The exultation of that moment when I saw one of the two musk-oxen stagger, and then fall, I know I shall never again experience.
The report of my rifle startled the other musk-ox into a wild gallop over a ridge, and I followed as rapidly as I could, so soon as I made sure that the other was really down. As I went over the ridge I caught sight of the remaining musk-ox, and shot simultaneously with two reports on my left, which I later discovered to have come from the second Indian whom I had passed in closing upon Seco on the run to the first view of the musk-oxen, and who now hove in sight with one dog, as the second musk-ox dropped.
I found on returning to my kill that it was a cow, needless to say a sore disappointment; and so, although pretty well tuckered out, I again started to the north in the hope that I might get wind of the other two of the four after which I had originally started, or find tracks of stragglers from the main herd. Several miles I went on, but finding no tracks, and darkness coming down, I turned to make my way back, knowing that the Indians would follow up and camp by the slain musk-oxen for the night. But as I journeyed I suddenly realized that, except for going in a southerly direction, I really had no definite idea of the exact direction in which I was travelling, and with night setting in and a chilling wind blowing I knew that to lose myself might easily mean death. So I turned about on my tracks and followed them back first to where I had turned south, and thence on my back tracks to where the musk-ox lay. It was a long and puzzling task, for the wind had always partly, and for distances entirely, obliterated the earlier marks of my snow-shoes.
Nine o’clock came before I finally reached the place where the dead quarry lay; and there I found the Indians gnawing on raw and half-frozen musk-ox fat. Seco, badly frozen and hardly able to crawl from fatigue, did not turn up until midnight; and it was not until he arrived that we lighted our little fire of sticks and had our tea.
Then in a sixty-seven degrees below zero temperature we rolled up in our furs, while the dogs howled and fought over the carcass of my first musk-ox.
Except in the summer, when the caribou are running in vast herds, venture into the Barren Grounds entails a struggle with both cold and hunger. It is either a feast or a famine; more frequently the latter than the former. So there was nothing extraordinary in being upon our third day without food at the first musk-ox killing to which I have referred. Yet the lack of nourishment was not perhaps as trying as the wind, which seemed to sweep directly from the frozen seas, so strong that we had to bend low in pushing forward against it, and so bitter as to cut our faces cruelly. Throughout my journey into this silent land of the lone North the wind caused me more real suffering than the semi-starvation state in which we were more or less continuously. Indeed, for the first few weeks I had utmost difficulty in travelling; the wind appeared to take the very breath out of my body and the activity out of my muscles. I was physically in magnificent shape, for I had spent a couple of weeks at Fort Resolution, on Great Slave Lake, and what with plenty of caribou meat and a daily run of from ten to twenty miles on snow-shoes by way of keeping in training, I was about as fit as I have been at any time in my life. Therefore the severe struggle with the wind impressed me the more. But the novelty wore off in a couple of weeks, and though the conditions were always trying, they became more endurable as I grew accustomed to the daily combat.