A BAD FOLLOW UP
Having covered half the distance between himself and the brown spot on
the horizon, Curlie decided to drop down below the crest of the hill. By
going up a narrow ravine for a half mile, then creeping over the ridge
and following down the bend of a second ravine, he would, he was sure,
come out close to the feeding animal, quite close enough for a shot.
Stealthily he carried out his plans. When at last he reached the end of
this little journey and, with finger on the trigger, slowly rose from the
ground where he had been creeping for the last hundred yards, he was so
surprised that for a second he felt paralyzed.
There, not twenty yards away, with his back to the boy, feeding like some
contented domesticated creature in a pasture, stood as fine a buck
caribou as one might ask to see. The wind being away from him, and toward
the boy, he had neither smelled, heard nor seen Curlie. He did not even
know of the boy’s presence there.
To say that Curlie was suddenly stricken with buck fever, would be
putting it mildly. His fingers trembled. Cold perspiration stood out upon
his brow.
This lasted but a second, then he was himself again. It was a tense
moment. The fate of their expedition might hang upon his shot; the
question of going on or turning about must be decided by their ability to
procure food.
“How,” he whispered, “how in time do you shoot a caribou when he’s got
his back to you?”
He hesitated. A shot fired now might not reach a vital spot, yet the
creature might at any moment sense his presence and go crashing away over
the hard-crusted snow.
At this moment he was startled by a loud “ark-ark-ark” to the right and
above him.
“Two of ’em,” he whispered as he dropped behind his snow bank.
The thing he now witnessed both surprised and amused him. A second
caribou had appeared at the crest of a steep hill. Having paused there
long enough to call to his companion, instead of racing away to a place
of gradual descent, he spread out his snowshoe-like hoofs and with a loud
“ark-ark,” went scooting, toboggan-fashion, down the hill. So fascinated
was Curlie with the sight of this performance that for a moment he forgot
his duty to his friends and himself. But just in time he brought himself
up with a snap. The rifle went to his shoulder. Just as the second buck,
the larger of the two, reached the bottom and stood at attention, the
rifle cracked. The buck leaped high, to plunge back upon the snow.
Crack-crack-crack went the hoofs of the first caribou as he raced away,
and the crack-crack-crack answered the rifle.
It took not a second glance to tell Curlie that his first shot had
reached its mark.
“Think I hit the other. Two’s better than one,” he muttered as he raced
away over the fresh trail. True enough, there were drops of blood here
and there on the snow.
“Went over the ridge. I’ll get him!” Curlie snapped a fresh cartridge
into his magazine as he went zig-zagging his way up the hard-packed and
slippery hill. Twice he lost his footing and narrowly escaped a slide to
the bottom, but each time he escaped by digging into the snow with
fingers and toes.
At the top he breathed a sigh of relief. For a few seconds he could catch
no sight of the caribou, then he saw it disappearing over the next ridge.
Just as it dropped from sight, it appeared to stumble and fall.
“Done for!” exulted the boy. “Just one more ridge and I’ve got him.”
For a second he hesitated. It was growing dark.
“Ought to go back,” he mumbled. “But there’ll be a moon in an hour and I
can get along without light till then.”
Hurriedly sliding down the ridge, he made his way up the other. Arrived
there, he glanced straight ahead, expecting to see the caribou lying at
the bottom of the ravine. But not a brown speck marred the whiteness of
that snow.
“That’s queer!” he exclaimed. “I was sure he was done for.”
By looking closely, he was able to see four sharply-cut paths in the snow
crust.
“He tobogganed down and I thought he fell,” Curlie grinned. “That’s one
on me. Well, there’s no use to follow him. If he is well enough to go
tobogganing, he’s not greatly in need of attention. I better get back and
tend to the other one.”
Darkness had fallen. It was with the greatest difficulty that he made his
way back to the spot where the dead caribou lay.
Once there he proceeded to cut up the meat. Then, having built a cache
out of blocks of snow which would keep the meat out of reach of wolves
and foxes, he shouldered one hind quarter and turned to go.
Then and not till then did he realize that he did not exactly know the
way back to camp. He had come a considerable distance, and in the eager
excitement of the hunt had failed to take note of each turn in his trail
or to fix in his memory the shapes of the hills about him that they might
serve him as guide posts.
“Pretty pickle!” he told himself. “Here I’ve got a heavy load and I’ll
likely as not have to walk ten miles to make five. Going to storm, too,”
he told himself as he studied the hazy horizon. “The mountains were
smoking with snow forty miles away this afternoon. Ho, well, guess I’ll
make it some way.”
Shouldering his burden, he went slipping, sliding down the hill. He had
not been going many minutes before he realized that he was not going to
“make it someway”—not that night at least.
A playful breeze began throwing fine snow in his face. As he approached
the crest of a ridge this breeze grew rude. It gave him a shove which
landed him halfway back down the hill.
“Stop that, you!” he grumbled as he gathered himself up and attempted the
hill anew.
But the thing did not stop. It grew in violence until the boy knew he was
facing one of the sudden, severe blizzards known only on the Arctic
hills, a storm which no man can face for hours and live.
“It’s no use,” he told himself. “I’d just blunder round till I’m hot and
exhausted, then sit down and freeze. Better sit down here while I’m still
all here.”
Making his way to a spot somewhat sheltered by a cut bank, he placed his
burden on the ground, then set to work with his sheath knife cutting
blocks from a snow bank. Out of these he built a snow-fort-like affair
which protected him on two sides.
“Wish I knew how to build a snow-house,” he told himself. “But I don’t,
so what’s the use to try?”
Having accomplished this much, he cut thin strips of meat from the
caribou carcass. These he placed upon the snow. When they had frozen he
ate them with relish.
“M-m!” he murmured. “Most as good as cooked and a whole lot better than
dried fish.”
Having eaten, he gathered his garments close in about him and sat down
upon the ground.
Presently he rose suddenly and, having drawn several small articles from
pockets in his belt, proceeded to wind a coil antenna. This when
completed he hung to the top of his Alpine staff which he had stuck
upright in the snow. Then, having thrust a pair of receivers over his
head, he sat down again.
In the belt there was arranged a complete radiophone receiving set with a
range of two hundred miles.
“Might hear something more interesting than the storm,” he told himself.
“B’r’r’r! It’s sure going to be bad.”