"Try, anyway. You've got a long-range rifle. If you can hold true, he's yours."
This was one thing that Ben was skilled at,—holding true. He raised the weapon to his shoulder, drawing down finely on that little speck of brown across the gulch. Few times in his life had he been more anxious to make a successful shot. Yet he would never have admitted the true explanation: that he simply desired to make good in the girl's eyes.
He held his breath and pressed the trigger back.
Beatrice could not restrain a low, happy cry of triumph. She had forgotten all things, for the moment, but her joy at his success. And truly, Ben had made a remarkable shot. Most hunters who boast of long-range hits do not step off the distance shot; fifty yards is called a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards three hundred; and to kill true at this range is not the accustomed thing on the trails of sport. The bullet had gone true as a light-shaft, striking the animal through the shoulders, and he had never stirred out of his tracks. With that joy of conquest known to all owners of rod and gun—related darkly to the blood-lust of the beasts—they raced across the gully toward the fallen.
Ben quartered the animal, and again he saw fit to save the hide. It is the best material of all for the parka, the long, full winter garment of the North.
Ben carried the meat in four trips back to the camp. By the time this work was done, and one of the quarters was drying over a fire of quivering aspen chips, the day was done. Again they saw the twilight shadows grow, and the first sable cloak of night was drawn over the shoulders of the forest. Beatrice prepared a wonderful roast of caribou for their evening meal; and thereafter they sat a short time at the mouth of the cavern, looking quietly into the red coals of the dying fire. Again Ben knew the beneficence and peace of the sheltering walls of home. Again he felt a sweet security,—a taming, gentling influence through the innermost fiber of his being.
But Fenris the wolf gazed only into the darkened woods, and the hair stood stiff at his shoulders, and his eyes glowed and shone with the ancient hunting madness induced by the rising moon.