I saw a
cow-elk and a yearling calf trotting across a glade about a hundred
yards distant. Wanting R.C. to see them I looked his way, and pointed.
But he was pointing also and vehemently beckoning for me to join him. I
ran on all fours over to where he knelt. He whispered pantingly:
"Grandest sight--ever saw!" I peeped out.
In a glade not seventy-five yards away stood a magnificent bull elk,
looking back over his shoulder. His tawny hind-quarters, then his dark
brown, almost black shaggy shoulders and head, then his enormous spread
of antlers, like the top of a dead cedar--these in turn fascinated my
gaze. How graceful, stately, lordly!
R.C. stepped out from behind the pine in full view. I crawled out, took
a kneeling position, and drew a bead on the elk. I had the fun of
imagining I could have hit him anywhere. I did not really want to kill
him, yet what was the meaning of the sharp, hot gush of my blood, the
fiery thrill along my nerves, the feeling of unsatisfied wildness? The
bull eyed us for a second, then laid his forest of antlers back over his
shoulders, and with singularly swift, level stride, sped like a tawny
flash into the green forest.
R.C. and I began to chatter like boys, and to walk toward the glade,
without any particular object in mind, when my roving eye caught sight
of a moving brown and checkered patch low down on the ground, vanishing
behind a thicket.
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