Wilderness Ways | Page 5

away. But I did
not touch them. That is a degradation which no wild creature will
permit when he is free; and I would not take advantage of their
helplessness.
Did they starve in the snow? you ask. Oh, no! I went to the place next
day and found that they had gained the spruce tops, ploughing through
the snow in great bounds, following the track of the strongest, which
went ahead to break the way. There they fed and rested, then went to
some dense thickets where they passed the night. In a day or two the
snow settled and hardened, and they took to their wandering again.
Later, in hunting, I crossed their tracks several times, and once I saw
them across a barren; but I left them undisturbed, to follow other trails.
We had eaten together; they had fed from my hand; and there is no
older truce on earth than that, not even in the unchanging East, where it
originated.
Megaleep in a storm is a most curious creature, the nearest thing to a
ghost to be found in the woods. More than other animals he feels the
falling barometer. His movements at such times drive you to
desperation, if you are following him; for he wanders unceasingly.
When the storm breaks he has a way of appearing suddenly, as if he
were seeking you, when by his trail you thought him miles ahead. And
the way he disappears--just melts into the thick driving flakes and the
shrouded trees--is most uncanny. Six or seven caribou once played
hide-and-seek with me that way, giving me vague glimpses here and

there, drawing near to get my scent, yet keeping me looking up wind
into the driving snow where I could see nothing distinctly. And all the
while they drifted about like so many huge flakes of the storm,
watching my every movement, seeing me perfectly.
At such times they fear little, and even lay aside their usual caution. I
remember trailing a large herd one day from early morning, keeping
near them all the time, and jumping them half a dozen times, yet never
getting a glimpse because of their extreme watchfulness. For some
reason they were unwilling to leave a small chain of barrens. Perhaps
they knew the storm was coming, when they would be safe; and so,
instead of swinging off into a ten-mile straightaway trot at the first
alarm, they kept dodging back and forth within a two-mile circle. At
last, late in the afternoon, I followed the trail to the edge of dense
evergreen thickets. Caribou generally rest in open woods or on the
windward edge of a barren. Eyes for the open, nose for the cover, is
their motto. And I thought, "They know perfectly well I am following
them, and so have lain down in that tangle. If I go in, they will hear me;
a wood mouse could hardly keep quiet in such a place. If I go round,
they will catch my scent; if I wait, so will they; if I jump them, the
scrub will cover their retreat perfectly."
As I sat down in the snow to think it over, a heavy rush deep within the
thicket told me that something, not I certainly, had again started them.
Suddenly the air darkened, and above the excitement of the hunt I felt
the storm coming. A storm in the woods is no joke when you are six
miles from camp without axe or blanket. I broke away from the trail
and started for the head of the second barren on the run. If I could make
that, I was safe; for there was a stream near, which led near to camp;
and one cannot very well lose a stream, even in a snowstorm. But
before I was halfway the flakes were driving thick and soft in my face.
Another half-mile, and one could not see fifty feet in any direction. Still
I kept on, holding my course by the wind and my compass. Then, at the
foot of the second barren, my snowshoes stumbled into great
depressions in the snow, and I found myself on the fresh trail of my
caribou again. "If I am lost, I will at least have a caribou steak, and a
skin to wrap me up in," I said, and plunged after them. As I went, the
old Mother Goose rhyme of nursery days came back and set itself to
hunting music:

Bye, baby bunting, Daddy's gone a hunting, For to catch a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby bunting in.
Presently I began to sing it aloud. It cheered one up in the storm, and
the lilt of it kept time to the leaping kind of gallop which is the easiest
way to run on snowshoes: