Caribou! You breathe the word more than you whisper it to yourself, for you are thousands of miles from civilization and a full day's trek on foot, maybe more than thirty miles, from the nearest living, breathing human being.
Caribou! And this was my first caribou hunt where I was entirely on my own.
It came about this way. Chief Lukas came to the Police Post at Port Burwell where my comrade and I were stationed. It's a lonely Post on an island at the top of Labrador on the Atlantic rim of Hudson Strait. If you look at a map of the northeastern sector of North America you will see where I mean. The mainland is Central Ungava, and not actually the Labrador.
"One needs meat," said Lukas the native chief, meaning the food supply of the local tribe was getting too low for safety, considering the time of year. It was February and we were past the four weeks of almost total night which marks the worst of winter just north of latitude 60. It was clear weather, and although blizzards are always a chance to be taken, I agreed with Lukas that it was a good time to go out after caribou.
"One goes," said Chief Lukas, and I knew by that he wanted me to be of the party, for the native Inuit or Eskimo of the Ungava region calls everything "One"; himself, his family, his relatives his dogs, the caribou, birds, beasts, fish - in fact, every creature and thing that contains Spirit, since he believes the world as he knows it to be made up of two kinds of Spirit, one Good and the other Evil, and the whole makes One to him.
We had loaded up the sleds and taken the two teams of dogs, eighteen to one, and twenty to the other, the five natives and myself. We figured on hunting on the Ungava mainland, maybe two "sleeps" inland or, as we would reckon it, a trifle under one hundred miles, since running with dogs means covering more mileage than when a man is alone and on foot.
The weather held and we crossed the Strait ice safely and were headed along the coast for the hilly terrain where the caribou is found, when this dog trouble overtook us. That had made me restless, and I was glad when there was a dim sort of twilight showing through the ventilation hole and the men in the camp igloo stirred. It was morning although the moon was full, and the stars - little daylights is what the natives call them - twinkled as though laughing at us as we started to fix that gooey mess that makes what we may as well call the tires of the sled runners.
The ice on the tide flow was level with the collar ice by the time we had struggled out of sleeping bags, knocked the ice particles off the caribou hair of our underwear with snow knives, shrugged ourselves into fur shirt, scrambled round to get on under and top pants and pulled the keeool-ee-tuks over our heads. We chewed on our skin boots, or kamiks, before getting out of the sleeping bag. That was a chore I always hated, but it is a case of every man on his own in the North, and if the walrus hide of the kamiks is not chewed to keep it soft, the boots very soon become hard and unwearable. The tough soles of the hide of the square-flipper seal never made me a real tasty mouthful.
Some of the men went out for the second team of dogs: others of us bent over the Primus stove for which we had brought a few cans of kerosene as fuel, and using a trader's enamel basin as kettle, Tommy dropped in a supply of the tundra dirt. Bobby and Troutguts brought up the broken sled, and I stirred the soupy mess while it boiled until I had chunks of it as tough as thick bread dough. The natives slapped the chunks on the runners of the upturned sled, and smoothed it off with a white man's jack-plane. Before the traders and police came north they used the native knives for this, which was long and tiresome process. The Eskimo is very quick to see the advantage of white man's inventions, and puts them to good use.
The dirt on the runner gets a coating of warm water which freezes almost instantly, so the smooth surface is provided with ice to run on ice. Metal-shod runners simply freeze solid on the packed snow and ice surfaces. In travel, inspection of sled runners is made every two or three days, very much as the white man takes a look at the car tires before he starts and during a trip.
I was terribly eager on this hunt, for I'd wrung from Lukas assent to my plan of being one of the lone hunters. The delay was bad, but the fact that tundra must be comparatively near was good. We hurried the reloading of the sleds and got under way at good speed. Lukas ran with me, and told me that because of his arm injury he would stay with the dogs at the main camp when we made it. The kingmik can never be taken too near a possible grazing ground of the caribou, for he turns all wolf the minute he gets the scent of the antlered ruminant which is the true American native reindeer. It is similar to, but not the same as, the reindeer usually pictured, which is an immigrant from Europe, brought in because of the shortage of game for native food.
"How!" shouted Tommy, who was driving the second team, and cracked his whip as a signal for the dogs to stop. "How!" We had been traveling steadily for a good five hours with the going fairly smooth.
"How!" I shouted, and cracked my whip sharply. The dogs stood still, then lay in their harness, and even I could recognize that we had reached caribou country. One-eyed Bobby and Troutguts started in to make a snowhouse; it was evident this was the place where the main camp of the hunt would be established.
On a caribou hunt each man acts independently after the central camp site has been decided upon. But, roughly, we laid the general line of the hunt that night, and as I went to sleep I hoped the natives did not notice how excited I was, and maybe, if I tell the full truth, a bit nervous. You come to depend on having a native along, for he can read the weather signs and more than guess as to what the terrain will be like round the next snow and ice hill, even if he has never been that way before himself. It is difficult to establish landmarks, for the continuous wind and snow is forever changing the appearance of the country, even within an hour if a fairly bad storm comes up, as it is apt to do. A heap of snow may look like a drift one day; the next the wind will have swept it clean to show that there is a rocky bluff beneath. It is difficult to tell direction, but the Inuit rarely makes a mistake, even when no stars are visible.
In the dim light of that February morning I hoisted my sleeping skins to my shoulders and swung my food bag; secured my hunting knife of sharp-edged steel with its ivory handle, and my snow knife, also of steel. The native has lost the art of his ancestors in making copper implements, and now substitutes traders' metal for bone, ivory or stone as used in old-time weapons. I had my rifle and ammunition and set off at a good pace in the direction of my choice. The other men set off at the same time, trekking so that we would form four spokes of a wheel with the main camp as hub.
A day's walk, the same pace being kept by each man as far as possible, brought me to where I was to make my ovenight igloo. Although a couple of natives working for an hour and a half could make an igloo large enough for six men, and have each block of snow cut and shaped to perfection, I had not much hope of turning out a first-class architectural job. Instead, I scooped out a cave in a snowdrift, constructed a sort of rough lean-to, spread my fur rug and, after I had cut off and eaten some of the dried seal meat which was part of my equipment, prepared for sleep.
I had walked until about three in the afternoon. Night had now fallen full, and the moon was high, making the atmosphere clearer than winter daylight. I could not sleep. I left my floor skin and meat in the lean-to and went outside. All day I had watched for caribou tracks and had seen nothing, not even the small tracks of lemming in the snow, and I felt discouraged.
It was a hilly spot where I'd pitched my lodging for the night. I saw a jutting bluff ahead and went toward it, but my thoughts wandered as I walked, for the scene was beautiful with all its lonely barrenness; no tree for hundreds of miles - just snow and ice, and rock swept bare in places of the gritty dry snow where the high winds soughed continuously. No human being nearer than the natives, each at the peak of our roughly designed spoke wheel. Each man looking for caribou; each man, if he failed to find game, knowing to continue on the day following in the circle until he caught up with his neighbour hunter to compare notes, and if still without a trophy to go on to the next until all had joined forces again, and a new central camp could be made at another place.
I heard a sound, different from that of the wind and the thin, sharp crackle of ice; and, silent in my native kamiks, I stole behind a lesser rock and concealed myself. I released my rifle. A big shaggy beast came into sight, rounding the high bluff.
"Caribou!" I breathed the word more than I whispered it. The animal was scenting, but the wind carried the man smell away, and the beast came on at a steady lope. I was tempted to shoot this first one, but I waited as the Eskimo had taught me. What looked to me like a huge herd followed the first caribou. There came several rows of them, slowly swinging along in the moonlight, one behind the other, the lines keeping even, like platoons of soldiers. I singled out several large bucks, swung my rifle up, sighted and fired. I saw one stumble and I knew I had wounded him, but he did not fall. My sighting was better now and I bagged four others. My heart was pounding; I could feel perspiration starting from every pore, and I wanted to shout. Tremendous is this thrill and excitement of getting meat when one knows several score of human beings - men, women, children; the trader, we of the police - are depending on this hunt for fresh meat.
The herd scattered, thundering now across the snow, and I realized it did not consist of thousands of caribou as I had thought. There may have been fifteen or twenty head at most. I came out from behind the sheltering rock. The four buck lay stretched where they had fallen, but before I went toward them I had to find that wounded deer. I circled my rock rapidly; then I heard myself call out:
"There - over there!"
The beast was down but not dead, and stumbling a bit myself in my haste across the rough ground I fired again and put the buck out of pain. I thought that the animals had been huge, but this one was not more than average, nor were the others. The five had fallen widely separated, and I figured rapidly what to do. I must save the meat at once, although fatigue was now following the excitement, and it was a real task for one man to haul those animals into one heap, but that was what had to be done. I fetched the snow knife to cut blocks from a drift and thus make a cave larder for the meat, so they could be effectively concealed from marauding wolves and foxes until I forged my way back to camp and had the natives bring up the sleds to tote the big load back to the settlement.
I cut off some twenty pounds of meat from the flank of one animal, and when they were well covered, went back to my little shelter, intent on rest and sleep. But the brightness of the moon, the new energy I obtained from the meat, a portion of which I ate, sent me outside again. I guessed it to be about fifty below zero, and the sky was clear there seemed to little chance of a blizzard, that deadly menace of the Northland, so I shouldered my goods again and started to back-track to the main camp. It was not a wise thing to do, but I got away with it.
It must have been about eight or nine in the morning when I sighted the main snowhouse. I did not dare come within reach of the dogs, so I fired my rifle in the air and they started howling. That brought Chief Lukas crawling out, and he controlled the dogs so I could come near.
"Auk shu ni!" I sang out. "It's Kad-Lou-Nok, Ee-nook Ka-sak!" As I came closer I called, "A cache of five caribou," and Lukus grinned like a Cheshire cat. I don't think he believed me until he saw the meat.
"Auk shu ni!" he replied, giving the "Hello there," of the Eskimo, which really means "Be strong."
Lukas led the way into the snowhouse, for I had to get out of my perspiration-soaked clothing, since perspiration is one of the big risks to life in northern lands. By becoming too hot a man can freeze to death, which seems a contadiction but is a fact. That's really why caribou skin is used for winter clothing in Baffin Land and the far Northeast generally. The hairs are hollow, and into these the perspiration soaks, so when the clothing is turned inside out, this freezes and the ice particles are easily knocked off each morning. It's a bit chilly on first putting on, but no worse than the sting of a cold shower, and the glow which comes later is equally good.
Lukas started to boil water for tea, using melted ice of course, while I slipped out of my top suit, undoing the thong that held the hood so close over the face I had room only for the dark goggles which must be worn. The native wears a crude sort of goggles made from the stretched intestine skin of an animal, but he is now adopting those of the white man. Goggles are required not only because of the chances of snow blindness, but because in such cold the eyes are very liable to frostbite. I laid aside my mitts and inner and outer shoes, then rolled into my sleeping bag prepared to enjoy the tea and some more of the meat I had brought in, before I slept. We would have all day and maybe two days before the other men would rejoin us.
"Lukas," I said sleepily as I turned in my bag, "I want to come here in summer; do you think the caribou would be here then?"
Lukas laughed as he often did at the white man's fancies, but he did come with me in July when we sailed our little police whaleboat to the mainland and trekked in as near to the bluff where I'd killed the caribou as I could recall. But this was still ahead of me. Now in the main camp of the present hunting outfit I had to sleep and sleep sound. I knew the natives would make a forced trek to the cache; we'd have to pick up the animals the other men might also have shot, and then another forced stretch of travel to bring the good news of fresh meat back to the settlement.
I hunched myself myself comfortably in the sleeping bag, and wondered what the fellows down in Edmonton would think of this life. Edmonton in Alberta had been my last station before coming in to the Arctic; I remembered grumbling one evening there after routine of the day was over, and saying "Nothing ever happens to me." Well, plenty was happening now, of that I was sure. It was a long step from being one of the troop of musical riders, mounted on a brown satin-skinned horse called Jeff, giving exhibition riding at some of the rodeos, to hunting caribou a thousand miles from nowhere.