made along the streams on the east side of the Rockies. On the west side of course there were no buffalo, and probably never had been any; and to judge from the signs, the other animals wandered aimlessly in every direction.
We went ahead slowly and noiselessly, for we hoped to see some of the game lying down, and to get a close shot before we were discovered. Presently a covey of ruffed grouse, flying up out of the snow into the pines, afforded easy shots; but we dared not risk our arrows for fear of shattering the points against the solid wood. We determined thereafter always to carry a couple of blunt ones for bird shooting.
Soon after passing the grouse, I caught a glimpse of some black thing that bobbed through the snow into a balsam thicket. We went over there and came to the trail of a fisher, the largest member of the weasel family. As I had often seen the large, glossy black pelts of these animals brought into the fort by Indians and company trappers, I was anxious to get a close view of one alive. I looked for it farther along in the snow; but Pitamakan, who was gazing up into the trees, all at once grasped my arm and pointed at a small red-furred creature that, running to the end of a long bough, leaped into the next tree.
"Huh! Only a squirrel!" I said. But I had barely spoken when, hot after it, jumped the fisher, the most beautiful, agile animal that I had ever seen. It was considerably larger than a house cat.
We ran, or rather waddled, as fast as we could to the foot of the fir, barely in time to see the fisher spring into the next tree, still in pursuit of the squirrel. The latter, making a circle in the branches, leaped back into the tree over our heads. The fisher was gaining on it, and was only a few feet behind its prey when, seeing us, it instantly whipped round and went out of that tree into the one beyond, and from that to another, and another, until it was finally lost to sight.
"Oh, if we could only have got it!" I cried.
"Never mind, there are plenty of them here, and we'll get some before the winter is over," said my companion.
Although I had my doubts about that, I made no remark. Pitamakan was promising lot of things that seemed impossible,—needles and thread, for instance. "Let's go on," I said. "It is too cold for us to stand still."
We came now to the red willow thicket where the bull moose had frightened us. There a barely perceptible trough in the new-fallen snow marked where he and his family had wandered round and retreated, quartering down the valley.
"They are not far away, but I think we had better not hunt them until we have two bows," Pitamakan remarked.
Just below the red willows we saw our first deer, a large, white-tail doe, walking toward the river, and stopping here and there to snip off tender tips of willow and birch. We stood motionless while she passed through the open timber and into a fir thicket.
"She is going to lie down in there. Come on," said Pitamakan.
He started toward the river and I followed, although I wondered why he didn't go straight to the deer trail. Finally I asked him the reason, and right there I got a very important lesson in still-hunting.
"All the animals of the forest lie down facing their back trail," he explained. "Sometimes they do more than that; they make a circle, and coming round, lie down where they can watch their trail. If an enemy comes along on it, they lie close to the ground, ears flattened back, until he passes on; then they get up slowly and sneak quietly out of hearing, and then run far and fast. Remember this: never follow a trail more than just enough to keep the direction the animal is traveling. Keep looking ahead, and when you see a likely place for the animal to be lying, a rise of ground, a side hill, or a thicket, make a circle, and approach it from the further side. If the animal hasn't stopped, you will come to its trail; but if you find no trail, go ahead slowly, a step at a time."
There was sound sense in what he told me, and I said so; but feeling that we were losing time, I added, "Let's hurry on now."
"It is because there is no hurry that I have explained this to you here," he replied. "This is a time for waiting instead of hurrying. You should always give the animal plenty of chance to lie down and get sleepy."
The day was too cold, however, for longer waiting. We went on to the river, and were surprised to find that it was frozen over, except for long, narrow open places over the rapids. As there was no snow on the new-formed ice, walking on it was a great relief to our tired legs. A couple of hundred yards down stream we came to the fir thicket, and walked past it. Since no fresh deer track was to be found coming from the place, we knew that the doe was somewhere in it.
Back we turned, and leaving the river, began to work our way in among the snow-laden trees, which stood so close together that we could see no more than twenty or thirty feet ahead. I kept well back from Pitamakan, in order to give him every possible chance. It was an anxious moment. Killing that deer meant supplying so many of our needs!
We had sneaked into the thicket for perhaps fifty yards when, for all his care, Pitamakan grazed with his shoulder a snow-laden branch of balsam, and down came the whole fluff of it. I saw the snow farther on burst up as if from the explosion of a bomb, and caught just a glimpse of the deer, whose tremendous leaps were raising the feathery cloud. It had only a few yards to go in the open; but Pitamakan had seen it rise from its bed, and was quick enough to get a fair shot before it disappeared.
"I hit it!" he cried. "I saw its tail drop! Come on."
That was a certain sign. When a deer of this variety is alarmed and runs, it invariably raises its short, white-haired tail, and keeps swaying it like the inverted pendulum of a clock; but if even slightly wounded by the hunter, it instantly claps its tail tight against its body and keeps it there.
"Here is blood!" Pitamakan called out, pointing to some red spots on the snow. They were just a few scattering drops, but I consoled myself with thinking that an arrow does not let out blood like a rifle-ball because the shaft fills the wound. We soon came to the edge of the fir thicket. Beyond, the woods were so open that we could see a long way in the direction of the deer's trail. We dropped to a walk, and went on a little less hopefully; the blood-droppings became more scattering, and soon not another red spot was to be seen—a bad sign.
At last we found where the deer had ceased running, had stopped and turned round to look back. It had stood for some time, as was shown by the well-trodden snow. Even here there was not one drop of blood, and worst of all, from this place the deer had gone on at its natural long stride.
"It is useless for us to trail her farther," said Pitamakan dolefully. "Her wound is only a slight one; it smarts just enough to keep her traveling and watching that we don't get a chance for another shot."
I felt bad enough, but Pitamakan felt worse, because he thought that he should have made a better shot.
"Oh, never mind," I said, trying to cheer him. "There are plenty of deer close round here, and it is a long time until night. Go ahead. We'll do better next time."
"I am pretty tired," he complained. "Perhaps we had better go to camp and start out rested to-morrow."
I had not thought to take the lead and break trail a part of the time; of course he was tired. I proposed to do it now, and added that it would be a good plan to walk on the ice of the river and look carefully into the timber along the shores for meat of some kind.
"You speak truth!" he exclaimed, his face brightening in a way that was good to see. "Go ahead; let's get over there as quick as possible."
In a few minutes we were back on the ice, where he took the lead again. And now for the first time since leaving camp—except for a few minutes after
