His trail is everywhere; he is
himself nowhere. You scour the country for a week, crossing
innumerable trails, thinking the surrounding woods must be full of
caribou; then a man in a lumber camp, where you are overtaken by
night, tells you that he saw the herd you are after 'way down on the
Renous barrens, thirty miles below. You go there, and have the same
experience,--signs everywhere, old signs, new signs, but never a
caribou. And, ten to one, while you are there, the caribou are
sniffing your snowshoe track suspiciously back on the barrens that you
have just left.
Even in feeding, when you are hot on their trail and steal forward
expecting to see them every moment, it is the same exasperating story.
They dig a hole through four feet of packed snow to nibble the
reindeer lichen that grows everywhere on the barrens. Before it is
half eaten they wander off to the next barren and dig a larger hole;
then away to the woods for the gray-green hanging moss that grows on
the spruces. Here is a fallen tree half covered with the rich food.
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