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Honk the Moose
by Phil Stong
Chapter 1
Hunter
Waino and Ivar had been hunting all day but they had not found any deer — not even a bear. Ivar was pretty certain that he had shot a rabbit with his thousand-shooting air gun but the rabbit was pretty sure he hadn't. They slid down the rolling hills above Birora, Minnesota, on their hickory skis and started the slow tramp, on foot, up the brick streets.
All the hills of the Iron Range are made of red or purple iron ore and covered thickly with evergreens — fir, spruce, cedar. The roads are red with iron ore in the summer and green with trees; in the long winter of that northern country they are white and green.
Ivar's hair was so light that it was almost white. He had smiled so much in the ten years of his life that two small smile wrinkles had set up business at the corners of his eyes to make it easier for him. Waino had dark, stubbly hair and his head was almost as round as a basketball. Whatever Ivar thought suited Waino.
"If we had shot a deer," Ivar said, "I guess he would have been pretty hard to get home."
Waino nodded. "Couldn't have done it. Anyway, deers are pretty nice — they don't hurt anybody."
They had put their skis over their shoulders and the ice that had formed on Waino's ski, where the snow had piled up under his toe, fell off at this time — into the collar of his mackinaw jacket.
"Here, you," he told the ski. "That'll be enough of that."
"Well, g'bye, Ivar — I might as well turn in here."
"Oh come on down to the stable. We'll oil the skis and sit in the hay."
Ivar's father kept the livery stable in Birora. He boarded the horses and the donkeys from the iron mines and the horses from the lumber camps. He was a doctor, too, and took care of them when they were sick.
Waino thought it over. "All right. We'll plan where we're going to hunt tomorrow." He pinged the air rifle at a fence and hit part of it. "Wish that had been a good old moose," he said.
He didn't mean it. A moose is considerably bigger than a very big horse and its antlers are about the size of the kitchen stove. While an air gun is a very dangerous weapon and will make almost anyone jump and yell, it would not make a moose jump and yell. The moose might notice that it had been shot or it might not. If it did notice, the two boys would have had to climb a tree, or two trees, as soon as possible.
"We could have put his horns over the fireplace," Ivar said.
They were getting rather cold. Their fathers and mothers had come to America and to the Iron Range from Finland, which is a good deal closer to the North Pole than to Minnesota; but even here the thermometer was thirty degrees below zero and the cold wind blew up over the Missabe Hills from Lake Superior. It was good to get into the warm stable and up close to the hot stove in the office.
"Papa must have had to drive somewhere," Ivar said, opening his jacket to the warmth of the stove. He got a rag and a can of harness oil and the two boys began to rub down their skis to keep the wood from warping or wearing.
"I still wish," Waino said dreamily, "that that had been a good old moose I shot."
Ivar dropped his skis and seized the air gun. "If that had been a moose," he said, "this is what I'd have done to him." He fired three shots, as fast as he could pull the lever, out the door of the office and down the dark corridor between the stalls where the horses were feeding.
There was a very sad sound at once. It went "Haawwnnk — hawnk — hawnk — haawwnnkk!"
The two boys dropped the air gun, oil, skis, rags — everything. "Golly gee! What do you think that is, Ivar?"
Ivar had jumped straight up in the air, but not as high as nine feet. He was brave again now — he was fairly sure he was. "It — it sounded — it sounded like an automobile."
"Automobiles don't care if you shoot them," Waino suggested.
"Might have hit the honker."
"It honked a long time."
"Yeah." Ivar admitted that it was not an automobile. He braced his shoulders back. He was a Suomi — Swho-me — which is what brave Finlanders call themselves. He remembered Vainamoinen, the Finnish hero, just as good as Hiawatha and Columbus and Daniel Boone. "I'll find out what it is."
He went bravely to the light switch that lit up the long aisles of the barn.
"Maybe it was a moose," Waino said softly. He came over and looked across Ivar's shoulder.
