BATISTE, THE BEAR HUNTER 229 



rooted gopher hole was so fresh that it had not yet dried. This 

 was not a region of timber-wolves. What had dug that hole ? Not 

 the small, skulking coyote — the vagrant of prairie life ! Oh ! 

 — no ! — the coyote like other vagrants earns his living without 

 work, by skulking in the wake of the business-like badger ; and 

 when the badger goes down in the gopher hole, Master Coyote 

 stands near by and gobbles up all the stray gophers that bolt to 

 escape the invading badger. 1 What had dug the hole ? Ba'tiste 

 thinks that he knows. 



That was on open prairie. Just below the cliff is another kind 

 of hole — a roundish pit dug between moss-covered logs and earth 

 wall, a pit with grass'~clawed down into it, snug and hidden and 

 sheltered as a bird's nest. If the pit is what Ba'tiste thinks, some- 

 where on the banks of the stream should be a watering-place. He 

 proposes that they beach the canoes and camp here. Twilight 

 is not a good time to still hunt an unseen bear. Twilight is the 

 time when the bear himself goes still hunting. Ba'tiste will go 

 out in the early morning. Meantime if he stumbles on what looks 

 like a trail to the watering-place, he will set a trap. 



Camp is not for the regular trapper what it is for the amateur 

 hunter — a time of rest and waiting while others skin the game 

 and prepare supper. 



One hunter whittles the willow sticks that are to make the camp 

 fire. Another gathers moss or boughs for a bed. If fish can be 

 got, some one has out a line. The kettle hisses from the cross-bar 

 between notched sticks above the fire, and the meat sizzling at the 

 end of a forked twig sends up a flavor that whets every appetite. 

 Over the upturned canoes bent a couple of men gumming afresh 

 all the splits and seams against to-morrow's voyage. Then with a 

 flip-flop that tells of the other side of the flap-jacks being browned, 

 the cook yodels in crescendo that " Sup — per ! — 's — read — ee !" 



1 This phase of prairie life must not be set down to writer's license. It is something that 

 every rider of the plains can see any time he has patience to rein up and sit like a statue within 

 field-glass distance of the gopher burrows about nightfall when the badgers are running. 



