204 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



enough to turn short : the trapper knows he is looking at the 

 snow-shoe of the craftsman. This is the sort he must have for 

 himself. 



The first thing, then — a moose for the heavy filling ; pref- 

 erably a spinster moose ; for she is too lazy to run from a hunter 

 who is not yet a Mercury ; and she will furnish him with a banquet 

 fit for kings. 



Neither moose call nor birch horn, of which wonders are told, 

 will avail now. The mating season is well past. Even if an old 

 moose responded to the call, the chances are his flesh would be 

 unfit for food. It would be a wasted kill, contrary to the principles 

 of the true trapper. 



Every animal has a sign language as plain as print. The 

 trapper has hardly entered the forest before he begins to read this 

 language. Broad hoof-marks are on the muskeg — quaking bog, 

 covered with moss — over which the moose can skim as if on 

 snow-shoes, where a horse would sink to the saddle. Park-like 

 glades at the heads of streams, where the moose have spent the 

 summer browsing on twigs and wallowing in water holes to get 

 rid of sand flies, show trampled brush and stripped twigs and 

 rubbed bark. 



Coming suddenly on a grove of quaking aspens, a saucy jay 

 has fluttered up with a noisy call — an alarm note ; and something 

 is bounding off to hiding in a thicket on the far side of the grove. 

 The wis-kat-jan, or whiskey jack, as the white men call it, who 

 always hangs about the moose herds, has seen the trapper and 

 sounded the alarm. 



In August, when the great, palmated horns, which budded 

 out on the male in July, are yet in the velvet, the trapper finds 

 scraps of furry hair sticking to young saplings. The vain moose 

 has been polishing his antlers, preparatory to mating. Later, 

 there is a great whacking of horns among the branches. The 

 moose, spoiling for a fight, in moose language is challenging his 



