lling from the moose across the
centre to bear the brunt of wear; long enough for speed, short enough to
turn short: the trapper knows he is looking at the snow-shoe of the
craftsman. This is the sort he must have for himself.

The first thing, then--a moose for the heavy filling; preferably a
spinster moose; for she is too lazy to run from a hunter who is not yet
a Mercury; and she will furnish him with a banquet fit for kings.

* * * * *

Neither moose call nor birch horn, of which wonders are told, will avail
now. The mating season is well past. Even if an old moose responded to
the call, the chances are his flesh would be unfit for food. It would be
a wasted kill, contrary to the principles of the true trapper.

Every animal has a sign language as plain as print. The trapper has
hardly entered the forest before he begins to read this language. Broad
hoof-marks are on the muskeg--quaking bog, covered with moss--over which
the moose can skim as if on snow-shoes, where a horse would sink to the
saddle. Park-like glades at the heads of streams, where the moose have
spent the summer browsing on twigs and wallowing in water holes to get
rid of sand flies, show trampled brush and stripped twigs and rubbed
bark.

Coming suddenly on a grove of quaking aspens, a saucy jay has fluttered
up with a noisy call--an alarm note; and something is bounding off to
hiding in a thicket on the far side of the grove. The _wis-kat-jan_, or
whisky jack, as the white men call it, who always hangs about the moose
herds, has seen the trapper and sounded the alarm.

In August, when the great, palmated horns, which budded out on the male
in July, are yet in the velvet, the trapper finds scraps of furry hair
sticking to young saplings. The vain moose has been polishing his
antlers, preparatory to mating. Later, there is a great whacking of
horns among the branches. The moose, spoiling for a fight, in moose
language is challenging his rivals to battle. Wood-choppers have been
interrupted by the apparition of a huge, palmated head through a
thicket. Mistaking the axe for his rival's defiance, the moose arrives
on the scene in a mood of blind rage that sends the chopper up a tree,
or back to the shanty for his rifle.

But the trapper allows these opportunities to pass. He is not ready for
his moose until winter compels the abandoning of the canoe. Then the
moose herds are yarding up in some sheltered feeding-grou