Half a mile away he caught the edge of the spruce forest.

There something told him he would find safety.

A hunter would have known that he was wounded unto death as he dragged himself out into the foot-deep snow of the lake.
A dozen rods out from the tamaracks he stopped, head thrown high, long ears pitched forward, and nostrils held half to the sky.

It is in this attitude that a moose listens when he hears a trout splash three-quarters of a mile away.

Now there was only the vast, unending silence, broken only by the mournful hoot of the snow owl on the other side of the lake.