186 THE MOOSE 



avalanclies to check his onward rush, and wind- 

 mained Hmbs of shadowy pines stretched out 

 murderous arms for his throat. His own world 

 fought against him. 



It was very Hght. A full moon shone through 

 the gaunt forest, flinging checkered shadows across 

 the snow. The going was easier now. Instinc- 

 tively the moose knew that he was on a well- 

 defined trail — a trail not made by the bush people. 

 It was a trap-line, marked out by blazed trees. 

 Once, as he crashed through a closely-grown thicket, 

 he felt his off fore-leg caught in a loop attached to 

 a pole placed across the path — a lynx snare, which 

 gave way before the strain as though it were con- 

 trived of sewing-cotton. 



No other animal was moving — he had the world 

 to himself, he and the wolves. In so severe a snap 

 the fur-bearers, not by any means impervious to 

 weather conditions, remain in the warmest corner 

 they can find until the temperature rises. 



An open, treeless plateau, on which an apparently 

 hard crust was formed by the action of the sun's 

 heat, which had melted the surface, to freeze hard 

 again in the pitiless extreme of the night, lay ahead, 

 and the moose sped forward gallantly. P'or some 



