On and on he went, following the trail of the three moose. At the end of an hour he slackened his pace and began to advance cautiously from boulder to boulder, pausing every few moments to listen and reconnoitre the foreground. At length the sound of voices reached his ears, and throwing himself fiat upon the crust, he wriggled forward into the shelter of a huge rock that jutted sharply from the shoulder of a low ridge.
In an open space formed by a bend of the creek two men were busily engaged in quartering the carcass of a cow moose. The bull had already been quartered and loaded upon a sled, with the huge antlered head bound securely upon the top of the load. The other cow lay where she had fallen. The smaller of the two men straightened himself, glanced cautiously about him, and cleansed his sheath knife by drawing the flat of it across the sleeve of his coat. "I tell yeh, Brek Wiley, it's rotten business, an' I wisht I was well out of it." Something in the man's voice caused Connie to strain forward for a closer view as Wiley paused in the act of cleaving the backbone of the moose with an axe.
"Cold feet, eh," sneered the poacher. "Ye're
