For days afterwards, surprised and irritated with himself, David McDougal could not shake what he had seen. When the call for assistance had sounded over the megaphone (a mere ten minutes after the launching of The Mighty Moose), David, in his capacity as a military officer, had accompanied the doctor further along the bank, near his own property, to the whirlpool. The Old River Man was in the process of constructing a complicated series of ropes, poles, clothesline pulleys, hooks and wires, to pull the young man out of the water along with his contraption of horns and hides since the two were hopelessly and, it would appear, almost permanently intertwined. Four policemen were stationed halfway up the bank in order to discourage the stampede of spectators who were, by now, half crazy with blood-lust and curiosity.

With absolutely nothing to do until the River Man had drawn in his catch, and the possibility of very little to do after that, David looked uncomfortably across the river to the American side. There he noticed for the first time that day the dark strip of spectators lining the far shore, as if a giant mirror had been set up halfway across the river. For one moment he wondered if they had their own daredevil, their own circus to attend. But then he realized that word must have spread across the border, flushing the crowds out of their homes there as well as here. And although he had been next to certain they could see nothing at all from that distance, there they stood like a throng of pilgrims awaiting a miracle. They would be disappointed, he had suspected, angry probably, so near and yet so far from the opportunity to scrutinize injury or death. As angry as some of the men at the top of the bank who were hurling insults at the embarrassed police.

Unable to avoid it any longer, David had looked out to the centre of the whirlpool where the remains of The Mighty Moose and its passenger moved around and around like an unidentifiable beast on a strange carousel. It was difficult to determine, at this stage, which areas were beast and which were human, but there was one thing certain: neither had survived the journey in their original form. David was amazed that the two had actually remained together, the moose hide being torn to pieces. The three pairs of antlers, or at least what he could see of them, appeared to be intact, however, proving one of the young man’s theories. But Buck O’Connor himself was clearly no longer in the land of the living, and bright red slashes of his blood appeared here and there on the more ordinary colour of the moose’s hide, giving it, from this distance, an almost festive appearance.

The Old River Man had been guiding The Mighty Moose towards shore when David noticed the three men from the undertaking establishment descending the bank with their wicker coffin.

“How can they be so sure?” he had asked the doctor who, in turn, looked at him as if he had entirely taken leave of his senses.

Then there is nothing I can do, David had thought helplessly, there is no part for me to play. Accustomed to shouting orders, familiar with being a centre of calm in the thick of imagined chaos, he began to feel guilty about his presence at this very real disaster. As if he were just a privileged spectator with a ringside seat.

The Mighty Moose approached the shore. David recognized an arm, a tattered shirt, some suspenders. The men with the wicker basket prepared for its passenger, opening the lid, adjusting leather straps. The Old River Man, at home with the corpses the river had to offer, began, almost casually, to pull away the horns and skin that surrounded the body.

“This one didn’t die of drowning,” he said.