"You had caribou fever, Pete," suggested Richards.

"Yes," said Easton, "caribou fever, sure thing."

"I don't believe you'd have hit him if he hadn't winded you," Stanton
remarked. "The trouble with you, Pete, is you can't shoot."

"No caribou fever, me," rejoined Pete, with righteous indignation at
such a suggestion. "Kill plenty moose, kill red deer; never have
moose fever, never have deer fever." Then turning to me he asked, "You
want caribou, Mr. Wallace?"

"Yes," I answered, "I wish we could get some fresh meat, but we can
wait a few days. We have enough to eat, and I don't want to take time
to hunt now."

"Plenty signs. I get caribou any day you want him. Tell me when you
want him, I kill him," Pete answered me, ignoring the criticisms of
the others as to his marksmanship and hunting prowess. All that day
and all the next the men let no opportunity pass to guy Pete about his
lost caribou, and on the whole he took the banter very good-naturedly,
but once confided to me that "if those boys get up early, maybe they
see caribou too and try how much they can do."

After breakfast Pete and I paddled to the other end of the little lake
to pick up the trail while the others broke camp. In a little while
he located it, a well-defined path, and we walked across it half a
mile to another and considerably larger lake in which was a small,
round, moundlike, spruce-covered island so characteristic of the
Labrador lakes.