sful--a
number of fine skins having been already taken--the hunters were still
worried over the wolverines. On one path alone they had found nothing
but a fox's foot, and the tails of four martens; besides, several of
their traps were missing. In another place, where they had dressed a
caribou killed by Oo-koo-hoo, and had left the meat overnight for the
women and boys to haul in next day, wolverines had found it and defiled
it in their usual way.

The women, too, had had their troubles as owls had visited their
snares, and robbed them of many a pelt. Worse in some respects than
the wolverine is the owl, for while the wolverine leaves a track that
one can trail, and either find what is left of the game, or overtake
and punish the marauder, the owl leaves no trail at all, and though he
frequently eats only the brain or eyes of the game, he has a habit of
carrying the game away and dropping it in the distant woods where it is
seldom found. So the women took to setting steel traps on the ends of
upright poles upon which they judged the owls would alight, as these
birds are much given to resting upon the tips of "ram-pikes," and in
that way they had caught several.

One evening early in November, after a hard day's travel through a big
storm of wet, clinging snow, we sat by the fire in Oo-koo-hoo's lodge,
and happily commented on the fact that we had got everything in good
shape for the coming of winter. Next morning, when we went outside, we
found that everything was covered with a heavy blanket of clinging
snow, and the streams and the lake beginning to freeze over. We found,
also, to our amazement that a big bull-moose had been standing on the
bank of Muskrat Creek and watching the smoke rising from our lodges as
the fires were lighted at sunrise--just as I have shown in my painting.

[Illustration: Next morning we found that everything was covered with a
heavy blanket of clinging snow, and the streams and the lake beginning
to freeze over. We found, also to our amazement that a big bull-moose
had been standing on the bank of Muskrat Creek and watching the smoke
rising from our lodges as the fires were lighted at sunrise. After a
hurried breakfast, we set out in pursuit of the moose, which we . . .
See Chapter III.]

After a hurried breakfast, we three men set out in pursuit of the moose
which we overtook within a mile, and then there was meat to haul on
sleds to our camp. That day the temperature fell rapid