ice, and as Quonab served
the mink, so Rolf served the marten and the woods was still.

Chapter 29. Snowshoes

"That's for Annette," said Rolf, remembering his promise as he hung the
stretched marten skin to dry.

"Yi! Yi! Yi!" came three yelps, just as he had heard them the day he
first met Quonab, and crossing the narrow lake he saw his partner's
canoe.

"We have found the good hunting," he said, as Rolf steadied the canoe at
the landing and Skookum, nearly well again, wagged his entire ulterior
person to welcome the wanderer home. The first thing to catch the boy's
eye was a great, splendid beaver skin stretched on a willow hoop.

"Ho, ho!" he exclaimed.

"Ugh; found another pond."

"Good, good," said Rolf as he stroked the first beaver skin he had ever
seen in the woods.

"This is better," said Quonab, and held up the two barkstones, castors,
or smell-glands that are found in every beaver and which for some hid
reason have an irresistible attraction for all wild animals. To us the
odour is slight, but they have the power of intensifying, perpetuating,
and projecting such odorous substances as may be mixed with them.
No trapper considers his bait to be perfect without a little of the
mysterious castor. So that that most stenchable thing they had already
concocted of fish-oil, putrescence, sewer-gas, and sunlight, when
commingled and multiplied with the dried-up powder of a castor, was
intensified into a rich, rancid, gas-exhaling hell-broth as rapturously
bewitching to our furry brothers as it is poisonously nauseating to
ourselves--seductive afar like the sweetest music, inexorable as fate,
insidious as laughing-gas, soothing and numbing as absinthe--this, the
lure and caution-luller, is the fellest trick in all the trappers' code.
As deadly as inexplicable, not a few of the states have classed it with
black magic and declared its use a crime.

But no such sentiment prevailed in the high hills of Quonab's time, and
their preparations for a successful trapping season were nearly perfect.
Thirty deadfalls made by Quonab, with the sixty made on the first trip
and a dozen steel traps, were surely promise of a good haul. It was
nearly November now; the fur was prime; then why not begin? Because
the weather was too fine. You must have frosty weather or the creatures
taken in the deadfalls are spoiled before the trapper can get around.

Already a good, big pile of wood was cut; both shanty and storeroom
we