“They’ve crapped all over it - not good table manners. We stripped that side last night anyway, and they’re just picking the bones clean. We ought to get a lot of hamburger off the neck, and there is the inside backstrap.
“I don’t know how much is salvageable on the other side. He was lying in that muck and we couldn’t turn him.”
“There’s not a whole lot left - mostly rib meat. We might save some of it.”
It didn’t take long for the four of us to strip the moose bare, wrap sections in game cloths and drop them into gunny sacks. There were six heavy loads setting on the ground when we finished. We dropped four into backpacks, and then helped each other to shoulder the load. Ed slipped into his while sitting.
“Here! Give me a hand in helping Ed up. Hell! If one of us get separated and then falls he’ll just have to lay there till someone finds him.”
The return march commenced, a single file inching its way down hill toward the lake, each of us taking care to pick our step. The trail on the valley floor was good, weaving its way through the brush and around small ponds. We stopped about half way for a break. Overcast had replaced blue sky, and snow fell on higher elevations. We sat and watched the snow move down the mountain tops.
“Its in the trees now. You can see where its turning into rain; a line across there where the snow stops.”
“Its getting colder. Weird isn’t it. Yesterday it was warm and sunny - this morning too, and now its snowing like a son-of-a-bitch up there.”
“Yeah. And its been raining on us for the last fifteen minutes. Let’s get on our way. There’s still blue sky over the lake. Maybe this will pass over.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
We walked from under the storm by the time we reached the lake. Dan squatted and then fell on his pack. That seemed easy so the rest of us followed suit. I undid by shoulder straps, retrieved some candy and jerky, and tossed pieces to them. We laid back looking up into a broken sky.
“You know! I’m beginning to think we’re four crazy bastards. Here we are, busting our butts and enjoying every minute of it.”
“And we’re not even a third done. Its going to be a bitch carting this back to the trucks.”
“And the snow’s coming. That, I don’t like.”
“It seems a waste of time for all four of us to go back for the last two loads of this one”, I ventured. “I can’t handle the mountain - found that out yesterday. Going up is no problem, but I have no control on the way down. If you guys can get it off in a load each, I’ll bring in the those two.
“If we bone out some of the meat, we might be able to do it”, Dan said. “There would be three big loads though - eighty to a hundred pounds each. That’s quite a load for coming down a mountain.”
We a make a platform of driftwood for the meat, covered it with the inverted raft, and started up the trail taking light footed strides. Twenty minutes later I cut off to the left as the others angled toward the mountain.
I packed my loads to the lake by four pm. The others were not in sight so I inspected the raft, found two small slits, patched them. I then headed back up the path, meeting Dan and Ed about a half-mile in.
“Where’s Doug”, I ask?
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