Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/42



been a wet spring, cold and belated, and the turbulent Wassis was still in flood, raging between its scarred banks. A couple of hundred yards lower down, it plunged over the forty-foot drop of Great Falls and went crashing, torn to flying snow, through the black and narrow deeps of the gorge. The steady, trampling thunder of its plunge throbbed on the air.

Near the edge of the high bank, but not too near, stood a lanky, long-legged, long-headed moose calf, sniffing at the green and brown leaf-buds of a poplar sapling. Its preposterously long nose was pleased with the scent of the bursting leaf-buds; but the awkward youngster had not yet learned to browse, even upon such delicate fare as poplar-buds. He was still dependent on the abundant milk of his great, dark-coated mother.

The cow moose was at the other side of the glade, forty or fifty paces back from the bank, browsing comfortably on the tender, sappy twigs of a young silver birch. She was a splendid specimen of her race, full five feet high at the tip of her massive, humped shoulders; her brown, furred hide was almost black except along the belly,