254 CANADIAN WILDS. 



and return to the post, and although we kept 

 up the hunt for several days more, we failed to 

 locate the missing "meat." 



In due course of time, snow covered the 

 ground, and men circled the bush in the vicinity 

 of the post without any results, and we had un- 

 willingly to place the two steers on our profit 

 and loss account. 



Time went on, the winter passed, and the 

 summer also, and none of the visiting Indians 

 reported any signs of the cattle. 



The following winter, in February, a party 

 of hunters came in from the headwaters of the 

 Moisie Kiver, 150 miles north of us, and they 

 reported having killed our cattle among a small 

 herd of wood caribou. To prove their story they 

 produced the horns which they had brought 

 down all those miles on their toboggans as 

 visible proof. 



The report they gave me was as follows: 

 They had come across the tracks of this small 

 bunch of caribou (five) with which the oxen 

 were living in consort, sometime in early De- 

 cember. The animals winded them and the 

 hunters failed to sight the herd. 



As the snow was yet shallow, they left them 

 unmolested until after the Xew Year, when the 

 men from the nearby camps organized a hunt 

 expressly to run them down. 



