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. A storm in the woods is no joke when you are
six miles from camp without axe or blanket. I broke away from the
trail and started for the head of the second barren on the run. If I
could make that, I was safe; for there was a stream near, which led
near to camp; and one cannot very well lose a stream, even in a
snowstorm. But before I was halfway the flakes were driving thick and
soft in my face. Another half-mile, and one could not see fifty feet
in any direction. Still I kept on, holding my course by the wind and
my compass. Then, at the foot of the second barren, my snowshoes
stumbled into great depressions in the snow, and I found myself on the
fresh trail of my caribou again. "If I am lost, I will at least have a
caribou steak, and a skin to wrap me up in," I said, and plunged after
them. As I went, the old Mother Goose rhyme of nursery days came back
and set itself to hunting music:

Bye, baby bunting,
Daddy's gone a hunting,
For to catch a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby bunting in.