CHAPTER XII A BAD FOLLOW UP
Having covered half the distance between himself and the brown spot onthe horizon, Curlie decided to drop down below the crest of the hill. Bygoing up a narrow ravine for a half mile, then creeping over the ridgeand 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 ofthis little journey and, with finger on the trigger, slowly rose from theground where he had been creeping for the last hundred yards, he was sosurprised that for a second he felt paralyzed.
There, not twenty yards away, with his back to the boy, feeding like somecontented domesticated creature in a pasture, stood as fine a buckcaribou as one might ask to see. The wind being away from him, and towardthe boy, he had neither smelled, heard nor seen Curlie. He did not evenknow of the boy's presence there.
To say that Curlie was suddenly stricken with buck fever, would beputting it mildly. His fingers trembled. Cold perspiration stood out uponhis brow.
This lasted but a second, then he was himself again. It was a tensemoment. The fate of their expedition might hang upon his shot; thequestion of going on or turning about must be decided by their ability toprocure food.
"How," he whispered, "how in time do you shoot a caribou when he's gothis back to you?"
He hesitated. A shot fired now might not reach a vital spot, yet thecreature might at any moment sense his presence and go crashing away overthe hard-crusted snow.
At this moment he was startled by a loud "ark-ark-ark" to the right andabove him.
"Two of 'em," he whispered as he dropped behind his snow bank.
The thing he now witnessed both surprised and amused him. A secondcaribou had appeared at the crest of a steep hill. Having paused therelong enough to call to his companion, instead of racing away to a placeof gradual descent, he spread out his snowshoe-like hoofs and with a loud"ark-ark," went scooting, toboggan-fashion, down the hill. So fascinatedwas Curlie with the sight of this performance that for a moment he forgothis duty to his friends and himself. But just in time he brought himselfup 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, therifle 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 hadreached its mark.
"Think I hit the other. Two's better than one," he muttered as he racedaway over the fresh trail. True enough, there were drops of blood hereand there on the snow.
"Went over the ridge. I'll get him!" Curlie snapped a fresh cartridgeinto his magazine as he went zig-zagging his way up the hard-packed andslippery hill. Twice he lost his footing and narrowly escaped a slide tothe bottom, but each time he escaped by digging into the snow withfingers and toes.
At the top he breathed a sigh of relief. For a few seconds he could catchno 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 Ican get along without light till then."
Hurriedly sliding down the ridge, he made his way up the other. Arrivedthere, he glanced straight ahead, expecting to see the caribou lying atthe bottom of the ravine. But not a brown speck marred the whiteness ofthat 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 snowcrust.
"He tobogganed down and I thought he fell," Curlie grinned. "That's oneon me. Well, there's no use to follow him. If he is well enough to gotobogganing, he's not greatly in need of attention. I better get back andtend to the other one."
Darkness had fallen. It was with the greatest difficulty that he made hisway back to the spot where the dead caribou lay.
Once there he proceeded to cut up the meat. Then, having built a cacheout of blocks of snow which would keep the meat out of reach of wolvesand foxes, he shouldered one hind quarter and turned to go.
Then and not till then did he realize that he did not exactly know theway back to camp. He had come a considerable distance, and in the eagerexcitement of the hunt had failed to take note of each turn in his trailor to fix in his memory the shapes of the hills about him that they mightserve him as guide posts.
"Pretty pickle!" he told himself. "Here I've got a heavy load and I'lllikely 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 weresmoking with snow forty miles away this afternoon. Ho, well, guess I'llmake it some way."
Shouldering his burden, he went slipping, sliding down the hill. He hadnot 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 approachedthe crest of a ridge this breeze grew rude. It gave him a shove whichlanded him halfway back down the hill.
"Stop that, you!" he grumbled as he gathered himself up and attempted thehill anew.
But the thing did not stop. It grew in violence until the boy knew he wasfacing one of the sudden, severe blizzards known only on the Arctichills, 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 andexhausted, then sit down and freeze. Better sit down here while I'm stillall here."
Making his way to a spot somewhat sheltered by a cut bank, he placed hisburden on the ground, then set to work with his sheath knife cuttingblocks from a snow bank. Out of these he built a snow-fort-like affairwhich 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 thecaribou carcass. These he placed upon the snow. When they had frozen heate them with relish.
"M-m!" he murmured. "Most as good as cooked and a whole lot better thandried fish."
Having eaten, he gathered his garments close in about him and sat downupon the ground.
Presently he rose suddenly and, having drawn several small articles frompockets in his belt, proceeded to wind a coil antenna. This whencompleted he hung to the top of his Alpine staff which he had stuckupright in the snow. Then, having thrust a pair of receivers over hishead, he sat down again.
In the belt there was arranged a complete radiophone receiving set with arange 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."