CHAPTER XII

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.”