ell. Each time he stops to examine a trap he must pause to cover all
trace of the man-smell, daubing his own tracks with castoreum, or
pomatum, or bears' grease; sweeping the snow over every spot touched by
his hand; dragging the flesh side of a fresh pelt across his own trail.

Mid-day comes, the time of the short shadow; and the Indian trapper has
found not a thing in his traps. He only knows that some daring enemy has
dogged the circle of his snares. That means he must kill the marauder,
or find new hunting-grounds. If he had doubt about swift vengeance for
the loss of a rabbit, he has none when he comes to the next trap. He
sees what is too much for words: what entails as great loss to the poor
Indian trapper as an exchange crash to the white man. One of his best
steel-traps lies a little distance from the pole to which it was
attached. It has been jerked up with a great wrench and pulled as far as
the chain would go. The snow is trampled and stained and covered with
gray fur as soft and silvery as chinchilla. In the trap is a little paw,
fresh cut, scarcely frozen. He had caught a silver fox, the fortune of
which hunters dream, as prospectors of gold, and speculators of stocks,
and actors of fame. But the wolves, the great, black wolves of the Far
North, with eyes full of a treacherous green fire and teeth like tusks,
had torn the fur to scraps and devoured the fox not an hour before the
trapper came.

He knows now what his enemy is; for he has come so suddenly on their
trail he can count four different footprints, and claw-marks of
different length. They have fought about the little fox; and some of the
smaller wolves have lost fur over it. Then, by the blood-marks, he can
tell they have got under cover of the shrub growth to the right.

The Indian says none of the words which the white man might say; but
that is nothing to his credit; for just now no words are adequate. But
he takes prompt resolution. After the fashion of the old Mosaic law,
which somehow is written on the very face of the wilderness as one of
its necessities, he decides that only life for life will compensate such
loss. The danger of hunting the big, brown wolf--he knows too well to
attempt it without help. He will bait his small traps with poison; take
out his big, steel wolf traps to-morrow; then with a band of young
braves follow the wolf-pack's trail during this lull in the hunting
season.

But the animal world knows that old trick of dra