On our way back to the first lake Pete called my attention to a fresh
caribou track in the hard earth. It was scarcely distinguishable, and
I had to look very closely to make it out. Then he showed me other
signs that I could make nothing of at all--a freshly turned pebble or
broken twig. These, he said, were fresh deer signs. A caribou had
passed toward the larger lake that very morning.

"If you want him, I get him," said Pete. I could see he felt rather
deeply his failure of the morning and that he was anxious to redeem
himself. I wanted to give him the opportunity to do so, especially as
the young men, unused to deprivations, were beginning to crave fresh
meat as a relief from the salt pork. At the same time, however, I
felt that the fish we were pretty certain to get from this time on
would do very well for the present, and I did not care to take time to
hunt until we were a little deeper into the country. Therefore I told
him, "No, we will wait a day or two."

Pete, as I soon discovered, had an insatiable passion for hunting, and
could never let anything in the way of game pass him without qualms of
regret. Sometimes, where a caribou trail ran off plain and clear in
the moss, it was hard to keep from running after it. Nothing ever
escaped his ear or eye. He had the trained senses and instincts of
the Indian hunter. When I first saw him in New York he looked so
youthful and evidently had so little confidence in himself, answering
my question as to whether he could do this or that with an aggravating
"I don't know," that I felt a keen sense of disappointment in him.
But with every stage of our journey he had developed, and now was in
his element. He was quite a different individual from the green
Indian youth whom I had first seen walking timidly beside the railway