220 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



stick into the woods and sends the dog after it. The dog comes 

 back without any barkings of alarm. The man knows that the 

 wolves have drawn off. Will he wait out that long Northern night ? 

 He has had nothing to eat but the piece of pemmican. The heavy 

 frost drowsiness will come presently ; and if he falls asleep the fire 

 will go out. An hour's run will carry him home ; but to make 

 speed with the snow-shoes he must run in the open, exposed to all 

 watchers. 



When an Indian balances motives, the motive of hunger in- 

 variably prevails. Pulling up his hood, belting in the caribou 

 coat and kicking up the dog, the trapper strikes out for the open 

 way leading back to the line of his traps, and the hollow where 

 the lodges have been built for shelter against wind. There is 

 another reason for building lodges in a hollow. Sound of the 

 hunter will not carry to the game ; but neither will sound of the 

 game carry to the hunter. 



And if the game should turn hunter and the man turn hunted ! 

 The trapper speeds down the snowy slope, striding, sliding, coast- 

 ing, vaulting over hummocks of snow, glissading down the drifts, 

 leaping rather than running. The frosty air acts as a conductor to 

 sound, and the frost films come in stings against the face of the 

 man whose eye, ear, and touch are strained for danger. It is the 

 dog that catches the first breath of peril, uttering a smothered 

 "woo! wool'''' The trapper tries to persuade himself the alarm 

 was only the far scream of a wolf-hunted lynx ; but it comes again, 

 deep and faint, like an echo in a dome. One glance over his shoulder 

 shows him black forms on the snow-crest against the sky. 



He has been tricked again, and knows how the fox feels before 

 the dogs in full cry. 



The trapper is no longer a man. He is a hunted thing with 

 terror crazing his blood and the sleuth-hounds of the wilds on his 

 trail. Something goes wrong with his snow-shoe. Stooping to 

 right the slip-strings, he sees that the dog's feet have been cut by 

 the snow crust and are bleeding. It is life for life now ; the old, 



