A Try for Ptarmigan . 229 



A TRY FOR PTARMIGAN 



We were in the caribou country. Far north, 

 wrapped in his white shroud, lay Mistassini, 

 sleeping through the long, white silence until 

 Wa-Wa called him. Nearer, to the left, lay the 

 Big Flat Water, drowsing under a pallid coverlid 

 a fathom thick. Over all sprang an arch of 

 mysterious gray that seemed to draw in and 

 narrow slowly, steadily, silently, while we looked. 

 Far as we could see, stretching in one soundless 

 cordon until they dwindled in the distance to 

 mere mounds, stood what had been sturdy coni- 

 fers. Now they were tents, drear domes of death 

 they seemed, pitched there by the army of the 

 Arctic for a bitter bivouac. We stood before the 

 small cabin and looked eastward. No sign of 

 the sun, although he had been up an hour. Some- 

 where behind the sad gray veil he was shining 

 with the wonderful brilliancy of the North, but 

 that day he would cast no velvet shadows for us. 



" Well, wot ye tink } " inquired Joe. 



I hardly knew what to say. Something in the 

 feel of the air, in the pervading grayness, coun- 

 selled caution ; yet here was the last day of my 

 leave, and as yet the twelve-gauge had not spoken 

 to the game I particularly desired, the ptarmigan 

 in its full winter plumage. 



Joe waited with all the patience of the Indian 



