THE INDIAN TRAPPER 217 



man's dog might scent the trail of a wolf, the wolf clears at a long 

 bound. He leaps over open spaces, if he can ; and if he can't, 

 crouches low till he has passed the exposure. 



The trapper swings forward in long, straight strides, wasting 

 not an inch of ground, deviating neither to right nor left by as 

 much space as a white man takes to turn on his heels. Suddenly 

 the trapper's dog utters a low whine and stops with ears pricked 

 forward towards the brush. At the same moment the Indian, 

 who has been keeping his eyes on the woods, sees a form rise out 

 of the earth among the shadows. He is not surprised ; for he 

 knows the way the wolf travels, and the fox trap could not have 

 been robbed more than an hour ago. The man thinks he has come 

 on the thieves going to the next trap. That is what the wolf means 

 him to think. And the man, too, dissembles ; for as he looks the 

 form fades into the gloom, and he decides to run on parallel to the 

 brushwood, with his gun ready. Just ahead is a break in the shrub- 

 bery. At the clearing he can see how many wolves there are, and 

 as he is heading home there is little danger. 



But at the clearing nothing crosses. The dog dashes off to 

 the woods with wild barking, and the trapper scans the long, white 

 stretch leading back between the bushes to a horizon that is already 

 dim in the steel grays of twilight. 



Half a mile down this open way, off the homeward route of his 

 traps, a wolfish figure looms black against the snow — and stands ! 

 The dog prances round and round as if he would hold the creature 

 for his master's shot; and the Indian calculates — "After all, 

 there is only one." 



What a chance to approach it under cover, as it has approached 

 his traps ! The stars are already pricking the blue darkness in 

 cold, steel points ; and the Northern Lights are swinging through 

 the gloom like mystic censers to an invisible Spirit, the Spirit of 

 the still, white, wide, Northern wastes. It is as clear as day. 



One thought of his loss at the fox trap sends the Indian flitting 

 through the underwoods like a hunted partridge. The sharp 



