he shot, except
for service as a tepee mat. The white arctic wolf would bring better
price. The enormous black or brown arctic wolf would be more valuable;
but the value would not repay the risk of the hunt. But all these
worthless, ravening rascals are watching the traps as keenly as the
trapper does; and would eat up a silver fox, that would be the fortune
of any hunter.

The Indian comes to the brush where he has set his rabbit snares across
a runway. His dog sniffs the ground, whining. The crust of the snow is
broken by a heavy tread. The twigs are all trampled and rabbit fur is
fluffed about. The game has been rifled away. The Indian notices several
things. The rabbit has been devoured on the spot. That is unlike the
wolverine. He would have carried snare, rabbit and all off for a guzzle
in his own lair. The footprints have the appearance of having been
brushed over; so the thief had a bushy tail. It is not the lynx. There
is no trail away from the snare. The marauder has come with a long leap
and gone with a long leap. The Indian and his dog make a circuit of the
snare till they come on the trail of the intruder; and its size tells
the Indian whether his enemy be fox or wolf.

He sets no more snares across that runway, for the rabbits have had
their alarm. Going through the brush he finds a fresh runway and sets a
new snare.

Then his snow-shoes are winging him over the drifts to the next trap. It
is a deadfall. Nothing is in it. The bait is untouched and the trap left
undisturbed. A wolverine would have torn the thing to atoms from very
wickedness, chewed the bait in two, and spat it out lest there should be
poison. The fox would have gone in and had his back broken by the front
log. And there is the same brush work over the trampled snow, as if the
visitor had tried to sweep out his own trail; and the same long leap
away, clearing obstruction of log and drift, to throw a pursuer off the
scent. This time the Indian makes two or three circuits; but the snow is
so crusted it is impossible to tell whether the scratchings lead out to
the open or back to the border of snow-drifted woods. If the animal had
followed the line of the traps by running just inside the brush, the
Indian would know. But the midwinter day is short, and he has no time to
explore the border of the thicket.

Perhaps he has a circle of thirty traps. Of that number he hardly
expects game in more than a dozen. If six have a prize, he has done
w