THE LONE TRAIL 201 



they did so, it was not their way to sit and calmly 

 wait for death after the fashion of the lynx. Very 

 frequently their purposeful onslaughts on the pole 

 to which the chain of the trap was attached ended 

 in the half-freedom of the wild. Trap and wol- 

 verine, they vanished together over untraversed 

 snows. 



Far into the mountains the trap-line penetrated, 

 and almost all the ground yielded good results, 

 being little hunted. Cretney was lucky, too, trap- 

 ping on original methods of his own, defying many 

 of the traditional systems. One of those rare souls 

 Byron told us of, "a wild bird and a wanderer," 

 his temperament and his fellowship with Nature 

 taught him the ways of the beasts, and put into 

 his mind all sorts of rarely- thought- of schemes 

 for securing the pelts he wanted. 



In the extreme cold the rotten fish-baits, which 

 in open weather enticed the craftiest animal, froze 

 up, and, losing their penetrating odour, became 

 ineffectual. Then the trapper turned to the quickly 

 evaporating scent-baits — castoreum, oil of anise, 

 and the rest. 



Dead falls of various kinds he utilized, all of 

 which took time to construct, besides a cruel 



26 



