ws where
the caribou will be." Down at Conjuror's Falls, he had cached less than
two months' rations for his dog, and they were facing seven months of
the long snows. To be sure, she could live on meat, if meat was to be
had, but a husky thrives on fish, and Marcel determined that she should
have it.

Confident of finding game plentiful, his partners, with the usual lack
of foresight of the Crees, had netted less than three months' supply of
whitefish and lake-trout. This emergency store Marcel knew would be
consumed by February, however plentiful the caribou proved to be, for
the Crees seldom possess the thrift to save against the possible spring
famine. So he determined to set his net at once.

Borrowing Joe's canoe, he packed it through the "bush" to a good fish
lake where he set the net under the young ice, and baited lines; then
taking Fleur, he started cruising out locations for his trap-lines in
new country, far toward the blue hills of the Salmon watershed, where
game signs had been thick the previous spring.

Toward the last of October when the snow began to make deep, Fleur's
education as a sled-dog began. Already the fast growing puppy was
creeping up toward one hundred pounds in weight, and soon, under the
kind but firm tutelage of the master, was as keen to be harnessed for a
run as a veteran husky of the winter trails.

When he had set and baited his traps over a wide circle of new country
to the north, Jean returned to his net and lines, and at the end of ten
days had a supply of trout and whitefish for Fleur, which he cached at
the lake. On his return, Antoine and Joe derided his labors when the
caribou trails networked the muskegs, but Marcel ignored them.

It looked like a good winter for game. Snow-shoe rabbits were plentiful
and wherever their runways led in and out of the scrub-spruce and fir
covers, there those furred assassins of the forest, the fox and the
lynx, the fisher and the marten, were sure to make their
hunting-grounds. During November and December, when pelts are at their
best, the men made a harvest at their traps. The caribou were still on
the barrens feeding on the white moss from which they scraped the snow
with their large, round-toed hoofs, and the rabbit snares furnished stew
whenever the trappers craved a change from caribou steaks. But no Indian
will eat rabbit as a regular diet while he can get red meat. This
varying hare of the north, which, so often, in the spring, from