There, while they rested and listened, Pierre deftly rolled his strip of birch bark into a horn of two feet in length, small at the mouth end, but several inches wide at the other. He tied it with cedar thongs, and, putting it to his lips, uttered a call so like a cow moose that Adrian wondered more and more. “Hm-m! I thought I was pretty smart, myself; but I’ll step down when you take the stand.” “Sh-h-h! Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t breathe if you can help it.” Adrian became rigid, all his faculties merged in that one desire to lose no sound. Again Pierre gave the moose call, and--hark! what was that? An answering cry, a far-away crashing of boughs, the onrush of some big creature, hastening to its mate. Noiselessly Pierre brought his gun into position, sighting one distant point from which he thought his prey would come. Adrian’s body dripped with a cold sweat, his hands trembled, specks floated before his staring eyes, every nerve was tense, and, as Margot would have said, he was a-thrill “with murder,” from head to foot! Oh! if the gun were his, and the shot! Another call, another cry, and a magnificent head came into view. With horns erect and quivering nostrils, the monarch of that wilderness came, seeking love, and faced his enemies. “He’s within range--shoot!” whispered Adrian. “Only mad him that way. Sh! When he turns--” “Bang! bang! bang!” in swift succession. The great horns tossed, the noble head came round again, then bent, wavered, and disappeared. The tragedy was over. “I got him! I got him that time! Always shoot that way, never--” Pierre picked up his paddle and sent the canoe forward at a leap. When there came no responding movement from his companion he looked back over his shoulder. Adrian’s face had gone white, and the eagerness of his eyes had given place to unspeakable regret. “What’s the matter? Sick?” “Yes. Why, it was murder! Margot was right.” “Oh, shucks!” Whereupon Pierre pulled the faster toward the body of his victim. CHAPTER XV SHOOTING THE RAPIDS Three months earlier, if anybody had told Adrian he would ever be guilty of such “squeamishness,” he would have laughed in derision. Now, all unconsciously to himself, the influence of his summer at Peace Island was upon him, and it came to him with the force of a revelation that God had created the wild creatures of His forests for something nobler than to become the prey of man. “Oh! That grand fellow! His splendidly defiant, yet hopeless, facing of death! I wish we’d never met him!” “Well, of all fools! I thought you wanted nothing but a chance at him yourself.” “So I did, before I saw him. What if it had been Madoc?” “That’s different.” “The same. Might have been twin brothers. Maybe they were.” “Couldn’t have been. Paddle, won’t you?”