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The least fit was easy to decide. That was the poor little animal that had literally had
the stuffings knocked out of it, making the footing slippery as well as lending the
vicinity a certain nauseating air. The other two, their bellies dragging the ground,
squared off just in front of a fire pit that cast a demonic glow onto the bloodied
features of a man, on the left, and a moose, on the right. The moose, a cow, had only
two good legs the back legs were torn and dragged uselessly behind her. She
braced on her front hooves to lunge toward the man, who tottered on his knees and
elbows, but met each of her lunges with one of his own, battering her muzzle with
the stock of his rifle. Neither man nor moose seemed aware of me, which was odd,
because I had certainly made enough racket. Also, even absorbed as I was by the
drama before me, I still had the crawly feeling that something watched me very
closely indeed.
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The moose lunged, her breath pluming opaque whiteness into the man's face, her
nose missing him by about a foot. He whacked feebly with his rifle, missing her by
about the same distance and falling over to one side with the effort.
"Dumb moose," he panted in an aggrieved tone. "Crazy moose. I was tryin' to help
ya, ya dumb moose."
The moose responded only by lunging again, doggedly lurching for him as he
doggedly whapped at her. The determination in the set of his jaw and the thrust of
his pale head more than equaled her own hardheaded stubbornness.
As I drew nearer, the details of the man's appearance alarmed me. The top of his
union suit was soaked with blood, one suspender hung broken from his waist, and
his pants were soaked through with blood and mud. The moose was not in much
better shape. One side of her throat had been torn open, the wound pumping great
quantities of blood every second.
"See here, sir," I said to the man as kindly as possible, "I hardly think that's the ideal
way to moose hunt. Of course, I've only seen it done once, but I believe it's
customary to use the other end of the gun."
As if to make a liar out of me, the moose lunged a final time and fell heavily to her
side, her great dark eyes rolling up in her head, her front legs sticking straight out.
The man gazed at her wonderingly and held his gun stock aloft again, the barrel
digging into the ground, before looking up to notice me, after which he, too, fell
over. I skirted the fire pit, approaching him cautiously, armed and undoubtedly
demented as he was. But as he continued to mutter, I looked him full in the face and
recognized both his visage and that stricken voice with which he had once
confounded a whole ship with his grief.
"Dumb moose," Egil Larsson mourned. "She was a dumb moose. I was gonna help
her. Dumb moose."
"Help her what, silly fellow, commit suicide?" I chided. I tried to get him to his feet,
but though he groaned he would not rise, but lay still, very wet and sticky and cold,
and I grew afraid that something in him was seriously damaged.
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"Wolf," he answered me as though we were carrying on a perfectly reasonable
conversation. "I was gonna help her with the wolf. Killed her baby. But the darn
wolf ran away and she got me insteada him. Dumb moose."
As he spoke I looked elsewhere, searching for help, for some device with which to
move him, for details of the clearing, for something to carry water from the creek
which I had barely noticed before, what with everything else happening. I was, in
fact, looking everywhere but at his wounds and his face, from which the life was
surely going to depart unless I could find a way to aid him, and quickly. I scanned
the clearing, the creek, the distance to the open-doored cabin about a hundred yards
away from us. Thinking of splints, I looked to the woods, and saw twin red points
looking back at me.
"W wolf Did you say wolf?" I asked. The points seemed to grow larger, and I
thought, even in the nighttime shadows of the trees, I could make out a deeper
blackness over there.
"Dumb moose " he muttered less intelligibly than before.
"You're sure it wasn't, perhaps, a sled dog looking for a handout? They look very
similar to one another, as I'm sure you may have noted."
Still, I didn't think a sled dog could be trusted amidst all this blood either. By that
time Larsson was expressing no opinions whatsoever, either on the relative menace
of sled dogs versus wolves, or on the mental capabilities of moose. I unknotted the
blanket from my shoulders and spread it over him. Leaves rustled behind me, four
times in quick succession, and I whirled to see a distinctly lupine outline studded
with red eyes and gleaming teeth, several feet away on the other side of the moose.
Wild animals, as I know from my extensive study of the subject in the
Leatherstocking series and the works of several other authors knowledgeable on the
subject, are mostly afraid of fire. I say mostly to except the dragon, who generated
fire himself and so was not, but then, he was a minor deity of alien origin and not,
properly speaking, a wild animal at all. The fire pit contained little more than
brightly burning coals now, buried too deeply to produce wolf-intimidating flames.
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If I was unable to frighten the beast away with fire, I would have to try another
method. Larsson's grasp on his gun was slack enough that I easily pried it from his
fingers. My own fingers all but refused to cooperate as I pressed their cold-numbed
surfaces lightly over the icy metal, seeking the release that would allow me to
examine the cartridge chamber. I found it and the rifle broke open with a clank like
rusting armor. No shells remained and a hasty pat-down of Larsson's accessible
pockets failed to produce extras.
I peered down the barrel, but saw no light through the other end, even when I
pointed it at the fire pit. Clogged then, and useless. Even if I had shells, I would
rather risk my luck with what was actually little more than a wild dog, for all of its
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