ing over the snow for all
the world like a bouncing football done up in gray fur--all members of
the cat tribe running wherever the "little white chaps" run.

So when the lull fell on the hunt and the mink trapping was well over
and marten had not yet begun, Koot gathered up his traps, and getting a
supply of provisions at the fur post, crossed the white wastes of
prairie to lonely swamp ground where dwarf alder and willow and
cottonwood and poplar and pine grew in a tangle. A few old logs
dovetailed into a square made the wall of a cabin. Over these he
stretched the canvas of his tepee for a roof at a sharp enough angle to
let the heavy snow-fall slide off from its own weight. Moss chinked up
the logs. Snow banked out the wind. Pine boughs made the floor, two logs
with pine boughs, a bed. An odd-shaped stump served as chair or table;
and on the logs of the inner walls hung wedge-shaped slabs of cedar to
stretch the skins. A caribou curtain or bear-skin across the entrance
completed Koot's winter quarters for the rabbit-hunt.

Koot's genealogy was as vague as that of all old trappers hanging round
fur posts. Part of him--that part which served best when he was on the
hunting-field--was Ojibway. The other part, which made him improvise
logs into chair and table and bed, was white man; and that served him
best when he came to bargain with the chief factor over the pelts. At
the fur post he attended the Catholic mission. On the hunting-field,
when suddenly menaced by some great danger, he would cry out in the
Indian tongue words that meant "O Great Spirit!" And it is altogether
probable that at the mission and on the hunting-field, Koot was
worshipping the same Being. When he swore--strange commentary on
civilization--he always used white man's oaths, French _patois_ or
straight English.

Though old hermits may be found hunting alone through the Rockies,
Idaho, Washington, and Minnesota, trappers do not usually go to the
wilds alone; but there was so little danger in rabbit-snaring, that
Koot had gone out accompanied by only the mongrel dog that had drawn
his provisions from the fort on a sort of toboggan sleigh.

The snow is a white page on which the wild creatures write their daily
record for those who can read. All over the white swamp were little deep
tracks; here, holes as if the runner had sunk; there, padded marks as
from the bound--bound--bound of something soft; then, again, where the
thicket was like a hedge