The Young Alaskans on the Trail - Emerson Hough (best free novels TXT) 📗

breaking off the dead limbs as he slowly advanced upward.

Rob remained aloft for some moments, but at last descended and rejoined Alex.

“Now, what did you see, Mr. Rob?” inquired the old hunter.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Rob; “it’s hard to figure out exactly, of course. But Mackenzie talks about high mountains off to the northwest, and a parallel range of mountains running to the south, with a narrow valley between. That, of course, must be this river, and as near as I can tell, it must have been about here that he and Mackay and the Indian hunters took to the shore to spy out the way.”

“And jolly well got lost, too, eh?”

“They certainly did—got lost from their boat for an entire day! I can imagine how they felt when they didn’t know whether the boat was above them or below them. Mackenzie says the mosquitoes about ate them up. They sent branches down the river to let the boatmen know they were above them. It wasn’t until night that finally they found the boat was far below them. I’ll warrant they were glad when they got together again. The truth is, the men were almost ready to turn back and leave Mackenzie where he was.”

“They’d have done that a dozen times but for his courage,” said Alex. “Well, now, what would you do, Mr. Rob, if you should get lost in the woods or mountains any time?”

“I’d try to keep cool,” said Rob, “but I’m not sure that I could. It’s a mighty bad feeling—I know what it is myself. What would you do, Alex, if you ever got lost in a storm, or anything of that kind?”

“Sit down and build a fire,” answered Alex. “Go to sleep, take it easy, and wait till my mind got cool. Then when you’re rested and all ready to go on, you nearly always know which is the right direction. You see, an Injun is a good deal like a dog, as Moise would say. But now suppose I should get separated from you in here—how would you get back to camp?”

“Well, you see,” said Rob, “there is that high mountain on this side of the river, and there is one right opposite, far off on the east side. I know our camp is on the line between those two peaks. Of course I’d know the river was downhill, unless I wandered off over some other little divide. I’d just simply go downhill as straight as I could until I hit the river. Of course I couldn’t tell, maybe, whether I was just above or below the camp. But I’d wait to see smoke, and I’d fire off my rifle, hoping that some one would hear me. Then I think I would not go very far from that place. I’d sit down and build a smoke, and wait.”

“That would be the best way to do,” Alex assented. “But do you know, simple as that seems, lots of grown men couldn’t do it—they’d lose their heads and be just as apt to go west as east! Many a man has been lost in the wilderness simply because he got excited and scared and didn’t take it easy. Always remember that whenever you are in a wild country it isn’t as dangerous as it seems to be.

“But come, now,” he resumed, “I suppose we must get over in that flat country and see if we can find any sign of game.”

“How do you hunt caribou, Alex? I don’t know anything about it.”

“That’s hard to answer,” rejoined the old hunter. “Of course you can take a trail if you can find it, and if it seems fresh. An Injun hunts moose by following the trail. But either a moose or a caribou has very keen scent, and if you follow straight on after them, and don’t circle once in a while and pick up the trail again, you’re not apt to come up with either one or the other. A caribou, however, is a strange animal—it isn’t nearly as wild as a moose or a bighorn. A grizzly bear has very keen scent but very bad eyes, and I don’t suppose a grizzly can see you half a mile at best. Now, a caribou has good eyes, ears, and nose, but he hasn’t got any head. Sometimes he is very shy, and sometimes he’ll stand and look at you, and let you keep on shooting. He seems to be full of curiosity, and wants to know what you’re doing.

“We’ll work on over a little at a time,” he continued, “and maybe if we skirt around some open meadows or glades we may see some tracks. Sometimes they come out in places like that to feed or stand around. A water-hole or little lake, too, is good for game usually. When an Injun knows he’s in a country where game is moving or feeding he keeps pretty quiet and lets the game come to him rather than going to it.”

The theories laid down by the old hunter seemed soon to work out fairly well, because they had not gone up more than a mile farther until they got into a country which showed considerable sign of moose and caribou, the latter in rather a fresh trail. As this led them to a sort of open, grassy glade, where other sign was abundant, Alex paused for a time in the hope that something might show from the heavy cover in which they had been traveling.

At last he quietly laid a hand on Rob’s arm, and without making any sudden movement, pointed across the glade, which at that place was several hundred yards wide.

“Oh, I see them!” said Rob, in an excited whisper. “What funny-looking things they are—five of them!”

“Two stags, three cows,” said Alex, quietly. “Too far to shoot. Wait awhile.”

They drew back now into the cover of the surrounding valleys, where it is true the mosquitoes annoyed them unspeakably, but where they remained with such patience as they could possess. The caribou seemed to be slowly feeding out from the opposite edge of the forest, but they were very deliberate and uncertain in their progress. The two watched them for the best part of half an hour.

“Too bad!” said Alex, at last, as he peered out from behind the tree which shielded them. “Four hundred yards at best.”

Rob also ventured a look at this time.

“Why, there’s only three,” said he.

“Yes, the two stags went back into the woods.”

“But we can’t kill the cows,” said Rob, decisively.

“Why not? They’re just as good to eat.”

“Maybe better,” said Rob, “I don’t doubt that. A young, fat cow is better meat than an old bull any time, of course. But Uncle Dick said we mustn’t waste anything, and mustn’t kill anything except what had horns in this kind of game.”

“Well,” said Alex, “I don’t much feel like going back to camp without any meat.”

“Nor I. Let’s wait here awhile and maybe the stag’ll come out again.”

This indeed proved to be the case, for in a few minutes the smaller stag did show at the edge of the wood, offering a dim and very uncertain mark at a distance of several hundred yards. Rob began to prepare his rifle.

“It’s too far,” said Alex. “No Injun would think of shooting that far. You might only cripple.”

“Yes,” said Rob, “and I might only miss. But I’d rather do that than shoot at one of the cows. I believe I’ll take a chance anyhow, Alex.”

Adjusting his rifle-sights to the best of his knowledge, Rob took long and careful aim, and fired at the shoulder of the distant caribou, which showed but indistinctly along his rifle-sights. The shot may have come somewhere close to the animal, but certainly did not strike it, for with a sudden whirl it was off, and in the next instant was hidden by the protecting woods.

Now, there was instanced the truth of what Alex had said about the fickleness of caribou nature. The three cows, one old and two young ones, stood in full view in the open, at about half the distance of the stag. They plainly saw both Alex and Rob as they now stepped out from their cover. Yet instead of wheeling and running, the older cow, her ears standing out high and wide, began to trot steadily toward them instead of running away. Rob once more raised his rifle, but this time not to shoot at game, but only to make an experiment. He fired once, twice, and three times in the air; and even up to the time of the last shot, the old cow trotted steadily toward him, not stopping until she was within fifty yards of him. Here she stood staring wide-eyed, but at length, having figured out something in her own mind, she suddenly wheeled and lumbered off again, her heavy, coarse muzzle straight ahead of her. All three now shambled off and soon were lost to view.

“Well, what do you think about that, Alex?” demanded Rob. “That’s the funniest thing I ever saw in all my hunting. Those things must be crazy.”

“I suppose they think we are,” replied Alex, glumly; “maybe we are, or we’d have taken a shot at her. I can almost taste that tenderloin!”

“I’m sorry about it, Alex,” said Rob, “but maybe some of the others will get some meat. I really don’t like to shoot females, because game isn’t as plentiful now as it used to be, you know, even in the wild country.”

Alex sighed, and rather unhappily turned and led the way back toward the river. “It’s too late to hunt anything more,” said he, “and we might not find anything that just suited us.”

When at length they reached camp, after again crossing the river in the Mary Ann, twilight was beginning to fall. Rob did not notice any difference in the camp, although the keen eyes of Alex detected a grayish object hanging on the cut limb of the tree at the edge of the near-by thicket. John and Jesse pretended not to know anything, and Alex and Rob, to be equally dignified, volunteered no information and asked no questions.

All the boys had noticed that old hunters, especially Indian hunters, never ask one another what success they have had, and never tell anything about what they have killed. Jesse, however, could not stand this sort of thing very long, and at length, with considerable exultation, asked Rob what luck he had had. Rob rather shamefacedly admitted the failure which he and Alex had made.

“We did better,” said Jesse; “we got one.”

“You got one? Who got it?” demanded Rob. “Where is it?”

“There’s a ham hanging up over there in the brush,” answered Jesse. “We all went out, but I killed him.”

“Is that so, John?” asked Rob.

“It certainly is,” said John. “Yes, Jesse is the big chief to-night.”

“We only went a little way, too,” said Jesse, “just up over the ridge there, I don’t suppose more than half a mile. It must have been about noon when we started, and Moise didn’t think we were going to see anything, and neither did we. So we sat down, and in an hour or so I was shooting at a mark to see how my rifle would do. All at once we saw this fellow—it wasn’t a very big one, with little bits of horns—come out and stand around looking to see what the noise was about. So I just took a rest over a log, and I plugged him!”

Jesse stood up straight, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, a very proud young boy indeed.

Moise, strolling around, was grinning happily when at last he met the unsuccessful hunters.

“Those Jesse boy, she’ll been good shot,” said he. “I s’pose, Alex, you’ll not