Part 11 (1/2)

Every shrub takes fire; for the ice drops are a prism, and the result is the same as if there had been a star shower or rainfall of brilliants

Does the Indian trapper see all this? The white ance doubts whether his tawny brother of the wilds sees the beauty about him, because the Indian has no white man's terms of expression

But ask the bronzed trapper the tith of shadow the sun casts, or the degree of light on the snow

Inquire the season of the year; and he knows by the slant sunlight coet hi-Grounds; and after he has filled it with the implements and creatures and people of the chase, he will describe it in the metaphor of what he has seen at sunrise and sunset and under the Northern Lights He does not _see_ these things with the gabbling exclamatories of a tourist He sees them because they sink into his nature and become part of his mental furniture The most brilliant description the writer ever heard of the Hereafter was from an old Cree squaw, toothless, wrinkled like leather, belted at the waist like a sack of wool, with hands of dried parchment, and moccasins some five months too odoriferous Her version ran that Heaven would be full of thewaters and south winds; that there would always be warht like a midsummer afternoon, with purple shadohere tired women could rest; that the trees would be covered with blossoms, and all the pebbles of the shore like dewdrops

Pushed from the Atlantic seaboard back over the mountains, from the mountains to the Mississippi, west to the Rockies, north to the Great Lakes, all that was to be seen of nature in Ah he has not understood

But now he holds only a fringe of hunting-grounds, in the timber lands of the Great Lakes, in the canons of the Rockies, and across that northern land which converges to Hudson Bay, reaching west to Athabasca, east to Labrador It is in the basin of Hudson Bay regions that the Indian trapper will find his last hunting-grounds Here clia before Columbus opened the doors of the New World to the hordes of the Old; and here Indian trappers will hunt as long as the race lasts When there is no ame, the Indian's doom is sealed; but that day is far distant for the Hudson Bay region

The Indian trapper has set few large traps It is midwinter; and by Dece All the streams are frozen like rock; but the otter and pekan and e at random across open field Some foolish fish always dilly-dally up-strea is seen--a kettle of living fish; fish gasping and panting in ice-he as each day's frost freezes another layer to the ice walls of their prison The banks of such a pond hole are haunted by the otter and his fisher friends By-and-bye, when the pond is exhausted, these lazy fishers e across country Meanwhile, they are quiet

The bear, too, is still After --for in trapper vernacular the bear takes a long time to please himself--bruin found an upturned sturasses Then he curled up with his nose on his toes and went to sleep under a snow blanket of gathering depth Deer, rounds Unless they are scattered by a wolf-pack or a hunter's gun, they will not be likely to round is eaten over Nor are led into their warm houses, where they will stay till their winter store is all used; and their houses are now hidden under great depths of deepening snow But the fox and the hare and the er as they are astir, so are their rampant enemies, the lynx and the wolverine and the wolf-pack, all ravenous fro crows

That thought gives wings to the Indian trapper's heels The pelt of a coyote--or prairie wolf--would scarcely be worth the taking Even the big, gray timber-ould hardly be worth the cost of the shot, except for service as a tepeebetter price The enormous black or brown arctic ould 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 traas 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 froone 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 alarh the brush he finds a fresh runway and sets a new snare

Then his snow-shoes are winging hi 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 sa 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 is lead out to the open or back to the border of snow-drifted woods If the ani 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 nuame in more than a dozen If six have a prize, he has done well Each time he stops to examine a trap hehis own tracks with castoreu 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 soed the circle of his snares That rounds 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 reat 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 traray 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 dreaold, and speculators of stocks, and actors of fareat, 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 knohat his enemy is; for he has come so suddenly on their trail he can count four different footprints, and claw-ht about the little fox; and some of the smaller wolves have lost fur over it Then, by the blood-rowth to the right

The Indian says none of the words which the whiteto his credit; for just noords are adequate But he takes prompt resolution After the fashi+on of the old Mosaic lahich somehoritten on the very face of the wilderness as one of its necessities, he decides that only life for life will co, broolf--he knows too well to attempt it without help He will bait his s, steel wolf traps to- braves follow the wolf-pack's trail during this lull in the hunting season

But the ani scent across the trail of wise intentions; and of all the animal world, none knows it better than the brown arctic wolf He carries hi air than his brother wolves, with the sa forward of sharp, erect ears, the sareen eyes; but his tail, which is bushy enough to brush out every trace of his tracks, has not the skulking droop of the gray wolf's; and in size he is a giant aain, and keeping to the open, where he can travel fast on the long snow-shoes, sets out for the next trap

The er It is late in the afternoon Then all the shadows ; but the Indian travels on; for the circuit of traps leads back to his lodge

The wolf thief may not be far off; so the man takes his musket from the case He may chance a shot at the ene behind a fringe of brush to ard The wind carries scent of danger from the open, and the brush forht scent the trail of a wolf, the wolf clears at a long bound He leaps over open spaces, if he can; and if he can't, crouches low till he has passed the exposure

The trapper swings forward in long, straight strides, wasting not an inch of ground, deviating neither to right nor left by as much space as a whiteutters a lohine and stops with ears pricked forward towards the brush At the sa his eyes on the woods, sees a for the shadows He is not surprised; for he knows the way the wolf travels, and the fox trap could not have been robbed o Theto the next trap That is what the wolf means him to think And the man, too, disseloom, and he decides to run on parallel to the brushwood, with his gun ready Just ahead is a break in the shrubbery

At the clearing he can see howho crosses The dog dashes off to the woods ild barking, and the trapper scans the long, white stretch leading back between the bushes to a horizon that is already diht