A herd of caribou was rounding a low hill at a swinging trot. By and by there were perhaps forty in sight, traveling northwest at a quite rapid rate, as if fleeing before something.
“Kile,” said Harluk, and putting his head down, he started north at a good rate of speed, evidently bound on intercepting them. The Eskimo is not a good runner, but he is persistent. Harluk plunged on, falling over his own feet, but scrambling up again, leaving dents in the soft tundra moss, and still keeping up the pace, which bade fair in the end to wind Joe and Harry, until he reached a place that suited him in what seemed to be the path of the advancing herd. It was a wide, shallow valley between two low limestone hills. It was dotted here and there with scattered boulders, and the ground was rough with broken rock chinked with deer moss. Harluk placed the boys behind boulders at the extreme right and left of this valley, and bade them wait motionless until deer came near enough to shoot. He himself hastily built a little circular inclosure of stone in which he could crouch unobserved.
A half hour passed, during which there was no sign. The sun was low, and Harry shivered, sitting motionless in the chill of the valley. A snow-bunting came flitting along and lighted fearlessly beside him, and the next moment a great snowy owl swept over the ridge and down upon the snow-bunting, which wriggled between Harry’s feet for protection. The owl glared at him fiercely for a moment with great round eyes, then slipped into the air again, and vanished down the valley. As Harry watched him, he saw branching antlers, and a caribou came around the curve, followed by more and more, feeding and wandering toward him. He sat rigid, his eyes fixed upon them like a dog at the point. They nibbled at the gray moss, unconscious of danger, but lifted their heads and gazed in surprise as a most discordant bellow came from the circle of stone where Harluk lay hidden. Their manner changed in a moment from shambling and slouchy to alert, upheaded, and vigilant. They pawed the earth and sniffed suspiciously, then began to move toward Harluk’s stone fort. Their heads were high, their muzzles thrust forward, and they trod with dainty alertness where before they had shambled. Out of the tail of his eye Harry could see Harluk’s hand and fur-clad arm waving grotesquely above the stones. It was this that had held the attention of the herd and toward which their curiosity was leading them. Within twenty minutes the whole herd were circling about the little inclosure of stone, drawing nearer and nearer to the hand that waved above it. They were within gunshot of either Harry or Joe now, but neither might shoot lest he endanger Harluk. Moreover, neither boy had shot deer before, and the sight of forty of these great creatures within gunshot had given both the buck fever. Harry found himself shaking as with the palsy, and had an almost irresistible desire to throw his gun in the air and halloo.
The deer were very near Harluk now, and his beckoning arm had shrunken to the tip of his mitten, now lifted a little, then slowly withdrawn. The deer fairly crowded forward to look for it. As their muzzles appeared over the stones, Harluk leaped to his feet with a tremendous yell. The effect was to paralyze the herd for a second. They stamped and snorted, but stood firm while Harluk lunged with his spear full at the shoulder of the nearest. The shaft went home, and the deer sank to the ground transfixed to the heart. Immediately there was a tremendous stampede among the deer. The stupid creatures rushed this way and that, colliding with one another in a paroxysm of terror, then started down the valley again in the direction whence they had come. In this sudden confusion a caribou was knocked fairly from his feet, falling against Harluk from behind and tripping him. He scrambled to his feet again with a rush and carried Harluk clinging mechanically to his back, too surprised to do anything else. As the herd clattered by, Harry saw Joe spring to his feet and begin to jump up and down, wave his rifle in the air, and halloo. He shouted to him to quit that and shoot, and then it came to him that he was doing precisely the same thing, nor did he seem to be able to stop, even when he was conscious of it, until the herd was well by him.
Such is the effect of the buck fever. In its delirium people are sometimes conscious that they are acting absurdly, but do not have the power to stop it.
By the time the herd was so far down the valley that it was nearly out of gunshot, Harry and Joe had come to sufficiently to do some wild shooting. This had no effect but to bring an equally wild yell from Harluk, who rolled from his perch at the whistling of the bullets and abandoned his quarry. Of the forty caribou among which they had been for a half hour or more, they had secured but one. However, they had enough meat for the present, and they divided up the animal and started back for the camp with it on their shoulders.
They reached the spot where they had camped before the hunt, and stared and rubbed their eyes with many exclamations of astonishment and alarm. There was no trace of tent, sled, or dogs. All had vanished. They threw down their burdens and looked at one another.
“Are you sure this is the place?” asked Harry.