole even than your big bore. Yes, and if you asked Eli there, he’d be likely to tell you that if he _had_ to choose between the two, he’d much prefer being hit by a bullet from your old elephant gun, to one from my pea-shooter, as you call it. That’s all.”

Giraffe listened, and frowned. He may have tried to look as though he did not believe half he heard; but apparently he had lost considerable interest in his own heavy artillery, for he was seen to quietly lay it down immediately afterwards.

“And Sebattis has promised to show me how he makes what he calls a ‘moose-call’,” remarked Bumpus, proudly; “being a strip of birch bark, curled up in a peculiar way like a long cornucopia; and through this the hunter can coax an old bull to come near enough to give him a shot. P’raps now, he’ll even let us hear what it sounds like.”

“Bully!” exclaimed Davy Jones; “I’ve always wanted to know what that could be like, when I’ve read about men calling the moose. Does he come to have a fight, Eli?”

“I guess that’s jest what he does,” replied the older guide, who was smoking his pipe contentedly by the fire, all duties for the day having been closed up.

“Then that must have been why Sebattis stripped that bark from the birch tree after we landed this afternoon,” remarked Step Hen. “I wondered whether he meant to write on it, the way you told us the Indians did, Allan; making pictures where white men would have letters, and drawing the story out. There he goes now, starting to make the horn, I guess.”

“This is mighty pleasant up here, fellows,” said Thad, as he glanced around; “all of you look perfectly happy, as though not a single care rested on your minds.”

Bumpus immediately shivered, as though that reminded him he ought to be ashamed of himself to be enjoying such things, with heartless disregard concerning the dreadful happenings that, for aught he knew, were taking place at his home.

“Ah!” he remarked, with a big sigh; “I wonder where they all are to-night. And I certainly hope from the bottom of my heart, my poor father and mother, and all my brothers and sisters ain’t a-sittin’ on the curb, without a place to sleep in. What if that foolish forgetfulness was the cause of it all? I’ll never be happy again, boys, never once!”

“Oh! there he goes again on that same old racket!” exclaimed Giraffe; who did not appear to feel the slightest sympathy for his afflicted comrade, simply, because he would not believe there could be any reason for the dire forebodings of Bumpus. “Now, if we only had a wireless outfit along, and Bumpus, here, could get in direct touch with his folks, I reckon they’d give him the merry laugh because he’s been so silly about that old letter. Why, chances are, it wasn’t anything much, after all. Perhaps your dad wanted to ask his friend the cashier of the bank to drop around that evening, and have a game of billiards at your house. Do please forget it; or anyway bury your troubles deep down in your own bosom, Bumpus; because, if you keep on frettin’ and moanin’ like you’ve been doing, the chances are you’ll spoil this outing for the rest of us.”

“Well,” remarked Bumpus, indignantly; “guess if you happened to be in the same fix that bothers me, you’d moan and groan too.”

“Oh! I’ve got troubles of my own, let me tell you,” continued Giraffe; “all of us have. There’s Step Hen, he’s wondering what we’re going to have to eat if we clean out all we fetched along, and the game keeps some shy; Davy’s been uneasy this long time, ever since, in fact, he fell into the camp-fire from the limb of a tree, where he was hangin’ by his toes when the rotten thing broke under him; Bumpus, you yourself are over your head in a sea of troubles; or you were a short time back, when you took that header over the end of the canoe, into the river. We all have ’em, old fellow; but we don’t go around whinin’, and tellin’ every one. Do close up. There, looks like Sebattis is satisfied with the shape of the horn he’s made. Let’s take a squint at it, please.”

The birch bark trumpet was passed around for examination. No one knew better how to manufacture the simple but effective moose call than the Penobscot. Even such an old and experienced guide as the Maine woodsman, Eli Crookes, was ready to admit that Sebattis stood in a class all by himself, when it came to enticing the wary but belligerent moose to approach, by means of insidious calls upon the crude horn, that breathed defiance one minute, and enticing sounds the next.

“See if you can make it go,” suggested Step Hen.

Accordingly Thad, who had it in his hands at the time, placed it to his mouth. He puffed his cheeks out, and Bumpus hastened to clap both hands over his ears, as though he expected to hear a strident blast, such as the old-time Highland chiefs were accustomed to making when they wanted their clans to appear, and attack the hated English from south of the border.

But it was wonderful what a miserably soft noise followed all these efforts on the part of Thad. He had never touched a moose call before, and did not have the knack of extracting anything like a bellow from the innocent-looking device.

There was a general laugh at his inability to make use of the call; even the two Maine guides joining in, though the result was nothing more nor less than had been expected on their part. It requires long practice to know just how to pucker up the lips, and send the wind whistling through the bark tube that becomes larger at the further end, until it resembles a megaphone.

So Thad turned it over to Step Hen. That worthy did his level best, and was only able to extract a miserable squeak that made Bumpus chuckle.

“Just try it yourself, and see,” said Step Hen, thrusting the call into the chubby hands of the stout scout.

And so Bumpus, feeling confident that he could at least excel the last attempt, since he was the bugler of the troop, and could play on any sort of instrument, took the call. He grew so red in the face with trying to send forth a clarion note, that some of the boys feared he would break a blood vessel. But not even a grunt followed. The horn refused to show any of it’s good qualities, even when a master hand at the bugle took hold.

Then Giraffe was induced to try, and with no better success than had attended Step Hen’s attempt.

“I don’t believe the old thing can make a noise at all!” declared Bumpus, aggressively.

“Suppose you ask Sebattis to show you,” suggested Allan; who might have done it himself fairly well, but did not wish to spoil the work of the Indian.

Accordingly, the dark-faced guide, without showing the slightest interest in the matter, took the roll of birch bark, and placed it carelessly to his lips. What the boys listened to then, was a revelation to them. At first, the sound seemed like several troubled grunts, and Bumpus was grinning with the expectation that it was going to prove to be a rank failure, when the call grew louder and more insistent, until it seemed to roll up against the mountain far away on the other side of the river like a burst of thunder; or in great waves of sound. Then it grew softer again, and finally wound up with another tremendous volume that seemed to make the very air vibrate.

After Sebattis took the call down from his lips the echoes swung back and forth from one side of the river to the other, gradually dying away in the far distance.

“My! but that was simply great!” ejaculated the entranced Step Hen.

“Never heard anything to equal it in all my life; and such a queer whoop too!” declared Giraffe.

“Look at Sebattis; what’s he sitting up that way for?” cried Davy Jones.

“Seems to be listening, fellers! Oh! I wonder what he’s heard? Is that an echo that comes stealing back from up-river way?” and Bumpus half started to clamber to his feet.

Then the six scouts remained motionless, as, with their ears on the alert for the faintest sounds, they heard an increasing answering call come stealing through the night air.

Thad reached out his hand toward where Step Hen had rested his new magazine rifle against a neighboring tree. He guessed instantly what it meant. There was no echo about that thrilling sound! Sebattis had sent out a challenge, and it must have reached the ears of a real bull moose that chanced to be within hearing; and this swelling roar that they were listening to now was his sturdy response.

Yes, it was surely a genuine moose that had answered the call; and no doubt he was even at that very minute lumbering along over the pine-covered slope, eager to accept the challenge that breathed in that strange medley of sounds!