14 Arctic Adventure (15 page)

‘That one wasn’t big enough,’ said Hal. ‘Where can we find a really great one?’

‘At Moose Pass,’ said Ben. ‘But first you’d better have lunch with us and we’ll tell you what you are up against. You may change your mind about trying to capture a moose.’

As they ate Ben told them what he had learned about this animal during his twenty-five years in Alaska.

‘Right here you will find the biggest moose on earth,’ said Ben. ‘There are moose in Europe, but there they call them elk and they are about half the size of the Alaskan moose. The bull moose in Kenai weighs about eighteen hundred pounds and is much taller than any horse. Up to the top of his horns he may measure as much as twelve feet.’

Hal looked up. ‘This room measures about eight feet from floor to ceiling,’ he said. ‘The moose is four feet taller! No wonder he’s the animal king of Alaska.’

‘The moose belongs to the deer family,’ said Ben. ‘But did you ever see any antlers on a deer as wide as these —six feet across? He puts about fifty pounds of food every day into his stomach.’

‘What kind of food?’ Roger asked.

‘Wood,’ said Ben. ‘He doesn’t kill any animals. He eats no meat. He eats trees —the leaves, twigs, even the trunks. The Indian name for him is musee, which means wood-eater. From musee we get the word moose.’

‘You mentioned Moose Pass,’ said Hal. ‘Do we fly there?’

‘No. You had better hire a wanigan.’

‘What in heaven’s name is a wanigan?’

‘It’s a sort of van. It is usually pulled by a tractor. When it is used on snow it has runners. But there’s no snow here, so it is fitted with wheels and it has a motor of its own. You’ll have to have a wanigan to bring back your moose —if you get one. I’ll take you to a wanigan garage.’

The boys rented a wanigan, said goodbye to their aviator friends, and set out on the road to Moose Pass.

Half-way there they encountered a moose. Of course he stood in the middle of the road. Remembering that moose have the right of way, Hal stopped the wanigan. For half an hour they waited. Some men were working at the side of the road. One of them called, ‘I’ll move him for you.’

He picked up a stone and threw it. It struck the moose on his nose. The nose of a moose is like no other nose on earth. It is a foot long, and very tender. The animal use’s it as if it were a hand. The nose picks leaves from a tree and stuffs them into the mouth. It is the moose’s pride and joy and he resents any interference with it.

This moose got the idea that the stone had come from the wanigan. He did not stay still one moment longer. He came bellowing and snorting like a steam engine.

Hal backed the wanigan down the road but the angry moose, with a speed that one would not expect from so large a beast, overtook the car. A moose is accustomed to standing on his hind feet to reach high branches. This time he stood on his hind feet, and with his powerful front feet pushed the wanigan over into the ditch. There it lay upside down with its engine still whirring. The upside-down boys crawled out and retreated into a field. The moose, having punished those he considered his tormentors, wandered away, his big nose trembling with anger.

The road men were Eskimos and, true to their nature, came at once to help. Together with the boys, they got the wanigan right side up and back on the road. The boys, feeling a little shaken, thanked the men and went on their way.

Eventually they came to a point where the railroad crossed the road, and near by was a small railway station. They went in to rest and get any information they could from the station master. On the wall they saw a sign which read, ‘NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DELAYS CAUSED BY MOOSE.’

‘You boys want a ticket?’ said the station master. ‘No,’ said Hal. ‘We just came in to get some information about moose. We noticed the sign on the wall. Evidently you have trouble with moose getting on the track.’

‘Yes,’ said the old station master. ‘We’ve killed a lot of them. You’ve come to the right place for information. I know about all there is to know about the moose. It’s a very strong animal, and if you eat it it makes you strong. The left hind foot of a moose is a cure for epilepsy. Bones from the antlers will take away headache. If you grind part of an antler up into powder it will be an antidote for snakebite. The hoof of a moose will cure six hundred diseases.’

A young man who had heard all this laughed. ‘The old geezer has a lot of superstitions,’ he said.

Hal said, ‘But the moose is really a very remarkable animal.’

‘Yes it is. It is born with its eyes wide open. Seven days after birth it can outrun a man. The female adult moose weighs a thousand pounds and the bull moose weighs almost twice as much. Its antlers are unique. They look like big soup plates. With its terrific front feet it can trample to death bears, wolves, cougars, coyotes and wolverines. You wouldn’t imagine it could get so strong eating nothing but asters, ferns, lilies, duckweed, burrweed, duck potato and all kinds of wood. It also eats the leaves and twigs of aspen, balsam, birch, maple and mountain ash. It’s so big and clumsy-looking, yet it can slip through the woods without a sound. In spite of its diet of lilies and such it can get very dangerous. It crashes headlong into cars and yesterday one charged a locomotive. That was a bit too much for His Majesty.’

‘He died?’

‘Yes, he died. But there are plenty more. Are you especially interested in moose?’

‘Just now, yes,’ said Hal. ‘We want to take one alive for a zoo.’

‘It would be easier to take one dead.’

Hal laughed. ‘I don’t think we’ll try to pick up the bones along the railroad tracks. Where are the live ones?’

‘A good place to find them is around Kenai Lake. I’ll go with you if you like.’

‘Great. My name is Hal. This is Roger, my brother.’

‘I’m Ivak —part Eskimo, part Montana.’

The wanigan bumped over a fair road to the lake. Sure enough, there were several big bulls here, some on shore, some in the water. With them were some cow moose. They were smaller than the bulls, and had no horns. Also there were calves, hornless as yet, but bright, lively and strong.

‘You notice’, said Ivak, ‘that nearly all of them are inside that big circle where the grass is trampled down. That is called a mooseyard. Where there are many moose, you’ll always find a mooseyard. It’s a sort of meeting place, where they get together and enjoy each other’s company. And they don’t like to have any other animal come in and try to join the club.’

‘What magnificent antlers they have,’ said Hal. ‘They don’t go up very much like the antlers of a deer. They go out — one set from the right side of the head, and the other from the left. Each one looks like a huge platter or a soup tureen. How would you describe them?’

Ivak said, ‘To me they look like big shovels. They can carry things on those enormous plates.’

‘What kind of things?’ Roger asked.

‘Bushes, plants, weeds — anything they want to eat later on. And you notice they have a fence all around the plate to hold things in.’

‘You mean that row of spikes? They look sharp and dangerous.’

‘They are the weapons of the moose. If any enemy comes around, the moose lowers its head and plunges those spikes into it and kills it. You see that some have only a few spikes, perhaps a dozen—and others may have as many as forty—all of them as sharp as needles.’

‘Why is there so much difference?’ Roger asked.

‘Nature plays tricks,’ said Ivak. ‘One moose is not exactly like another. They are like people —all different. Just as a lady may wear a different hair-do, so each moose has a different horn-do.’

‘What are those moose doing out in the lake?’

‘Watch and you will see them disappear beneath the surface. They go down after water plants. They scrape up the plants with their horns. There’s one that has just come up. He has a load of plants on his platters. When he is ready to eat them he will shake the plants off on to the ground and use his long nose to push them into his mouth.’

‘Look!’ said Roger. ‘There’s a grizzly. He’s coming right into the mooseyard.’

‘That’s very bad manners’, said Ivak, ‘for any other animal to burst into the private club of the moose. He’ll get what he deserves.’

A huge bull moose was attacked by the grizzly. Every grizzly thinks himself very important. He is used to conquering any animal who interferes with him. This grizzly stood up on his hind feet in order to get his teeth into the neck of the moose. All he got was the goatee or whiskers that hung from the moose’s throat. He spat these out and tried again.

If a grizzly bear can stand on its hind feet, so can a moose. The moose stood erect, battered the bear’s face with his front feet as a boxer does with his fists. But the rock-hard hooves of the moose were much more terrible than the gloved fists of a boxer.

The grizzly who had invaded the private domain of the moose was thoroughly punished. His face looked like a bowl of mush. Still he fought. Evidently more severe measures were necessary to punish this rascal. The moose lowered his head and used the deadly spikes on his antlers to punch his enemy full of holes.

The impudent grizzly, who probably never before had met an enemy he could not conquer, fell away and crawled out of the mooseyard.

‘I think that’s the moose we want,’ said Hal. ‘He’s the biggest one of the lot.’

Ivak grinned. ‘Do you think you can do better than the grizzly?’

‘Yes,’ said Hal, ‘but without fighting.’

‘This is something I want to see,’ said Ivak. ‘Perhaps you are going to use your lasso.’

‘No,’ said Hal. ‘The lasso is no good in this case. He would break it.’

‘Then you are going to use gentle persuasion? You won’t get far with that.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Hal. ‘Roger, do your bit and I’ll do mine.’ He went outside the magic circle, where he had seen a hole made by field mice. He stepped very softly, not wishing to alarm any mouse that might be at home. He lay down beside the hole and waited.

In the meantime, Roger was doing his bit. He walked slowly toward the giant moose. The moose had learned to be afraid of guns, but this visitor had no gun. He had no pistol, no stick, no knife. The great moose, master of the mountains, was not in the habit of running from anybody or anything — except a gun.

Roger came close and began speaking in soft tones. It was a friendly voice and the speaker was only a boy, so what was there to be afraid of? He let the boy pat his great neck.

Hal came, carrying in his hand a wriggling mouse. He walked very slowly, keeping his hands out in full sight so that the moose would understand that he had no gun. Then, very gently, he placed the mouse on the foot-long nose of the moose.

The little eyes of the mouse studied the moose, and the great eyes of the moose were fixed upon the mouse.

Neither was afraid of the other. By a dip of his nose, the giant could have slipped the mouse into his mouth and swallowed it.

He did not, for several reasons. First, the mouse was too small to do him any harm. Second, he never ate other animals. He was a strict vegetarian. He ate no meat. But the main reason was that he had never before been visited by a friendly little mouse. It was quite evident that he liked the little beast.

The mouse crawled up the nose and on up into the antlers, where he lay down in the soup bowl or shovel or platter or whatever one might want to call it. Some leaves remained in the bowl and they happened to be to his liking. He munched on them and was very happy. This was better than a hole in the ground.

But a mouse can never stay still for very long. The little fellow noticed the wanigan. He crawled out of the shovel, and down the nose, and dropped to the ground. He also had a nose but nothing in comparison with the nose of the great moose. The mouse’s nose, though small, was very keen and he smelled some food that the boys had left in the wanigan. He went in to investigate.

The great moose stood for a long time gazing at the wanigan. He was evidently waiting for his small friend to come out.

When he did not, the moose walked slowly to the wanigan and looked inside. After thinking it over, he climbed up into the wanigan making the floor creak under his weight of almost a ton.

Hal, very quietly, let down the sliding door at the back of the wanigan. Before it completely closed Roger thrust in a big bush for the wood-eater to dine upon during the trip to Kenai airport.

The boys thanked Ivak for his help, then climbed into the cab, which was separated by a partition from the quarters occupied by the moose and the mouse. They drove back to the Kenai airport and made arrangements for the transport of the mighty moose to Long Island and, on the next day, flew back to Point Barrow and their faithful Nanook.

They were climbing Castle Mountain when the williwaw caught them.

‘I’m afraid we’re in for it,’ Hal said. ‘Here comes a williwaw.’

‘What kind of an animal is a williwaw?’ Roger asked.

‘It’s not a wild beast,’ said Hal. ‘It’s a wild storm. It’s a hurricane and a typhoon and a tornado all mixed up together. It’s born in the Aleutian Islands and it sweeps across Alaska tearing down houses and killing cattle.’

‘Doesn’t sound too good,’ said Roger. ‘What can we do about it?’

‘Nothing much. Just try to stay alive. Lucky we didn’t bring our big tent. It would be blown away. The pup tent we brought will be better.’

‘Let’s get it up in a hurry,’ said his young brother.

You don’t carry anything more than you have to when you climb a mountain. The pup tent was light and small. It was just long enough for the one sleeping bag they had brought. The bag was large enough for two, providing that you didn’t mind being jammed together like a couple of sardines.

They anchored the tent to the ground with large rocks. Surely the wind wouldn’t be strong enough to blow away 100-pound rocks.

Hal had wisely placed the tent with its back end toward the wind.

‘That’s about all we can do,’ he said. ‘See those black clouds racing in from the west? They’re full of wind. Let’s get inside.’

They crawled into the pup tent. Hal laced the flaps securely.

‘You get into the bag first,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll try to squeeze in beside you.’