fellows, dressed in tinkers' tatters, were
singing--what? A song of the _Grand Monarque_ which has led armies to
battle, but not a song which one would expect to hear in northern
wilds--

"Malbrouck s'on va-t-en guerre
Mais quand reviendra a-t-il?"

Three foes assailed the trapper alone in the wilds. The first danger was
from the wolf-pack. The second was the Indian hostile egged on by rival
traders. This danger the French trapper minimized by identifying himself
more completely with the savage than any other fur trader succeeded in
doing. The third foe was the most perverse and persevering thief known
outside the range of human criminals.

Perhaps the day after the trapper had shot his first deer he discovered
fine footprints like a child's hand on the snow around the carcass. He
recognises the trail of otter or pekan or mink. It would be useless to
bait a deadfall with meat when an unpolluted feast lies on the snow. The
man takes one of his small traps and places it across the line of
approach. This trap is buried beneath snow or brush. Every trace of
man-smell is obliterated. The fresh hide of a deer may be dragged across
the snow. Pomatum or castoreum may be daubed on everything touched. He
may even handle the trap with deer-hide. Pekan travel in pairs.
Besides, the dead deer will be likely to attract more than one forager;
so the man sets a circle of traps round the carcass.

The next morning he comes back with high hope. Very little of the deer
remains. All the flesh-eaters of the forest, big and little, have been
there. Why, then, is there no capture? One trap has been pulled up,
sprung, and partly broken. Another carried a little distance off and
dumped into a hollow. A third had caught a pekan; but the prisoner had
been worried and torn to atoms. Another was tampered with from behind
and exposed for very deviltry. Some have disappeared altogether.

Among forest creatures few are mean enough to kill when they have full
stomachs, or to eat a trapped brother with untrapped meat a nose-length
away.

The French trapper rumbles out some maledictions on _le sacre carcajou_.
Taking a piece of steel like a cheese-tester's instrument, he pokes
grains of strychnine into the remaining meat. He might have saved
himself the trouble. The next day he finds the poisoned meat mauled and
spoiled so that no animal will touch it. There is nothing of the deer
but picked bones. So the trapper tries a deadfall for the thief