On the third night Hearne was alone in his tent. Twilight
deepened to night, night to morning. Still no hunters returned. Had
he been deserted? Not a sound broke the waste silence but the baying
of the wolf pack. Weak from hunger, Hearne fell asleep. Before
daylight he was awakened by a shout; and his Indians shambled over the
drifts laden with haunches of half a dozen deer. That relieved want
till the coming of the geese. In May Hearne struck across the Barren
Lands. By June the rotting snow clogged the snow-shoes. Dog trains
drew heavy, and food was again scarce. For a week the travellers found
nothing to eat but cranberries. Half the company was ill from hunger
when a mangy old musk-ox, shedding his fur and lean as barrel hoops,
came scrambling over the rocks, sure of foot as a mountain goat. A
single shot brought him down. In spite of the musky odor of which the
coarse flesh reeked, every morsel of the ox was instantly devoured.
Sometimes during their long fasts they would encounter a solitary
Indian wandering over the rocky barren. If he had arms, gun, or arrow,
and carried skins of the chase, he was welcomed to camp, no matter how
scant the fare. Otherwise he was shunned as an outcast, never to be
touched or addressed by a human being; for only one thing could have
fed an Indian on the Barren Lands who could show no trophies of the
chase, and that was the flesh of some human creature weaker than
himself. The outcast was a cannibal, condemned by an unwritten law to
wander alone through the wastes.
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