It was no new experience, therefore, for Andy to be alone in the woods, and as he stole quietly through the trees he felt a deal of confidence in his ability as a hunter and that he should make good his boast to bag enough partridges for supper.
A little distance from the tilt he turned down to the lake shore, lined here by scrubby willow brush, in the hope of finding willow ptarmigans, white grouse of the North, feeding upon the tender ends of the willows. But unrewarded he finally turned back again into the deeper spruce woods, and had gone but a little way when a small flock of spruce grouse rose from the ground and, unconscious of danger and quite fearless, took refuge in a tree. At easy range Andy had no difficulty in clipping the heads from five of the birds with his rifle bullets before the remaining ones took flight.
“I knew I’d get un!” exclaimed Andy exultantly, gathering up the game. “Now we’ll have a fine supper.”
He drew a stout buckskin thong from his pocket, and at intervals of about two inches made five slip nooses. Through each of these he passed the legs of a bird, and drawing tight the ends of the thong, made them secure. Tying the thong firmly around his waist, his game thus carried made no burden, and left his hands free.
“Now,” said he, “I’ll see what Seal Lake looks like.”
A little to the right of where Andy had killed the partridges rose a naked, rocky hill, and turning toward it he quickly began ascending. A hundred feet up its side he passed the last scrubby spruce tree. On the central plateau of Labrador the tree line seldom rises far above the base of the hills. It was a steep, rocky climb, but Andy was accustomed to scrambling over rocks, and in a few minutes he had gained the summit.
Turning toward the lake he discovered its far-reaching waters extending a full half-hundred miles to the westward. Its extreme end was hidden in the boundless forest which, punctured by rocky, snow-clad hills, rolled away as far as his eye could reach. For a considerable distance to the northward he could trace, like a silver thread, the sparkling waters of the Nascaupee. To the southeast lay piled in massive grandeur an array of great white mountains. On the sides of some of them high mica cliffs reflected the sun like disks of burnished silver.