THE TRAPPER 153 



to a pen like the barring corral, far from his own 

 people, and eat his heart out running round its walls. 



With the recklessness of utter despair the black 

 fox fell to gnawing his foot, severing the strong 

 sinews ruthlessly, tearing through bone and flesh 

 with strong canine teeth, whimpering a little as 

 an injured dog whimpers, but always gnawing, 

 gnawing. 



He laid his foot on the altar of freedom like 

 the hero he was. There it stood, upheld in the 

 sharp jaws of the small trap, with red-edged bones, 

 black and delicately moulded. And across the 

 snow the crippled fox moved free, hop-and-go-one, 

 carrying his injured leg. 



Travelling onwards swift as they could, far 

 beyond the lands where the dreaded man-smell 

 lurked, the little company jumped an old bull 

 moose yarded up by himself in a hollow belt of 

 scrub bushes screened from the keen winds by a 

 granite wall of Nature's building. Here beneath 

 a rude pilaster he made his bed, there under a 

 column broken asunder in the course of the years 

 he sheltered from the snow-storms. 



He would have none of their advances, and 

 turned his back on them. His hornless head was 



20 



