To say that Curlie was suddenly stricken with buck fever, would be putting it mildly. His fingers trembled. Cold perspiration stood out upon his brow.
This lasted but a second, then he was himself again. It was a tense moment. The fate of their expedition might hang upon his shot; the question of going on or turning about must be decided by their ability to procure food.
“How,” he whispered, “how in time do you shoot a caribou when he’s got his back to you?”
He hesitated. A shot fired now might not reach a vital spot, yet the creature might at any moment sense his presence and go crashing away over the hard-crusted snow.
At this moment he was startled by a loud “ark-ark-ark” to the right and above him.
“Two of ’em,” he whispered as he dropped behind his snow bank.
The thing he now witnessed both surprised and amused him. A second caribou had appeared at the crest of a steep hill. Having paused there long enough to call to his companion, instead of racing away to a place of gradual descent, he spread out his snowshoe-like hoofs and with a loud “ark-ark,” went scooting, toboggan-fashion, down the hill. So fascinated was Curlie with the sight of this performance that for a moment he forgot his duty to his friends and himself. But just in time he brought himself up with a snap. The rifle went to his shoulder. Just as the second buck, the larger of the two, reached the bottom and stood at attention, the rifle cracked. The buck leaped high, to plunge back upon the snow.
Crack-crack-crack went the hoofs of the first caribou as he raced away, and the crack-crack-crack answered the rifle.
It took not a second glance to tell Curlie that his first shot had reached its mark.
“Think I hit the other. Two’s better than one,” he muttered as he raced away over the fresh trail. True enough, there were drops of blood here and there on the snow.