man will complain when things go
wrong in the game of life. And up there on The Labrador the game of life
is a man's game and every man who wins must play it like a man, with
faith and courage.

The weeks that followed were trying and tedious ones. Sometimes there
was not much to eat, when the hunting was poor, but they thanked God
there was always something.

But when February came at last there was not food enough to render it
possible for them to make the long journey to the ice edge with safety.
Living now was from hand to mouth. Each day they must hunt for what they
would eat that day. Grouse and rabbits were the game upon which they
usually relied, but Fate had cast this as one of those years when the
rabbits disappear from the land as it is said they do every nine years.
Be that as it may, not one was killed that winter and not a track was
seen. For them to go to the ice without food was too great a risk. If
they went and failed to find seals and were overtaken by a storm they
would perish.

This was the condition of affairs when Bobby and Jimmy set out one cold,
clear morning to hunt for ptarmigans, the white grouse of the North. Not
far away was a barren hill whose top was kept clean swept of snow by the
winds, and up this hill they climbed, for sometimes ptarmigans are found
in places like this, feeding upon the frozen moss berries which cling to
the rocks.

Bobby was in advance, and from the summit of the hill he scanned the
great expanse of snow reaching away over the endless rolling country to
the westward. And looking, he discovered in the distance a dark, moving
mass slowly drawing down another hillside. For a moment he was
speechless with joy, but it was for only a moment, and then he shouted:

"_Tuktu! Tuktu! Tuktu!_" (Caribou, or reindeer.)

Bobby's excited cry brought Jimmy up on a run, and when he looked and
saw, he, too, shouted, and was no less excited than Bobby.

"Caribou! The caribou are coming!"

That was enough to send them back on a run for Abel and Skipper Ed and
their rifles and all the ammunition they could muster, and then all four
turned back to meet the caribou.

On and on came the great herd, in a far-reaching, endless mass,
thousands upon thousands of them, and they were heading directly for the
hill where the four eager hunters waited.

At length the mass reached them, and what followed was not a hunt but a
slaughter, and when they were through more than a hundred caribou