Once there he proceeded to cut up the meat. Then, having built a cache out of blocks of snow which would keep the meat out of reach of wolves and foxes, he shouldered one hind quarter and turned to go.
Then and not till then did he realize that he did not exactly know the way back to camp. He had come a considerable distance, and in the eager excitement of the hunt had failed to take note of each turn in his trail or to fix in his memory the shapes of the hills about him that they might serve him as guide posts.
“Pretty pickle!” he told himself. “Here I’ve got a heavy load and I’ll likely as not have to walk ten miles to make five. Going to storm, too,” he told himself as he studied the hazy horizon. “The mountains were smoking with snow forty miles away this afternoon. Ho, well, guess I’ll make it some way.”
Shouldering his burden, he went slipping, sliding down the hill. He had not been going many minutes before he realized that he was not going to “make it someway”—not that night at least.
A playful breeze began throwing fine snow in his face. As he approached the crest of a ridge this breeze grew rude. It gave him a shove which landed him halfway back down the hill.
“Stop that, you!” he grumbled as he gathered himself up and attempted the hill anew.
But the thing did not stop. It grew in violence until the boy knew he was facing one of the sudden, severe blizzards known only on the Arctic hills, a storm which no man can face for hours and live.
“It’s no use,” he told himself. “I’d just blunder round till I’m hot and exhausted, then sit down and freeze. Better sit down here while I’m still all here.”
Making his way to a spot somewhat sheltered by a cut bank, he placed his burden on the ground, then set to work with his sheath knife cutting blocks from a snow bank. Out of these he built a snow-fort-like affair which protected him on two sides.
“Wish I knew how to build a snow-house,” he told himself. “But I don’t, so what’s the use to try?”