THE MUSK-OX AND ITS HUNTING
By Caspar Whitney
IN THE FAR NORTH
I
My First Kill
We had passed through the “Land of Little Sticks,” as the Indians so appropriately call that desolate waste which connects the edge of timber land with the Barren Grounds, and had been for several days making our way north on the lookout for any living thing that would provide us with a mouthful of food.
We had got into one of those pieces of this great barren area, which, broken by rocky ridges, of no great height but of frequent occurrence, are unspeakably harassing to the travelling snow-shoer. It was the third twelve hours of our fast, save for tea and the pipe, and all day we had been dragging ourselves wearily up one ridge and down another in the ever recurring and always disappointed hope that on each we should sight caribou or musk-oxen. The Indians were discouraged and sullen, as they usually did become on such occasions; and this troubled me really more than not finding food, for I was in constant dread of their growing disheartened and turning back to the woods. That was the possibility which, since the very starting day, had at all times and most seriously menaced the success of my venture; because we were pushing on in the early part of March, at a time when the storms are at their greatest severity, and when none had ever before ventured into the Barren Grounds. Therefore, in my fear lest the Indians turn back, I sought to make light of our difficulties by breaking into song when we stopped to “spell”[1] our dogs, hoping by my assumed light-heartedness to shame the Indians out of showing their desire to turn homeward.
How much I felt like singing may be imagined.
So the day dragged on without sight of a moving creature, not even a fox, and it was past noon when we laboriously worked our way up one particular ridge which seemed to have an unusual amount of unnecessary and ragged rock strewn over its surface. I remember we scarcely ventured to look into the white silent country that stretched in front of us; disappointment had rewarded our long searchings so often that we had somehow come to accept it as a matter of course. Squatting down back of the sledge in shelter from the wind seemed of more immediate concern than looking ahead for meat: at least we were sure of the solace our pipes gave. Thus we smoked in silence, with no sign of interest in what the immediate country ahead might hold for us, until Beniah, the leader of my Indians, and an unusually good one, started to his feet with an exclamation and, hurriedly climbing on top a good-sized rock, stretched his arm ahead, obviously much stirred with excitement. He shouted, once and loud, “ethan,”[2] and then continued mumbling it as though to make his tongue sure of what his eyes beheld. We all gathered around him, climbing his rock or on other ones, in desperate earnestness to see what he saw in the direction he continued pointing. It was minutes before I could discern anything having life in the distance which reached away to the horizon all white and silent, and then I detected a kind of vapor arising apparently from some dark objects blurringly outlined against the snow about four miles away; it was the mist which arises from a herd of animals where the mercury is ranging between sixty and seventy degrees below zero, and on a clear day may be seen five miles away. Thoroughly aroused now, I got my field-glasses from my sledge and searched the dark objects under the mist. They were not caribou, of that I was certain; as to what they were I was equally uncertain, for the forms were strange to my eye. So I handed the glasses to Beniah, saying, “ethan illa.”[3] Beniah took the glasses, but as it was the first time he had ever looked through a pair, their range and power seemed to excite him quite as much as did the appearance of the game itself. When he did find his tongue, he fairly shouted, “ejerri.”[4] I had no accurate knowledge of what “ejerri” meant, but assumed we had sighted musk-oxen. Instantly all was excitement. The Indians set up a yell and rushed for their sledges, jabbering and laughing. It seemed incredible that these were the same men who so shortly before had sat silent with backs to the wind, dejected and indifferent.
Every one now busied himself turning loose his dogs,—a small matter for the Indians, with their simply sewn harness from which the dogs were easily slipped, but a rather complex job for me. My dog train had come from the Post, and its harness was made of buckles and straps and things not easily undone in freezing weather; so it happened that by the time my dogs were unhitched, the Indians and all their dogs were fully quarter of a mile nearer the musk-oxen than I and running for very dear life. My preconceived notions of the musk-ox hunting game were in a jiffy jolted to the point of destruction, as I now found myself in a situation neither expected nor joyful. It was natural to suppose some assistance would be given me in this strange environment, and that the consideration of a party of my own organizing and my own paying should be my killing the musk-ox for which I had come so long a distance. But we were a long way from the Post and interpreters and restraining influences; and at this moment of readjustment I speedily realized that it was to be a survival of the fittest on this expedition, and if I got a musk-ox it would be of my own getting. It comforted me to know that, even though somewhat tucked up as to stomach, due to three days’ hard travel on only tea, I was in fine physical condition, and up to making the effort of my life.
By the time I had run about two miles I had caught the last of the Indians, who were stretched out in a long column, with two leading by half a mile. Within another mile I had passed all the stragglers, and was running practically even with the second Indian, who was two or three hundred yards behind the leading one. This Indian, Seco by name, was one of the best snow-shoe runners I ever encountered. He gave evidence of his endurance and speed on many another occasion than this one, for always there was a run of four miles or more after every musk-ox herd we sighted, and invariably a foot-race between Seco and me preceded final leadership. I may add incidentally that he always beat me, although we made some close finishes during the fifty-seven days we roamed this God-forgotten bit of the earth.
On this particular day, though I passed the second Indian, Seco kept well in the lead, with practically all the dogs just ahead of him. It was the roughest going I had ever experienced, for the course lay over a succession of low but sharp, rocky ridges covered with about a foot of snow, and, on the narrow tripping shoes used in the Barren Grounds, I broke through the crust where it was soft, or jammed my shoes between the wind-swept rocks that lay close together, or caught in those I attempted to clear in my stride. It was a species of hurdle racing to test the bottom of a well-fed, conditioned athlete; how it wore on a tea diet I need not say.
After we had been running for about an hour, it seemed to me as though we should never see the musk-oxen. Ridge after ridge we crossed and yet not a sight of the coveted quarry. Seco still held a lead of about one hundred yards, and I remember I wondered in my growing fatigue why on earth that Indian maintained such a pace, for I could not help feeling that when the musk-oxen finally had been caught up, he would stop until I, and all the Indians and all the dogs had come up, so as to more certainly assure the success of the hunt: but it was not the first time I had been with Indian hunters, and I knew well enough not to take any chances.
In another half hour’s running, as I worked up the near side of a rather higher and broader ridge than any we had crossed, I heard the dogs barking, and speeding to the top, what was my