Joe said, "If you wound 'em moose, me sure get 'em."
We all landed at once. My companion reloaded; the Indian fastened his
birch, threw off his hat, adjusted his waistband, seized the hatchet, and
set out. He told me afterward, casually, that before we landed he had seen
a drop of blood on the bank, when it was two or three rods off. He
proceeded rapidly up the bank and through the woods, with a peculiar,
elastic, noiseless, and stealthy tread, looking to right and left on the
ground, and stepping in the faint tracks of the wounded moose, now and
then pointing in silence to a single drop of blood on the handsome,
shining leaves of the Clintonia Borealis, which, on every side, covered
the ground, or to a dry fern-stem freshly broken, all the while chewing
some leaf or else the spruce gum. I followed, watching his motions more
than the trail of the moose. After following the trail about forty rods in
a pretty direct course, stepping over fallen trees and winding between
standing ones, he at length lost it, for there were many other moose-
tracks there, and, returning once more to the last bloodstain, traced it a
little way and lost it again, and, too soon, I thought, for a good hunter,
gave it up entirely. He traced a few steps, also, the tracks of the calf;
but, seeing no blood, soon relinquished the search.
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