XX
CARIBOU IN CAMP
“
This weather,” said Uncle Dick, walking toward an open place in the trees and looking up at the bright sky above, “is entirely too fine to suit me. This morning looks as though we would have a warm day, and that means high water. The rock walls in the cañons below here don’t stretch, and a foot of water on a flat like this may mean twenty feet rise in a cañon. And that is where this little band of travelers will all get out and walk.”
Leo, who had been examining his boat, which he had drawn up on the beach to dry overnight, now asked a little time to calk a leak which he had discovered. Meantime the boys concluded it might be a good plan to walk out a little way into an open place and try the sights of their rifles, which they knew would need to be exactly right if they were to engage in such dangerous sport as that of hunting the grizzly bear.
“S’pose you see some small little bear,” said Moise, as they started out, “you shoot ’um. Shoot ’um caribou too, s’pose you see one—law says traveler can kil meat.”
“Well, we’re not apt to see one,” said John, “for we’d scare them when we began to shoot our rifles.”
They had advanced only a few hundred yards from the camp when they found an open place in front of the trees which offered a good opportunity for a rifle-range of two hundred yards.
“I’m not going to fool with my sights,” said Jesse, “because my gun shot all right last night on the grouse. You fellows go ahead.”
Rob and John proceeded with the work of targeting their rifles, firing perhaps a dozen shots apiece in all before they turned to walk back to the camp. As they did so Rob, happening to look back of them, suddenly halted them with a low word. “What’s that?” said he.