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He did not enter Perdue's store as was his wont, but made straight for his own log house beyond. A miserable, half-starved cur was lying at the door. Giving the animal a brutal kick, which sent it howling away, Pritchen entered the building. Throwing his snow-shoes into one corner and the rifle with the ptarmigan on a pile of rugs, he sat down upon a small stool.
"Can it be, Mr. McElroy," she glared at him with straightening lips, "that I misunderstood you to say George Washington was not a paragon of truth?" "You mean a bird?" he innocently asked. "A bird, sir?" the black dress gave a startled rustle. "Excuse me; I thought you said ptarmigan."
The wood which composed the light framework of the cart being now disposable as fuel, we were glad to make use of it in cooking a few ptarmigan, which afforded us another sumptuous meal. It is not perhaps, easy for those who have never experienced it, to imagine how great a luxury anything warm in this way becomes, after living entirely upon cold provisions for some time in this rigid climate.
But as they drove in day after day with nothing more valuable than some rabbits or a few ptarmigan, or some other kind of partridges, they were half-discouraged, and told Mr Ross they were surprised at their poor success. Frank was especially mortified at his ill success. He had for days set his trap for a beautiful cross-fox that he had once or twice seen.
In the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan. He came out of a thicket and found himself face to face with the slow-witted bird. It was sitting on a log, not a foot beyond the end of his nose. Each saw the other.
It is just the same with all the other animals and plants that now inhabit these isles of Britain. If there be anything at all with a claim to be considered really indigenous, it is the Scotch ptarmigan and the Alpine hare, the northern holygrass and the mountain flowers of the Highland summits.
Then he remembered, and, turning on the back- track, started for home, carrying the ptarmigan in his mouth. A mile above the forks, running velvet-footed as was his custom, a gliding shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, he came upon later imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in the early morning.
But the cub saw, and it was a warning and a lesson to him the swift downward swoop of the hawk, the short skim of its body just above the ground, the strike of its talons in the body of the ptarmigan, the ptarmigan's squawk of agony and fright, and the hawk's rush upward into the blue, carrying the ptarmigan away with it, It was a long time before the cub left its shelter. He had learned much.
He gave it no more thought then, but a time came afterward when he remembered it. "Weatherbee had noticed that fog-bank," he went on, "from high up the glacier. It worried him so he finally turned back to meet me, and he had waited so long he was down to his last biscuit. I was mighty reckless about that second ptarmigan, but the water the birds were cooked in made a fine soup.
Fresh salmon, arctic ptarmigan, and reindeer's tongue were delicacies which would have delighted any palate, and the wine had really seen Bordeaux, although rainy weather had evidently prevailed during the voyage thence to Hammerfest.
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