CHAPTER XXXIV

WILD OXEN.

I read in one of the May issues of _Forest and Stream_ of a dog that joined a band of wolves and became as savage and fleet of foot as the best of them, and brought to my mind a circumstance that came under my own observation, of a pair of steers that threw off all trammels of restraint and took to the bush.

I think it is worth recording, for it shows that even horned cattle brought up with care, and fed at regular intervals can support themselves, even through the rigor of a northern winter in the wild bush country.

In my early days on the Labrador we were in the habit of getting our winter beef on the hoof from the villages on the south shore. The cattle were sent over by schooner, late in the fall, and stall-fed until the cold weather set in, when they were killed and the carcasses hung up to freeze. As we had no wharf accommodation, the cattle were unloaded in a primitive and unceremonious way. The schooner anchored two or three hundred yards from the shore. The cattle sided up alongside the rail next the beach, and a couple of sailors introduced hand spikes under the animal's body, the end engaging the top of the rail. At the word "Go" the beasts were hurled sideways into the water. Rising to the surface, after the plunge, they naturally struck out for the shore, where we had men with short ropes ready to secure them and lead them away to the stable.

On the occasion upon which I write we had a consignment of five three-year-old steers, the meat of which, augmented by the usual game of the country, was considered sufficient for the post's use during the following winter.

Two of the bunch reached footing in such a lively state that they baffled the combined efforts of our men to capture them, and with a few defiant snorts and bounds, they reached the primitive forest and were lost to view.

As soon as I realized that there was a possibility of the animals being lost to us, I turned out all the "hangers on" about the post, with our own men in hot pursuit. Night coming on shortly after, the hunt was given up, only to be resumed with greater energy the following day; but the nature of the ground being hard, hoof marks were indistinguishable, and to use dogs would only make the cattle wilder. Once more the men had to reluctantly abandon the search and return to the post, and although we kept up the hunt for several days more, we failed to locate the missing "meat."

In due course of time, snow covered the ground, and men circled the bush in the vicinity of the post without any results, and we had unwillingly to place the two steers on our profit and loss account.

Time went on, the winter passed, and the summer also, and none of the visiting Indians reported any signs of the cattle.

The following winter, in February, a party of hunters came in from the headwaters of the Moisie River, 150 miles north of us, and they reported having killed our cattle among a small herd of wood caribou. To prove their story they produced the horns which they had brought down all those miles on their toboggans as visible proof.

The report they gave me was as follows: They had come across the tracks of this small bunch of caribou (five) with which the oxen were living in consort, sometime in early December. The animals winded them and the hunters failed to sight the herd.

As the snow was yet shallow, they left them unmolested until after the New Year, when the men from the nearby camps organized a hunt expressly to run them down.

From hearsay they thought the strange tracks were those of moose, and were very much, surprised when the herd was sighted to find they were horned cattle, and at once concluded (and very correctly) that they were the long lost cattle.

The chief informed me they were so fleet of foot that the five deer were come up with and killed before they overtook the steers, which were rolling fat, sleek of coat and had an under growth of wool such as the deer had, showing that under different circumstances nature had given them this protection against the severity of the climate.

I hardly think I would have credited their story with the proof, and further, the next summer, when they came in to trade on the coast, they brought me a piece of the thigh skin of each animal. Verily these oxen had a call from the wild and took it and became as one with the denizens of the bush.

Reading of the dog that fraternized and went off with the wolves brought this to my mind after a lapse of forty-one years.