CHAPTER III 

 THE INDIAN TRAPPER 



It is dawn when the Indian trapper leaves his lodge. 



In midwinter of the Far North, dawn comes late. Stars, 

 which shine with a hard, clear, crystal radiance only seen in North- 

 ern skies, pale in the gray morning gloom ; and the sun comes over 

 the horizon dim through mists of frost-smoke. In an hour the 

 frost-mist, lying thick to the touch like clouds of steam, will have 

 cleared ; and there will be nothing from sky-line to sky-line but 

 blinding sunlight and snow-glare. 



The Indian trapper must be far afield before mid-day. Then 

 the sun casts no man-shadow to scare game from his snares. Black 

 is the flag of betrayal in Northern midwinter. It is by the big 

 liquid eye, glistening on the snow like a black marble, that the 

 trapper detects the white hare; and a jet tail-tip streaking over 

 the white wastes in dots and dashes tells him the little ermine, 

 whose coat must line some emperor's coronation robe, is alter- 

 nately scudding over the drifts and diving below the snow with the 

 forward wriggling of a snake under cover. But the moving man- 

 shadow is bigger and plainer on the snow than the hare's eye or 

 the ermine's jet tip ; so the Indian trapper sets out in the gray 

 darkness of morning and must reach his hunting-grounds before 

 high noon. 



With long snow-shoes, that carry him over the drifts in swift, 

 coasting strides, he swings out in that easy, ambling, Indian trot, 

 which gives never a jar to the runner, nor rests long enough for 

 the snows to crunch beneath his tread. 



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