"What fun would there have been in living had I not hunted
occasionally?" he reasoned. "Let him who will, regret; it's not going to
be Karr!"
But the instant the dog said this, a singular change came over him. He
stretched his neck as though he had a mind to howl. He no longer trotted
alongside the game-keeper, but walked behind him. It was plain that he
had begun to think of something unpleasant.
It was early summer; the elk cows had just given birth to their young,
and, the night before, the dog had succeeded in parting from its mother
an elk calf not more than five days old, and had driven it down into the
marsh. There he had chased it back and forth over the knolls--not with
the idea of capturing it, but merely for the sport of seeing how he
could scare it. The elk cow knew that the marsh was bottomless so soon
after the thaw, and that it could not as yet hold up so large an animal
as herself, so she stood on the solid earth for the longest time,
watching! But when Karr kept chasing the calf farther and farther away,
she rushed out on the marsh, drove the dog off, took the calf with her,
and turned back toward firm land. Elk are more skilled than other
animals in traversing dangerous, marshy ground, and it seemed as if she
would reach solid land in safety; but when she was almost there a knoll
which she had stepped upon sank into the mire, and she went down with
it.
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