Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/45

 back from the gorge, far back from the hated thunder of the falls, and then wandered aimlessly down the wide valley, moving without a sound through the balsam-scented silence. For all her bulk and the spread of her great, cleft, knife-edged hoofs, she could go through the woods and the undergrowth, when she chose, as noiselessly as a weasel or a fox.

Ordinarily it was the habit of the big cow moose to keep strictly to her own range, a section of the valley about four miles in length and stretching back to the hardwood ridge, some three miles from the river. This was her home, and she knew every inch of it. Now, however, it had grown distasteful to her. Continuing on downstream, a mile below the gorge, she found herself in fresh territory. Crossing a sparsely wooded rise, from which the lumbermen had cleaned out all the heavier timber, she saw below her a valley more spacious than her own, with a stretch of pale green water-meadow, or "intervale," where the wild Wassis joined its current to the broader flood of the Ottanoonsis. In the angle of their junction stood a log cabin and a barn, surrounded by several patches of roughly fenced clearing.

The scene as a whole had no interest for the unhappy mother moose, except for one item in it. In a little grassy inclosure behind the barn, hidden from the cabin windows, was a red calf, stand-