“The birds and beasts have eaten whatever they may have left,” spoke the lieutenant. “Too bad, my lads. However, we’re out, and we’ll make shift some way. Fetch up another load, while I hunt.”
Out he went, with his gun. They managed to bring up another load from the sledges. They heard a gunshot.
“Hooray! Meat for supper, after all.”
But when he returned in the darkness he was empty-handed.
“I wounded a deer, and lost him,” he reported shortly; and he slightly staggered as he sank down for a moment. “We can do no more to-night. We’ll melt snow for drinking purposes; but the deer-hide is likely to make us ill, in our present condition. We’ll keep it, and to-morrow we’ll have better luck.”
So with a fire and melted snow they passed the night. Nobody else arrived. The doctor and Brown seemed to be a day’s march ahead; Baroney and Hugh Menaugh and Bill Gordon were wandering with the horses through this broken high country; and the other eight were toiling as best they could, with the sledges, in separate pairs, seeking a way out also.
The lieutenant started again, early in the morning, to find meat for breakfast. They went down into the canyon, to get the rest of the loads, and the sledges—and how they managed, with their legs so weary and their stomachs so empty, Stub scarcely knew.
They heard the lieutenant shoot several times, in the distance; this helped them. He rarely missed. But he came into camp with nothing, and with his gun broken off at the breech—had wounded deer, had discovered that his gun was bent and shot crooked—then had fallen and disabled it completely.
He was exhausted—so were the others; yet he did not give up. He rested only a minute. Then he grabbed up the gun that had been stowed among the baggage. It was only a double-barreled shotgun, but had to do.
“I’ll try again, with this,” he said. “You can go no further; I see that. Keep good heart, my lads, and be sure that I’ll return at best speed with the very first meat I secure.”