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Updated: May 31, 2025
Soon I discovered it was a fox of a peculiar color which I had not seen before. I lay flat on the snow, as the animal was coming in my direction. He was evidently hungry, and was hunting ptarmigans himself. When he came within shooting distance I fired and killed him. He was a white fox, but much of his snowy-white fur had dropped, and was replaced by bluish.
Bobby kept the house, too, so well supplied with rabbits and ptarmigans, through his incessant hunting, that presently there were enough hanging frozen in the porch to last till the coming of warm weather. One evening near the end of February Bobby announced, as he entered the cabin after giving the dogs their daily feed: "There's only enough seal meat left to last the dogs a week.
They were Laplanders and Finlanders. A great fair was taking place, and most of the people had crossed the mountains to the Arctic Sea, taking with them for sale reindeer meat, butter, cheese, reindeer cheese made in the summer and autumn, frozen ptarmigans, skins of reindeer, bears, foxes, ermines, and other animals; ready-made clothing, gloves and shoes of reindeer skin; hoofs of reindeer, and other things.
Ptarmigans in flocks of hundreds fed upon the tender tops of the willows that lined the river banks, and these supplied them with an abundance of fresh meat, varied occasionally by rabbits, two or three porcupines and a lynx that Dick shot one day near the tilt. This lynx meat they roasted by an open fire outside the tilt, and considered it a great treat.
I told him all about the camp by the little lake, and the winding distant river, and the cries of the ptarmigans and the loons, and the finding of the stag. "Helen dear," said Daddy, who had been looking at me in that keen way of his, "I don't think I ever saw you so enthusiastic before.
It allowed me to approach within twenty feet. It walked down a sixty degree slope of the rock, took flight with a few whirring wing-beats, then sailed with wings perfectly motionless four hundred yards down a gentle grade, and vanished over the brow of a cliff. Ten days ago Loomis told me that he found a nest with nine eggs. On the way down to my sled I saw four more ptarmigans.
So saying he lifted the animal on his shoulders, and they made their way to the ship, guided by the stars; still their expedition was not quite fruitless: they bagged several brace of ptarmigans.
John and a party of friends were going with a large number of sleighs loaded with reindeer meat, butter, reindeer cheese, smoked tongues, skins, garments, shoes, and thousands of frozen ptarmigans, to sell to the people living on the coast. The day after our coming parties of Finlanders and Laplanders began to leave, with forty or fifty sleighs and a number of spare reindeer in case any gave out.
The wigwam was pitched upon the shores of Petitsikapau Lake, where there was a thick growth of willows upon the tender tops of which hundreds of ptarmigans the snow-white grouse of the arctic were feeding; and rabbits had the snow tramped flat amongst the underbrush, offering an abundance of fresh food to the hunters, a welcome change from the unvaried fare of dried venison.
I fancied I could see the snow dust of Chilcoot yet powdering his shoulders. And then he strewed the table with the nuggets, stuffed ptarmigans, bead work and seal pelts of the returned Klondiker, and began to prate to us of his millions. "Bank drafts for two millions," was his summing up, "and a thousand a day piling up from my claims. And now I want some beef stew and canned peaches.
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