All the tunnels smelt of grouse, but devil a grouse could
he find. He had come a bit early. It was as yet barely night, and he
should have waited till later, when they would be more asleep.
However, he dug on along the tunnels, driving the grouse before him.
And then a strange thing happened. About three yards ahead of him the
snow burst--burst, I say, like a six-inch shell, upwards. There was a
terrific commotion, a wild, whirring, whirling smother, a cloud of
white, and away went five birds, upon heavily beating wings, into the
gathering gloom. Gulo went away, too, growling deep down inside of,
and to, himself.

He was hungry, was Gulo. Indeed, there did not seem to be many times
when he was not hungry. Also, being angry--not even a wild animal
likes failure--he was seeking a sacrifice; but he had crossed the
plain, which the night before had been as a nightmare desert to him,
and the moon was up before his chance came.

He crossed the trail of the reindeer. He did not know anything about
those reindeer, mark you, whether they were wild or semi-tame; and _I_
do not know, though _he_ may have done, how old the trail was. It was
sufficient for him that they _were_ reindeer, and that they had
traveled in the general direction that he wanted to go. For the
rest--he had the patience, perhaps more than the patience, of a cat,
the determination of a bulldog, and the nose of a bloodhound. He
trailed those reindeer the better part of that night, and most of the
time it snowed, and part of the time it snowed hard.

By the time a pale, frozen dawn crept weakly over the forest tree-tops
Gulo must have been well up on the trail of that herd, and he had
certainly traveled an astonishing way. He had dug up one lemming--a
sort of square-ended relation of the rat, with an abbreviated tail--and
pounced upon one pigmy owl, scarce as large as a thrush, which he did
not seem to relish much--perhaps owl is an acquired taste--before he
turned a wild cat out of its lair--to the accompaniment of a whole
young riot of spitting and swearing--and curled up for the day.

He was hungry when he went to sleep. Also, it was snowing then. When
he woke up it was almost dark, and snowing worse than ever. If it
could have been colder, it was.

While he cleaned himself Gulo took stock of the outside prospect, so
far as the white curtain allowed to sight, and by scent a good deal
that it did not. This without appearing outside the den