THE LONE TRAIL 203 



him, and he wondered why the mink and the 

 marten and the ermine travelled jumping, and 

 alighted so circumspectly that their hind -feet 

 exactly covered the spot just vacated by the fore, 

 and why the long hair at the back of the wolverine's 

 fetlock was designed, as it unmistakably was, to 

 alter the shape of his track in the snow. But now 

 the bush people kept few secrets from him ; he had 

 wrested most of them. 



The weather changed, and for a week the world 

 lay so frozen that it was well-nigh useless to go out 

 on the trap-line — the fur-bearers would be lying up 

 so close. The hours in the shack dragged by in 

 sleep, in baking a rough variety of bread from 

 ancient yeast-cakes and flour, in counting gains 

 and averaging losses, in thawing out stiffly-frozen 

 rabbits for food, and in fixing traps ready for 

 setting. Those designed for the foxes the man 

 never touched with bare hands, lest some scent of 

 him might cHng. 



Moosewa's horns lay derelict in a corner. They 

 had been measured carefully, and try as he would 

 in his desire not to over-estimate, the trapper could 

 not make them less than eighty inches in span. 

 A noble trophy, and though in the subsequent 



