It was late afternoon when, with heart pounding painfully against his ribs, he stood neck deep among scrub spruce trees.
The scene before him was one to inspire an artist’s brush or lend fire to a poet’s pen. A young buck caribou, a superb creature of shining brown and glistening black, stood before him in a narrow circle of green. Walled in on every side by dark young fir trees, the wild creature’s miniature pasture seemed to have been planned by some famous director for the setting of a scene in a wildwood drama.
The caribou was feeding toward him.
“Another minute, just one more,” he told himself.
His watch ticked loudly. It seemed certain that the wild creature must hear. The snap of a twig off to the right came near spoiling it all. The caribou lifted its head. Johnny’s unnerved hand all but lost its grip on his bow.
The day’s trail had been long and tiresome. Over rocky slopes, down icy streams, across treacherous snows, the caribou had led the way until the boy, weak from lack of food, was near to the point where one gives up in despair. Twice, as if to tempt him, a snowshoe rabbit leaped from his path, only to pause among the rocks and stare at him. Twice he had strung his bow, twice nocked his single arrow for a shot. Twice he had told himself that a miss among those rocks meant a shattered shaft, that at most the rabbit offered but a meal or two of indifferent food. Twice he had slipped the arrow in his belt, had unstrung his bow to take up the task of dogged tracking.
“It’s to be the caribou or nothing!” he had told himself. “A month’s provision, or famine.”
And now, here, just before him, feeding peacefully, was the caribou. For the moment he was well over at the far side of his narrow pasture. A few moments more, and he would be close enough for a sure shot, and then! The boy caught his breath as he thought what the speeding of that single arrow meant to him.
Closing his eyes, he saw himself, a load of meat across his shoulders, beating his way back to the last outpost of civilization where were feathers, wood and steel for the making of many arrows. Then again the picture went dark. He saw the shadow of his present self, struggling over long lost trails, eagerly sucking bitter bark or grubbing into frozen earth for some crude substance with which to allay his hunger.
“I must win!” he told himself stoutly. “I must not miss!”