They were in a splendid game country, and David
watched for the first opportunity that would give Baree and himself
fresh meat. The white sand bars and gravelly shores of the stream were
covered with the tracks of the wild dwellers of the valley and the
adjoining ranges, and Baree sniffed hungrily whenever he came to the
warm scent of the last night's spoor. He was hungry. He had been hungry
all the way over the mountains. Three times that day David saw a caribou
at a distance. In the afternoon he saw a grizzly on a green slope.
Toward evening he ran into luck. A band of sheep had come down from a
mountain to drink, and he came upon them suddenly, the wind in his
favour. He killed a young ram. For a full minute after firing the shot
he stood in his tracks, scarcely breathing. The report of his rifle was
like an explosion. It leaped from mountain to mountain, echoing,
deepening, coming back to him in murmuring intonations, and dying out at
last in a sighing gasp. It was a weird and disturbing sound. He fancied
that it could be heard many miles away. That night the two feasted on
fresh meat.
It was their fifth day in the valley when they came to a break in the
western wall of the range, and through this break flowed a stream that
was very much like the Stikine, broad and shallow and ribboned with
shifting bars of sand.
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