For many minutes the two stood silently gazing into the North. At
their feet spread the broad plain where Mukoki had killed the caribou
while they watched him from the plateau; beyond that were the dense
stretches of forest, broken here and there by other plains and
meadows, and a dozen lakes glistened in the red tints of the setting
sun. When Rod first looked upon that country a few months before it
was a world of ice and snow, a cold, dazzling panorama of white that
reached from where he stood to the Pole. Now it was wakening under
the first magic touch of spring. Far away the two young gold hunters
caught a glimmer of the stream which they were to follow up to the
chasm. Last winter it had been a tiny creek; now it was swollen to the
size of a river.

Suddenly, as they looked, two dark objects came slowly out into an
opening a mile away. At that distance they appeared hardly larger
than dogs, and Rod, whose mind was still filled with thoughts of
Wolf, exclaimed "Wolves!"

In the same breath he caught himself, and added:

"Moose!"

"A cow and her calf," said Wabi.

"How do you know?" asked Rod.

"There; watch them now!" cried Wabi, catching his companion by the
arm. "The mother is ahead, and even from here I can see that she is
pacing. A moose never trots or gallops, like a deer, but paces, using
both feet on a side at the same time. Notice how the calf jumps about.