"Now, Preble, I
am going to walk up to that bull and get a close picture. He will
certainly charge me, as I shall be nearest and in full view. There
is only one combination that can save my life: that is you and that
rifle."
Then with characteristic loquacity did Preble reply: "Go ahead."
I fixed my camera for twenty yards and quit the sheltering rock.
The bull snorted, shook his head, took aim, and just before the
precious moment was to arrive a heavy shot behind me, rang out, the
bull staggered and fell, shot through the heart, and Weeso cackled
aloud in triumph.
How I cursed the meddling old fool. He had not understood. He
saw, as he supposed, "the Okimow in peril of his life," and acted
according to the dictates of his accursedly poor discretion. Never
again shall he carry a rifle with me.
So the last scene came not, but we had the trophy of a Musk-ox
that weighed nine hundred pounds in life and stood five feet high
at the shoulders - a world's record in point of size.
Now we must camp perforce to save the specimen. Measurements, photos,
sketches, and weights were needed, then the skinning and preparing
would be a heavy task for all. In the many portages afterwards the
skull was part of my burden; its weight was actually forty pounds,
its heaviness was far over a hundred.
What extraordinary luck we were having. It was impossible in our
time limit to reach the summer haunt of the Caribou on the Arctic
Coast, therefore the Caribou came to us in their winter haunt on
the Artillery Lake. We did not expect to reach the real Musk-ox
country on the Lower Back River, so the Musk-ox sought us out on
Aylmer Lake. And yet one more piece of luck is to be recorded. That
night something came in our tent and stole meat. The next night
Billy set a trap and secured the thief - an Arctic Fox in summer
coat. We could not expect to go to him in his summer home, so he
came to us.
While the boys were finishing the dressing of the bull's hide, I,
remembering the current from the last bay, set out on foot over the
land to learn the reason. A couple of miles brought me to a ridge
from which I made the most important geographical discovery of the
journey. Stretching away before me to the far dim north-west was
a great, splendid river - broad, two hundred yards wide in places,
but averaging seventy or eighty yards across - broken by white
rapids and waterfalls, but blue deep in the smoother stretches and
emptying into the bay we had noticed. So far as the record showed,
I surely was the first white man to behold it.
