DEATH OF THE MOOSE COW 75 



sisted of a heterogeneous collection of empty tin 

 cans, surrounding half a dozen wooden shacks, one 

 more pretentious than the rest being the saloon 

 and only store for hundreds of miles — ^headquarters, 

 too, of the trappers of the district, who unmurmur- 

 ingly added to the trader's profit of 40 per cent, on 

 the pelts by investing the hardly-earned purchase- 

 money in whisky and goods supplied at a larger 

 percentage still. 



The trappers had long since left for the hunting- 

 grounds, and the dreary trading- post, saved from 

 the bush which crowded it on every side, lay deso- 

 late and gaunt. Above the trees, half a mile away, 

 a thm spiral of smoke ascended from an Indian 

 settlement, to which the most ordinary sense of 

 smell would guide anyone from a great distance. 

 Stumps of trees lay about everywhere, ceasing only 

 as they met the standing pines, which hung over the 

 last of the six log shacks— a tumble-down cabin 

 proclaimed by a printed board as a Real Estate 

 Office I A little apart, as though to mark class 

 difference, two Chinamen lived in an unwanted 

 shanty, and scratched a living by washing for gold 

 in a creek long since abandoned by the white man. 



It was the antithesis of the moose calf's world. 



