Packs were soon made. Johnny was surprised at the lightness of the sleeping bags used by his friends. “Scarcely five pounds apiece,” he told himself. Bacon, cornmeal, coffee, a few dried beans, three cans of condensed milk, such was the food supply of these wanderers. Each took in his pack as much caribou as he could comfortably carry. When Johnny saw that the girl proposed to carry a full third of the load, he offered to carry her caribou meat.
As she received his offer, her face flushed and her lips parted as if with a quick retort. Then, seeming to sense the spirit in which the offer was made, she allowed those same lips to open in a friendly smile as she said:
“I am used to the load. Without it I should not be hungry at noontime. It is enough if you break trail for us.”
Johnny soon realized the truth of this last remark. The effect of the slight thaw of two days before was gone. The snow on the sloping hillside, hard packed as it was by many an Arctic blast, offered a surface so smooth and hard that more than once his feet shot from beneath him and he went speeding straight down to the gentler slopes a hundred feet below.
To avoid following his example the old man with his hunting knife cut steps across the perilous places.
Noon found them nearing a clump of pines. As they came close to it, some object quite like a rolling ball of snow moved swiftly before them.
At once Faye’s pack was off her shoulder and her stout arms stringing her bow as she whispered,
“Birds. Ptarmigan. A whole covey of them!”
Next moment she and Johnny were off in swift pursuit.
After a half hour’s exciting chase, they returned with four of these white quail of the Arctic. To Johnny’s chagrin, Faye had out-shot him three to one.