With but thirty rounds of ammunition, he dared not risk a miss; and, since his rifle was a 45-90, he was compelled to shoot the small creatures through the head.
There were very few of them, and days went by without seeing one.
When he did see one, he took infinite precautions.
He would stalk it for hours.
A score of times, with arms that shook from weakness, he would draw a sight on the animal and refrain from pulling the trigger.
His inhibition was a thing of iron.
He was the master. Not til absolute certitude was his did he shoot.
No matter how sharp the pangs of hunger and desire for that palpitating morsel of chattering life, he refused to take the slightest risk of a miss.
He, born gambler, was gambling in the bigger way.
His life was the stake, his cards were the cartridges, and he played as only a big gambler could play, with infinite precaution, with infinite consideration.
Each shot meant a squirrel, and though days elapsed between shots, it never changed his method of play.
Of the squirrels, nothing was lost.
Even the skins were boiled to make broth, the bones pounded into fragments that could be chewed and swallowed.
Daylight prospected through the snow, and found occasional patches of mossberries.
At the best, mossberries were composed practically of seeds and water, with a tough rind of skin about them; but the berries he found were of the preceding year, dry and shrivelled, and the nourishment they contained verged on the minus quality.
Scarcely better was the bark of young saplings, stewed for an hour and swallowed after prodigious chewing.
April drew toward its close, and spring smote the land.
The days stretched out their length.
Under the heat of the sun, the snow began to melt, while from down under the snow arose the trickling of tiny streams.
For twenty-four hours the Chinook wind blew, and in that twenty-four hours the snow was diminished fully a foot in depth.
In the late afternoons the melting snow froze again, so that its surface became ice capable of supporting a man's weight.
Tiny white snow-birds appeared from the south, lingered a day, and resumed their journey into the north.
Once, high in the air, looking for open water and ahead of the season, a wedged squadron of wild geese honked northwards.
And down by the river bank a clump of dwarf willows burst into bud.
These young buds, stewed, seemed to posess an encouraging nutrition.
Elijah took heart of hope, though he was cast down again when Daylight failed to find another clump of willows.
The sap was rising in the trees, and daily the trickle of unseen streamlets became louder as the frozen land came back to life.
But the river held in its bonds of frost.
Winter had been long months in riveting them, and not in a day were they to be broken, not even by the thunderbolt of spring.
May came, and stray last-year's mosquitoes, full-grown but harmless, crawled out of rock crevices and rotten logs.
Crickets began to chirp, and more geese and ducks flew overhead.
And still the river held.
By May tenth, the ice of the Stewart, with a great rending and snapping, tore loose from the banks and rose three feet.
But it did not go down-stream.
The lower Yukon, up to where the Stewart flowed into it, must first break and move on.
Until then the ice of the Stewart could only rise higher and higher on the increasing flood beneath.
When the Yukon would break was problematical.
Two thousand miles away it flowed into Bering Sea, and it was the ice conditions of Bering Sea that would determine when the Yukon could rid itself of the millions of tons of ice that cluttered its breast.
On the twelfth of May, carrying their sleeping-robes, a pail, an ax, and the precious rifle, the two men started down the river on the ice.
Their plan was to gain to the cached poling-boat they had seen, so that at the first open water they could launch it and drift with the stream to Sixty Mile.
In their weak condition, without food, the going was slow and difficult.
Elijah developed a habit of falling down and being unable to rise.
Daylight gave of his own strength to lift him to his feet, whereupon the older man would stagger automatically on until he stumbled and fell again.
On the day they should have reached the boat, Elijah collapsed utterly.
When Daylight raised him, he fell again.
Daylight essayed to walk with him, supporting him, but such was Daylight's own weakness that they fell together.
Dragging Elijah to the bank, a rude camp was made, and Daylight started out in search of squirrels.
It was at this time that he likewise developed the falling habit.
In the evening he found his first squirrel, but darkness came on without his getting a certain shot.
With primitive patience he waited till next day, and then, within the hour, the squirrel was his.