Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 36).djvu/88

78 (yesterday) he came to tell me, in his reserved and silent manner, that three fine moose were feeding quietly behind the plateau of Partridge Creek. After swallowing a hasty mouthful all four of us—Grant, your two men, and I—started out from the hut. We made a wide détour. At the top of a hill, where we had hidden ourselves, all of us stretched full length on the ground, we perceived, a short distance off in the valley, near a ‘mooselick,' three enormous moose moving slowly forward and quietly browsing on the moss and lichens. All at once they gave three simultaneous bounds, and, one of the males giving vent to the striking bellow which these animals utter only when they are hunted or mortally wounded, the three went off at a mad gallop towards the south.

“What had happened?"

“We decided to approach the spot where the animals had taken fright so suddenly. Arriving at the ‘moose-lick,' a spot about sixty feet long and fifteen wide, we saw in the mud, and almost on a level with the water of the ‘lick,' the fresh imprint of the body of a monstrous animal. Its belly had made an impression in the slime more than two feet deep, thirty feet long, and twelve feet wide. Four gigantic paws, also deeply impressed, had left at each end of the main imprint, and a little to the side, footprints five feet long by two and a half feet wide, the claws being more than a foot long, the sharp points of which had buried themselves deeply in the mud. There was also the print, apparently, of a heavy tail, ten feet long and sixteen inches wide at the point.



“We followed the tracks of the monster in the valley for five or six miles, and then, at the ravine of Partridge Creek—a place which the miners call a gulch—they ceased suddenly as if by enchantment.”

next day, at five o’clock in the morning, Father Lavagneux, Buttler, Leemore, a neighbouring miner hastily summoned, myself, and five men of the tribe, crossed the River Stewart in two canoes. Neither of the first two guides, who were overcome with terror, nor the sergeant of the Mounted Police, who received our story with scepticism, nor the letter-carrier, would consent to accompany us.

All day long we searched, without result, the valley of the little River McQuesten, the flats of Partridge Creek, and the country between Barlow and the lofty, snow-covered mountains.

At last, towards evening, tired out, after having toiled for a long time through the great marsh, we lighted a fire at the top of a