“Some bear, I’d say!” echoed Joe.
“There’s a day’s work to be done on the tent,” said Jennings. “He ripped it up something awful. But we’ll have to make it do at least till we meet Munson.”
“Yes, and till we get ashore.”
“Guess so. Lend a hand and let’s see what shift we can make for a wink more of sleep before we march on.”
In a few moments Joe and Jennings were curled up in their sleeping-bags, snoring as if they were safe in bed at home.
CHAPTER XXV
THE WILD STAMPEDE
At no time in Curlie Carson’s adventurous life had he experienced such strangely mingled emotions as he did while riding astride the white reindeer in the midst of the wild stampede. A sea of tossing antlers was all about him. Behind him was the red glare of a mountain of flame. What the next moment would bring forth he could not even guess. Now the mass of struggling life was crowded into a narrow runway between banks of a river and now they spread out over an open flat. Now his legs were pinched and bruised by antlers pressed against them, and now he rode almost alone. But always his white steed plunged on into the night made light as day by the great conflagration.
“Our hope is in the open tundra, open, treeless tundra,” he told himself over and over.
The great horde of creatures, seeming to know this by instinct, headed straight for it. Now he could see the tundra’s broad, white expanse gleaming before them. Would they make it? The fire was gaining upon them. He felt the hot breath of flame upon his cheek. The crowding from behind became all but unbearable. Beside him, mouth open, panting, raced a monstrous caribou. Before him crashed a spotted reindeer.
Would they make it? Now they were a half mile from safety, now a quarter. The smell of burning hair came stiflingly from the rear.