tumn days with the shimmering heat of a crisp
noon and the noiseless chill of starry twilights found the trappers
canoeing leisurely up-stream from the northern tributaries of the
Missouri nearing the long overland trail that led to the hunting-fields
in Canada.

One evening they came to a place bounded by high cliff banks with the
flats heavily wooded by poplar and willow. Ba'tiste had found signs that
were hot--oh! so hot! The mould of an uprooted gopher hole was so fresh
that it had not yet dried. This was not a region of timber-wolves. What
had dug that hole? Not the small, skulking coyote--the vagrant of
prairie life! Oh!--no!--the coyote like other vagrants earns his living
without work, by skulking in the wake of the business-like badger; and
when the badger goes down in the gopher hole, Master Coyote stands
nearby and gobbles up all the stray gophers that bolt to escape the
invading badger.[37] What had dug the hole? Ba'tiste thinks that he
knows.

That was on open prairie. Just below the cliff is another kind of
hole--a roundish pit dug between moss-covered logs and earth wall, a
pit with grass clawed down into it, snug and hidden and sheltered as a
bird's nest. If the pit is what Ba'tiste thinks, somewhere on the banks
of the stream should be a watering-place. He proposes that they beach
the canoes and camp here. Twilight is not a good time to still hunt an
unseen bear. Twilight is the time when the bear himself goes still
hunting. Ba'tiste will go out in the early morning. Meantime if he
stumbles on what looks like a trail to the watering-place, he will set a
trap.

Camp is not for the regular trapper what it is for the amateur hunter--a
time of rest and waiting while others skin the game and prepare supper.

One hunter whittles the willow sticks that are to make the camp fire.
Another gathers moss or boughs for a bed. If fish can be got, some one
has out a line. The kettle hisses from the cross-bar between notched
sticks above the fire, and the meat sizzling at the end of a forked twig
sends up a flavour that whets every appetite. Over the upturned canoes
bend a couple of men gumming afresh all the splits and seams against
to-morrow's voyage. Then with a flip-flop that tells of the other side
of the flap-jacks being browned, the cook yodels in crescendo that
"Sup--per!--'s--read--ee!"

Supper over, a trap or two may be set in likely places. The men may take
a plunge; for in spite of their tawny skins,