"At last, snow-fall warned me to prepare for winter. I was in this valley that day, and I've been here ever since. If I had ever got any pleasure from that stolen money, which I haven't, I would have paid for that pleasure a hundred times that first winter. Fortune favored me in one thing: the caribou came by in great droves, and, before my ammunition was exhausted, I had secured plenty of meat. But at that, I came near dying before I learned that one who lives upon a strictly meat diet must measure carefully the proportions of lean and fat. Someway, I learned. And somehow, starving, freezing, half-mad of lonesomeness, I got through the winter, but I am glad you did not see me when the first wild geese came north. If ever there was a wild man, dressed in skins and dancing in the sun, it was I."
"But the wheat?" asked Barney. "How did that happen?"
"I am coming to that," smiled his host. "Early that spring," he continued, passing his hand across his forehead, as if to brush away the memory of that terrible winter, "the Indians came. They came from the Dismal Lake region. Driven south by forest fires, they were starving. I had a little caribou meat and shared it with them; that made them my everlasting friends."
"And you got the wheat from them?" interposed Barney.
"Hardly. I doubt if they had ever seen a grain of wheat.
"Well, we lived together that summer. But I am getting ahead of my story. Shortly before they arrived, I noticed some strange-looking caribou in the clearing. I had no ammunition, so could not shoot them. Anyway, they were skin-poor and would be of little use to me. But they seemed strangely tame, coming close to my cabin at night. They were company, and I was careful not to frighten them away. One night, in the moonlight, I caught a glistening flash from the ear of the oldest doe. Then, too, I noticed that one of them had unnaturally short antlers. A closer look told me that these antlers had been cut off.
"Then came the wonderful discovery: these were not caribou, but reindeer escaped from some herd in Alaska.
"Right then I decided to capture and use them. I would put them in pound until their rightful owners came for them, which would be never." He smiled.
"Well, I tried making a lasso of caribou skin. For a long time I could not come near enough to reach them with the lasso. But one night, while they rested, I crept up to them and my lasso caught one by the antlers. Then there was a battle, and all the while I was thinking that now I should have milk, butter and cheese, meat and clothing. And then there was a snap; the skin-rope broke and away went the reindeer—and my hopes.
"I then hit on the plan of building a corral and driving them into it. This was a pretty big job for one man, but with trees lining both sides of a narrow run, where the deer went to drink, I managed to weave willow branches into the spruce trees and make a stout barrier. Well—one morning, I found myself with six reindeer in pound—a bull, three does, a yearling and an old sled-deer. Not long after, the herd was increased by four fawns.