he lines upon his forehead grew deeper as he
thought and schemed. At times his glance, bent most of the time upon the
fire before him, would be raised to seek the great bale of furs, the
product of his winter's catch. The meal was eaten, the hours passed, and
then, with a grunt, he ordered Bigbeam to open the package, which work
she performed with great deftness, for who but she had cleaned the skins
and bound them most compactly? They were spread upon the dirt floor, a
rich and luxurious display. No Russian princess, no Tartar king, no
monarch of the south, ever saw anything finer for consideration. There
were the smooth, silken skins of the cross fox, of the blue fox, that
strange, deeply silken-furred creature, the blend of which is a puzzle
to the naturalists; of the silver fox, which ranges so far southward
that the farmers and the farmers' sons of the northern tier of the
United States follow him fiercely with dog and gun because of the value
of his coating; of the otter, most graceful of all creatures of land or
water, and in the far north with fur which is a poem; of the sable,
which creeps farther south than many people know of; of the grim
wolverine, black and yellow-white and thickly and densely furred, and of
the great gray wolf of nearly the Arctic circle, a wolf so grizzly and
so long and high and gaunt and strong of limb that he tears sometimes
from the sledge ranges the best dog of all their pack and leaps easily
away into the forest with him; a beast who transcends in real being even
the old looming gray wolf of mediaeval story who once haunted northern
Germany and the British Isles and the Scandinavian forests, and who made
such impress upon men's minds that the legend of the werewolf had its
birth. There were thick skins of the moose and there was much dried
meat. All these, save the meat, contributed to make expansive the
display which Bigbeam, utilizing all the floor space, laid before the
eyes of Red Dog.

The showing made Red Dog even more anxiously contemplative. He thought
of the long, weary way to the present trading post, and of how it would
be equally long and weary were a new post to be located in the hunting
grounds of Little Peter. He knew how soft was the snow when it began to
melt in early spring, how the snow shoes sank deeply and became a burden
to lift, how the sledge runners no longer slid along the surface, and
the floundering dogs tired after half a day's journey; he thought how
fu