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Updated: May 5, 2025
He knows his limits, and they stop him shoulder deep. When he would follow no farther I swam to the canoe and tugged it out into deep water. Umquenawis stood staring now in astonishment at the sight of this queer man-fish. The red light died out of his eyes for the first time, and his ears wigwagged like flags in the wind.
On the instant Noel left the duds where they were and bolted along the shore under the bushes, calling me loudly to come quick and bring my rifle. When we went back Umquenawis had trodden the clothes into the mud, and vanished as silently as he came.
There only is his head at home; and only as you see it there, whether looking out in quiet majesty from a lonely point over a silent lake, or leading him in his terrific rush through the startled forest, will your heart ever jump and your nerves tingle in that swift thrill which stirs the sluggish blood to your very finger tips, and sends you quietly back to camp with your soul at peace well satisfied to leave Umquenawis where he is, rather than pack him home to your admiring friends in a freight car.
The Indians grew insistent at this, telling me of the hunter that had been killed, claiming now, beyond a doubt, that this was the same bull, and urging me to kill the ugly brute and rid the woods of a positive danger. But Umquenawis was already learning the fear of me, and I thought the lesson might be driven home before the summer was ended.
As the swarm of flies that pestered him rose to his head he would sink it slowly, drowning them off. Through my glass, as I drew near, I could see a cloud of them hovering above the wavelets, or covering the exposed antlers. After a few moments there would be a bubbling grumble down in the mud, as Umquenawis blew the air from his great lungs.
Only in the wilderness, with the irresistible push of his twelve-hundred pound, force-packed body behind it, the crackling underbrush beneath, and the lofty spruce aisles towering overhead, can it give the tingling impression of magnificent power which belongs to Umquenawis the Mighty in his native wilds.
I crept away through the swamp, the eager calls following me even to my canoe; first a plaint, as if something were lacking to the placid lake and quiet woods and the soft beauty of twilight; and then a faint question, always heard in the kwit of a partridge, as if only I could explain why two eager voices would never again answer to roll call when the shadows lengthened. Umquenawis The Mighty
Umquenawis the Mighty is lord of the woodlands. None other among the wood folk is half so great as he; none has senses so keen to detect a danger, nor powers so terrible to defend himself against it.
For a week or more I haunted the spot; but though I saw the pair occasionally, in the woods or on the shore, I learned no more of Umquenawis' secrets. The moose schools are kept in far-away, shady dingles beyond reach of inquisitive eyes. Then, one morning at daylight as my canoe shot round a grassy point, there were the mother and her calf standing knee-deep among the lily pads.
It may have been curiosity, or the uncomfortable sense of being watched and followed by the man-fish, who neither harmed nor feared him, that brought Umquenawis at last to our camp to investigate. One day Noel was washing some clothes of mine in the lake when some subtle warning made him turn his head. There stood the big bull, half hidden by the dwarf spruces, watching him intently.
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