For
some reason they were unwilling to leave a small chain of barrens.
Perhaps they knew the storm was coming, when they would be safe; and
so, instead of swinging off into a ten-mile straightaway trot at the
first alarm, they kept dodging back and forth within a two-mile
circle. At last, late in the afternoon, I followed the trail to the
edge of dense evergreen thickets. Caribou generally rest in open woods
or on the windward edge of a barren. Eyes for the open, nose for the
cover, is their motto. And I thought, "They know perfectly well I am
following them, and so have lain down in that tangle. If I go in, they
will hear me; a wood mouse could hardly keep quiet in such a place. If
I go round, they will catch my scent; if I wait, so will they; if I
jump them, the scrub will cover their retreat perfectly."
As I sat down in the snow to think it over, a heavy rush deep within
the thicket told me that something, not I certainly, had again started
them. Suddenly the air darkened, and above the excitement of the hunt
I felt the storm coming.
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