The caribou’s body was plainly exposed, and so close that the boy felt he could not miss. Straightening himself suddenly but noiselessly, he drew back his bowstring and let fly. He struck the beast squarely, but though he had aimed for the heart, his arrow evidently did not pierce that vital spot. The caribou felt the sting of the wound, sprang into the air and was off at a great pace. After it sped Jean, his moccasined feet scarcely seeming to touch the rocks, moss and intervening low bushes, as he cleared them.
[XXIV]
NANGOTOOK’S DISAPPEARANCE
Had the caribou not been badly wounded, pursuit would have been hopeless, but it was bleeding freely, as its trail showed. Nevertheless it led the boys a long chase, down the hillside, along thickly wooded, low ground, through a gap between ridges and to the edge of a brook. There, exhausted by loss of blood, it sank down among the thick underbrush. But when it caught sound or scent of the hunters, the beast struggled to its feet again, and attempted to cross the stream. Jean, pushing through the bushes, caught sight of it, and let fly another arrow. He hit his mark, and the caribou fell before it could reach the other side.
After the lads had recovered their breath, they pulled the dead animal out of the shallow water. To take such a load up the ridge would be hard work, and Ronald suggested that they try following the brook.
“It empties into the cove of course,” he said. “When we reach there, one of us can go back along shore for the canoe.”
The banks of the brook were thickly covered with trees and bushes. With their heavy load tied to a pole and carried between them, the boys made slow progress. More than once they wished they had turned back the other way. At last they came to a place where the brook rippled down a slope into a marsh, and joined a larger stream that wound sluggishly, in many turns and twists, through the tall, ripe grass and sedges. On the farther side of the larger stream was a dense belt of leafless shrubs that appeared to stand almost in the water, and beyond them thick cedar woods.
“Now where are we?” exclaimed Ronald disgustedly. “It seems I guessed wrong about this little brook. I never thought of its emptying into another stream.”
“I’m not sure you were so very wrong,” Jean replied. “We could see when we paddled up the cove that it was low and swampy at its head. This may well be the very swamp. If we follow it we can soon discover.”
Accordingly, turning to the north, they made their way along the higher ground. The marsh was roughly triangular in shape and, as they went on towards its base, they soon found that Jean was right. Beyond a belt of rushes and other aquatic plants, the waters of the cove came in view. When the boys reached the shore, Jean offered to go for the canoe while Ronald kept watch over the game. Ronald did not like inaction, but he knew his friend was the better woodsman, and could make his way through the forest and over rough ground almost as rapidly and tirelessly as Nangotook himself. So the Scotch lad set himself to wait as patiently as he could.