HUNTING THE WHITE SHEEP IN ALASKA. 



13 



your measly old carcass into a grease 

 spot." But the guide had troubles of his 

 own. The disgusted groan he gave as a 

 ball of fire hopped out of his short- 

 stemmed pipe and lit between the toes of 

 his moccasinless feet would have been 

 creditable as the dying wail of his great 

 ancester Mox-Mox, whose bones lay sepul- 

 chred in the sand spit at far-away Dyea. 



The landing was at last happily con- 

 summated, a suitable place found, and the 

 goods cached. Then came the portage. It 

 took a pull, a long pull, a hard pull, and a 

 pull all together to get the water-soaked 

 boat out of the river and on top of the 

 bank. But that, too, was finally accom- 

 plished, and by sundown we had her over 

 the ridge and into a narrow, timber-bor- 

 dered lagoon, stretching away to the East 

 as far as the eye could reach. 



"Two suns," said One-Ear, motioning 

 up the narrow strip of water; "then Hai- 

 ker; then hyu sheep, hyu, hyu, h-y-u!" 



"Shut up, you bamboozling old fool!" 

 said the yet ruffled Batterman. as he helped 

 Lou set up the tent. "You don't want to 

 get gay at this stage of the game, or I'll 

 give you the go-by like a white fish." 



"Mica sullix? Mica wawa halo sense," 

 rejoined the Chilcat, as he began gathering 

 driftwood for the fire. 



Three miles up the lagoon next morning 

 Batterman's quick eye fell on a grazing 

 caribou in the reeds 200 yards back from 

 shore. .Quickly raising his rifle he brought 

 the animal down with a .44 slug, amidst a 

 great thrashing and pounding of reeds and 

 mud. To skin and quarter the animal took 

 nearly an hour. Then we again embarked, 

 One-Ear heading the boat up the lagoon 

 with steady, silent strokes. Later that day, 

 with the going down of the sun, a big 

 black bear came lumbering out of a thicket 

 on the bank and plunged into the water. 



"Mosquito," said One-Ear. This was 

 true. The huge, unwieldy beast, coming 

 down from the highlands in quest of food, 

 had been set upon and its eyesight totally 

 destroyed by repeated stinging, leaving 

 him at the mercy of the Alaskan vampire. 

 Swinging the boat around, One-Ear put 

 the brute out of its misery by sending a 

 .44-50 slug crashing through its skull. 



Two days of steady rowing, except when 

 we were eating and sleeping, brought us to 

 the Eastern end of the lagoon. There we 

 ran the Wanderer ashore under the very 

 shadow of Haiker, a colossal piece of table 

 land reaching up into the sky many thou- 

 sands of feet. Not till camp was pitched 

 and the inner man satisfied — caribou steak, 

 smoking hot, the menu — did our thoughts 

 turn in earnestness to Haiker, on whose 

 seamed and rugged top we would be found 

 on the morrow. As the shadows length- 

 ened and the soft summer twilight drew on 



apace, our eyes followed those of One- 

 Ear, who, in the fashion of his race, 

 squatted on the ground before the camp- 

 fire, his arms about his knees, lost in si- 

 lent meditation. 



Up, straight up, a thousand feet in the 

 air, a huge, overhanging spur stood out 

 from the main body of the mountain, cut 

 clear against the steel blue dome, not un- 

 like a giant thumb, yet seeming ready to 

 break away and fall. Should that occur, 

 our little camp would be crushed into ob- 

 livion. To the right of the spur a huge 

 crevasse had rent the mountain side in 

 twain from top to bottom, leading up at 

 an angle of 45 degrees to the apex, miles 

 away. 



"True now, One-Ear," said Batterman, 

 as he filled and lighted his brierwood; "are 

 the sheep as plentiful up there as you have 

 pictured?" 



"Ugh!" grunted One-Ear, his eyes yet 

 on the giant thumb; "hyu sheep. Let 

 brothers wait in patience. By and by, 

 when the little sun shows his eye on 

 another day, we will enter the illahe of 

 plenty." 



It is said there is no night in Alaska dur- 

 ing the month of June. That night, at 

 least, the appellation of "Midnight Sun" 

 was well merited. We filled and lighted 

 our pipes all around. Even old One-Ear 

 joined in by taking ' a totem-carved pipe 

 from his bosom and lighting it. We sat 

 outside the tent in the twilight an hour 

 or more, marking out the programme for 

 the following day's sport. At the expiration 

 of 2 hours Lou consulted his watch. It 

 was 11:55, and so light one could easily 

 have read Recreation. Just at that mo- 

 ment the fiery eye of the sun shone 

 through a gap in the mountain range, cast- 

 ing bars of gold over the desolate land. 

 For a full minute it hung there, crowning 

 Haiker's snowy crest with a diadem of 

 frosty stars. Then it slowly swung behind 

 the mountain battlements, and the semi- 

 darkness reigned once more. 



"Look, white men," said One-Ear, as 

 the sun struck the devil's thumb; "look 

 up there. The father of the sheep, who 

 never sleeps, greets the tenas sun!" 



We all looked up. On the very pinnacle, 

 his great horns cut clear against the sky, 

 immovable as a sphinx, was a magnificent 

 bighorn, looking over the endless vista to 

 the North. Batterman reached for his 

 Winchester, raised the sights to 1,000 

 yards, took a careful aim and sent a leaden 

 messenger speeding upward at the sil- 

 houetted animal against the sky. He might 

 as well have blazed away at the moon. The 

 distance was too great. Then Lou tried his 

 hand. In fact, we all tried, even old One- 

 Ear entering into the sport of the thing. 

 Not until the magazines were empty did 



